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Completed Let's play Dark Heart of Uukrul! -- Dead and done!
- Thread starter Crooked Bee
- Start date
The only question is, when will it be? I have it in my uukrul.txt, "two secret temple doors: Ufthu shrine and Fsofth shrine", but I haven't braved them yet. Even though I can already invoke HOYAMOQ several times successfully, I'm not sure if I should do it now.
Codexlurker
Savant
- Joined
- Dec 15, 2010
- Messages
- 366
Huh where? I just started playing because of this LP and I'm at the second Sanctuary.
Codexlurker said:
Assuming you mean to ask where URSHAS is, it's the sixth sanctuary, so you still have some way to go before you reach it. It's just that this LP is slower than my actual playthrough, for obvious reasons such as writing updates taking time; I hope to catch up in a few weeks.
Also, good luck with the game; it's pretty fun.
Codexlurker
Savant
- Joined
- Dec 15, 2010
- Messages
- 366
It is, but I seem to be rather wasteful with the food since I like to search everywhere. Other then that, I've been trying Daggerfall, and it's ridiculous how dangerous the tutorial area is in Daggerfall compared to Oblivion. I got killed by something after opening a door(2hits) and I couldn't even see it.Crooked Bee said:
Have I already said that I fucking hate the nonsensical spell names in those very old crawlers? Instead of using common sense names like prayer, light, identify, whatever it has to be nonsense like halito, drom, sirdhe and so on. What is the point of this, anyway? I honestly never got that.
Codexlurker
Savant
- Joined
- Dec 15, 2010
- Messages
- 366
Nope, I was able to get the Imp to go into a corner or somewhere due to fucked up pathfinding. I got two shotted by a thief. I restarted the game and killed the Imp using a silver flail and fucked the thief up with my battle axe.Fowyr said:
Carlos' Bitch1
Arcane
haha...just wait. Just wait.
The starting areas are very easy.
Blackadder said:
haha...just wait. Just wait.
The starting areas are very easy.
Uhm, it wasn't me who was complaining about the lack of challenge, it was bro lightbane.
And in any case, I think lightbane was just fooling around. He's just reading this LP and, as usual, complaining about the lack of gruesome deaths. 
Also, I'd like to make it clear -- to all of my readers -- that I'm not using a walkthrough. That would strip the game of all the fun. If I get stuck, I'd rather ask Blackadder or Fowyr for help.
Which also means that this LP is not very likely to be successfully completed. But I will do my best.
Codexlurker said:
You're just like me, then.
Codexlurker said:
You should definitely give Chaos Strikes Back a try.
Cenobyte said:
IMMERSHUN!!1 It wasn't Mass Effect which started it, you know.
Also, what Fowyr said.
Crooked Bee said:Cenobyte said:
IMMERSHUN!!1 It wasn't Mass Effect which started it, you know.
Also, what Fowyr said.
Well, I guess I'm too much of a newfag since I find normal spell names sufficiently immersive. Who knows? It's of course only a minor detail, don't get me wrong, but annoying nonetheless.
Anyway, do continue. And of course, also update the FF4HoL lp :D
GarfunkeL
Racism Expert
Good going so far Bee! Keep it up!
6: The Four Temples, the Circle of Magic, and the Catacomb
Previously on this LP, we explored the (mostly empty) storage area, did some shopping and weapon repairing, fled the catacomb -- as Kalos sensed an aura of danger there -- and everyone in our party made it to level 2. Our checkpoint was the URLASAR sanctuary.
Exploring the temples
Okey dokey, our next destination is the temple area. -- At that point I didn't know if the temple area would be safe from combat encounters, so first we head to the Forge and repair Lord Rocket's broken Short iron sword:
Then we buy him a Longsword...
..and equip it. We sell the Mace we're carrying; I don't think we need that many weapons. We've got 201 coins now -- so why not buy an Iron gauntlet for Rocket as well?
Yeah, I'm not one who tends to save money. I'm spendthrift like that.
Having equipped it, Lord Rocket has his armour raised to 13:
Now we should be fine. Let's descend to the temple area.
We take the hitherto not taken path:
The corridor to the east leads to the catacomb. Ugh. We'll go there later. Going south, we enter the hall of the temples.
Let me remind you of this area's layout which I described in the last update. It's shown in the drawing in the corridor we've come from:
F is the temple of Fsofth, God of the Spiritual Self; D is the temple of Drutho, God of the Underworld; U, the temple of Ufthu, God of War; and finally G, the temple of Golthur, God of the Physical Self.
According to the automap, we've entered the area from the north -- from the north one of the shorter lines in the drawing.
Now we're moving in the direction of the Ufthu shrine.
There're two inscriptions here, both in gibberish. The first one...
...is untranslatable with NGOS, alas:
Only some letters are translated, but we can't make out the whole inscription. The last word is probably "right" or "might", but well, who knows really.
The second one...
...is easily translated, however:
Duly noted.
Let's enter the Ufthu temple now.
