Completed DECENT PERSON SIMULATOR 1985 (ultima 4 lp)

[ore clover]

Chapter 27: Searching For the Village Hidden in the Lake

Spoiler

Having survived a forest full of demons and liches, our quintet now searches for safer avenues of fun.

Today we’re going to see about finding the whereabouts of Lock Lake. If you remember, we learned a while back that there’s someone who can teach us the gate spell, as well as more info on a word we’ll need to know to enter the abyss. Supposedly there’s a village hidden in the lake, which is probably where we’ll find those two.

How to find the lake? If you’ve seen the game’s world map, you’ve likely noticed all those scribble-scrabbles marked up all over the place. Those are actually part of a runic alphabet; Britannia’s ancient written language, I guess. So the world map provides names for lots of locations, just in a different alphabet.

The image of the map provided from this repository isn’t as good as the gog version, due to that division in the center cutting off bits of land.

So far the game has provided no means to translate, but that’s fortunately unnecessary. One of the extras included with the game is a reference card; it’s actually more of a several page mini-manual, with all the commands and spell mixtures you’ll need to start playing.

Check the last page:

Spoiler

If you peek at the map, you’ll see a lake just to the northeast of Lord British’s castle labeled “lock ake”: Lock Lake. It properly spells the word out on the gog version. We’ll make our way there.

Our hero levels up again, continuing to leave his companions in the dust. We also grab some free healing from Lord British, and then it’s off on our journey.

We could probably walk there if we felt like it, but I’d rather use the ship. If there’s a hidden village in the lake, we’ll need a boat of some sort to reach it; hopefully we can find a river that leads from the bay to the lake.

On our way we trade blows with a pirate ship, nearly wrecking in the process; our boat had 1 hitpoint left afterward. We decide to park it next to shore and walk for a while.

A pretty sizable bunch of rogues immediately engage us in the hills. I haven’t been paying attention, but I wonder if eight is the max character count for enemy groups? It’s a possibility, since eight is our max as well.

We continue north, following the coast, and see the water flow into a river. That probably leads to the lake, but that bridge will prevent us from sailing in. Guess we’ll keep looking for an alternate waterway in.

We turn around to fetch the boat, and notice some liches inbound. As long as they don’t have any demons with them we should be okay, right?

I don’t know if it’s due to the number of virtues we’ve enlightened, party size, or char level, but this game seems to have some sort of scaling in place for enemy encounters. Guess that’s where Todd got the idea from.

It’s a drawn out affair, particularly because I’m still trying to focus on our newer members scoring the kills. I’m starting to think I should just buy them both ranged weapons, too.

We tangle with some wizards immediately after. By now I’m almost drooling from the monotony of having only my melee members fight, so I didn’t notice Julia’s dangerously declining health.

Oh, whoops. She ded.

Guess we’ll have to postpone our search for Lock Lake. I’m pretty sure any healer can provide resurrection services, so we’ll just jog back to Lord British’s castle.

Silver lining is that Shamino gained a level. Hopefully Julia will be close behind once she’s back in tip-top condition.

Wow, that’s a great deal. For a character with this level in Wizardry I’d be paying through the nose. Julia’s resurrected with 0 hitpoints, but we just have Lord British heal her. Our hero also donates some more blood, although I guess he doesn’t need to anymore now that he’s maxed his sacrifice virtue.

On our way back to the lake we’re attack by some lava lizards, as well as a new monster. That fellow’s a hydra. They breathe fire, like dragons, but other than that they’re not much beefier than the lizards.

Hmm, definitely don’t think we’ll be able to move the boat through here. Even if we were to destroy the bridge with cannon fire (assuming that’s even possible), the water’s too shallow. We decide to disembark and walk around the lake a bit, in case we find another river leading to it; the world map seems to indicate at least two.

As we move nearby the bridge, these assholes attack us. So far that mass sleep spell hasn’t screwed us over yet, but it sure is tedious to deal with. Balrons are quickly becoming my least enjoyable foe to tackle.

We move up north, and so far have seen no signs of a village. It must be close to the center of the lake.

I also take a peek at another gem, both to double check we’re in the right area and to see if we can spot the village. Still no dice on the village, but I’m pretty sure we’re in the right place.

We’ve now reached the top of the lake. Maybe these rivers jutting out of it lead to the water up north of the landmass.

Unfortunately none of the rivers extend beyond this area. Taking care to avoid the marshlands we make our way south again. Maybe we’ll find a way over here somewhere.

We reach the eastern edge of the lake, but it’s starting to look like there aren’t any waterways we can sail through to reach its center. I’m not sure how we’re supposed to find that village. With how chaotic blink’s range is, I can’t imagine ol’ Garriott designed this area with that in mind as the premier method. Maybe we’ll just have to put off this portion of our journey for now.

If nothing else, this little adventure boosted Julia another level. Now I don’t have to worry as much about keeping her and Shamino at the forefront of combat.

That concludes this update. We didn’t find what we came looking for, but we learned so many things about ourselves, and strengthened the bonds of friendship we hold for each other! Or, uh, something...

 

[Darth Roxor]

[perception] the visions from the shrines are runic letters!

 

[ore clover]

[perception] Success! +100xp

I'm thinking it was their way of fighting piracy. Besides the visions themselves, the game has never mentioned the runes once. Gots to have the manuals to win.

Chapter 28: Testing the Waters of a Dungeon

Spoiler

Back to the ship we go. I’ve had it up to here with Julia. She hardly hits shit with her mace, so leveling her is the dullest of chores. We’re headed to Buccaneer’s Den to buy her a crossbow.

A horde of hungry demons pursues, slowly overtaking us due to the wind direction. We could really use Ben-Hur and his slave buddies to row for us right about now.

Even after three rounds of cannonfire we’re facing six of them.

Shamino and Julia try to stay out of the way while our ranged dudes jockey for firing positions, the demons shuffling back and forth the entire time. I have to say that I’m very glad we equipped ranged weapons before seizing this ship; these naval battles would probably be infinite stalemates otherwise.

After the demons’ corpses sink into the ocean we shore up at the Den. We can only afford the crossbow for now, but I plan to also buy a ranged weapon for Shamino later on. I’ve had enough of maneuvering those two into melee position.

For now we decide to see about finding a river into Lock Lake; we’ll just sail around the general area for a bit, just in case we missed something earlier.

Some squids and a serpent come at us along the way. The squids are courteous enough to approach the boat, so Shamino gets to fight too.

As I’d figured earlier, it doesn’t look like there are any waterways into the lake. There must be some other way into that lake. Jingles said the village is accessible by ship, but unless there are some pirates hanging about in the lake I don’t see that as a viable route. The older games had space ships and shit, so maybe we can find a speeder or something somewhere and just hover on over. Oh well, we'll deal with it later.

Where should we go now? There’s one location that I’ve put off entirely up to this point: dungeons. Since we can’t find a way to Lock Lake, let’s try exploring one of those dungeons we’ve spotted instead.

Twenty minutes and many fights later, we reach our destination. Since honesty was the first virtue I maxed and meditated on, I figure that its corresponding dungeon should be the first we visit. We take a moment to camp out, and then stroll in.

Like most games from the era, vision is obstructed during dungeon crawling. We’ll just cast a Light and see what the layout looks like.

Uh… whoa. Wasn’t expecting that.

For those of you who played one or more of the earlier Ultimas before Ult 4, this will come as no surprise to you. This is a bit of a tradition in the early Ultimas; top down view for the overworld, and a first person perspective for dungeon crawling. As you’ll see in a bit, combat still switches to the overhead view. This was a neat surprise for me, since I haven’t gone through the other games that use this setup.

Although this also means I won’t know where I’m going, since we can't see around corners like with the overhead view. Guess I’ll have to dust off grid cartographer and put it to use.

Having played Wiz 1 just before this, I thought it’d be a cinch to start mapping and crawling. Unfortunately I had a bit of trouble acclimating to Ultima 4’s format, since it’s not quite like Wiz 1.

Take this hallway, for example (we’re still standing under the ladder, I’m just looking south now instead of east). In Wizardry, you can see three spaces ahead of you with a light spell active. Knowing that, I was able to quickly draw out corridors three spaces at a time, and then move forward and repeat the process.

Based on that, I assumed it would take three steps to reach that wall and set that up accordingly.

We ended up clearing the distance in two steps instead, requiring me to alter what I’d already mapped. I think the problem is that Wiz 1 has everything equally spaced and Ultima 4 doesn’t.

Check this hallway, just to the right of the door we walked to. I interpret it as taking three steps to reach the wall, because the amount of distance between us and that corner to our right looks like half the gap between the next corner and the far wall; it’s actually two steps.

Bottom line, it’ll take some time for me to get used to the slightly different implementation.

We trot back over to the ladder and some bats appear, probably from down the other hallway. Unlike Wizardry, you can see monsters wandering the halls just like when exploring the overworld. There are a few instances where fights start without you seeing the enemies beforehand, when going through some doorways, but besides that you have to bump into them to start the fight.

No blobber combat for us. The battle maps take into account the general layout of your dungeon square, showing bends and objects like the ladder, which is nice attention to detail. Also, new monster! These are giant bats; pretty much harmless, and also non-evil. We easily kill a few and let the rest run.

We head back to that doorway we found, taking on some rats beforehand. If it weren’t for the tail, I’d say they look more like rabbits to me.

Here’s what is looks like when enemies leave behind chests. The sprites all stretch a bit vertically when you’re standing in the same spot, probably because the view screen isn’t a square.

Another difference from Wizardry. In Wiz doorways are one-dimensional; you pass through and end up in a chamber on the other side immediately. In Ultima 4 you have to pass through an extra square before reaching the chamber on the other side; so a doorway’s actually a little room between two doors.

