4: Of Wolves, Skeletons, and Secret Doors
Okay, so our goal in this update is to make it from the first sanctuary, URTAS, to the second one, URLASAR. This ain't too complex or long a crawl since we're still in the introductory part of the game, so let me show you how easily it can be done.
Stepping out of the eastern exit of the URTAS sanctuary, our glorious party of low-level adventurers find themselves in a room with many doors (tm):
Two doors to the east, two to the north, and two to the south. In fact this ain't many compared to the number of doors per room we'll get later in the game. One step further to the east, we trigger a text event:
And Kalos gets to play a knowledgeable one for a change. Up til now, that has been spekkio's prerogative.
We decide to explore the closest of the south doors first:
Growls and grunts? Who do you think is there?
Woof woof!
So this is just a couple of doggies. I doubt two doggies could be much trouble to a party of four.
After the movement phase, spekkio casts AMRAS, the basic fire spell we already know from the last update:
Last time I forgot to post the description of the Arkana of Fire found in the manual, so here it is:
Lord Rocket swings his weapon, inflicting 17 points of damage on the other dog. Kalos tries to invoke Ufthu...
...but, just the way it was in the previous update, the warrior god can't be arsed to answer. Bee is more successful -- that is, she succeeds in landing a hefty critical:
After that, Rocket one-hit kills the remaining beastie, and we gain some exp:
And no treasure.
But, truth be told, the battle really was easy.
In the room we've now entered, there's another door to the south, which we also enter:
Uhm, dear readers, this is the first rotating plate we've met. There'll be plenty of them down the road. Here's an automap of the entrance to this room:
("T" is the teleporter, and the, uhm, penis sign stands for the sanctuary.)
Why can't we map past here, you ask? Well, because this is a puzzle area with rotating plates, obviously.
Once we've stepped on such a plate it rotates, leaving us clueless as to which direction we're really facing. Also, this is but a starting area, that's why we're told that we've stepped onto a rotating plate; later, we won't get this message, which will leading to a lot of WTF? and frustration. 
Luckily, we have a compass with us that we can consult by a heading check:
North is where we've come from, to the east is a dead end, so we go south. Turning around the corner, we reach another intersection with a rotating plate:
We've come from the south but now are facing west, which is the only way to explore this room further. There seems to be nothing in that part of the room, but we tend to use the "Search walls" option quite often and so discover a loose section of the wall:
spekkio again passes a perception check.
We're given three options; let's start by examining the wall:
Now we know the way to, uhm, properly handle this wall, and can acess the hidden passage it conceals:
There is but a scroll there:
We let spekkio have it, as he's our party magician.
The scroll is yet unidentified, of course:
And we go back to the room from which we started, the one right to the east of the URTAS sanctuary:
Let's enter the door we're directly facing:
So it takes a joint effort of Bee and Rocket to pry it open, and inside is only one copper coin!?
This game's trolling us! In that, it's a truly Codexian game.
Shall we now enter the second door to the north? Because, well, why not.
Hmm, looks like we've wandered into...
...a bat lair!!
Oh-kay. We try to position spekkio and Kalos as far behind LR and Bee as we can; this is what comes out of it:
Well, it could be worse I guess.
Lord Rocket kills the bat next to him, and then Bee does the same thing. Another bat tries to give spekkio a good biting...
...but misses. spekkio, for his part, doesn't:
So even a mage can sometimes kill things melee, huh? Good to know.
Oh, and Ufthu once again fails to answer Kalos' prayer. :/ All in all, this battle is easy, and we emerge from it almost unscathed:
Experience scales to the degree in which a character contributed to the victory, which only makes sense.
No treasure. Again. I am disappoint. :/
Our next encounter is with some rats, but we slay them easily, obtaining some experience points. Not many:
In the northeast passage, we come across a secret door:
Okay, I guess Kalos wants us to know he's no less perceptive than spekkio.
Looking for a device yields no result:
So we ask Lord Rocket to barge into the door:
And then again:
Inside the secret room, we find an ointment:
There's another door to the south:
("B" is where we found a single copper coin, "A" is where we encountered the bats.)
Going through two more doors, we find a small sum of money on the ground. I forgot to take a screenshot of that glorious moment, so here's an automap instead:
"D" is where the money was.
Now we can exit the secret area and explore the northeastern passage further:
Our next encounter is with rats AND bats. How ... varied.
We deal with the fuckers, no probs. spekkio, having 10 psychic points left, casts AMRAS twice, and Kalos, in a fashion we're already getting used to, fails to invoke Ufthu's aid. So it's all up to Lord Rocket again.
It looks like we've explored the northwestern passage:
And so we're back in the room with six doors.
Now we need to choose between the two remaining doors in the southeast, the eastern-ish one...
...and the southern-ish one:
Intrigued by the sound of footsteps, we enter the latter one:
Ah, rats!
This time, however, this ain't just rats. The rats are accompanied by a new type of enemy -- undeady skeletons! So the footsteps were those of the skeletons, I gather.
In the above screenshot, Kalos has already managed to damage a skeleton using his "Turn undead" ability. Finally Kalos is to some extent helpful in combat. Bee attacks the same skeleton...
