23: Cat-and-mouse
In which we explore the dungeon of twisted paths, FUUUUUUUUUU-, speak a word, solve a mind-bending lever puzzle, discover the dark heart of Uukrul, and grind a lot. Phew.
Previously on this LP, we solved the crossword puzzle and slayed the dragon living in the -- surprise, surpise -- dragon dungeon. A precious golden chalice and another frozen heart were our well-earned reward.
Kalos only needs 703 exp to make level 9, so we go back to the dragon dungeon to grind a bit. In about 15 minutes, we slay some rats, goblins, spiders, and reptiles, which allows Kalos to level up:
Yay!
We see he's gained +1 to his Piety, Dexterity, and Vitality.
Let's now head to Sagaris to identify the golden chalice:
It must be worth quite a hefty sum.
But before we rush to the shop to sell it, let's check if spekkio and Kalos can obtain new rings.
spekkio's Knowledge ring is now golden!
Kalos doesn't get any new rings though. Still, visiting the temple area allows us to invoke TULAR at an altar to increase our food supply. It's pretty nice that now that we've reached a certain level of skill, we don't need to waste money on food any more.
At the shop, we sell the chalice for 716 coins:
Kewl. We also sell Rocket's Killer blade...
...because it hasn't proved particularly useful, and I hate carrying useless stuff around.
Bee is equipped with a small shield, so let's buy a better one for her:
The best there is in the shop is a Sacred targe (one only; exclusive!). Equipping it makes Bee's AC go from 19 to 21. Good.
So, uhm, let's explore Eriosthe further!
From UREAL, we take the eastern exit. UREAL is called the Sanctuary of Twisted Paths in the manual, so I'm going to be calling this dungeon the dungeon of twisted paths, oh yeah.
As you may remember from the previous update, this dungeon is a kind of test, a cat-and-mouse game with Uukrul himself. Let me remind you what happened once we entered it for the first time:
We managed to escape this trap by acknowledging Uukrul's might, which made bro lightbane a bit butthurt.
Still, a game's a game.
There's also a welcoming sign in here:
So totally evil! I wonder what lies ahead...
So north we go!
As I told you earlier, dear readers, my save file become corrupted for some reason when I was already halfway through this dungeon, so that I lost all the hard-earned exp from the fights I'd had by that point. After some consideration -- and after having reloaded my back-up save -- I decided not to be redoing *all* the exploration and combat, but rather to rush straight to the point I was at when the save got corrupted, simply because I already knew what I had to know and explored what I had to explore up to that point. The good thing is, the section I had already explored was kind of introductory, a prelude to the main part of the dungeon of twisted paths, so I could safely skip it given that I already had all the screenshots with the maps and inscriptions and other stuff from that section.
Which means that yeah, I'll be able to show you my exploration of that section. But please keep in mind that all the exp and automaps I received in there was soon to be lost.
We're being watched, folks!
Along the way, we come across some mysterious indentations that seem to be randomly (?) placed:
Sometimes there are seven indentations, sometimes there are three, or six, or one, etc. I still haven't been able to figure out what it's all about though.
A drawing beckons us:
A hammer?
What about a sickle, then?
The path branches here. We go south -- and stumble upon a new type of enemy:
Evil eye!
"Red floating eye", lol. RPGs are quite ridiculous, aren't they?
The eye's true name is Gortonkleer, by the way. Just what kind of a name is that?
Gortonkleers are indeed quite evil, at least at the current level of our party. They can cast two nasty spells, both having the whole battlefield as their area of effect. The first spell stuns our party and perhaps even weakens us (I guess, since there are no descriptions of enemy spells given). And the second spell is definitely an ice spell, probably SEHKMUR, which is quite damaging to all our characters. To add insult to injury, Gortonkleers can also heal themselves, which they do as soon as their HP gets low. So the goal is to finish them off before they do that.
(I think I won't be covering the combat in detail here, as this update is supposed to cover many hours of gameplay in one go, so that I've got 1927 (!) screenshots to sort through, and I want to keep the images to a minimum, especially given that I don't have any Codex gallery space left and therefore will reluctantly be using imgboot soon.)