Scary.
Even more scary.
There're two not yet translatable inscriptions inside the temple:
Well, they're partially translatable in fact, but not that it helps much.
Once we approach the shrine itself...
...a blinking symbol of Ufthu -- a yellow hammer -- appears, and Kalos is awared a new ring:
Kalos now has a copper ring to Ufthu, which is a level two ring compared to the level one iron ring he previously had:
And here is the temple's layout:
Going through the north, uhm, corridor/passage of this temple, we're alerted to something...
That's actually a hint at a secret door:
(I'd like to reiterate that most of the secret doors are not hinted at in this game.)
We try looking for a device to open the door...
... but to no avail. We do it twice -- sometime you just can't find the necessary device on the first try -- but still fail. Lord Rocket tries barging into the door -- several times -- but doesn't succeed at all:
"The door won't budge". From what I've gathered, this message means that this particular door cannot be opened by physical means. We ain't even got a ring to Drutho yet and so can't invoke HOYAMOQ.
(Do not be deceived by the prayer's name. It is a basic and universal door-opening prayer, not meantly exclusively for temple doors.) There's an even more powerful version of this prayer, BELAMOQ...
...but I don't think Kalos will be able to invoke it until he gets to much higher experience and ring levels.
We've fully explored the Ufthu temple now.
Let's move on to the Drutho shrine:
Outside it, two inscriptions again. One barely translatable...
...and the other, perfectly readable:
Nothing like some in-game humour.
Will we have to follow that advice? I sure hope not.
Onwards to Drutho's temple entrance:
Much better than the blood and gore so loved by Ufthu.
Kewl.
Two more gibberish inscriptions inside that cannot be translated with NGOS:
We approach the shrine...
...but Kalos isn't awarded any ring. Not even an iron one.
Ah well, maybe later.
I haven't been able to find any secret doors or anything here.
So we move on. Our next destination is the temple of Golthur, God of the Physical Self.
We find two more inscriptions outside this temple. We manage to NGOS-translate them both, one fully and one for the most part:
Oh-kay, but I liked the previous one better.
I think that's "Life is the [something] of time". "Hermit of time", maybe?
Eh, who cares, it's just a "wise" saying. (Not a vital clue hopefully.)
Ah yes, Blackity Cat's favorite god.
See what I mean.
Two more not particularly legible inscriptions inside.
And no ring for Kalos, again:
:/
The only remaining temple is that of Fsofth, God of the Spiritual Self.
And two more inscriptions on the outside, (mostly) translatable with NGOS.
Meh.
of inscriptions.
"[Something] is the servant of [something]". "Disruption"? Any ideas, dear readers?
spekkio hears something. Something pastoral.
Yup, pastoral indeed.
The two inside-the-temple inscriptions are so hardcore it hurts.
(Yup, NGOS has no effect on this one whatsoever.)
Oh well. Let's wait until spekkio can cast NGOSMUR, a more powerful version of NGOS.
Alas, no love for Kalos here as well:
But we manage to locate a -- not hinted at -- secret door here:
Naturally, we can't open it yet. It'll have to wait.
There's one more section of the temple area we haven't yet explored: the south short line on the temple area map.
Another drawing here:
I've been trying to decipher what it is meant to represent -- but even with all the knowledge and the automaps I've got now I can't tell for sure.
But anyway. To the east is a teleporter:
I write down its name. It's a shorcut to the temple area, after all.
To the west is some kind of stairs.
We descend them -- and find ourselves in a somewhat long-ish corridor.
To the Magic Circle
Behind that door is an empty room, and behind it, yet another corridor.
Moving further and climbing some stairs...
MUDCRABS!!
Four large crabs and a giant ant. The animal kingdom's most attractive beasties.
Kalos attempts to invoke RALKOR but miserably fails. spekkio heals Lord Rocket with SHUM. Bee misses at a crab. The crab, in return, misses at Bee. Now the large crab is revealed for the abomination it is, a Mutant Crab:
spekkio hits it with AMRAS, but the damage it deals isn't particularly high. Moreover, the next AMRAS he tries to cast misses its target. :/ Kalos, however, finally succeeds in invoking RALKOR -- for the first time, yay!
There's no message for successfully invoking a prayer, only a blinking symbol of the respective god and a decrease in an enemy's HP.
I actually hope Ufthu would blow a crab to pieces, but Kalos' skill level is apparently not high enough for that.
Lord Rocket hits at a crab, but doesn't wound it. of Rocket.
Not much damage, really.
Yay, I'm good.
Then Lord Rocket severely cripples another crab, while Kalos finishes it off, melee-style.
One thing that keep bugging me about this game is, why the hell are there in-battle messages like that for melee, but not magic, attacks?
Good. Only two crabs remaining now. Another successful RALKOR...
...and there's just one left. Bee kills it.
No loot. We discard the skull, it's useless (I hope).
Going further down the corridor, we come across a fork with two doors. The one to the left leads to the ALARIQ teleporter:
And the other one, to...