We go into the next chamber, take a left, head down a two-step hallway, and turn left again. May as well see what’s behind this door too.

Some of these doorway junctures have a handplaced encounter that you must deal with each time you pass through. As you can see by the bend, we’ll end up past the second door and facing east once we clear this.

Also, that’s a reaper in the corner to the right. We saw one earlier in Lord British’s gaol.

They can cast mass sleep spells. Balrons, please move over and welcome reapers as they join you as my most hated opponents.

Initially I thought these sprites up here were some sort of energy barrier, but it turns out they’re a monster too. These are slimes, another pushover enemy. They’re also considered evil; not sure how that works.

One more new enemy. Notice how the treasure chest over there has a pair of eyes peeking out? That’s a mimic, a monster taking the form of a chest as an illusion to lure unwary adventurers. Other than when they attack you, they’ll give themselves away by peeking once you come close.

Once we kill the mimic, I send Shamino to retrieve the real chest it left behind. Once he steps on that spot, the walls shielding off the reaper disappear. We slowly (damn sleep spell!) make our way toward it, kill it, loot the chests, and then move on.

Be warned: If you walk right back into the doorway, you’ll have to go through the fight again. I don’t know if it’s considered cowardly to just deal with the slimes and leave, ignoring the reaper, but something to keep in mind.

Right about here I realized that I should probably put off my exploration of the dungeon until I’m better prepared. We decide to return to the entrance and resupply. Depending on how deep Deceit runs, we may need many more of our spells. Plus we don't want to starve to death.

If nothing else, we now have enough dosh to find Shamino a ranged weapon. Soon we’ll be equipped to handle every problem from a distance.

 

[ore clover]

Chapter 29: Gathering More Clues

Spoiler

With the spoils we acquired from our brief visit into Deceit, we can now find a ranged weapon for Shamino. First order of business, though, will be replenishing our spells and food stores.

Along the way back to Moonglow we deal with a couple pirate ships.

We’ve also started destroying the ships after the fights. Just in case accumulating boats will hog the game’s allocated memory.

Some fire lizards almost killed us along the way, thanks in part to interference from the wind.

We fill up on our most used spells and grab enough food to keep us going for a little while, using up almost half our cash. Bows cost 250, though, so we’ll be fine.

We pay a quick visit to Lord British, and he levels up Iolo and Jaana. We all have a healthy stock of hitpoints, so there should be little danger of party fatalities from here on out.

I also forgot which town specifically sold the bows, so we spend the next fifteen minutes or so traveling the land and vanquishing monsters. Eventually we settle at Trinsic.

We could already afford it earlier, but some extra cash from defeated enemies helps out. This should cut the tedium out of fights by half, since we can just lob projectiles right from the start with every char.

I finally remembered to start asking the different Antos family members about the book of truth and candle of love, so after some quick skirmishes outside Trinsic we set sail for Serpent’s Hold.

In addition to several easy fights, we also encounter these wizards and demon. Now that we all have ranged weapons this fight is much less dangerous than it would’ve been before, since we don’t have to put anyone directly into harm’s way so that their melee weapons will strike home.

Sister Antos unfortunately has nothing to say about either the candle or book. Thinking about it, that makes sense. Father Antos told us where to find the book of truth, and he was inside the Lycaeum; a location devoted to truth. So Sister Antos probably knows about the third item, which likely has something to do with courage.

So far no one in the Serpent’s Hold has given any clues as to what the item is, so we’ll focus on the candle instead. Back to the Abbey!

We anchor nearby Lord British’s castle, planning to use his moongate to travel to Yew. From there we’ll walk to the Abbey.

Some baddies approach from the woods, so we head over to fight them.

One of my favorite positions to use in combat: Lining everyone up in a row and taking turns shooting at a single target. Great way to quickly whittle down a target we don’t want coming too close. Usually I’ll split the team into several lines, though, to handle multiple incoming enemies.

I was a bit impatient waiting on the moongate, so instead took the team back around to see if there’s a waterway into Lock Lake. A futile effort, and we were repaid for this endeavor with an encounter of balrons.

It wasn’t exactly dangerous, but four balrons spamming sleep spells one after another is potentially rage-inducing. They had the decency to fly onto the ship’s deck, though, instead of keeping just out of our reach to the sides.

We used the boat to get to the other side of the bridge without stepping through the marshes. That river might extend out to the bay, but I won’t hold my breath. I’m more interested in this pathway through the mountains. Remember way back when, when we were told that the compassion shrines lies beyond two bridges east of Britain?

We’ve passed by two bridges on our way over here, so perhaps this pathway leads to the shrine. Even if I haven’t maxed out compassion, meditating at the shrine might give us some hints for the game.

There you are. We have the rune and mantra, so may as well meditate and see what happens.

As I thought, compassion is not quite ready for enlightenment. But here’s a useful clue for us: Based on this vision, it sounds like we’ll need to use the three items in a specific order, with the candle being last. I’ll have to remember to meditate at all the shrines we’ve already enlightened virtues for, to collect as many clues as we can.

We visit the Seer on our way back, and he reaffirms that we’ve been improving our hero’s spirituality with each meditation. He also says that we are making good progress in compassion, so I’ll just have to keep tossing coins at beggars in the name of enlightenment.

From there we head straight for the Abbey. As I thought Brother Antos, resident of Britannia’s love hub, knows about the candle of love. When I tell him that we don’t know where to find it he says, “Meditate on love at our shrine.”

I assume that he’s talking about that ankh we spoke with a while back. As I recall it told us to speak with the bard in the secret passage. We didn’t find any secret walls last time we visited, but that was also before I knew about the white mark identifying the secrets. Let’s have a more careful look around.

Damn, it was right over here the whole time. Checking the telescope image, it looks like this leads outside the walls. It also leads into a small room with treasure chests, but we have no need for those now that we have the rune of spirituality.

We step outside the walls and head directly south, careful not to veer over to the left and accidentally exit back to the overworld. As the ankh said, we see a lone bard just outside the castle’s southwest tower.

“I am a bard, I sing songs. Oh, all types. Dost thou like this one?” I of course tell him that I don’t. “Alas, it was new.”

Whatever, tell us about the candle! “The candle of love is found in a secret place hidden off Lock Lake!”

That blasted lake again. If only there was some way to drain all the water out of it. Ah well, we’ll worry about it later.

From there we spend the next fifteen or so minutes traveling to Skara Brae, acquiring their cheap food, and then making our way back to Lord British’s castle, vanquishing many monsters along the way. This should be a safe spot to save and quit, with little worry of immediate danger upon resuming.

Up next we'll begin preparations for a legitimate crawl of the dungeon Deceit. We hardly scratched its surface last update, and no better time to rectify that than now.

 

[ore clover]

Chapter 30: Blood Donors Racket

Spoiler

To the ship; we’ll use all that money we’ve accumulated to saturate our inventory with helpful items and spells.

Our first stop is the guild at Buccaneer’s Den, where we buy some more of all of their selection. It’ll be good to have torches in case we run out of light spells, or vice versa, we may need keys for locked doors, and more gems can help me map out the corridors.

Because I can never help getting sidetracked in open world games, we also decide to explore a bit more of the Den. This wizard warned against us exploring the forest, and now we’re going to ignore his advice.

We’ve stood up to demons, liches, and dragons, and lived to tell the tale (‘cept Julia that one time ofc). I think we can handle whatever evil lurks beyond these trees.

We bravely stomp on, and promptly find the river; not very dense for an all-consuming forest of evil. Maybe the wizard just forgot to mention that we needed to investigate to the east and west.

The forest doesn’t extend much farther to the west. I’m a bit underwhelmed so far. Just a bit; not too much.

Looks like another barrier over there; we’ll check the rest of the forest before Dispelling it.

I am not of understand this. That wizard must’ve been fooling with us.

We continue east, fight off a sea serpent, and follow the wall south.

I always get a kick out of the game’s descriptions for these evil npcs; I guess we’re applying honesty in its fullest form.

Brigant doesn’t seem to have much to say. “Aw, buzz off!” is his reply when we ask what his job is. He also turns away a couple times, forcing me to re-initiate the conversation. I throw a couple topics at him, including the Mondain skull, but nothing sticks.

We move southwest, exploring some more trees.

Sniflet here is hiding, or so he tells us. “I know something others want!” I imagine that means we want to know it, too.

“I… I… Wilt thou promise to use it only to aid the powers of good?” Of course, that’s why we're here.

“The lighter than air device that was stolen lies near the dungeon Hythloth!”

Oh cool, some sort of hot-air balloon? Maybe an airship? That’s something we’ll definitely want to find. If it really floats through the air, then that’s our ticket to the village hidden in Lock Lake.

Bit of trivia: The History of Britannia mentions that people in the Lycaeum had recently invented this device, but that it was stolen and no one knew where it ended up. I’d actually forgotten about that before Sniflet mentioned it.

Back over to the east there’s a bridge leading to a small island, with a lone wizard.

This goth fellow uses black magic! He’s quite enthusiastic about it. “I cast powerful magic missile spells. Dost thou?” Yes, although we usually default to fireballs. “Thou should try my mix of reagents! Try one black pearl and one part sulfurous ash!”

We’ll have to try that out. The manual says that magic missiles require 2 sulfur and one black pearl, but fireballs only need 1 sulfur. Odd that a weaker spell costs more to produce, so perhaps Starlight has discovered a more efficient mix that isn’t common knowledge.

We trot back to the barrier in the north and Dispel it, taking care to search all the squares. Nothing turns up, though, so I’m not sure what the deal is over here.