Still, Gortonkleers aren't the toughest kind of enemy as they don't have many HP, and with a right approach aren't too hard to kill.
We win this fight, get some exp (plus 74 coins), and move on, eventually reaching a dead end. Nothing but another drawing in here.
Again, a part of this drawing looks like a hammer. We also see two letters, T and S. The drawing certainly looks incomplete, to boot. I wonder what it means.
Getting a bit ahead of myself, I must confess that, just like with the indentations, I still haven't been able to figure out the meaning of this drawing. Oh well. :/
We head back to the crossroads and head north this time. A nasty-looking worm jumps at us!
Bastard. We kill 'im quick.
We keep encountering strange indentations, and my head hurts. Also, killing a group of thieves lands us a cool-looking gem:
Too bad the save is just about to get corrupted.
Bye-bye, you pretty gem thingie!
Three nasty orcs attack us! One of them turns out to be an Orcish Lord:
He is a quite nasty spellcaster, but Kalos invokes NULAMIR to silence him.
NULAMIR The Quiet House
Fshofth, On the shore of the lost lake,
There is a house. Though the spell makers talk,
It is quiet still. For though chanting sounds,
It will little disturb the air where they dwell.
The Orcish Lord gets totally defenseless after that.
Thanks to the Lord having been silenced, the fight has been a cakewalk. Otherwise it could've got more nasty. And the exp reward is p. nice. Too bad we're going to lose all of it soon.
The next encounter is with a lot of green mushrooms:
Funky. We're stunned and poisoned and oh my gosh.
See that weird thingie right next to Lord Rocket? It's an
Air Elemental Kalos has summoned to our aid!
Call elemental: a Priest may attempt to call forth an Elemental spirit to fight with the party. Elementals range in power from AIR, EARTH, WATER to FIRE.
If you are in combat, your Priest can also attempt to Call an Elemental. If you wish to call an Elemental, you are asked to choose which plane. Elemental spirits may be summoned from the four Elemental planes: AIR, EARTH, WATER, FIRE, increasing in power respectively. Elementals fight independently with the party against a common enemy, until the combat has finished or they have discharged their duty.
Your Priest's chance of successfully calling forth an Elemental depends on his skill. Calling demands a toll of your Priest's energies.
Yeah, it's the first time Kalos has successfully used the "Call elemental" command. Our dear priest has grown quite strong, yay!
With this, we've explored the first part of this dungeon and enter the second one.
Another intersection. Jumping a bit ahead, I should say that taking the eastern path gets us to the main part of the dungeon of twisted paths, and going south and up the stairs simply allows us to explore some more (and this dungeon is quite maze-like) and get some clues maybe. It is the southern path that I'll be skipping after I've lost my save file. For now, however, let's head south.
First thing we notice is that there's a LOT of indentations in here. Gosh. We also come across another hammer drawing.
A dead end!
And yet another drawing:
Another part of the incomplete drawing. The letters are different this time, however.
Back at the original intersection, we now go east.
Two more evil eyes! We slay 'em.
Advancing further...
:twisted: I hope you're shit scared already, dear audience.
The drawing ahead is just another hammer drawing, meh. No idea. Don't even ask.
Two ways to go now, east and west. First we go east.
Having slain another Orcish Lord, we meet a new kind of enemy -- a totally wild ant!
One evil mofo.
They aren't as tough as they look though. Movin' on.
The path is long, and there are some intersections along the way. Some orcs and mushrooms are slain. Many new mysterious indentations are encountered.
The whole point of this long crawl seems to be this drawing we finally get to:
Well, it's yet another (third) part of the incomplete drawing. And no, I dunno what it means. Two more letters though, A and I.
Kalos invokes MORPETH to reduce the random encounter rate which is quite high here.
MORPETH Quiet Walking
Drutho, Mistress of Stealth,
Bind our feet with soft silken cloth,
Silence our voices and muffle our steps,
That we may walk without calling our death.
It is here that the save got corrupted.
So I got back to this point by skipping all the side-passages.
And now we reach the main part of Uukrul's test:
Three tests, all leading to "the heart".