The magicians' circle, yay! spekkio's very special area.
There's a whole lot of inscriptions on the walls here...
...but there're all untranslatable at the moment, alas.
I hate this shit.
Let's enter the small building in the middle of the hall.
Enchanting? Enchanting!
Once we enter, spekkio's awared with a new ring!
Let's have at look at his updated character profile:
Looks mighty fine. For a level two magician, that is.
Inside the Circle of Magicians, we can also consult the archives by pressing "C":
We can read only two passages at the moment. The number of passages we have access to will increase as we progress in the game.
Let's read what we can now.
The first passage is a blah blah prologue.
The second one, too. Meh.
The inscriptions on the central building of the Circle are actually readable for a change:
Yup, these two inscriptions remind us about the hearts the vision of Mara told us to find. That looks like our main quest, yay. Not like there were any "sidequests" in this game.
To the south of the Circle is a small room:
We find a scroll there:
spekkio, being our party magician, picks it up.
We can't tell its purpose right now, though:
And some "merchants" ambush us:
Two merchants and two goblins, from the look of it.
spekkio's AMRAS spell does a good deal of damage to a goblin:
It doesn't take long for Bee and Lord Rocket to slay the goblins; those fuckers are weak. A merchant damages Bee, but spekkio patches her up with SHUM. Lord Rocket kills the offender. The remaining merchant can't withstand the might of Kalos' RALKOR:
You're getting quite good at invoking the aid of Ufthu, Kalos-kun.
We trust Kalos to carry the rope. It may be needed for descending pits and the like.
Another door is to the east of the Circle:
It is a small corridor. In the north of it, Kalos -- this time not spekkio -- discovers the contours of a secret door:
We try looking for a device and barging into the door, but to no avail. Having no ring to Drutho, Kalos does not (of course) succeed in invoking HOYAMOQ.
Well, there surely was no harm in trying.
The only door left unexplored is the one to the north:
Gold into lead?
Kalos picks it up. No idea as to its purpose yet.
"Effervesces continually". What a sick phrase.
Okay, folks, consider the temple and the Circle areas explored!
Now we should attempt to make it through the catacomb again.
To the catacomb and back
We teleport ourselves to the temple area and then make it to the other side of the hall to enter the catacomb. It doesn't take long for our valiant party to be attacked by a bunch of totally nasty undead thingies.
Three skeletons accompanied by three orcs. A perfect symmetry.
Kalos tries to Turn undead, but doesn't manage to damage any of the skeletons. In the next couple of turns Bee kills the first skeleton, and Lord Rocket, the second one. Kalos' attempt at RALKOR goes unanswered by Ufthu. Next turn, however, our beginner priest is more efficient:
And an orc lies slain. Pathetic bastard.
After that, it's all a matter of hitting (and missing). We are eventually victorious. Somehow. We get a little experience and 37 coins.
We finally reach the ominous door that stopped us last time.
This time, however, we do proceed.
We find ourselves on an unmappable square with four doors. So perfectly symmetrical. (Truth be told, judging by Kalos' warning I expected something much more ... sinister here, like a huge evil monster thingie or something.) The catch is, this is a rotating plate, so we aren't really facing west. The first door we walk through happens to be the one to the south. (I didn't know all that at the moment, of course.) There's a small room with another door there...
...which we enter, finding ourselves in another one-square room with four doors. (Not a rotating place this time.) Turning west, we find ourselves in a T-shaped room.
It is, however, totally empty and devoid of meaning in the eyes of God.
Going back and then west, we find a small purse full of money:
In an already familiar manner, Bee has to do all the dirty work, but it is Kalos (the priest FFS!) who takes the money. Priests are greedy, true story.
Nothing more in this, southern area of the catacomb except for another empty room to the south. So we go back to the rotating plate 1x1 room. It is only now that I realize that something's wrong and actually bother to check the compass.
(Luckily this area is compassable, despite being non-mappable. The real shit will start once we hit BOTH non-compassable and non-mappable areas with shitloads of doors. Ugh.)
But just as we're about to enter the door to the west, some corpses rise up to attack us!
Scary fuckers.
Meh, just one of them. The only useful thing we get out of this fight, is that Kalos' Turn undead ability is totally powerless -- we'll probably have to buy him a cross to make it actually work.
A dead end. Or is it?
Good job, spek-kun. Have a tasty cookie.
It's up to Lord Rocket to make this door open, however. In three attempts, he succeeds.
It turns out that the secret passage was concealing a necklace.
Looks classy, yay.
With the help of our trusty compass, we now enter the door to the north of the rotating plate:
Behind the next door --
-- yet another room with four doors, yay.
I'm already wary of rotating plates so it doesn't take me long to discover one in the middle of this room. Fucking rotating plates. Horrible creatures.
Going south...
(I actually went north first, but found myself back here -- for a reason that will be revealed a bit later.)
...and then through another door, we find ourselves in a small -- mappable -- corridor.