Same deal on the other side of the rock; searching reveals nothing. I guess we’ll come back later; maybe there’s something hidden here, but we need a specific item to find it. Or it was just put there to waste one of my spells.

Scratch that, I’m retadred; did you notice the secret wall in the previous pic? I certainly didn’t; damnit, now we really will have to come back.

crap

We return to Moonglow to buy more spells, boosting our health with the inn beforehand. As we’re leaving the room I decide to peek at the other one. Other than some treasure chests, there’s also an npc.

A starving journalist? How’s that

MSM working out for you?

“I am a writer. It’s low paid, but glamorous!” She didn’t say much else; maybe this is an easter egg.

Our next stop is the herbs shop; hopefully those spells will be enough to last us through the crawl. During this I tried mixing Magic Missiles with one sulfur, instead of two, and the game told me it was a success. So I guess I'll stick to Starlight's recipe. Going to have to remember what that other spell I'd learned a more efficient recipe for was.

Now to splurge the rest of our cash on food.

Whoops, we wandered over to the healer instead. We’ll just be moving on. They ask if I want to donate blood but I refuse; I’ve done my good deeds already, muh sacrifice is maxed!

Huh? Waht!! Give me back my eighth, you extorting harpy!

So that’s how it’s going to be; these healers will force our hero to donate blood every time he requires their services, or risk losing his partial avatarhood in sacrifice. So I’ll just have to make sure we never visit them unless absolutely necessary.

For now though, our hero donates the blood; he has to boost the virtue, after all.

We buy our food and then head straight for the Seer. Fortunately my progress wasn’t completely trashed, so we can go back to the shrine right now.

A few fights later we reach the shrine. What a wonderful waste of fifteen minutes. Giving blood’s overrated anyway, grumblegrumble… “Save lives!” my ass.

We use the extra money we’ve gained from fights to buy some more food, and then we set sail for Deceit.

Not sure if I can save while inside the dungeon, so now’s the time to do it.

Tune in next time as we explore this dungeon for real!

 

[ore clover]

Chapter 31: Deceit pt. 1

Spoiler

Time to properly explore our first dungeon! Before I begin, just want to give a quick shoutout to Hidden Asbestos for his grid cartographer program. I can't draw straight lines for shit, so it's been a helpful tool going through Ultima's dungeons.

this is not a paid advertisement for grid cartographer, i received zero shekels, pls dun kill me

In the interests of getting up to speed with mapping the dungeons, I decided to use a gem from the onset so that I can have the map immediately, as well as estimate what sort of scope I’m dealing with. This is promising; much smaller than what I’m used to from Might&Magic and Wizardry.

The little red dot is our current position, and that symbol up in the top-left corner is a down arrow indicating the ladder to the next level.

Since the game screenshots will provide little context for position, I’ll post pics of the maps I made for the floors as we go.

Deceit floor 1

Since I know where the ladder is, may as well check out the rest of the floor first. We head directly south from the entrance ladder, dealing with some ghosts, a lich, and a demon before moving through the doorway.

No scripted battle here, so we move down the hallway to the next series of doors.

Same reaper encounter as before. We kill everything, take the gold, and continue.

Third doorway’s clear; time to check out those two "F" marks near the ladder. We take the shorter path up to the north and west from our current position.

Looks like something involving water, and the other pathway has an identical sprite; an underwater current blocking our way, perhaps? I cast a Dispel first, just in case it’s something magical, but nothing happens. We’re able to move through, though, so we have no issues reaching the ladder. Maybe if we search.

They’re both fountains (hence the “F” from the gem view), but don’t seem to have any effect. Oh well, let’s continue down.

Deceit floor 2

I use another gem here, and it looks like we won’t be able to easily map all the floors this way. I drew out what I could see, and figured I’d just add the rest in myself as we went. I obviously wasn’t planning on gem peering through the entire dungeon.

Spoiler

actually I was, but I quickly abandoned that idea when it became clear there'd be several floors

We move south to the door, and see some bats waiting for us within.

Pretty sure this isn’t a scripted encounter, but it’s cool that the battle map takes into account the doorway.

We move west through the doorway, and then turn and head south two steps. The gem showed that both pathways lead to the same spot, so we take the first door we see. No scripted fights yet, but that chamber in the center has falling rocks that damage the party when you enter. An unavoidable trap to take note of.

We move straight through, exiting through the west doorway. We continue south, clobbering some ghosts along the way, where we find another doorway to the east.

Here’s a scripted fight against some wisps. As you can see from the map, we’ll start to the west of the door square and end up to the east of it once we leave the battle zone.

Also, the wall closed off behind us on our way forward. Uh, can we not return this way? Guess we’ll keep moving.

We’re immediately thrust into another combat, this time with different foes. I don’t think we’ve seen those beholder fellows yet: They’re called gazers in Ultima 4, probs to avoid issues with D&D monster copyrights. Oh, and some headless.

Gazers have the annoying ability to cast Sleep at single targets. It’s not nearly as bad as the balron and reapers’ mass sleep attacks, but it makes handling multiple gazers at once a chore.

Another handplaced encounter awaits us on the other side, against some bats. They’re easy to vanquish, and we Dispel one of those poison barriers to get at the three chests before continuing on.

On the other side we find the ladder down to the next level. Hmm, I wonder how deep this goes?

Deceit floor 3

Our starting location is that up ladder to the north.

Down here I decided to start mapping manually, without the aid of a gem; may as well save those for emergencies. We move down to the three doors, and take the one to the west.

Welp, looks like our torch burned out; they don’t last forever, it would seem. We ignite another, but later on we’ll have to try out the Light spell to see if it also has a limited duration. We’re treated to a nondescript corridor, which we move through.

At the end we find this; that’s the design used for enemy wizard spells, but I assume it’s serving a different purpose here. Could be those blue orbs we were told about by the Serpent’s Hold beggar.

That about confirms it. No one touches it, for now; I remember that there’s a price to pay for their boons, so I’d rather leave that for later in case it’s particularly dangerous or permanent.

We head back to the trio of doors, taking the one to the east. This leads to another of those blue orbs. We’ll be sure to check them both out later. For now, it’s back to the three doors for us.

Moving through the southern door reveals another corridor, with a door just to our left. What awaits us in there, I wonder?

A couple reapers and lots of chests; the chest in the center’s a mimic. There are also a couple secret walls just past the entrance, but they don’t seem to lead anywhere. Once we’ve beaten the reapers and harvested the chests we return to the hallway.

Back in the corridor, heading south, we run into these monsters. Another new enemy for us. These are spiders, although my first thought was that fucked up demon with the lion head full of goat legs. They’re particularly annoying because, like vipers, they launch poison projectiles. Also non-evil, so we can't just perform wanton slaughter and be done with it

As you can see if you check the full map, the corridor branches two ways and leads to two ladders. To start with, we’ll descend the ladder to the southeast.

That’ll be it for this update. Join us next time as we continue to journey deeper into the bowels of Deceit.

 

[Darth Roxor]

how deceitful

 

[ore clover]

Chapter 32: Deceit pt. 2

Spoiler

Continuing right where we left off, next floor!

Deceit floor 4

Our starting position is the two way ladder in the top portion of the floor.

Looks like we have ourselves a two-way ladder here. Good to know where the route down is from the getgo. Let’s check out the rest of this floor, first.

Here’s something to keep in mind: the gems don’t necessarily show you everything. We knew that already, due to the long corridor in floor two, but as you can see from my map there’s another section on this floor. It’s inaccessible from here, and the gem doesn’t show it. Just another reason to not rely solely on the gems for mapping.

Anyway, let’s continue on. We take the door leading north to start with, and follow it to the second door in the northeast corner.

Another treasure room, this one guarded by bats and rats. Easy money.

Neat little twist to this room; half of the bridges vanish when you approach, preventing your team from crossing. As you can see, we’ll have to use those secret walls up north to cross over and reach our prizes. We’ll be seeing more of these puzzle-lite rooms as we go.

We take out the baddies, loot the chests, and return to the central hallway. Time to check out the other door. Some trolls and slimes attack us along the way, but besides that it’s another nondescript hallway leading to a treasure room.

No enemies to deal with here, but quite a few poison barriers. In my opinion, the most efficient way to handle this situation is to Dispel that first barrier, since we can’t walk through it, and then send one person through the rest to collect the treasure. They’ll undoubtedly be poisoned, but you don’t start losing health from that until you’re back to overworld or dungeon exploration.

Godspeed, Iolo, we believe in you!



As you can see, a couple of mimics lie in wait. They aren’t particularly dangerous, though, so Iolo solos them before snatching up all the treasure.

From there it’s back to the ladder. We’ve explored everything in this area that we can reach.

Deceit floor 5

Our starting position is that ladder nearby the two falling rocks and blue orb.

See those squares in the ceiling? Those are chutes for falling rocks; still unavoidable, but we can see them at least. Speaking of sight…

A draft of wind blows out our torch, leaving us grasping and blind. I had Jaana cast a magical light spell, instead of a torch, and the winds immediately blew that out as well. Good to know.

We turn round, to head back to the ladder, but I notice that we were able to continue past it. From what I could tell there was a wall directly west of the ladder, so it must be a secret passage.

I also panicked, due to being thrown off by the winds, and peered at another gem to recover my bearings.

That blue circle to the east is another magic orb, like the ones we found higher up. We can also see the next ladder, another fountain, and lots of

awaiting us to the southwest. We first take a quick peekaround by the ladder, see nothing else of interest, and then move to investigate the fountain.

Our hero takes the plunge first, in case the fountain is a trap; turns out to be quite the opposite. This fountain restores a char to full health when they drink from it, and as far as I can tell it allows for unlimited healing. We’ll just keep that in mind if we’re in the general area.

