DISCLAIMER: Imageshack has some issues with the RPGCodex, so hotlinking isn't working now and some of the images won't show -- you'll only see a frozen frog image instead. Hopefully the issue will be resolved eventually, but for now there's a solution for those using Firefox or Opera.
SOLUTION FOR FIREFOX (kudos to Antihero):
1. Type about:config in the address bar.
2. In the "filter" line, type "referer".
3. Set the value to 1 and reload.
4. If that doesn't work, set the value to 0.
5. Set it back to 2 later if you want.
SOLUTION FOR OPERA (kudos to Merkwürdigliebe):
Menu -> Settings -> Preferences -> Advanced -> Network -> Uncheck the "Send referrer information" box -> Profit!!
Hope that helps. I'll reupload all the images to photobucket eventually, but that's a lot of work, so it won't happen soon.
Let's play Dark Heart of Uukrul (1990): A blind oldskool dungeon-crawling LPnever to be finished!
CONTENTS!
1: Party Generation
2: Exploration basics
3: Combat basics and the first sanctuary
4: Of Wolves, Skeletons, and Secret Doors
5: Shopping and Leveling-up
6: The Four Temples, the Circle of Magic, and the Catacomb
7: It's a Trap!
8: Sagaris
9: Two Hearts
10: Two Deaths
11: Bats, Birds and Spiders
12: Faith
13: To URRAN
14: Unfinished Business
15: Shopping
16: Plagued
17: Third Heart
18: OMG
19: URSHAS and the Secret Temple Rooms
20: Dungeons and Dragons, Part 1
21: Dungeons and Dragons, Part 2
22: Dungeons and Dragons, Part 3
23: Cat-and-mouse
24: The Pyramid
25: Great Engineer, Part 1
26: Great Engineer, Part 2
27: The Cube
28: Hearthall
29: Adron's Palace
30: Chaos: Dead and Done
Hello Codexia!
Following my own inclination and Black Cat's sound advice -- according to which the purpose of an LP like this one is "more to show off a cool and hardcore game than to do a full walkthrough" -- I hereby announce the beginning of a totally hopeless and rage-inducing blind LP. "Blind" means I don't know what the hell I'm doing, where the hell I should go next, or how the hell can I get there in one piece. "LP" means you're going to follow me on my party's path to despair, disease, starvation and death -- and, without a doubt, laugh at my pathetic and incompetent efforts. My only excuse is, this being an introductory LP, you'll get casually introduced to this gem of a game and maybe get to like it despite or, if you're sadistic enough, even thanks to this LP's inevitable eventual demise; so much for the rationale. Graphics whores and storyfags may get the fuck out right now, there's nothing for them to see or be attracted to here. (I'm a storyfag myself by the way, and I find this game's, uhm, "proto-story" to be quite atmospheric -- with all those inscriptions, descriptions, visions, and bits and pieces of info and bad humour scattered around the dungeon -- so maybe storyfags can stay; graphics whores, on the other hand, should definitely get out. Also: no gay elven romances here, or any romances for that matter. Don't say I didn't warn you.)
Uukrul is supposed to be hardcore as fuck, meaning this LP's gonna be extremely long-going, something like Andyman's and Garfunkel's LPs of no less hardcore games. I've also got a life to live.
Also, bear in mind that my Final Fantasy: 4 Heroes of Light LP -- which you should definitely check out if for some weird stupid reason you haven't done so yet -- remains my top priority; this LP comes second. But I'm not in a hurry, and neither should you be, guys and gals and horses and whoever else inhabits this kawaii cesspit. Welcome and enjoy your stay.
Now I guess some introductory words should be spoken about the game itself. The Dark Heart of Uukrul is a first-person/top-down turn-based dungeon crawler with a four-character party, a lot of puzzles, random encounters (don't blame 'em on JRPGs FFS!), spells, prayers, traps, and tears. It's first-person when crawling dungeons and top-down when in battle encounters. The game was developed by Digital Studios Limited and published in 1990 by Brøderbund Software, the company that brought us Prince of Persia, The Last Express and Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?. A long, long time ago, that was. In other words...
...
