Adventures in Dungeon Crawling (Map Spoilers, maybe NSFW)

[Grauken]

The third dungeon is the buried empire of Melm, that was eradicated in a day by its own enslaved Troll population. The crabs are most likely the first enemies you meet, and they give you an idea of the rest of the dungeon, which means lots and lots of enemies that should best be attacked with blunt force.

I like how each dungeon so far feels different. The second was obviously something else, but even dungeon 1 and 3 have their own style. The first one was lots of blocky rooms, this one is more tunnels, lots of dark spaces, fewer walls you can break through, and the most obvious difference is...

...the trolls. Every floor on this dungeon has areas where you leave the stuffy tunnels, but then have to hide from powerful trolls (who look like Pandas on steroids) who can kill your party fast, if you meet more than one you're dead. Most of them can easily be evaded, which is a nice variation on stealth gameplay, where you hide in crevices until the troll patrols have gone by.

The younger trolls still pack a punch but are much more easily disposed of.

Whereupon the first floor had only one Troll section you had to cross, the deeper you get in this dungeon, the more you will see of them. Also, the dark places have their own set of enemies, which I thought was a nice touch.

You also meet this "nice" lady, who was part of an expedition into this dungeon, but who has lost her colleagues. When you search further, you will find them, or at least their remains, as most of them have met gruesome ends at the hands of the trolls (including one scene where a trolls eats one of the survivors before we can kill him)

 

[Grauken]

Okay, more plot this time.

Dronya tries to blow up the well, the guy (on the left) chastizes her for that, they meet one of the Hayao Miyazaki rejects, then Dronya forces the guy on the left into an owl shape and puts him into a cage, and Luca adopts him as her pet. This becomes important a tiny bit later, but before that, we see more of Mistress Dronya's brand of humor

Juliet, the naive dizzy rich girl, wants to find her true love and goes to the worst possible person to help her.

Madam Dronya finishes the love potion but forgets to mention that it makes Juliet fell in love with whomever she sees first. Luca obviously doesn't find that very funny, but she can't do anything about it.

Actually, there's a happy end to this story, for Juliet, not Dronya. For unknown reasons the spell backfires, Juliet is freed from its influence, and Madam Dronya is the one falling in love.

Remember Neldo the owl. Luca in panic frees him and asks for help, they send a magic message to Baba Yaga (an older witch from whom Dronya apparently tried to get away) and get a recipe for another potion that requires three items, which can be found in the three dungeons so far. Mostly it means going to the designated squares (exclamation point) where Neldo gives us the ingredients, except the third, for which we have to battle a worm. Once that is done, Dronya gets freed from her love for the shepherds' sheep.

Luca's and Dronya's dynamic is too funny

 

[Viata]

This looks like a fun game, I know what I'm going to play after this semester is over. Thanks.

 

[abnaxus]

 

[Grauken]

So, I'm trying to get back into the game. No reason I stopped playing, that just happens occasionally. Next level up is the springrealm.

We arrive at something autumny, really nice. Meet some friendly people who invite us to dinner and just ask us to get something out of their gardens. Well, it's not like we do that all the time, fetch random stuff for strangers. So off it is to the gardens

Somebody forgot to mention that we would wound up as extras from Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. Also, the fucker closed the door after us, there's no simple way of leaving here, except creating mud gates at this point.

I have to say I really love the visuals and the whole idea of this. Its fun seeing it in the movies but running like a shrunken human around a garden even better when you do it yourself.

Garden-appropriate monsters, although not very tough. The monsters you met in the Melm realm initially felt much harder.

Damn, I love the idea of the fleas (you met them in the previous realm when they were basically a springing pixel, now they've increased in size in accordance with the theme of this dungeon), but as a monster type they are might annoying, as they often poison lots of your characters. It's not so much deadly, just really annoying with the flashing effect outside of combat when you walk around.

The pins are harmless alone, but when you get five or so they can do some damage.

Fairies, non-combat encounters (where they just make snobbish comments about how fairies are just the best) and combat encounters.