...and manages to stun it. Good. Lord Rocket kills a rat. spekkio tries to hit one of the two remaining rats but misses. Kalos chooses to turn undead again, and the already wounded skeleton is destroyed.
Lord Rocket kills the second skeleton in one hit, and no challenge remains.
Nice, yay.
In the room we now enter, there's a further door to the east:
We enter it and...
I hope we'll be able to find another way out. To do that, we have to walk through a couple more doors; luckily, this area can be mapped so it's actually easy not to get lost:
(I hope you're able to distinguish simple walls from walls with doors in the above screenshot, o my perceptive readers.)
Along the way, we find a nice item -- a sword:
We trust Bee to pick it up:
Examining our party, we see that we've got 322 coins and 291 units of food left:
Let's brave the last remaining door:
An inscription is ahead:
It's in gibberish, but we succeed in translating it with spekkio's NGOS spell:
We face some stairs:
We climb them, then enter another door and stumble into another inscription:
Translating...
Oooh, scary. And evil. :twisted:
Next door hides something truly awful:
Shall we disregard Kalos' warning and proceed? But of course we shall!
Ouch!
A single wolf? So this is ... a boss battle!
Lord Rocket starts the fun:
The wolf isn't too bad either, though:
The fucker stuns our poor Rockety.
spekkio patches LR up by casting SHUM twice:
SHUM is the only iron spell in the Arkana of Healing.
One turn later Kalos is no longer stunned:
Bee hits the wolf for 14 hp. And then Lord Rocket seals the deal:
Not particularly impressive for a boss encounter.
There's even no treasure to loot. Meh.
In a corner of the room we're currently in...
...we find a small treasure:
Again, the character who discovers the money isn't the one to take it.
In a small room to the southwest...
...we find a dagger:
Bee picks it up.
It's time to be moving further east.
WHEN SUDDENLY
OH NOES A GHOST
Find the frozen hearts? What the hell could that mean?
And the vision indeed fades:
Woof woof!
Meh, it's just another random two-dog encounter. Nothing of importance. (Except that Kalos keeps miserably failing at doing his prayers.)
of priests.
And another set of stairs ahead of us:
And then, down the passage...
...we find the next sanctuary!
I hate this shit.
Since this is the first time we enter this sanctuary, our health is fully restored. Nice. We save the game and check just how many more experience points we need to progress to the next level:
Will we be able to make it to level 2 in the next update? And will Kalos be finally able to successfully invoke a prayer? It is a mystery!
Okay, so our goal in this update is to make it from the first sanctuary, URTAS, to the second one, URLASAR. This ain't too complex or long a crawl since we're still in the introductory part of the game, so let me show you how easily it can be done.
Stepping out of the eastern exit of the URTAS sanctuary, our glorious party of low-level adventurers find themselves in a room with many doors (tm):
Two doors to the east, two to the north, and two to the south. In fact this ain't many compared to the number of doors per room we'll get later in the game. One step further to the east, we trigger a text event:
And Kalos gets to play a knowledgeable one for a change. Up til now, that has been spekkio's prerogative.
We decide to explore the closest of the south doors first:
Growls and grunts? Who do you think is there?
Woof woof!
So this is just a couple of doggies. I doubt two doggies could be much trouble to a party of four.
After the movement phase, spekkio casts AMRAS, the basic fire spell we already know from the last update:
Last time I forgot to post the description of the Arkana of Fire found in the manual, so here it is:
AMRAS deals good damage to the dawg but doesn't manage to kill it, alas:
Lord Rocket swings his weapon, inflicting 17 points of damage on the other dog. Kalos tries to invoke Ufthu...
...but, just the way it was in the previous update, the warrior god can't be arsed to answer. Bee is more successful -- that is, she succeeds in landing a hefty critical:
After that, Rocket one-hit kills the remaining beastie, and we gain some exp:
And no treasure.
But, truth be told, the battle really was easy.
In the room we've now entered, there's another door to the south, which we also enter:
Uhm, dear readers, this is the first rotating plate we've met. There'll be plenty of them down the road. Here's an automap of the entrance to this room:
("T" is the teleporter, and the, uhm, penis sign stands for the sanctuary.)
Why can't we map past here, you ask? Well, because this is a puzzle area with rotating plates, obviously.
Once we've stepped on such a plate it rotates, leaving us clueless as to which direction we're really facing. Also, this is but a starting area, that's why we're told that we've stepped onto a rotating plate; later, we won't get this message, which will leading to a lot of WTF? and frustration. Luckily, we have a compass with us that we can consult by a heading check:
North is where we've come from, to the east is a dead end, so we go south. Turning around the corner, we reach another intersection with a rotating plate:
We've come from the south but now are facing west, which is the only way to explore this room further. There seems to be nothing in that part of the room, but we tend to use the "Search walls" option quite often and so discover a loose section of the wall:
spekkio again passes a perception check.
We're given three options; let's start by examining the wall:
Now we know the way to, uhm, properly handle this wall, and can acess the hidden passage it conceals:
There is but a scroll there:
We let spekkio have it, as he's our party magician.