There's a skull -- which we discard -- and a key here:
Lord Rocket picks the key up.
Nothing more to see here.
In this little phallus-shaped area, that is.
Back in the second rotating plate room, we're ambushed by some truly evil skeletons.
Three undeaddies. Oh-kay.
After a couple of turns, Kalos' Turn undead ability finally comes in handy, managing to damage a nearby skeleton a bit:
The little red sparkle near Kalos' head in the first of the above screenshots is the Turn undead animation. And the skeleton's health is depleted a little:
Lord Rocket finished the skeleton off. Bee kills the other two. Another battle won.
Behind the western door is another room, and behind it, a small compartment. Something horrible seems to have happened here.
To avenge or not to avenge? Well, it's not like we're given a choice. A skeleton attacks us.
He's alone, which is good. He's much tougher than the regular skeletons we fought earlier, though, which is bad.
Bee is severaly wounded. spekkio patches her up with SHUM.
Kalos, fortunately, manages to invoke RALKOR. Ufthu hits the armed skeleton hard, very hard.
This helps a lot, of course.
The evil skeleton strikes at Bee, again:
WTF is this shit?
Lord Rocket caresses the skeleton gently:
of Lord Rocket.
spekkio casts SHUM, and Bee's HP gets back into the green zone. The skeleton attacks Rocket, but the blow isn't very hard. Kalos fails to invoke RALKOR, and then spekkio uses SHUM again to bring Bee's HP to a safe level. The skeleton stuns Lord Rocket:
Lord Rocket is now put out of actions for several turns. :/
Bee damages the Armed Skeleton for 5 hp, and the mosnter strikes her for 12 hp in return. Kalos uses Turn undead, but it has no effect whatsoever on the skeleton. spekkio's AMRAS is more efficient:
Kalos fails at SIRDHE. Bee lays hand on Rocket to heal him up a bit.
Next turn Lord Rocket is stunned again:
Kalos and Bee attempt to attack the skeleton melee, but they both miss. Finally, spekkio's brings this battle to its end. This having been a boss battle, we're awared with a good amount of exp:
Also, the skeleton drops an iron key:
Oh-kay. We're pretty badly wounded, but thankfully Kalos succeeds in invoking SIRDHE, and our HP is restored to the full:
Now, the catch with this little room is that it's non-mappable and you cannot exit it the way you entered it; the door simply disappears once you've walked through it. Still, we manage find a secret door:
Lord Rocket sacrifices some of his HP to open it:
And we get back to the last rotating floor room.
The only door left unexplored is the northern one. We enter it.
Non-mappable again. We go down the corridor...
...
...only to find ourselves back in the rotating plate room.
Something's not right here. Let's proceed more carefully now, using a compass. In the beginning of the corridor, we're facing south:
However, a couple of steps later, we find out we're facing north for some reason:
Well, there can only be one reason for that. There is yet another rotating plate in the middle of the corridor. Having that in mind, we finally cross the corridor, finding ourselves in front of a locked grate:
Lord Rocket has two new keys. Shall we try them?
And...
Success, yay!
So we proceed.
Oooh, evil. :twisted:
And Kalos, you're such a wussy.
Again, I expect some kind of EVIL MONSTER! (tm), but all I got was thist-shirt inscription:
spekkio translates it with NGOS:
"I -- Uukrul -- decree this are forbidden -- leave now and search no more".
"Search no more"? Haha. Naturally, the first thing we do after reading the inscription is ... yep, we search more.
Bee finds a secret door.
No device.
No way to open it physically. of secret doors.
Ah well, we can't invoke HOYAMOQ yet. Fuck this shit, we're going out.
We slay some zombies on our way back and exit the catacomb. We'll be back though. *Makes a note in her uukrul.txt*
Yup, dear readers, it looks like there was no sense in going into the catacomb at this point. At all. Ah well, if only I have known that. :/ Still, we got some experience, which is always good.
The way to URMOR
From the temple area teleporter BORAMIS, we teleport ourselves to the Circle of Magic to see if spekkio's eligible for a better ring.
No new ring for spek-kun, alas, but we can read a new passage from the archives:
Oh-kay, so that's what the hearts Mara told us to find are for. Good to know.
From ALARIQ we teleport to BORASAL, the shopping area teleporter:
We buy some food...
...sell a small gem...
(We could sell it for a higher price had it been identified, but we can't do that yet, plus I didn't have any idea about the way to identify items at that point.)
...and buy a Mage's hat for spekkio since there isn't much a magician can wear in this game:
Equipping the new and trandy hat raises spekkio's defense by two points, from 3 to 5:
We sell spekkio's old cap for 6 coins.
And explore further east, to a new area:
This is another large hall, akin to one with the shop and the forge.
The first thing we find here is a ... hospice!
We enter it.
Well, this place will definitely be useful later.
Let's try healing our wounds since (thankfully) we ain't got no diseases yet.
We pay and...
Lord Rocket's HP is fully restored.