The caterpillar looks like another Hayao Miyazaki reject, but don't go to him without a certain leaf you can randomly collect in the level. If you have the leaf, he brings you to another level, if you don't and you ask to be brought somewhere, he fights you (and PKd me pretty fast).

The first two levels of the springrealm, not much to them. You notice the slightly lighter area in the second map? I went there and died because each step I took sapped my HP and I didn't realize that it did it much faster than when I was poisoned, so pretty much dead in a few steps.

Here's the hint to how to explore that area, which basically means get your karma down to 0 (at least that's what I did with the Witch Petition that sucks out all your karma).

In that area we meet another thematic appropriate NPC whose first thing to say to us is to slay something else. Makes sense, since we look probably like a Mercenary unit, still, it makes me question common sense when a stranger proposes to you as the first thing to kill something else. But I just roll with it, because killing stuff is kind of my thing in the game

Unrelated to all this, I realized there was a new destination open to me, so I ventured forth to see what was going on.

Alas, there's something blocking my entry, so I have to come here back later

 

[Grauken]

So, the next part of this dungeon is the Fallrealm, which you reach via caterpillar express and where you can find another of the teleport boxes that can bring you back home. Most of the enemies here you already met in the Springrealm, but now they come in combinations and especially the pins are really annoying in the beginning. But after a bit of leveling nothing here can harm you, except... (no not the Magitumbler, he's harmless)

This is the first part of the Fallrealm, only one part isn't explored, because it's patrolled by, wait for it (cue almost timely appropriate monsters, only a few days too late for it)...

Pumpkins. Big deadly pumpkins. At this point, they pretty much TPK me in a few rounds

The second part of the Fallrealm is much friendlier than those, until you reach another part where you can't take a step without getting harmed, and this time 0 karma doesn't help, so it's probably some plot-related thing I have to activate to get through here, most likely killing the biggest pumpkin from the previous map

Instead of exploring more, I tried to do some spring cleaning, as the Troll Shaman (the boss of the previous dungeon) was still undefeated. Last time I tried to kill him, he wiped the floor with my party, this time I think I was too over-leveled, since he only could kill my most recent employee, but otherwise I pretty much wiped the floor with him.

Looky there, Rosina is still an asshole trying to get a mystical key to become immortal. Despite what the third pic below implies, the troll shaman doesn't eat her, instead one of the pups she mistreated goes kamikaze on him, she finds the key, it turns out its fake and she falls over dead. Yep. This was pretty anti-climatic, I was hoping for something else, anything else, than just her falling over dead

I also explored the last parts of the Melm realm I hadn't gone to yet, remembering that falling down didn't just result in damage, but also that you sometimes get to new places. Pretty much cleared all the spaces behind unopened doors I couldn't get to until I realized something. There's a hole in the lowest level of this dungeon. Wait, is there more here?

Turns out there is, but also it requires, like the space in the Springrealm, zero karma. And it seems to go even deeper.

This is the Scuzzle. It's just here because I love the visual design, no other reason

 

[Grauken]

So I went to finally explore the deeper levels of dungeon 1.

You meet new monsters, like those flesh statues (which somehow remind me of Meat Boy) or those armadillos, which are pretty tough, especially if you meet three at once. Once you're a bit stronger they only become HP sponges, still annoying but less dangerous.

At this point, you'll probably need to advance a bit more methodological, as you don't have enough power points to break through all the walls, and breaking through walls becomes necessary to advance from here on. So make two mud gates, one to leave and one to return to, to have enough power.

This level didn't have anything especially tough except those djinn-like creatures that circle around the large square (the white marked crosses). The first one I met I got lucky and did a gore strike of ca. 40,000 that killed him instantly (which was surprising to me, most of the time my gore strikes go up to 5,000 at most). I thought I was on a lucky streak, engaged the next one, who then went on to kill my party.

This one has a boss monster, the great fish Devon. Too tough for me, so I saved killing him for later. Also, as you can see from the map, lots of walls to break through to get to him.