"Welcome to The Dark Heart of Uukrul, a game where you will explore a single immense underground city, searching for the means to destroy the incarnation of evil: Uukrul. Your underground world is far richer and more mysterious than any you have explored before. Your adventure will lead you from the simple passages and markets in the west to the final confrontation in the palaces of Adron and the areas of chaos to the east. You will find opponents, challenges, and puzzles of subtlety and depth." So says the manual. The underground city -- the "Mountain City" which we will explore from its western, more friendly end to the eastern, the darkest and most wicked one -- is called Eriosthe. "Eriosthe has fallen from its glory. Gone are the jewel-encrusted palaces, gone are the stately marble atriums. Much has fallen into decay, and Uukrul has laid many snares in the passages, corrupting their path. As you explore towards the east, the Sanctuaries will become sparser, the passage forward more obscure, the danger supreme. To survive you will need to be wary of every breath and step."
Yes, this game has food management, which is a must in any truly old-school cRPG. Every action we take -- be it exploring, resting, or searching walls for secret doors -- eats up some food, so given my thorough approach to exploration we'll be running out of food pretty quickly. (Starvation, here we come!) The sanctuaries are basically checkpoints -- again, hello JRPGs -- which let you rest, check you party level, back up your game -- you can save anywhere but the one and only regular save slot gets rewritten every time you enter a battle and/or one of your party members is killed (hardcore!), whereas the backup slot is not -- as well as recuperate, at the expense of food, your health and special points you need for spells and prayers. Which doesn't mean that reaching a sanctuary means you've "cleared" the previous part of the dungeon; in fact, you can -- or rather must -- revisit the already explored areas, as some passages, doors and secrets only become accessible as your skills progress. Apart from the sanctuaries, there are teleporters that let you fast travel between different areas of the vast Eriosthe dungeon. Every sanctuary has a corresponding teleporter, but there are more teleporters than there are sanctuaries.
"Your party consists of four Aspirants: a Fighter skilled with weapon use, a Paladin who has the ability to lay on hands as well as skill with weapons, a Priest who can call on the gods and elementals to aid the party, and a Magician whose magical skills are vital to the party's success. You are a party of novices, chosen not for your prowess but for your promise. Only as an inconspicuous party can you enter Eriosthe without alerting Uukrul to your presence. Once within it you can gain the strength and experience that you will need to defeat Uukrul." In other words, in this game you control a four-character party. The classes of your characters are pre-set, which may be a drawback for some, but given that I enjoy JRPGs that's no big deal to me personally. The starting stats are not preset, however, but are determined via a dialogue-based party generation process -- we'll take a look at it later.
tl;dr You control a Fighter, a Paladin, a Priest and a Mage. Here, take a look at the pic:
"But all is not dark. Eriosthe is a huge city and Uukrul has not corrupted the whole of it. In the west there are still people who struggle to make an honest living under his shadow. Here you will find a marketplace with a Shop for the purchase and sale of weapons and other items, a Forge for the repair of weapons, a Hospice which will heal your wounds, a Mausoleum where your dead can be resurrected or laid to rest and a Guild where you can meet and recruit other party members. Temples and a Magic Circle allow your Priest and Magician to advance in skills and powers." We'll see what exactly all these places are when we first visit them.
For now, a prologue is in order. In the manual, it's a two-page tl;dr, but I've attempted to make it more, um, streamlined and girly and thus more accessible to you, Fair Codexia. Let's get started, shall we?
Prologue
You enter the throne room of the Western Council. Elaria herself, leader of the Council and probably the most powerful figure in the Western Lands, comes down from the podium to greet you and tell you why you have been chosen from all of the new entrants to the Council's Training Guild. You are held spellbound by her voice and the power of her green eyes.
"You are the most promising of all the Aspirants, but none of you has any training in your arts. This is why you have been summoned. Your fate is to become great beyond the skill and abilities of the Council to teach. But your fate is also to walk closer to the darkness than any from the Guild have walked before. We would ask you to walk into Eriosthe itself."
Elaria' voice seems humble when she speaks of your power, as though she were in awe of what fate awaits you.