Immediately after, on our way to the chests, we run into these fellows. First time seeing them, I think; these are gremlins. They’re very easy to kill, but also a potential hazard. Whereas rogues have a chance to pickpocket your money, gremlins have a chance to steal your food. We definitely don’t want to be stuck starving down here, so we always try to kill them before they can reach us.

We trounce the gremlins, loot all the chests (aw yiss, this dungeon’s making us rich!), and check out that chamber in the southwest corner.

Lots of rogues and a couple of chests. Straightforward encounter, but we still cast a couple spells to make sure the rogues don’t get their hands on our booty.

Guess we'll check out that hallway with the magical orb now. Like before we lose our light, and we take a few hits from the falling rocks.

Time to find out what this orb provides. The beggar mentioned that it might boost any of the attributes, for a cost. We decide to have Iolo test this one, both because he has most of his health at the moment and could use a boost to his intelligence. A boost to his strength or dexterity wouldn’t be bad either.

Not bad; some health docked, which we can heal, for a permanent boost in his intelligence. If it’s the same way with the other orbs higher up, then that’s an acceptable price to pay.

We trot back up to floor three, to check out the other orbs. First one goes to Shamino, since he could also use some stat boosts. Same deal here, some health for permanent intelligence boost.

Third one goes to Jaana. Julia has a pretty low int, too, but tinkers don’t gain much mana due to their euphoric tendencies so I didn’t bother with her.

Onward to floor six!

Deceit floor 6

We ended up in the little section I put in the southwest; I don’t know if that’s where it is relative to the rest of the floor, but it doesn’t really matter since it’s completely separate.

Not much to see here; just the ladder and a door. Let's keep moving.

Moving through the elbow requires fighting these fellows. The hydras and loot are behind magic barriers, but no need to be hasty and Dispel them.

As soon as one of your chars moves to the chest in the northeast, the barriers will vanish. Score one for patient, methodical dungeon crawling.

The other ladder in this bend takes us back up to floor five, so let’s see where it leads.

If you’ll peek at the floor five map again, notice the small corridor with two ladders going down; this will take us to a new section in floor six. I was wondering what the point was with all this roundabout ladder klimbing, but you’ll see the devilish surprise in store for us.

This has to be my most despised fixed encounter in the game so far. In fact, I’ll go further and say that it may never be topped. You basically need to wade through sleep barriers, or waste several Dispels on them, while battling two monsters capable of mass sleep spells. If you don’t remove the barriers, they can potentially put your chars to sleep every turn. Egregious filler padding, as far as I’m concerned. There’s no challenge, either; all this fight tests is your patience.

FUCK I’m pissing myself off just writing about it. Let’s skip ahead to what comes afterward.

We’re back in floor six, standing by the ladder at the bottom of that hallway in the south. We move up to a fork in the corridor, and decide to peek around to the west and north first.

We’re definitely avoiding that. Reapers are incapable of movement, so they don’t pursue us. I think they’re supposed to be evil trees, if the illustration in the History of Britannia is anything to go by. We turn round and head down the corridor to the east, taking some hits from falling boulders before taking shelter in a niche to the south.

Another magical orb, providing +5 int for some health lost. This one goes to Iolo.

We brave the gauntlet of boulders, finding the ladder down to floor seven. There’s still more to explore on this floor, so we trounce back through the boulders.

Fortunately you can set up camp inside dungeons, although I’m sure there’s still a risk of enemies ambushing your rest.

We decide to take on the reapers, but luckily there're only two of them. Still time consuming, but not nearly as frustrating as if there were, say, eight of them.

We find another ladder down, as well as a doorway connecting back south to the fork; guess we could’ve avoided the reapers that way. Oh well, we scored some more cash for our trouble. We ignore the ladder for now, moving down the corridor until we reach the doorway at the northern tip of the floor.

Inside we find lots of lava lizards, and lots of treasure. It takes some time, but we prevail. Afterward our hero moves through the lava barriers to collect the gold.

Time to investigate the ladders. We’ll start with the closer one, since it doesn’t require stomping through traps.

We’re treated to a single room with no apparent way out besides the ladder. We search the square, and bash our heads against all the walls, but find nothing. Maybe Blinking is possible inside dungeons? Rather than risk that, we klimb back up and head over to the other ladder.

A few more rocks to the head and we’re ready to investigate the rest of floor seven.

I’ll end the update there. Just for reference, I’ve spent almost two hours in the dungeon up to this point. They’re decently sized, much more than what I was expecting going into this. Next time we’ll continue our descent, and see just how deep this dungeon runs.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Reapers are incapable of movement, so they don’t pursue us. I think they’re supposed to be evil trees

you'd know that if you played UW

 

[ore clover]

Chapter 33: Deceit pt. 3

Spoiler

Our journey through the dungeon of lies continues. We left off with two ladders leading down to floor seven. The first led to a small room with no exits, so now it’s time to see where the second ladder leads.

Deceit floor 7

Our starting location is the up-ladder, just to the right of that sealed off room.

We have two corridors to choose from, to the east and west. Let’s try west first.

Uh oh, winds blew out our light. Guess we’ll just have to continue south without.

We advance forward, taking damage from falling rocks and then a pit. From there we aren’t able to proceed any farther; was this deliberately set up to trick us into massive trap damage? We quickly head back north to our starting point. If there’s something going on here, we’ll figure it out after we’ve explored the safer corners of the floor.

With our sight restored we check out the corridor to the east, which leads to a doorway. Let’s move along through. No scripted encounter, and we’re faced with another branch: two doorways, one to the north and the other to the east. We’ll try east first.

Scripted encounter with balrons. Not as frustrating as the reaper fight from earlier, but you’ve likely gathered that any fight that involves sleep spells gets a

from me.

There’s also a little surprise awaiting us after the fight. I sent poor Iolo to harvest the treasure chest, and he was surrounded by fire barriers as soon as he approached. Rather than use a Dispel, Iolo just muscled through the barriers; he lost 40ish hitpoints, but that’s acceptable.

Also, I'm pretty sure that body that was lying next to the chest vanished. Those flames must've burnt it to ash. Fuckin metal, dude.

We’ve reached a four-way intersection: the balron fight to the south, the other doorway from before to the west, another doorway directly north, and a ladder to the east. Also to the east are these fellows, another new monster. These are insects, another essentially harmless non-evil creature.

We clear the insects out, and then decide to first investigate the door to our north.

Two ladders to the eighth floor; which to take first? Might as well start with this one.

Deceit floor 8

Our starting point is the south ladder.

We follow this corridor for a few steps coming across a door to our east and a ladder to the north.

The other ladder from the seventh floor's over there, I assume. We take a quick klimb to verify, fight some more insects, and then return to investigate this doorway.

Another gazer combat. They waste no time flinging sleep spells diagonally toward us while we scramble to cross the bridge. The headless aren’t much of a threat.

As our hero and Shamino cross over to the treasure room, the bridge vanishes behind them. Fortunately all is not lost; once they reach the room a secret wall becomes visible, granting them an exit. They snatch up the money, and catch up with everyone else outside.

We face another square pathway, thankfully without scripted fight chambers this time. If we turn north and then east, we see this stretch of corridor. Not quite sure what that object over there is; another ladder?

Turning to the south and east reveals a group of reapers lying in wait, so we’ll just go this way instead.

As we approach a doorway comes into view, along with the telltale sign of falling rock traps. Guess we’re being damaged in prep for a fight. No time like the present!

Here’s a battle that makes me glad that the whole team’s using ranged weaponry. Three trigger-happy sleep spellers, shielded by a moat and moronic cannon fodder. Side note: enemy group size is not limited to eight characters, it would seem.

We huddle up at the entrance, making sure everyone has a bead on a reaper, and start firing. As always it’s a tedious battle of attrition, exacerbated by the gremlins who constantly shift ranks to make sure the reapers are shielded.

If you don’t have ranged weapons, or don’t fancy letting your melee troops sit on the sidelines, there is an alternative solution. Circling to the sides of the mote will reveal bridges, allowing you to cross.

Hopefully there’s something particularly worthwhile on the other side of this chamber.

We’re treated to three more squares of falling rocks, another square pathway leading west, and finally a doorway leading to the south. Nowhere else to go on this floor; boss fight, mayhap?

Ah, we’ve reached our first altar room! As I recall we were told that the stone of honesty could be found on an altar, so hopefully they meant the Altar of Truth.

We clear out the demons, but there doesn’t seem to be much else we can do here. I try having our hero search while standing directly on the altar square, but we aren’t allowed to perform the Search command in battle zones.

We are allowed to Use items, though. The items list in our inventory includes all our runes and the book of truth. Eventually we’re supposed to use virtue stones at these altars, so that’s probably how we do it. I do try using the book of truth, but nothing happens.

Clearly we’ll have to backtrack to find the honesty stone; it must be hidden on a different floor, and we already know of at least one path we haven’t taken yet. But first, let’s check out these three other exits.

Moving through the exit to the east brings us into the eighth floor of the dungeon Shame (opposite of honor, mebbe?). Once upon a time, some wounded fighter or other told us that the altar rooms connect the dungeons together; looks like exiting the altar room in different directions takes you to different dungeons.

Let’s leave Shame for later. Back to the altar room to find out which other dungeons we can reach from Deceit.

An interesting tidbit; the fight in the altar room changes depending on which dungeon you enter from. It’s always four demons when approaching from Deceit, and these two hydras when approaching from Shame.

We quickly clear out the hydras and exit west, which takes us to the dungeon Wrong (opposite of justice); returning to the altar room gives us a fight against eight gremlins. Using the altar room’s southern exit takes us to the dungeon Hythloth (I think it’s the opposite of spirituality), and returning spawns a fight with three demons.