At the other side of the central building...
...there are two more establishments, The Guild which can be used for recruiting new adventurers in place of deceased ones...
...and the Mausoleum, used for resurrection:
Kewl.
But I've got my own plan for this playthrough: I'm gonna back up my game at the sanctuaries, and restore it if one of the party members is dead. That means I'll have to go through the same area again, but I really do want to play with the starting party right to the very end. Hopefully no one objects to that.
Let us explore further east.
There's an intersection here. To the north is some stairs, so we'll postpone going there for now. First we go east and find ourselves in a dining room.
Nothing of interest here, however.
Next we go south.
A door here.
Behind it are some downward stairs. And we're ambushed by a slime.
We deal with it without any problems, and get 30 coins for loot.
To the south from here is an empty room. I decide to descend the stairs, hoping that maybe a sanctuary is behind them.
This isn't quite what I hoped for, but oh well, I'm not complaining.
This doesn't bode well.
As we explore the room, we see our HP slowly decreasing:
We do, however, come across some kind of scroll.
Nothing more here, so we head back as fast as we can.
Going north, we finally make it to the next sanctuary, URMOR:
Grrrrr. Not this again.
But okay, we activate it and our health is fully replenished.
We still have some way to go to level 3:
Will we be able to level-up our party in the next update? It remains a mystery for now.
Previously on this LP, we explored the (mostly empty) storage area, did some shopping and weapon repairing, fled the catacomb -- as Kalos sensed an aura of danger there -- and everyone in our party made it to level 2. Our checkpoint was the URLASAR sanctuary.
Exploring the temples
Okey dokey, our next destination is the temple area. -- At that point I didn't know if the temple area would be safe from combat encounters, so first we head to the Forge and repair Lord Rocket's broken Short iron sword:
Then we buy him a Longsword...
..and equip it. We sell the Mace we're carrying; I don't think we need that many weapons. We've got 201 coins now -- so why not buy an Iron gauntlet for Rocket as well?
Yeah, I'm not one who tends to save money. I'm spendthrift like that.
Having equipped it, Lord Rocket has his armour raised to 13:
Now we should be fine. Let's descend to the temple area.
We take the hitherto not taken path:
The corridor to the east leads to the catacomb. Ugh. We'll go there later.
Going south, we enter the hall of the temples.
Let me remind you of this area's layout which I described in the last update. It's shown in the drawing in the corridor we've come from:
F is the temple of Fsofth, God of the Spiritual Self; D is the temple of Drutho, God of the Underworld; U, the temple of Ufthu, God of War; and finally G, the temple of Golthur, God of the Physical Self.
According to the automap, we've entered the area from the north -- from the north one of the shorter lines in the drawing.
Now we're moving in the direction of the Ufthu shrine.
There're two inscriptions here, both in gibberish. The first one...
...is untranslatable with NGOS, alas:
Only some letters are translated, but we can't make out the whole inscription. The last word is probably "right" or "might", but well, who knows really.
The second one...
...is easily translated, however:
Duly noted.
Let's enter the Ufthu temple now.
Scary.
Even more scary.
There're two not yet translatable inscriptions inside the temple:
Well, they're partially translatable in fact, but not that it helps much.
Once we approach the shrine itself...
...a blinking symbol of Ufthu -- a yellow hammer -- appears, and Kalos is awared a new ring:
Kalos now has a copper ring to Ufthu, which is a level two ring compared to the level one iron ring he previously had:
And here is the temple's layout:
Going through the north, uhm, corridor/passage of this temple, we're alerted to something...
That's actually a hint at a secret door:
(I'd like to reiterate that most of the secret doors are not hinted at in this game.)
We try looking for a device to open the door...
... but to no avail. We do it twice -- sometime you just can't find the necessary device on the first try -- but still fail. Lord Rocket tries barging into the door -- several times
-- but doesn't succeed at all:
"The door won't budge". From what I've gathered, this message means that this particular door cannot be opened by physical means. We ain't even got a ring to Drutho yet and so can't invoke HOYAMOQ.
(Do not be deceived by the prayer's name. It is a basic and universal door-opening prayer, not meantly exclusively for temple doors.) There's an even more powerful version of this prayer, BELAMOQ...
...but I don't think Kalos will be able to invoke it until he gets to much higher experience and ring levels.
We've fully explored the Ufthu temple now.
Let's move on to the Drutho shrine:
Outside it, two inscriptions again. One barely translatable...
...and the other, perfectly readable:
Nothing like some in-game humour.
Will we have to follow that advice? I sure hope not.
Onwards to Drutho's temple entrance:
Much better than the blood and gore so loved by Ufthu.
Kewl.
Two more gibberish inscriptions inside that cannot be translated with NGOS:
We approach the shrine...
...but Kalos isn't awarded any ring. Not even an iron one.
Ah well, maybe later.
I haven't been able to find any secret doors or anything here.
So we move on. Our next destination is the temple of Golthur, God of the Physical Self.