The deepest level had another boss monster, which seemed less tough than Devon if you guard when he's ready to attack. Whenever he brings up his shield you do pretty much no damage. In the end, we fought a battle of attrition, which I lost, but I think in a few levels I should be able to beat him.

Not a boss monster, but this is one of the reapers that turn up when you have too much mana and they're tougher than most boss monsters at this point. Also, since upper carrying level of mana is different for each level of the dungeon, I run into him when I was coming up from the deeper levels of dungeon 1 (didn't have enough points to create a mud gate) and run into him on level 1 or 2. Yep, TPK.

Next update we finish off the Spring/Fall realm and kill their insect keeper, and then move on to the next dungeon, the three towers of Umbra I mentioned in one of the previous posts

Also, if you missed the hilarious antics of Dronya and Lucca, one more pic

 

[Grauken]

Every time I get stuck I forget that the game basically tells me what to do next. So off to find one of the annoying fairy bards

Ah, found him, but as it turns out, it's a trap

At this point, Lamiadon is a pushover. He also seemed to enjoy fairy snacks from time to time, as we find the remains of fairy bard Kaede in his stomach

Back to the Dronya for our next piece of plot development, which isn't much. We meet a new member of her coterie, a spider called Baltini the third. Also, we unlock a new witch petition that will allow us to enter the area in the Fall realm with all the miasma.

I must say, for its rating, the game is surprisingly tame. Not sure that counts even as NSFW

Back to Prince Bagworm, who tells us what we already know. We have to venture deeper into the Fall realm (which we already did) and needed the Miasma ward. I was a bit confused here since I thought I already got the witch petition that would help me survive the green miasma, but maybe he just acknowledged that I had unlocked it. Whatevs, onwards toward the green miasma

There's one annoying thing about this area, which is that you don't see the walls on the map (but it seems I can see them on the mini-map, very odd, I didn't realize this when playing). That said, the area isn't large and the enemies are pushovers. The big boss is in that black area in the middle of the miasma area

Numblebee isn't exactly strong, but he has lots of HP, so just keep pushing attack again and again and again. Odd that the pumpkins mini-bosses are tougher than the end boss of the level. Afterward, we get a special key, one Dronya was searching for (one of three)

When we go back to Dronya, we find out a bit more backstory. She's searching for three powerful keys, as was her former master the Witch Baba Yaga, from whom Dronya run away. The little runty witch on the left is the one that made the love potion spell backfire, and she has spied on Dronya for Baba Yaga. Then Baba Yaga turns up and basically threatens Dronya into submission, forces her to give her the key, and also gives her the mission to search for the other two. Dronya, as expected, is furious but can't do anything about it at the moment

With the fourth dungeon finished, we're off to the fifth, the Towers of Umbra, where we couldn't pass last time. This time we get pushed back again as well, but then Neldo turns up and deactivates the ward and tells us a bit about what lies in front of us

Three towers, each with a lord, supposed to keep each other in check, but alas one of them isn't there anymore, so things are out of whack

The first part of the level 1 is pretty easy, enemies are just more pushovers, but things get probably more difficult the deeper I get

Found this guy on the second level. Reminded me of the boss monster in the deepest level of the first dungeon, the one that killed me pretty easily. Sweet revenge is mine, as I wiped the floor with him (actually, there were two of them and a warning indicated they were supposed to be some kind of sub-boss encounter, but two rounds and it was over for them).

Yeah, different color scheme for different towers. Actually, it kinda looks cool. So that's it for this time.

 

[The_Retro_Buff]

Okay, so I have this idea to dump in here pics from Dungeon Crawlers while I play through them. Won't be a let's play, more musings and observations, but not really a review, just assorted thoughts and stuff.

Not sure how often I update, might be dead after a few posts, might be going as long as I find it amusing

Lady Sword (PC Engine)
To Hell With Guns (PC / itch.io)
Labyrinth of Refrain: Coven of Dusk (PC / Steam)

Papa aweigh's Dungeon Design lessons
#1 - Junctions and Wizardry 5

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