"Eriosthe, as you know, was the greatest city ever constructed. Built hundreds of years ago underneath and spanning the Kalurn mountains it was once the jewel in the crown of the Western Lands. But that is now part of the faded past, Eriosthe has lain abandoned for many decades now since the flight of the Ancients."
(So the Ancients fled the city. I wonder why.)
"What you may not know is that the evil that defeated the Ancients has grown incredibly powerful and now seeks to poison the Western lands. That evil is contained in the devilry of one man, once of the Ancients himself: Uukrul."
Elaria pauses, watching your faces. You realize that the whispered rumors of trouble in the east were truer than any believed. If Uukrul, whom all presumed dead, were to strike the west, the suffering and destruction would be great if not total.
(An undead evil sorcerer.Bioware evil.)
"Uukrul must be stopped! We cannot afford to allow his plans to mature!"
(Elaria pauses again.)
"Eighteen months ago we sent a party of powerful Councillors against the evil. None have returned. Leading that party was Mara, who guided the Council for many years before she took up this burden."
Elaria is silent a moment and then looks at you with renewed spirit.
"Our mistake was to underestimate our opponent: he was more powerful and more cunning than we had thought. He intercepted our party and raped trapped them. Their power was not equal to his evil. Since that time we have reflected upon our failure, and upon our enemy's strengths, and we have perceived a road to defeat him. Uukrul has one fatal weakness; it is the same flaw that will always defeat evil: his hubris."
(Hubris, in Greek tragedy: excessive pride toward or defiance of the gods, leading to nemesis.)
"We see now that Uukrul believes himself unbeatable. Any threat by a powerful opponent will play into his hands and will end in our defeat. But he could never foresee defeat by a small party of Aspirants."
"This is why you have been chosen."
Elaria gives you a long, meaningful look.
"If you agree, you will be transported to the west side of Eriosthe and smuggled into the mountain city through a secret entrance. In his pride Uukrul will never suspect such a move against him."
What a sophisticated, cunning, feasible plan.
"I will not send you totally defenseless, although any powerful magic would alert Uukrul to our plans. I have four Soul Amulets, rescued from Eriosthe before it fell., which I can pass to you. Should you die these will capture your souls and allow your bodies to be resurrected. The Amulets will also allow you access to refuges within the Mountain City. These Sanctuaries will only open to a party bearing the Soul Amulets and will protect you from opponents."
(The "soul amulets" are this game's annoying copy protection system that makes you match letters and symbols, shit like that.)
"I can also give you this diary. It was being kept by Mara and her party, and was carried out of Eriosthe by an underground stream. Some pages have been torn from it, but it still may contain information to help you in your journey."
(The diary is another tl;dr in the manual. We'll take a look at it later, maybe.)
"Know that if you choose to follow the path into Eriosthe you cannot fail: evil is ever blind to its greatest weakness. This is your fate if you choose it, and the good of the Western Lands lies in your path. Darkness must fall!"
Yay! And so it begins.
"Within Uukrul's stronghold at the eastern end of Eriosthe and throughout the Mountain City are cunning traps, hostile monsters and myriad dangers; once Uukrul is aware of your presence he will stop at nothing to destroy you."
Traps, monsters and puzzles! It doesn't get better than this.
Next time: party creation.
As a bonus, theme song: Rakoth - Dark Heart of Uukrul (courtesy of Fowyr). Stay tuned.
SOLUTION FOR FIREFOX (kudos to Antihero):
1. Type about:config in the address bar.
2. In the "filter" line, type "referer".
3. Set the value to 1 and reload.
4. If that doesn't work, set the value to 0.
5. Set it back to 2 later if you want.
SOLUTION FOR OPERA (kudos to Merkwürdigliebe):
Menu -> Settings -> Preferences -> Advanced -> Network -> Uncheck the "Send referrer information" box -> Profit!!
Hope that helps. I'll reupload all the images to photobucket eventually, but that's a lot of work, so it won't happen soon.
Let's play Dark Heart of Uukrul (1990): A blind oldskool dungeon-crawling LP
Fowyr said:
Black Cat said:
CONTENTS!