This is a good development for us. We’ll be able to investigate several dungeons without finding their surface entrances, and supposedly the lighter-than-air machine is somewhere nearby Hythloth’s entrance. That means we might be able to find it by wandering into Hythloth’s eighth floor and then using the spell Xit to immediately teleport to the surface.

For now we still have to find the honesty stone, so it’s back into Deceit we go.

Unfortunately we have to go through this fight any time we want to access the Altar of Truth from Deceit, ughhhhhhhh…

We clear out the baddies and start making our way back to the ladders. Since there doesn’t seem to be anything else to find down here, we’ll just have to backtrack through the higher floors.

Along the way we bump into these fellows. I don’t remember if we’ve seen them before, but those swords and shields are phantoms. Though seemingly invisible they aren’t immune to our weaponry.

We klimb back up to the seventh floor (we’re standing just in front of the west ladder here), and I discover to my delight that it is possible to save the game while in dungeons. That was fortuitous, because I’d spent nearly three hours straight going through everything up to this point and was ready for a break.

Our update's not over yet, though! The stone of honesty will be found here and now!

Before doing anything else we decide to check out the doorway directly west of us; if you’ll recall we used the doorway to the southeast of it last time we moved through here, with the balron fight.

Lots of skeletons and some chests, protected by magical barriers. We can’t hit with our ranged weapons, but all we have to do is move forward and eventually some of the barriers vanish. We clear out the skellies and collect the cash.

Time to decide where to go. We know for sure that there was a ladder we hadn’t investigated yet, on floor three, so we head there first. Fifteen or so minutes of fights later, we return to the third floor and descend down the other ladder back to floor four.

This area is straightforward. If you remember the image of the fourth floor, from the previous update, it’s basically one long, looping corridor with treasure chests on every square. They don’t reappear as we loop, but it’s quite the haul regardless; we’ve passed 7000 gold pieces now.

That’s great, but we still don’t have the honesty stone. The only other area I can think of to investigate is that dark, trapped corridor on floor seven. There must be some reason why it’s there, right? I can hope, anyway.

On our way back down I notice that the orbs have returned, which implies we could acquire infinite intelligence points with a lot of patience. I decide to leave the orbs alone, though; feels like cheating to me, and the process of repeatedly respawning the orbs would obligate me to strike my head against the nearest wall.

Once we return to floor seven I decide to use another gem, which reveals a square pathway beyond the pit in the windswept corridor. I don’t know what those chevrons represent, but that ankh hopefully means a virtue stone altar. Let’s get ourselves there quick as we can!

According to the map there’re no walls in our way, so perhaps that means a magical barrier is in place. We cast Dispel, and discover that this is indeed the case. Now we can move through into the square pathway.

We take some damage while moving toward the ankh symbol, which probably came from a fire or electrical barrier. I’m thinking the chevron is a general symbol for magical barriers.

Once we’ve reached the ankh we Search, discovering the honesty stone. If you remember it was described as blue by the denizens of Moonglow.

With that, our explorations of Deceit are complete! Though our journey through the dungeons of Ultima 4 has only just begun. Join us next time as we figure out what to do with all this money we've found.

 

[ore clover]

Chapter 34: Spending the Loot

Spoiler

Now that we’ve cleared out Deceit, may as well find something to do with all our money. We nearly reached 8000 gold pieces total; must be able to afford some magic items now.

Even though walking all the way back to the entrance would net more experience and gold, I’ve had enough of the dungeon for now. Let’s just get back to the surface and move on.

We sail back to Moonglow, and then teleport over to Lord British; two chars gain a level.

From there it’s back to Moonglow, where we spend a little under a thousand gp refilling our spell counts. I also make sure to grab some more of the X Y and Z spells, so that we can teleport between dungeon floors whenever we need to.

We’ll sail back to the mainland now. There are a couple things I want to investigate before resuming the dungeon crawling, one of which being a revisit to Dupre and Geoffrey. I think our hero was level 5 last time we spoke to either of them, and the party’s average level has increased too, so maybe they’ll want to join us now.

As we sail west we notice an island just off our port bow. I don’t think it’s the Buccaneer’s Den; we’re still pretty close to Moonglow.

Would you look at that; we’ve found Magincia! We sailed south maybe ten or so squares and turned directly west, so we should be able to return here from Moonglow whenever we need to. To gain another point of approach, we decide to sail north to find out what portion of the mainland roughly coincides with the island's position on the x-axis.

Along the way we spot this little island, but it doesn’t seem to have any features of note. We ignore it and continue north, to make sure we don’t lose track of our position relative to Magincia.

Looks like the island is south of the Bloody Plains (northeastern region of the mainland on the world map). The rivers over there are just west of small bay that cuts into the land, close to the sacrifice shrine’s lake.

The isle of the abyss is probably floating around out here somewhere, too, but we’ll look for it later.

For further reference, sailing directly west from that little island we just found brings us to the three islands just north of Paws. We briefly stop by and I try different spellings of mandrake on the npcs, such as mendrake, mendreke, mandreke, etc. No dice, so we sail off to Buccaneer’s Den to restock on torches and gems.

That should get us by for a while, especially now that I’m more confident in my mapping skills. While we’re here, let’s find out what sorts of prices magical weapons run for.

I was considering buying our hero a magic wand, since he’s still stuck with a sling, but that would use up most of our haul from Deceit. Magical bows cost 2000 each, which would be much more reasonable; we could equip three chars with magic bows for the same cost of one wand. There’s no rush to take the plunge, so we decide to hold off until we’ve checked some items from other towns’ stores.

I also made the mistake of deciding to browse the armor shop, and had to spam random commands to get the npc to haul his lazy ass up to the counter. The Den doesn’t sell any armor we don’t already have (cloth, leather, chain), so we weigh anchor.

Trinsic had magical something or others, if I recall, and that’ll give us a chance to chat with Dupre.

Trinsic offers magic chain, but it’s a bit pricey. Health has never really been a concern, so we’ll just save our dosh for magic weapons instead.

While here I notice that Julia’s wearing leather. Since tinkers can wear any armor, besides magical, we buy her a set of chain mail for 600 gp.

Now then, what about Dupre?

He’s only level three, though. Odd that he made us wait before joining, because now he has a lot of catching up to do. We’ll also have to ditch that sword of his for a ranged weapon.

Maybe Geoffrey will play ball, too. We could have a seven-member party very soon.

For now we swing by the Den and grab a crossbow for Dupre, selling his sword; we also bump him up to second position in the party, so that he can get first crack at enemies. While here we buy two magic bows: one for Shamino, the other for Julia. Possible candidates for the third are Dupre, Julia, and maybe Geoffrey if he joins us; tinkers are supposed to not like magical weapons and armor, according to the manual, so maybe we’ll just stick with a crossbow for her.

Time to sail to Jhelom.

Heh, that chest’s been sitting there for several hours of playtime; some orcs dropped it after trying to board our ship, and I didn’t want to deal with the marshes at the time. Maybe we’ll grab it at some point.

I ragequit sailing, after the winds kept changing direction to directly impede progress, and decided to teleport instead. Along we the way we stop by Skara Brae for more food.

Geoffrey’s not ready to commit. I don’t know if that’s because he requires our hero to be an even higher level than Dupre does, or because Dupre dunked the party’s average level with his presence. Guess we’ll give the third magic bow to Dupre, once we’ve bought it.

We teleport back to Yew and then walk back to Lord British’s castle, taking care this time not to get lost in forests to the southwest.

Rather than wait for British’s moongate to appear, we decide to walk south to our boat. We’re able to farm some more money and experience on the loads of enemies that attack us along the way.

Back at the Den we buy a bow for Dupre, selling his crossbow back. With that we've pretty much spent all of our treasure haul from Deceit. Next time we'll handle a few more side issues before we return to dungeon crawling.

 

[Darth Roxor]

gimme dem dolla bills

 

[ore clover]

Chapter 35: Bribing Bartenders

Spoiler

Welcome back to the Quest of the Avatar. Before we return to dungeon crawling, there’s an item on my agenda that I very much would like to figure out. If you’ve kept up with the lp to this point, then you know that I’ve repeatedly been told to ask at taverns for certain important topics. And up to this point, I’ve been completely unsuccessful at doing so.

Maybe I can change that. I was reading through the History of Britannia again, and noticed a line in the geography section: “On the southern edge… town of Trinsic… [T]he Tap in town has some of the best brew around, and the bartender is a great source of current gossip. Be sure to tip him well!”

Sounds like we’ll have to order some drinks before we can ask the bartenders questions. To the ship!

We’ll start with the Folley Tavern in Paws; I’m quite ready to find out about how to acquire mandrake root.

My first strategy was to buy as much ale as we can, and see what happenes. Bottoms up!

He stopped me after three; I guess our hero was hogging them all to himself.

I then came to a subtler realization. Just like with magical herbs, you’re asked how much you’re going to pay after seeing the price for the mug. So, that must mean that we can tip the barkeep by entering a higher value. Ale costs 2 gp, so let’s see what happens when I pay him 10!

Yes! I’ve solved the tavern puzzle! Somebody find me a medal, or at least a certificate of participation.

Mandrake, at once!

Lol, so that’s how it’s going to be…

Spoiler

Hmm, I’m trying to remember if we’ve spoken to a Calumny before. Guess I’ll have to browse through my pics sometime. I buy another mug, but the barkeep doesn’t know where Calumny lives.

Now that I know how to ask bartenders for information, it’s time to find out about the white stone and sextants. Off we go!

We get this response when we ask about the white stone in Trinsic. I don’t know if that means the hermit has the stone, or knows where to find it. Hopefully “near Lock Lake” means outside of the lake. That lake holds lots of information that we need; if this game has a final boss, I wouldn’t be surprised if they were shacked up in the hidden village too.