Three doors, eh?
1.
Let's try the right one first.
Scary!
Judging by Uukrul's words, this is the most straightforward test -- the path of combat. Let's retreat for now.
2.
I wonder what lies behind the middle door...
We enter it.
Hmm, oh-kay, I guess?
There's a secret door in here, and we're supposed to "speak a single word" to open it.
The problem is, I have no idea what the secret word may be.
3.
The left door is a grate. A locked grate.
And there are two (?) more grates behind it. We're supposed to find the keys, but well, we've already explored the dungeon, quite exhaustively I thought, and haven't found even one of the keys.
I guess my wit is dim.
So let's try doing it the hard way. We enter the right door again, the path of the sword.
Foul!
"Fuming organisms", ouch.
These organisms -- which are in fact a Mutant Cell and two Fuming Amoebae -- can spit acid...
...breathe acid...
...breathe gas which poisons us...
...spit poison...
...heal their wounds...
...as well as sting us:
Oh my.
We finally kill them all, after I dunno how many turns -- this battle is looooooooong -- but at the cost of ALL our psychic and virtue points. We even had to use our Elixir of energy (which restores those points), and it is now depleted.
The experience we get soothes my soul though.
We also receive 78 coins, meh.
I'm not really sure that, without the virtue and psychic points, we're ready for whatever lies ahead. So we retreat to the sanctuary.
Hmmm. A few more battles like that one and we'll be able to level up...
At the Circle of Magicians, spekkio upgrades his Frost ring!
No new rings for Kalos though. We go back to the dungeon of twisted paths.
Some undead thingies attack us, but Kalos' gold cross allows us to turn undead p. efficiently.
So yeah, Kalos kills all the undead almost single-handedly and therefore gets the most exp.
The encounter with Gortonkleers is a recurring/respawning one. This time, however, the floating red eyes are accompanied by two Trolls -- and my, those Trolls are hard to kill! Horrible creatures, those trolls.
Not only do they heal their wounds when hurt, they can also stretch the passage of time:
Which is a nasty spell allowing the foes to get an additional action once in a while. (Yeah, one of the trolls is a "Major Golem", lol.)
Now that spekkio has the gold ring in the arkana of Frost, he's got a new spell at his disposal,
SEHKLAZAR, which helps us a lot in this battle.
16 SEHKLAZAR The Golden Breath of Ice
A wind of extreme cold will blast from the breath of the caster. Damage upon all your foes will be great indeed, few will escape.
It costs 16 (!) psychic points and so is able to deplete spekkio's energy extremely fast. Yet, at the same time, it is extremely powerful. Without it, I don't we would've been able to win this fight, nor the fights to come. So getting the gold Frost ring was probably the most fortunate thing to happen to us at this point.
As you can see from the amount of HP we get, this battle has been quite hard. We also get 396 coins, which is p. nice. Too bad we are, again, totally out of spell points, so that we have to retreat to UREAL to have a rest.
The good thing is, we're getting closer and closer to a level up. That's why I decide to grind a bit.
So I go back to the battle with Gortonkleers and Trolls. This time there are
three trolls here, oh my.
We're getting better at slaying them though, and the exp reward is still high even if a bit lower than the last time.
And here we go again! Grinding yay!
Hmmm, three trolls and a monk... We go all offensive and make spekkio cast SEHKLAZAR every turn. The battle is tough, but we prevail.
Major
!
Heh, just a little bit more exp is all we need.
The problem is, this game does
not allow you to grind much. It seems to have a special anti-grinding mechanics implemented, so that when we go back to the gortonkleer encounter for the fourth time, we don't get any tough enemies anymore.
No trolls or monks, meh. And the exp reward is negligible:
I try again and again, but nope, no tough enemies spawn at all. The game wants us to push forward, it seems.
Ah well. It's trickier that I suspected.
So forward we go -- back to the testing area.
Uukrul mockingly asks us if we've found out the secret word yet. We haven't.
Oh well, the fuming amoebae await!
After a long hard fight...
(FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU-)
...we slay the green bastards!