1: Party Generation
2: Exploration basics
3: Combat basics and the first sanctuary
4: Of Wolves, Skeletons, and Secret Doors
5: Shopping and Leveling-up
6: The Four Temples, the Circle of Magic, and the Catacomb
7: It's a Trap!
8: Sagaris
9: Two Hearts
10: Two Deaths
11: Bats, Birds and Spiders
12: Faith
13: To URRAN
14: Unfinished Business
15: Shopping
16: Plagued
17: Third Heart
18: OMG
19: URSHAS and the Secret Temple Rooms
20: Dungeons and Dragons, Part 1
21: Dungeons and Dragons, Part 2
22: Dungeons and Dragons, Part 3
23: Cat-and-mouse
24: The Pyramid
25: Great Engineer, Part 1
26: Great Engineer, Part 2
27: The Cube
28: Hearthall
29: Adron's Palace
30: Chaos: Dead and Done
Hello Codexia!
Following my own inclination and Black Cat's sound advice -- according to which the purpose of an LP like this one is "more to show off a cool and hardcore game than to do a full walkthrough" -- I hereby announce the beginning of a totally hopeless and rage-inducing blind LP. "Blind" means I don't know what the hell I'm doing, where the hell I should go next, or how the hell can I get there in one piece. "LP" means you're going to follow me on my party's path to despair, disease, starvation and death -- and, without a doubt, laugh at my pathetic and incompetent efforts. My only excuse is, this being an introductory LP, you'll get casually introduced to this gem of a game and maybe get to like it despite or, if you're sadistic enough, even thanks to this LP's inevitable eventual demise; so much for the rationale. Graphics whores and storyfags may get the fuck out right now, there's nothing for them to see or be attracted to here. (I'm a storyfag myself by the way, and I find this game's, uhm, "proto-story" to be quite atmospheric -- with all those inscriptions, descriptions, visions, and bits and pieces of info and bad humour scattered around the dungeon -- so maybe storyfags can stay; graphics whores, on the other hand, should definitely get out. Also: no gay elven romances here, or any romances for that matter. Don't say I didn't warn you.)
Uukrul is supposed to be hardcore as fuck, meaning this LP's gonna be extremely long-going, something like Andyman's and Garfunkel's LPs of no less hardcore games. I've also got a life to live.
Also, bear in mind that my Final Fantasy: 4 Heroes of Light LP -- which you should definitely check out if for some weird stupid reason you haven't done so yet -- remains my top priority; this LP comes second. But I'm not in a hurry, and neither should you be, guys and gals and horses and whoever else inhabits this kawaii cesspit. Welcome and enjoy your stay.Now I guess some introductory words should be spoken about the game itself. The Dark Heart of Uukrul is a first-person/top-down turn-based dungeon crawler with a four-character party, a lot of puzzles, random encounters (don't blame 'em on JRPGs FFS!), spells, prayers, traps, and tears. It's first-person when crawling dungeons and top-down when in battle encounters. The game was developed by Digital Studios Limited and published in 1990 by Brøderbund Software, the company that brought us Prince of Persia, The Last Express and Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?. A long, long time ago, that was. In other words...
...
"Welcome to The Dark Heart of Uukrul, a game where you will explore a single immense underground city, searching for the means to destroy the incarnation of evil: Uukrul. Your underground world is far richer and more mysterious than any you have explored before. Your adventure will lead you from the simple passages and markets in the west to the final confrontation in the palaces of Adron and the areas of chaos to the east. You will find opponents, challenges, and puzzles of subtlety and depth." So says the manual. The underground city -- the "Mountain City" which we will explore from its western, more friendly end to the eastern, the darkest and most wicked one -- is called Eriosthe. "Eriosthe has fallen from its glory. Gone are the jewel-encrusted palaces, gone are the stately marble atriums. Much has fallen into decay, and Uukrul has laid many snares in the passages, corrupting their path. As you explore towards the east, the Sanctuaries will become sparser, the passage forward more obscure, the danger supreme. To survive you will need to be wary of every breath and step."