On our way to Jhelom, to ask about sextants, we decide to stop by the valor shrine. I’ve already maxed that virtue, so we’re given this vision instead. This is just the sort of clue we needed; now I know what to ask Sister Antos over in Serpent’s Hold. We’re quickly reaching the point where we know everything we need to find to finish the game.

But first, to Jhelom.

After a small donation, the barkeep spills the beans. Sextants are a secret, under the counter item sold at Buccaneer’s Den. That’s our next destination after Serpent’s Hold.

“Then ask the fighter Garam for he knows where it lies!” Right, let’s go ask him. Pretty sure he lives here, too.

Garam’s in the room next to the southwestern tower, if you were wondering.

As for that location, my guess is that the letters convert into whatever number they match up with (A=1, B=2, etc.). So lat-14’1” and long-11’1”, maybe. Perhaps the sextant can help us with that.

It’s pretty pricey, but we can afford it. Best to grab it now while we can.

This worries me, though. Since it’s lumped in with all these consumables, it could be a one-use item. I think we’ll wait until we have enough cash to buy a second one before testing it out, just in case.

We decide to look for some baddies, to build up our gold supply before continuing; want to make sure we can afford more food when we need it.

Damn wind!

Ah, they’ll do nicely. We spend the next five minutes stomping these enemies.

I think we’re ready to return to exploring the dungeons. We’ll start with Hythloth, to see if we can find that flying machine. That’d clear up several pending queries all on its own.

We make a quick visit to Lord British, and two chars gain a level. The extra hitpoints give Dupre more of a safety net for fights, and now he feels like less of a runt.

We stop by Britain for food, but only can afford six packs without going completely bankrupt. I should’ve taken the time to travel to Skara Brae instead.

We’ll use the Altar of Truth to reach Hythloth, via Deceit. That way we can also quickly access other dungeons if we come up shorthanded.

Since I already have the dungeon mapped, we continue through in the dark. Probably don’t need to be that stingy with torches and Light spells, but whatever.

To skip some of the scripted encounters, I take advantage of the Z(down) spell to reach the last two floors. Fortunately it’s much safer than teleporting up and down floors in Wizardry; you don’t specify coordinates, so there’s not a risk of materializing into solid rock, USS Pegasus style.

A few more fights later, and we’re back at the Altar of Truth (our hero’s napping due to a gazer fight just before).

Next time we'll start exploring Hythloth, as well as snippets of the other dungeons.

 

[Darth Roxor]

 

[ore clover]

Chapter 36: Primitives Can't Work Air Balloons

Spoiler

I think the first the dungeon we’ll head to will be Hythloth. I’d like to see about tracking down that flying machine.

As we leave the altar room we see a long corridor with what looks like a green waterfall at the end. It looks like a giant version of the poison barriers we’ve seen before, so we’ll treat it as such.

Since we’re mainly here for the flying machine, it would be easy enough to immediately X-it to the surface. Especially considering that the white stone is no longer hidden in this dungeon. However I want to at least map out this floor, so we have an idea of where to go if we decide to return later.

The screenshot doesn’t do it justice, but I like the aesthetic of this barrier. It looks like a waterfall of acid slowly dropping from ceiling to floor (uh, acidfall I guess).

Our hero casts a Dispel, banishing the barrier from sight and revealing a turn to the east in the corridor.

We’re treated to another barrier. I think I’d better use a gem and see just how many of these we’ll have to deal with.

Five other chevrons, probably poison. That’ll make navigating this floor annoying. We decide to make a gamble and charge through the next two, hoping that only one of us will require Curing, heading for the chamber two steps east and then north from our position.

Oh, another one of the altars; that opens up more dungeons for us to access, no doubt. Interesting fact to note: the gem map does not specify these altar rooms, showing plain chambers instead. A bit odd, since they do reveal virtue stone locations, but nothing we can’t work around.

Guess we’ll check out where this altar leads: 1) Heading east brings us to the dungeon Wrong, and returning spawns a fight with eight gremlins. 2) Heading north brings us to the dungeon Despise (opposite of compassion) and returning spawns a fight with four balrons. 3) Heading west brings us to the dungeon Covetous (uh, opposite of sacrifice? guess we’ll find out later).

We enter into a nondescript hallway in Covetous, and so decide to explore it a bit more before returning to Hythloth.

Covetous floor 8

We're starting at the altar room to the north. We're not immediately exploring this dungeon, so I'm just posting a partial pic of the floor.

Walking south takes us to a doorway, which leads into this fight here. No secret walls or treasure to be found.

On the other side we see a ladder and a second doorway. Our priority is still Hythloth, so we’ll just map everything else on this level and ignore the ladder for now.

Next doorway’s a fight with some ettins, along with a couple treasure chests to loot. Another long, straight corridor awaits us on the other side. We follow it south to a third doorway, leading to the west.

We’ve found the Altar of Courage, third and final altar room. This also means we now have access to every anti-virtue dungeon in the game. We could spend the next several hours just dungeon crawling, if we really wanted to.

Time to check which dungeons it hooks up to.

North is Destard, and features a four wizard fight when entering the altar room. Before returning, we decide to investigate the floor a bit.

Destard floor 8

Starting location's the altar room, ofc.

We follow the hallway until we find what appears to be a dead-end. As you can see from the map there’s a secret wall there, which we explore later, but for now we decide to return to the altar room.

Exiting east from the altar brings us to the dungeon Shame. We found it from the Altar of Truth earlier, but didn’t explore. Let’s see what the floor offers.

Shame floor 8

Another partial map. We're starting at the north altar room.

We first move west and then directly south, entering this dragon chamber. Despite the dead-end there’s another chamber to the left, so there must be a way to reach it. Have you spotted the secret wall?

Stepping through it opens up a path to the other chamber, allowing us to continue west. We’re only performing cursory explorations at the moment, so we leave it for later and return to the hallway.

Taking the hallway to the west brings us back to the Altar of Truth. This will connect us back to Hythloth, so now seems like a good time to get back on track.

There is no time to be lost. To the surface!

Not sure where we are in the world yet. Could be an island or next to a river, if that water’s any indication. Let’s loop around this mountain range.

There it is! The flying machine!! Much an easier than I expected.

I use a gem to figure out what our surroundings look like. Definitely an island of some kind, but there’s something strange about the surroundings. What could all that black with the dots represent in the southeast? Spehs? I wonder if this is the isle of the entrance to the abyss?

We’re surrounded by mountains on all sides, so we won’t find any answers standing here. Let’s load ourselves into the balloon forthwith!

We try a few directions, but the balloon remains motionless. “Drift only!”? I guess that means the balloon follows the wind direction while in the air. But how do we get it into the air in the first place?

Real hot-air balloon pilots generate lift by heating the trapped air. So, maybe we need to do that too?

I hope that using a torch will solve the issue, but apparently we can’t use them outside dungeons. Damnit, this is annoying. I wonder if it’s missing some components? We learned about its location at the Buccaneer’s Den, so maybe someone from there stole it. If that’s the case, maybe that secret passage I missed last time has something we need.

At least we still have all the dungeons to occupy our time with. We decide to put off the hot-air balloon, and by extension Lock Lake, for later. I really hope it isn’t as simple as I didn’t press the right button. I wish I were smart.

Hythloth floor 1

This floor’s very straightforward: a ladder leading to the surface, a ladder leading to the next floor, and a blue orb. Since Deceit’s orbs were safe enough, we decide to test this one out.

Dupre will take the plunge. Since he’s a bit lower level, and a paladin, he could use any combination of attribute boosts.

Oh shit! That’s a much higher price than I expected; damn orbs in Deceit lured me into a false sense of security.

That pretty much killed our exploration of Hythloth before it began. We instead decide to resurrect Dupre as quickly as possible, so that he doesn’t miss out on experience.

Our hero uses several Z(down) spells to bring us back to the eighth floor. From there we make a beeline for the Altar of Truth, enter Deceit, and then X-it back to the surface where our boat awaits.

300 gp later, as well as 100 hitpoints from our hero donated, Dupre’s back on his feet. We make a quick stop at the inn, to restore some of his health, and then call it quits for now.

We faced some unexpected setbacks this time, but they won’t keep this sextet down for long. Next update we’ll resume our dungeon crawling, and start looking for more of those virtue stones.

 

[ore clover]

Chapter 37: Destard pt. 1

Spoiler

We spend half our remaining monay on some more Cure and Z(down) spells, the other on food, and then return to the ship. Like before, we’ll travel through Deceit to reach the other dungeons.

Back at the Altar of Truth, we decide to head east to Shame. From there we can access the Altar of Courage, from which we can access Destard. That’s a dungeon we know contains a stone for sure (red stone of courage), so that’s a good starting location for our hunt.

Destard floor 8

Just as a refresher.

Last time we found a dead-end, so now we’ll look for a secret wall in the vicinity. But first we have to go through seven reapers.



Only two and half minutes spent on the fight, at least, although I did ramp Dosbox up a few hundred cycles for the duration.

At the hallway’s dead-end we find a secret passageway leading west. It reveals a chamber with several doorways connected together in the center, as well as a small path branching to the east that leads to a ladder.

I didn’t investigate all the doorways, so I’m not sure if there’s some treasure hidden in one of them.

The northernmost had this interesting setup, although no enemies. Not sure if there was anything within those magical barriers. From there we shuffle over to the ladder to explore the rest of the floors.

Destard floor 7

Starting location is down ladder in center section.

Not much to see on this floor. Another one of those square pathways, followed by a doorway.