We find two more inscriptions outside this temple. We manage to NGOS-translate them both, one fully and one for the most part:
Oh-kay, but I liked the previous one better.
I think that's "Life is the [something] of time". "Hermit of time", maybe?
Eh, who cares, it's just a "wise" saying. (Not a vital clue hopefully.)
Ah yes, Blackity Cat's favorite god.
See what I mean.
Two more not particularly legible inscriptions inside.
And no ring for Kalos, again:
:/
The only remaining temple is that of Fsofth, God of the Spiritual Self.
And two more inscriptions on the outside, (mostly) translatable with NGOS.
Meh.
of inscriptions.
"[Something] is the servant of [something]". "Disruption"?
Any ideas, dear readers?
spekkio hears something. Something pastoral.
Yup, pastoral indeed.
The two inside-the-temple inscriptions are so hardcore it hurts.
(Yup, NGOS has no effect on this one whatsoever.)
Oh well. Let's wait until spekkio can cast NGOSMUR, a more powerful version of NGOS.
Alas, no love for Kalos here as well:
But we manage to locate a -- not hinted at -- secret door here:
Naturally, we can't open it yet. It'll have to wait.
There's one more section of the temple area we haven't yet explored: the south short line on the temple area map.
Another drawing here:
I've been trying to decipher what it is meant to represent -- but even with all the knowledge and the automaps I've got now I can't tell for sure.
But anyway. To the east is a teleporter:
I write down its name. It's a shorcut to the temple area, after all.
To the west is some kind of stairs.
We descend them -- and find ourselves in a somewhat long-ish corridor.
To the Magic Circle
Behind that door is an empty room, and behind it, yet another corridor.
Moving further and climbing some stairs...
MUDCRABS!!
Four large crabs and a giant ant. The animal kingdom's most attractive beasties.
Kalos attempts to invoke RALKOR but miserably fails. spekkio heals Lord Rocket with SHUM. Bee misses at a crab. The crab, in return, misses at Bee. Now the large crab is revealed for the abomination it is, a Mutant Crab:
spekkio hits it with AMRAS, but the damage it deals isn't particularly high. Moreover, the next AMRAS he tries to cast misses its target. :/ Kalos, however, finally succeeds in invoking RALKOR -- for the first time, yay!
There's no message for successfully invoking a prayer, only a blinking symbol of the respective god and a decrease in an enemy's HP.
I actually hope Ufthu would blow a crab to pieces, but Kalos' skill level is apparently not high enough for that.
Lord Rocket hits at a crab, but doesn't wound it.
of Rocket.
Not much damage, really.
Yay, I'm good.
Then Lord Rocket severely cripples another crab, while Kalos finishes it off, melee-style.
One thing that keep bugging me about this game is, why the hell are there in-battle messages like that for melee, but not magic, attacks?
Good. Only two crabs remaining now. Another successful RALKOR...
...and there's just one left. Bee kills it.
No loot. We discard the skull, it's useless (I hope).
Going further down the corridor, we come across a fork with two doors. The one to the left leads to the ALARIQ teleporter:
And the other one, to...
The magicians' circle, yay! spekkio's very special area.
There's a whole lot of inscriptions on the walls here...
...but there're all untranslatable at the moment, alas.
I hate this shit.
Let's enter the small building in the middle of the hall.
Enchanting? Enchanting!
Once we enter, spekkio's awared with a new ring!
Let's have at look at his updated character profile:
Looks mighty fine. For a level two magician, that is.
Inside the Circle of Magicians, we can also consult the archives by pressing "C":
We can read only two passages at the moment. The number of passages we have access to will increase as we progress in the game.
Let's read what we can now.
The first passage is a blah blah prologue.
The second one, too. Meh.
The inscriptions on the central building of the Circle are actually readable for a change:
Yup, these two inscriptions remind us about the hearts the vision of Mara told us to find. That looks like our main quest, yay. Not like there were any "sidequests" in this game.
To the south of the Circle is a small room:
We find a scroll there:
spekkio, being our party magician, picks it up.
We can't tell its purpose right now, though:
And some "merchants" ambush us:
Two merchants and two goblins, from the look of it.
spekkio's AMRAS spell does a good deal of damage to a goblin:
It doesn't take long for Bee and Lord Rocket to slay the goblins; those fuckers are weak. A merchant damages Bee, but spekkio patches her up with SHUM. Lord Rocket kills the offender. The remaining merchant can't withstand the might of Kalos' RALKOR:
You're getting quite good at invoking the aid of Ufthu, Kalos-kun.
We trust Kalos to carry the rope. It may be needed for descending pits and the like.
Another door is to the east of the Circle:
It is a small corridor. In the north of it, Kalos -- this time not spekkio
-- discovers the contours of a secret door:
We try looking for a device and barging into the door, but to no avail. Having no ring to Drutho, Kalos does not (of course) succeed in invoking HOYAMOQ.
Well, there surely was no harm in trying.