Yes, this game has food management, which is a must in any truly old-school cRPG. Every action we take -- be it exploring, resting, or searching walls for secret doors -- eats up some food, so given my thorough approach to exploration we'll be running out of food pretty quickly. (Starvation, here we come!) The sanctuaries are basically checkpoints -- again, hello JRPGs -- which let you rest, check you party level, back up your game -- you can save anywhere but the one and only regular save slot gets rewritten every time you enter a battle and/or one of your party members is killed (hardcore!), whereas the backup slot is not -- as well as recuperate, at the expense of food, your health and special points you need for spells and prayers. Which doesn't mean that reaching a sanctuary means you've "cleared" the previous part of the dungeon; in fact, you can -- or rather must -- revisit the already explored areas, as some passages, doors and secrets only become accessible as your skills progress. Apart from the sanctuaries, there are teleporters that let you fast travel between different areas of the vast Eriosthe dungeon. Every sanctuary has a corresponding teleporter, but there are more teleporters than there are sanctuaries.
"Your party consists of four Aspirants: a Fighter skilled with weapon use, a Paladin who has the ability to lay on hands as well as skill with weapons, a Priest who can call on the gods and elementals to aid the party, and a Magician whose magical skills are vital to the party's success. You are a party of novices, chosen not for your prowess but for your promise. Only as an inconspicuous party can you enter Eriosthe without alerting Uukrul to your presence. Once within it you can gain the strength and experience that you will need to defeat Uukrul." In other words, in this game you control a four-character party. The classes of your characters are pre-set, which may be a drawback for some, but given that I enjoy JRPGs that's no big deal to me personally. The starting stats are not preset, however, but are determined via a dialogue-based party generation process -- we'll take a look at it later.
tl;dr You control a Fighter, a Paladin, a Priest and a Mage. Here, take a look at the pic:
"But all is not dark. Eriosthe is a huge city and Uukrul has not corrupted the whole of it. In the west there are still people who struggle to make an honest living under his shadow. Here you will find a marketplace with a Shop for the purchase and sale of weapons and other items, a Forge for the repair of weapons, a Hospice which will heal your wounds, a Mausoleum where your dead can be resurrected or laid to rest and a Guild where you can meet and recruit other party members. Temples and a Magic Circle allow your Priest and Magician to advance in skills and powers." We'll see what exactly all these places are when we first visit them.
For now, a prologue is in order. In the manual, it's a two-page tl;dr, but I've attempted to make it more, um, streamlined and girly and thus more accessible to you, Fair Codexia. Let's get started, shall we?
Prologue
You enter the throne room of the Western Council. Elaria herself, leader of the Council and probably the most powerful figure in the Western Lands, comes down from the podium to greet you and tell you why you have been chosen from all of the new entrants to the Council's Training Guild. You are held spellbound by her voice and the power of her green eyes.
Elaria' voice seems humble when she speaks of your power, as though she were in awe of what fate awaits you.
(So the Ancients fled the city. I wonder why.)
Elaria pauses, watching your faces. You realize that the whispered rumors of trouble in the east were truer than any believed. If Uukrul, whom all presumed dead, were to strike the west, the suffering and destruction would be great if not total.
(An undead evil sorcerer.
(Elaria pauses again.)
Elaria is silent a moment and then looks at you with renewed spirit.
(Hubris, in Greek tragedy: excessive pride toward or defiance of the gods, leading to nemesis.)
Elaria gives you a long, meaningful look.
What a sophisticated, cunning, feasible plan.
(The "soul amulets" are this game's annoying copy protection system that makes you match letters and symbols, shit like that.)
(The diary is another tl;dr in the manual. We'll take a look at it later, maybe.)
Yay! And so it begins.
"Within Uukrul's stronghold at the eastern end of Eriosthe and throughout the Mountain City are cunning traps, hostile monsters and myriad dangers; once Uukrul is aware of your presence he will stop at nothing to destroy you."
Traps, monsters and puzzles! It doesn't get better than this.
Next time: party creation.
As a bonus, theme song: Rakoth - Dark Heart of Uukrul (courtesy of Fowyr). Stay tuned.
But won't take offense if you don't, of course.
This game sure has a (bad) sense of humour.