Moving through the doorway brings us to this zone. No enemies, just a bridge to cross. I guess it adds some atmosphere by showing an underground current of water running through the dungeon.

Past the doorway is a corridor with a couple twists and turns that leads to a ladder. With nowhere else to go at the moment, we klimb it.

Destard floor 6

We're starting in the left section, on the eastern down ladder.

We immediately see another up ladder, and when we move toward it a second down ladder pops into view, farther west. To the north and south are two doorways, the north one blocked by some reapers in the hall. We decide to ignore them for now, entering the south doorway.

Lots of treasure for our trouble, along with quite a few trolls; at this point in the game they’re a non threat, though. Other than the rocks interspersed throughout, there’re no interesting tricks or puzzle-lites to deal with.

We make our way to the north doorway, dealing with the reapers in the process. There’re only four of them this time.

This treasure room’s a bit worse than the last, due to all the poison-spewing spiders. The pillars in the room also make maneuvering complicated, but we figure it out. Half the party ends up poisoned, losing us three Cures.

We decide to klimb up to level five, before investigating that second down ladder.

Destard floor 5

Northern ladder is where we start.

Here’s another simple floor. Other than three ladders, the only location of interest is a four-way doorway in the middle. What could be waiting for us in that chamber?

A single treasure chest; as you’ve probably guessed, stepping on it deactivates the barriers holding the dragons back.

Where to next? We decide to check the second ladder down before continuing to floor four.

This area’s just a square chamber with four pillars. Most noticeable thing is -

There are drafts of wind dotting the chamber, so we spend most of our exploration in the dark. Rather not lose too many torches and Lights due to thinking we’d already spotted all the wind.

There are also at least two magic orbs in here, but we leave them alone; we’re still wary after the fatal experience in Hythloth.

Back up to floor five, and from there floor four.

Destard floor 4

Starting position is the down ladder.

Nothing so far, just a corridor that heads north and then east to a doorway. Let’s see where that leads.

The screenshot doesn’t show it, but we’re looking at a bunch of magic barriers constantly alternating between sleep and fire. If there’s something interesting within, I don’t feel like going through the trouble of investigating. If we step in a sleep barrier, we could be put to sleep and then take fire damage repeatedly. Best to ignore them entirely.

To my surprise, the barriers close in and attack! Just what are we dealing with here?

Hmm, more phantoms. Interesting that they aren’t restricted to a floating sword and shield appearance. The phantoms are more resilient than I’d like, but we’re in no danger of dying. Let’s see where the south exit leads.

One long corridor of treasure chests that loops back to the east entrance to the chamber we just left. We scoop it all up on our way back.

After clearing out the phantoms again we exit north. A bending corridor that leads to a ladder up to floor three. So far this dungeon feels less complex than Deceit; not sure if I’m just imagining that. Oh well, onward to floor three!

… next update!

 

[ore clover]

Chapter 38: Destard pt. 2

Spoiler

The crawl through Destard continues!

Destard floor 3

Starting location is the ladder to the east.

Just a straight corridor leading to a doorway so far.

No treasure or tricks to this room, but moving through it is required to visit all the other points of interest on this floor. After we clear out the baddies we head south.

The chamber leads into a three block hallway south, which turns west to a sequence of doorways. Sitting in between is another magic orb, which we leave alone.

Continuing west leads us to a treasure chest at a dead-end. We snatch up the treasure and return to the four-way chamber, moving west next.

Ah, the ladder up to floor two. May as well check it out now.

Destard floor 2

Ladder in the top left corner is where we start.

Nowhere to proceed but two doorways, one to the south and another to the east. Let’s try to the east first.

We’re forced to run a gauntlet of nixies, who pelt us with ranged attacks while we try to line up shots.

Not a lot to this area. To the south is a corridor that loops around into a square, with ladders at each corner. Past the doorway to the east is a fountain.

Nasty!

Hmm, bad fountain. Let's check out the square loop.

Beside the ladders there’s a short corridor heading west, which links up with the doorway leading south from our starting position, as well as another doorway continuing farther south.

Moving south leads us to another fountain. This one has no effect. Let’s head back north and check out that other doorway by our starting point.

The zorn goes down quickly enough, but we have to wait for the ghosts to fully phase through the walls before we can fight them.

What I mean is this. Julia can’t attack the ghost adjacent to her, because he’s technically still inside the wall. To coerce the ghosts into the hallway we line up in a single column in the center. Takes some time, but we clear them all out.

We go through the nixies again, and take the closest ladder up to floor one.

Destard floor 1

We’re standing in a completely walled off chamber, with seemingly no exits besides the ladder. Could be like the one we found in Deceit, but let’s check for secret walls first.

Secret passages are always disconcerting. There’s no indication of where you came from or where you can proceed, and if you’re not paying attention to the compass you can easily lose track of your direction. Fortunately this one is only a couple squares long, heading west.

We see a ladder leading to the surface to the north, and a long hallway extending off to the south. We decide to investigate the hallway to the south first.

We take a few more steps, and find another ladder leading to the surface? Multiple entry points into the dungeon? Seems pointless, since the ladders are so close to each other.

The corridor branches off in four directions, so we head west next.

A third ladder? We trot north and find a fourth. Must be some looping going on here. To test it, we check to see if there are other secret passages by these ladders.

The first secret passage brought us two steps south of the corresponding ladder. So, the other ladders should also have secret passages two steps south.

There we are, a second ladder down. This whole floor seems to be an entrance ladder and a secret down ladder infinitely recurring in all directions.

Still no virtue stone, but we’ve missed a couple ladders along the way. Time to backtrack.

On our way through floor 3 we check out the pathway leading north out of the central chamber. It’s a mirror image of the south exit, complete with magic orb and treasure chest.

We’re back on level six (the left section on my map), where the other ladder we’ve missed is. We take it down to level seven. We found Deceit’s stone on its seventh floor, so here’s hoping we’re about to find another.

A straight corridor to the north, and a doorway to the south.

The doorway leads to three more. Let’s check out the north before we investigate these.

More doors? Could be another loop going on. We decide to investigate the doorway leading west, and notice an altar down the hall.

Our second virtue stone acquired! The game is tricky, though; it tells you the colors of the stones, but not their virtue. We already knew this one was courage, thanks to the npcs at Jhelom, but it shouldn’t be difficult to guess the rest as we find them.

Two found, six more to go. Next update we'll continuing dungeon crawling for stones.

 

[ore clover]

Chapter 39: A bit more Hythloth exploration plus sum Covetous

Spoiler

Since finding the red stone went so smoothly, let’s move right on to another dungeon.

Also, can confirm that this area loops. I found the same altar by traveling south from our position, and it recognizes that we’ve already recovered the red stone.

Back at the Altar of Courage, we decide to return to Hythloth. The reason being that we’ve only found two of the altar rooms connected to it, so returning from Courage will allow us to finish mapping the eighth floor. Then we’ll get back to collecting virtue stones.

Nowhere to go but farther south through this doorway.

Straightforward fight with some treasure waiting for us afterward. There’s a secret passageway to the left, so we wander over yonder next.

Just some dragons (lol, you know a game’s combat is sketchy when dragons aren’t a concern), but I noticed that the secret wall seems to have shut behind us. Guess we’ll have to press on. We decide to go west first, and check out the southern path later.

A lot of transition battles to go through. That means no loot besides what we find during the combats.

Up next are some demons and a balron. I couldn’t find any squares that triggered off the barriers, so we Dispelled one to reach the balron.

Whoo, look at all that!

I think the spot Shamino’s standing on deactivates the barriers. We clear out the balrons and then clear out the chests. A great haul, but we’ll also have to go through all the fights again to leave. Oh well, the cash makes it worth it. Maybe it can’t buy happiness, but money can at least dull the pain of existence.

Back at the dragon encounter I decide to investigate a secret wall I’d ignored previously. Looks like this will allow us to return to the Altar of Courage, should we want. For now we’ll head south.

At least the fights are done with. But where are we now?

We trot down, turn west, and spot a poison barrier in front of us. I use a gem, and realize that we’ve been exploring the top portion of the floor. Good to know. I also like how there’s absolutely no way to progress in this floor without dealing with poison barriers.

We use the secret passage in the dragon encounter to return to the Altar of Courage. From here we’re going to travel to Covetous. I don’t remember if anyone told us about that dungeon, and whether it still contains its stone, but I think we’ll be fine. When we searched for the runes, every town had theirs besides those of humility and spirituality. Perhaps the same will be the case here.

Writing of which, I think we’ve only identified seven dungeons. Pride isn’t one of them, so perhaps there is no anti-humility dungeon. Hopefully we’ll discover where to find its stone when we revisit Magincia.

Covetous floor 8

Starting at south altar.

Time to see where this ladder leads.

Covetous floor 7

We start on the ladder to the far left.

The ladder leads up to a single square chamber, with the only way forward being a door to the east. Moving through we find squids and some upside-down wizard hats. The History of Britannia’s bestiary doesn’t have an entry for them, but the game identifies them as twisters.

More squids attack us at the other end of the bridge. We clear them out and exit the area.

We seem to be standing within a secret passageway. The walls to the north and south are solid, but we can continue east.

We’re dumped into a hallway with two down ladders, one to the north and the other to the south. The first thing I do is try to continue moving east, and we discover another secret passage directly across from the one we just left.

Moving one more step east reveals the shrine of the orange stone. If I remember, one of the npcs in Minoc, town of sacrifice, mentioned that their orb was orange. I guess Covetous is the anti-sacrifice dungeon, as far as the game is concerned. I’d think compassion would be, since that involves giving money to poor people in this game, but we already have Despise for that virtue.