I am again too afraid to proceed further though, given that -- again -- we've wasted all our virtue and psychic points on those amoebae. So back to UREAL we go!
Retreating is quite worthwhile in this case, however, as three of our comrades level up!
Lord Rocket gains +1 in Strength and Piety.
For Bee, this level-up means +1 to Strength, Piety, and Dexterity!
And finally, spekkio's Dexterity and Vitality increase by one point.
Also, Bee can equip the Kris of resting, the bloody anti-mage dagger, now!
And spekkio-kun gets a
Platinum ring in the arkana of Healing!
Yay!
The 10th archival passage is now available, too:
We'll get to the pyramid and the torture cells in the next update. :twisted:
And Kalos gets a Platinum ring from Ufthu!
At the shop, we buy a Greatsword to replace Bee's Broadsword:
And the same for Rocket. We also buy a Mail coif for him, as a replacement of his Leather coif:
Lord Rocket's AC goes from 24 to 26, yay.
And how 'bout a new helm for Bee?
Bee's AC increases from 21 to 23! :mondblut:
Hmm, a Mail coif and Hard leather boots for Kalos?
Kalos' AC is now 17 instead of 14! He also gets to wield a new weapon, Morning star:
And then we buy a Healing salve for everyone. The shopping is now complete.
The task now is to grind on the nasty amoebae until we're good enough to not experience any problems when fighting them at all.
BUT FIRST... Let's speak a word!
Yup, folks, I've got a bright idea. Uukrul wants us to "speak a single word", eh?
Hmm, wrong. Then maybe...
Yay! (I'm very smug about this issue.)
And so we've passed the test. Which doesn't mean we won't be back for some more grinding, 'coz it lands some nice exp.
Yeah, the urn ahead seems to be hiding Uukrul's dark heart (in case you've been wondering why the game's called "Dark Heart of Uukrul"
), but we can't reach it from here...
Oh well.
There's another door in the back though:
And I wonder what the inscription ahead may be...
My head! It hurts! Let's leave this for later, 'k?
But anyway. We can't get to Uukrul's dark heart without solving the lever puzzle, which we'll do a bit later, so let's head south, through the next door.
We come across a black bound book along the way.
Oooooooh.
And finally we reach the next sanctuary!
Let's head to Sagaris and have the black book identified.
It costs us 300 coins FFS!
Hmmmm....
Let's backup our game and...
Uh-oh.
We sell the evil book. Good riddance.
Now back to grinding!
Vile amoebae, here we come!
Cool. The battle is still draining, however.
We go back to UREAL and then to the temple area.
Yay! A new ring from Drutho for Kalos.
And back to the amoebae again...
And again...
spekkio gets a new ring after the last battle:
We can also read the 11th passage now:
Hmm. That seems to be too far ahead to be worried about now, though.
Yay! Another ring for Kalos!
of Kalos. It looks like our grinding is paying off!
So yeah, back to the amoebae yet again...
And one more time, boy...
No problems this time. I guess we've grown strong enough.
Let's see what lies behind the next door...
It's four trolls!
Rocket gets really close to death...
The battle wasn't too hard, really. We're good, yay!
Still, we are again out of spell points, and I suspect there's at least one more battle behind the next door, so we rush back to UREAL to rest.
spekkio gets awarded yet another ring, by the way:
Kewl.
You're progressing quite fast, spekkio-kun!
Back at the combat test, we first face the amoebae. We have a new (platinum) spell at our disposal now,
LENTIIS, which allows us to stretch the passage of time:
8 LENTIIS The Holding Heart
This Spell affects the forces that bind time to this world. When cast, the passage of time around the party will be slowed for a moderate period. This dilation of time can affect the severity of poisons, the speed and agility of enemies in combat, your consumption of food, and even the duration of other Spells you have in effect at the time. It is your responsibility to use this valuable Spell where it will be of most benefit to your party. Also, be aware that certain creatures have the ability to control time for their own purposes, reversing the effects of this Spell.
Yay! So that was the spell the trolls were casting!