The scroll is yet unidentified, of course:
And we go back to the room from which we started, the one right to the east of the URTAS sanctuary:
Let's enter the door we're directly facing:
So it takes a joint effort of Bee and Rocket to pry it open, and inside is only one copper coin!?
This game's trolling us! In that, it's a truly Codexian game.
Shall we now enter the second door to the north? Because, well, why not.
Hmm, looks like we've wandered into...
...a bat lair!!
Oh-kay. We try to position spekkio and Kalos as far behind LR and Bee as we can; this is what comes out of it:
Well, it could be worse I guess.
Lord Rocket kills the bat next to him, and then Bee does the same thing. Another bat tries to give spekkio a good biting...
...but misses. spekkio, for his part, doesn't:
So even a mage can sometimes kill things melee, huh? Good to know.
Oh, and Ufthu once again fails to answer Kalos' prayer. :/ All in all, this battle is easy, and we emerge from it almost unscathed:
Experience scales to the degree in which a character contributed to the victory, which only makes sense.
No treasure. Again. I am disappoint. :/
Our next encounter is with some rats, but we slay them easily, obtaining some experience points. Not many:
In the northeast passage, we come across a secret door:
Okay, I guess Kalos wants us to know he's no less perceptive than spekkio.
Looking for a device yields no result:
So we ask Lord Rocket to barge into the door:
And then again:
Inside the secret room, we find an ointment:
There's another door to the south:
("B" is where we found a single copper coin, "A" is where we encountered the bats.)
Going through two more doors, we find a small sum of money on the ground. I forgot to take a screenshot of that glorious moment, so here's an automap instead:
"D" is where the money was.
Now we can exit the secret area and explore the northeastern passage further:
Our next encounter is with rats AND bats. How ... varied.
We deal with the fuckers, no probs. spekkio, having 10 psychic points left, casts AMRAS twice, and Kalos, in a fashion we're already getting used to, fails to invoke Ufthu's aid. So it's all up to Lord Rocket again.
It looks like we've explored the northwestern passage:
And so we're back in the room with six doors.
Now we need to choose between the two remaining doors in the southeast, the eastern-ish one...
...and the southern-ish one:
Intrigued by the sound of footsteps, we enter the latter one:
Ah, rats!
This time, however, this ain't just rats. The rats are accompanied by a new type of enemy -- undeady skeletons! So the footsteps were those of the skeletons, I gather.
In the above screenshot, Kalos has already managed to damage a skeleton using his "Turn undead" ability. Finally Kalos is to some extent helpful in combat. Bee attacks the same skeleton...
...and manages to stun it. Good. Lord Rocket kills a rat. spekkio tries to hit one of the two remaining rats but misses. Kalos chooses to turn undead again, and the already wounded skeleton is destroyed.
Lord Rocket kills the second skeleton in one hit, and no challenge remains.
Nice, yay.
In the room we now enter, there's a further door to the east:
We enter it and...
I hope we'll be able to find another way out. To do that, we have to walk through a couple more doors; luckily, this area can be mapped so it's actually easy not to get lost:
(I hope you're able to distinguish simple walls from walls with doors in the above screenshot, o my perceptive readers.)
Along the way, we find a nice item -- a sword:
We trust Bee to pick it up:
Examining our party, we see that we've got 322 coins and 291 units of food left:
Let's brave the last remaining door:
An inscription is ahead:
It's in gibberish, but we succeed in translating it with spekkio's NGOS spell:
We face some stairs:
We climb them, then enter another door and stumble into another inscription:
Translating...
Oooh, scary. And evil. :twisted:
Next door hides something truly awful:
Shall we disregard Kalos' warning and proceed? But of course we shall!
Ouch!
A single wolf? So this is ... a boss battle!
Lord Rocket starts the fun:
The wolf isn't too bad either, though:
The fucker stuns our poor Rockety.
spekkio patches LR up by casting SHUM twice:
SHUM is the only iron spell in the Arkana of Healing.
One turn later Kalos is no longer stunned:
Bee hits the wolf for 14 hp. And then Lord Rocket seals the deal:
Not particularly impressive for a boss encounter.
There's even no treasure to loot. Meh.
In a corner of the room we're currently in...
...we find a small treasure:
Again, the character who discovers the money isn't the one to take it.
In a small room to the southwest...
...we find a dagger:
Bee picks it up.
It's time to be moving further east.
WHEN SUDDENLY
OH NOES A GHOST
Find the frozen hearts?
What the hell could that mean?And the vision indeed fades:
Woof woof!
Meh, it's just another random two-dog encounter. Nothing of importance. (Except that Kalos keeps miserably failing at doing his prayers.)
of priests.
And another set of stairs ahead of us:
And then, down the passage...
...we find the next sanctuary!
I hate this shit.
Since this is the first time we enter this sanctuary, our health is fully restored. Nice. We save the game and check just how many more experience points we need to progress to the next level:
Will we be able to make it to level 2 in the next update? And will Kalos be finally able to successfully invoke a prayer? It is a mystery!