The only door left unexplored is the one to the north:
Gold into lead?
Kalos picks it up. No idea as to its purpose yet.
"Effervesces continually". What a sick phrase.
Okay, folks, consider the temple and the Circle areas explored!
Now we should attempt to make it through the catacomb again.
To the catacomb and back
We teleport ourselves to the temple area and then make it to the other side of the hall to enter the catacomb. It doesn't take long for our valiant party to be attacked by a bunch of totally nasty undead thingies.
Three skeletons accompanied by three orcs. A perfect symmetry.
Kalos tries to Turn undead, but doesn't manage to damage any of the skeletons. In the next couple of turns Bee kills the first skeleton, and Lord Rocket, the second one. Kalos' attempt at RALKOR goes unanswered by Ufthu. Next turn, however, our beginner priest is more efficient:
And an orc lies slain. Pathetic bastard.
After that, it's all a matter of hitting (and missing). We are eventually victorious. Somehow. We get a little experience and 37 coins.
We finally reach the ominous door that stopped us last time.
This time, however, we do proceed.
We find ourselves on an unmappable square with four doors. So perfectly symmetrical. (Truth be told, judging by Kalos' warning I expected something much more ... sinister here, like a huge evil monster thingie or something.) The catch is, this is a rotating plate, so we aren't really facing west. The first door we walk through happens to be the one to the south. (I didn't know all that at the moment, of course.) There's a small room with another door there...
...which we enter, finding ourselves in another one-square room with four doors. (Not a rotating place this time.) Turning west, we find ourselves in a T-shaped room.
It is, however, totally empty and devoid of meaning in the eyes of God.
Going back and then west, we find a small purse full of money:
In an already familiar manner, Bee has to do all the dirty work, but it is Kalos (the priest FFS!) who takes the money. Priests are greedy, true story.
Nothing more in this, southern area of the catacomb except for another empty room to the south. So we go back to the rotating plate 1x1 room. It is only now that I realize that something's wrong and actually bother to check the compass.
(Luckily this area is compassable, despite being non-mappable. The real shit will start once we hit BOTH non-compassable and non-mappable areas with shitloads of doors. Ugh.)
But just as we're about to enter the door to the west, some corpses rise up to attack us!
Scary fuckers.
Meh, just one of them. The only useful thing we get out of this fight, is that Kalos' Turn undead ability is totally powerless -- we'll probably have to buy him a cross to make it actually work.
Killing the single corpse doesn't yield much experience, nor any treasure. We enter the room behind the western door.
A dead end. Or is it?
Good job, spek-kun. Have a tasty cookie.
It's up to Lord Rocket to make this door open, however. In three attempts, he succeeds.
It turns out that the secret passage was concealing a necklace.
Looks classy, yay.
With the help of our trusty compass, we now enter the door to the north of the rotating plate:
Behind the next door --
-- yet another room with four doors, yay.
I'm already wary of rotating plates so it doesn't take me long to discover one in the middle of this room. Fucking rotating plates. Horrible creatures.
Going south...
(I actually went north first, but found myself back here -- for a reason that will be revealed a bit later.)
...and then through another door, we find ourselves in a small -- mappable -- corridor.
There's a skull -- which we discard -- and a key here:
Lord Rocket picks the key up.
Nothing more to see here.
In this little phallus-shaped area, that is.
Back in the second rotating plate room, we're ambushed by some truly evil skeletons.
Three undeaddies. Oh-kay.
After a couple of turns, Kalos' Turn undead ability finally comes in handy, managing to damage a nearby skeleton a bit:
The little red sparkle near Kalos' head in the first of the above screenshots is the Turn undead animation.
And the skeleton's health is depleted a little:
Lord Rocket finished the skeleton off. Bee kills the other two. Another battle won.
Behind the western door is another room, and behind it, a small compartment. Something horrible seems to have happened here.
To avenge or not to avenge? Well, it's not like we're given a choice. A skeleton attacks us.
He's alone, which is good. He's much tougher than the regular skeletons we fought earlier, though, which is bad.
Bee is severaly wounded. spekkio patches her up with SHUM.
Kalos, fortunately, manages to invoke RALKOR. Ufthu hits the armed skeleton hard, very hard.
This helps a lot, of course.
The evil skeleton strikes at Bee, again:
WTF is this shit?Lord Rocket caresses the skeleton gently:
of Lord Rocket.spekkio casts SHUM, and Bee's HP gets back into the green zone. The skeleton attacks Rocket, but the blow isn't very hard. Kalos fails to invoke RALKOR, and then spekkio uses SHUM again to bring Bee's HP to a safe level. The skeleton stuns Lord Rocket:
Lord Rocket is now put out of actions for several turns. :/
Bee damages the Armed Skeleton for 5 hp, and the mosnter strikes her for 12 hp in return. Kalos uses Turn undead, but it has no effect whatsoever on the skeleton. spekkio's AMRAS is more efficient:
Kalos fails at SIRDHE. Bee lays hand on Rocket to heal him up a bit.