So yeah, we slay the amoebae:
Facing the trolls, spekkio tries casting another platinum Knowledge spell,
SATOR:
15 SATOR The Mind Siphon
The mysterious powers of your will may, by this incantation, be used to bind and feed upon the psychic energies of a foe of like intelligence. The siphon will seek out from those against you, one who is also capable of the use of magic. If there is such an enemy present, the siphon will attempt to forge a channel between your two minds, through which you may drain-his psychic energy, weakening his powers and restoring your own. While the siphon is attached, he will be incapable of using any magic. Powerful minds will try to resist this fearsome Spell, but it is strong and a highly valuable part of your discipline.
SATOR is paired with another platinum spell in the arkana of Knowledge,
ROTAS (quite obvious, isn't it?):
1 ROTAS Suction
This is the Spell that is used to draw psychic energy through the mind siphon. It has no effect unless Sator has first been used to establish a link. While a siphon is attached to an enemy, you must concentrate your complete attention on maintaining its hold. Every time you act, you must cast the Rotas Spell, which will both reinforce the siphon and draw some of the victim's energy through to your mind. This Spell, therefore, increases your psychic energy each time it is successfully cast. The more powerful your foe. the more energy will be gained each time it is cast. The mind siphon will eventually break, but if you fail to cast Rotas even once, it will break immediately. Once broken, a siphon cannot be re-established.
So yeah, spekkio casts SATOR, but...
Oh. :/
Still, we prevail:
Plus 788 coins.
And the third challenge is...
Flame spirits!
Frightening!
Uh-oh.
Kalos invokes
DROM to increase our attack power:
DROM Strength to the Sword Arm
Ufthu, Soldier of Misfortune,
Hear your humble Priest,
Send your strength to those on earth,
Who bear steel against the dark foes.
Nice.
One of the flame spirits is called Morszuleth, and the other one is called Morszutu. WTF?
Lord Rocket breaks his scimitar.
With the aid of DROM, Bee and Rocket do indeed hit p. hard. SEHKLAZAR also helps.
Since these are flame (fire) spirits, Kalos calls forth a
Water elemental:
The Water elemental looks funny.
And it hits Morszutu quite hard. (Water is strong against fire, etc.
) Nice!
We're victorious!
In fact, this has concluded the battle test. We find ourselves in the area with the urn.
And you know what?
Our whole party levels up again!
At the temple of Fshofth, Kalos receives a new ring:
Oh yeah, let's have a look at our attributes.
Lord Rocket gains +1 in Piety and Vitality.
Bee, +1 in Vitality.
Kalos has gained +1 to his Dexterity.
Finally, spekkio's Strength, Intelligence, and Piety have all increased by one.
At the forge, we repair Rocket's Scimitar, and at the shop, we buy him new Steel leggings:
That increases his AC from 26 to 27.
We also buy Steel leggins and a Plate mail for Bee:
Bee's AC is now 27.
Let's now solve the lever puzzle and get to the mysterious urn!
So yeah, 8 levers:
And a drawing with 8 crosses:
Long story short, the path to the urn consists of many 1x1 rooms, together making up the 4x4 area depicted in the drawing. Each 1x1 room has one to four doors. Pulling a lever means rotating (or something like that) one of the rooms so that the correct combination allows you to make a path that will lead you straight to the urn, as evident from the drawing. Otherwise, you're destined to stumble into a dead end.
It took me about 1,5 hours (!) of lever flipping to figure out the correct combination, which is pulling levers #1, #3, #4, #5, and #8. Gosh, I'm dumb. But insistent. And we finally get to the urn.
Let's approach it, shall we?
:twisted:
A heart of black glass? That must be Uukrul's dark heart!
Six sockets, meaning we need six stone hearts to unlock the mechanism. And we've only got five. Oh well. We'll be sure to return here later!
I'm tempted to say we've cleared the dungeon of twisted paths. Two questions remain though:
1. What the hell are those indentations supposed to mean?
2. What the hell are those drawings with the letters for?
I wonder if that's important...
Next time: pyramid!
Oh, and let me remind you of a certain quote from page 1 of this LP:
Hell March said:
This will never get past Tara--err, Pyramid.
Was Hell March correct in his assessment? It is a mystery, yay, so stay tuned!