Next turn Lord Rocket is stunned again:
Kalos and Bee attempt to attack the skeleton melee, but they both miss. Finally, spekkio's brings this battle to its end. This having been a boss battle, we're awared with a good amount of exp:
Also, the skeleton drops an iron key:
Oh-kay. We're pretty badly wounded, but thankfully Kalos succeeds in invoking SIRDHE, and our HP is restored to the full:
Now, the catch with this little room is that it's non-mappable and you cannot exit it the way you entered it; the door simply disappears once you've walked through it. Still, we manage find a secret door:
Lord Rocket sacrifices some of his HP to open it:
And we get back to the last rotating floor room.
The only door left unexplored is the northern one. We enter it.
Non-mappable again. We go down the corridor...
...
...only to find ourselves back in the rotating plate room.
Something's not right here. Let's proceed more carefully now, using a compass. In the beginning of the corridor, we're facing south:
However, a couple of steps later, we find out we're facing north for some reason:
Well, there can only be one reason for that. There is yet another rotating plate in the middle of the corridor.
Having that in mind, we finally cross the corridor, finding ourselves in front of a locked grate:
Lord Rocket has two new keys. Shall we try them?
And...
Success, yay!
So we proceed.
Oooh, evil. :twisted:
And Kalos, you're such a wussy.
Again, I expect some kind of EVIL MONSTER! (tm), but all I got was this
spekkio translates it with NGOS:
"I -- Uukrul -- decree this are forbidden -- leave now and search no more".
"Search no more"? Haha. Naturally, the first thing we do after reading the inscription is ... yep, we search more.
Bee finds a secret door.
No device.
No way to open it physically.
of secret doors.Ah well, we can't invoke HOYAMOQ yet. Fuck this shit, we're going out.
We slay some zombies on our way back and exit the catacomb. We'll be back though. *Makes a note in her uukrul.txt*
Yup, dear readers, it looks like there was no sense in going into the catacomb at this point. At all. Ah well, if only I have known that. :/ Still, we got some experience, which is always good.
The way to URMOR
From the temple area teleporter BORAMIS, we teleport ourselves to the Circle of Magic to see if spekkio's eligible for a better ring.
No new ring for spek-kun, alas, but we can read a new passage from the archives:
Oh-kay, so that's what the hearts Mara told us to find are for. Good to know.
From ALARIQ we teleport to BORASAL, the shopping area teleporter:
We buy some food...
...sell a small gem...
(We could sell it for a higher price had it been identified, but we can't do that yet, plus I didn't have any idea about the way to identify items at that point.)
...and buy a Mage's hat for spekkio since there isn't much a magician can wear in this game:
Equipping the new and trandy hat raises spekkio's defense by two points, from 3 to 5:
We sell spekkio's old cap for 6 coins.
And explore further east, to a new area:
This is another large hall, akin to one with the shop and the forge.
The first thing we find here is a ... hospice!
We enter it.
Well, this place will definitely be useful later.
Let's try healing our wounds since (thankfully) we ain't got no diseases yet.
We pay and...
Lord Rocket's HP is fully restored.
At the other side of the central building...
...there are two more establishments, The Guild which can be used for recruiting new adventurers in place of deceased ones...
...and the Mausoleum, used for resurrection:
Kewl.
But I've got my own plan for this playthrough: I'm gonna back up my game at the sanctuaries, and restore it if one of the party members is dead. That means I'll have to go through the same area again, but I really do want to play with the starting party right to the very end. Hopefully no one objects to that.
Let us explore further east.
There's an intersection here. To the north is some stairs, so we'll postpone going there for now. First we go east and find ourselves in a dining room.
Nothing of interest here, however.
Next we go south.
A door here.
Behind it are some downward stairs. And we're ambushed by a slime.
We deal with it without any problems, and get 30 coins for loot.
To the south from here is an empty room. I decide to descend the stairs, hoping that maybe a sanctuary is behind them.
This isn't quite what I hoped for, but oh well, I'm not complaining.
This doesn't bode well.
As we explore the room, we see our HP slowly decreasing:
We do, however, come across some kind of scroll.
Nothing more here, so we head back as fast as we can.
Going north, we finally make it to the next sanctuary, URMOR:
Grrrrr. Not this again.
But okay, we activate it and our health is fully replenished.
We still have some way to go to level 3:
Will we be able to level-up our party in the next update? It remains a mystery for now.
Not many new rings this time, eh, Fowyr? It's gonna get better soon iirc.
^ Why have you posted two identical hospice screenshots, one as incline, and the other one as decline, spek-kun?
But yeah, you're pretty badass, and you'll be only growing stronger as you gain more rings.
Really!? There is no mention of that in the manual. :/
But yeah, you're pretty badass, and you'll be only growing stronger as you gain more rings.
Fowyr said:
Really!? There is no mention of that in the manual. :/
)
Gondolin
Arcane
More like "serpent of deception".
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