Finding Covetous’ stone was much faster than I expected. I think I can confidently say that the virtue stones are always on the seventh floor of the dungeons, if the three that we’ve already found are any indication. Which works in our favor, because the altar rooms always transport us to the eighth floors.

I guess I could just speedrun through all the dungeons, quickly find their stones, and then call it quits. However I think we’ll check out the rest of Covetous before moving on. It's not like I need to finish the game as quick as I can, anyway.

 

[Darth Roxor]

so uh

who was it that actually put all those gud stones in evil dunjins

 

[ore clover]

No doubt all will be revealed by the end, but it does feel like someone contrived the quest beforehand (besides the developers ofc). Maybe Lord British knows more than he lets on.

Chapter 40: More Covetous Exploration

Spoiler

Since we’ve already found the orange stone we can explore the rest of Covetous with a care-free attitude. We still have corridors to the north and south to check out on this floor, and we’ll head north first.

A few steps steps to the east and we find a doorway leading farther north.

Biggest issue here are the liches, who spend the combat taking potshots at Shamino and Dupre from behind ghosts. Still not a real danger, though; Shamino still had 194 hitpoints once we defeated everything.

We’re immediately thrust into another combat. This fight’s a bit rougher than the previous. The gazers use the same start as the liches, but with sleep spells; our hero, Shamino, and Dupre spend half the combat asleep. We basically just hold our ground and let the enemies approach us, with the back row providing support fire over their dozing comrades.

Moving on brings us to a third combat. This one feels like an after-dinner salad in comparison to the others. The skeletons all crumple or flee in one hit, giving us quick access at the wizards.

We're finally back into a regular corridor after this, with an up ladder next to the exit. Dupre and Shamino basically tanked the gauntlet, and we used two Heals to keep Shamino healthy.

We take advantage of the lull to recover some more hitpoints. No ambush while we rest; so far it hasn’t happened once during a dungeon sleep.

The corridor stretches west from our position, leading to another down ladder. We turn north and see…

Another down ladder. Hmm, seems familiar. I suspect more looping at work.

We move past the second ladder, and see a corridor stretching east and leading to a doorway to the north. Pretty much what we just went through before the gauntlet of fights. I’m so confident, in fact, that we don’t charge into the door to see if we have to fight liches, ghosts, and phantoms again. We return to the up ladder we saw, just outside the doorway we exited from after the gauntlet, and klimb up to floor six.

Covetous floor 6

Starting location is the two-way ladder in the southwest.

Lots of square chambers with pillars on this floor, along with an up ladder to accompany the two-way we arrived on. We also eventually determine that it’s a looping map, too. I’m telling you now because we quickly find several drafts of wind, and thus spend the rest of our time here in the dark.

Only objects of note here are some magic orbs; I think there were three total. We end up using them later on, but for now we keep exploring the floor.

I grew a bit complacent during a gremlin fight, and one of the little christmas elves stole food from our hero. It dropped us from 153 to 127, which might be enough for us to put off completely exploring Covetous for later. We can last a bit longer, though.

Once I think we’ve found every nook and cranny to the floor, I have our hero try out one of the orbs. It cuts away 400 hitpoints, in return for the strength and dexterity boosts. I don’t remember exactly how much health Deceit’s orbs took, but I know it wasn’t as high as this.

I think I know how this works. The amount of health your char loses goes up with the number of attributes they gain at the same time; Dupre probably died in Hythloth because he was supposed to lose 600 or so hitpoints for the three attributes. As for which attributes you’ll gain, I think it’s tied into the principles that each virtues derives from.

Deceit only contains the Altar of Truth, thus honesty must only derive from truth (cuz sometimes telling the truth means being unloving and cowardly #thetruthhurts). Because honesty is associated with mages in this game, Deceit’s orbs give intelligence. Covetous is connected to the altars of love and courage, but not truth. So we gain strength and dexterity (lol, I wonder how associating love with dexterity works). Hythloth gave all three, so spirituality derives from all three principles.

We’ll be able to use the attributes these orbs give to figure out which virtue stones to use at which altars. Or we could always just check the altars the dungeons connect to. Bottom line is that we should have little trouble working out the virtue stone puzzle.

From there we decide to check out floor five. Using the two-way just brings us up to another one that’s stuck in a one square chamber, with no way out besides up and back down. Uh, guess we’ll head back to floor six and use the other ladder. Fortunately we’ll be able to reach it without losing our light; if you peek at the map, you’ll see that there’s a clear path between the two-way and regular ladder that doesn’t cross drafts of wind.

This was when we noticed the other orbs on the floor. Only one of the three requires moving through a draft of wind to reach; luckily for us, we’ve already used that orb. We give this second orb to Julia, since she can use boosts to attributes not named intelligence.

We’ll come back for the last orb later. For now, let’s try reaching floor five again.

Covetous floor 5

Starting position is southeast ladder.

This section’s basically just corridors extending in each cardinal direction for seven spaces before looping back to the ladder, with a treasure chest at every step. We gladly take the money, but we also notice that there’s no ladder leading up to floor four. Guess we’ll have to trot back down to six and use that two-way again.

Once we’re back on floor six we give the third orb to Shamino before klimbing the two-way ladder.

At this point I realized that there are actually two two-way ladders on floor six. Instead of the one square chamber, we’re in another treasure zone. Don’t mind if we do!

Iolo gets poisoned while opening the chests, and while Curing him I notice that we’ve run dangerously low on that spell. I think we’re going to have to call it quits on the expedition before we end up with half a party dying of poison.

We very briefly enter floor four, via that enclosed two-way ladder on floor five, but I’m not risking fights by checking out those doors. Back to the altar rooms we go.

Well, maybe just a peek…

Welp, I think I dun goof’d. We entered the door to the west, and the wall seems to have closed behind us. Not seeing any secret passages to trigger. At least none of these baddies can poison us.

I have my party members stomp all over, but we can’t seem to find a way to deactivate the barriers. We just use a Dispel instead, and I even have Shamino gather the treasure, which was probably a stupid risk with how few Cures we have. Then we left the demon behind its barrier and moved on.

Damnit, if it’s not one problem it’s several. I have our hero cast a Z(down), which dumps us back in the southwest section of floor five. Now we’ll leave the dungeon for real.

I was feeling impatient, and used another Z(down) to reach floor eight. We ended up in a corridor that I didn’t recognize, so I used a gem. I guess there was a ladder that we didn’t check out on floor seven, because I don’t recognize any of this. It’s basically a winding corridor with the occasional ladders and secret passages mixed in.

We’re going to have to use one of those ladders to return to floor seven, and then from there make our way back to the proper section of floor eight. Unfortunately the ladder hanging out in the open is guarded by reapers, so we charge into the secret passages to the north.

We bump into some gazers along the way, but I figure this is just a random encounter. Nice detail, though, with the secret walls placed to the north and south. Helps muh immershun.

Using the ladder in the secret passages leads us back to the corridor just to the west of the virtue stone’s altar. Now that I thunk about it, I ignored those two down ladders earlier. Now we know where they lead.

We can finally leave. We brave more squids and twisters as we move back to the down ladder to the west.

We return to the Altar of Love, rather than courage, so that we can travel to Hythloth. From there, we’ll enter the Altar of Truth, then Deceit, and teleport back up to our boat. It requires moving through three poison barriers, but we have Dispels to spare.

A few fights later, and we’re safe and sound at Moonglow. So, where to go from here? Made a right load of petish in knolla this weekend, so I say we take another break from dungeon crawling to spend the wads. While we’re at it, we can track down some more loose ends on the investigation side of things.

 

[ore clover]

Chapter 41: The Magnificent Seven

Spoiler

Now that we have all this money we can afford another magical weapon. We sail back to the Den and buy a magic wand for our hero, selling his dumpy sling in the process. We also grab some more gems from the guild store.

One more order of business while we’re here. If you remember, way back when, we were told to ask at the tavern in Buccaneer’s Den about the skull. When we visited I asked a random npc about the skull, and left it at that. However, knowing now that we can ask bartenders questions after tipping them, I’m going to see if I can learn anything more.

Oh, and of course we’ll have to check out that secret passageway.

After a hefty sum he points us in the right direction. I remember Jude; he was hanging out with the beggars in Minoc, whining about some evil crime he’d committed. We’ll have to pay him a visit.

Now then, to the secret passage.

Hmm, looks like a hidden magic shop. And a balron npc, perhaps? I’m sure that’s an interesting conversation.

Oh, well alright then…

We kill him and loot a chest, but we don’t see anything else. Guess we’ll talk with the shopkeep now.

This herbs shop specializes in selling overpriced goods when compared to the others we’ve visited. Except for black pearls, which they practically give away. We buy thirty, which we’ll use with some other ingredients once we can get back to shops with better prices.

Back outside we see a pirate ship putting to port. To avoid losing our ship to cannonfire we disembark and walk over to the pirates, initiated a combat and defeating them.

Gives us a chance to try out the new wand. As you can see our hero has been blessed with a majestic visual representation for his attack projectiles, far superior to that of his poor companions.

Time to try out the sextant, now that we can easily buy another if we need to. Looks like we won’t have to decode the numbers afterall.

Plus we haven’t spent the item, either. Happy days.

Here’s how it works: Latitude represents the y-axis, longitude the x. The letters on the right change with every square, and the letters on the left change every several. Basically once the right letters pass A or Z (I assume, I haven’t actually checked if every letter is represented), the left letters will change.

Since we know the lat and long of the bell of courage, let’s go find it!

We’re close. The bell was described as lying at the bottom of deep well in the sea, and this fits that description about right. Let’s bring the boat in for a search.

All that remains is the candle of love, and then we’ll have the three items we’ll need to enter the abyss.

I also use a gem, to see if there’s anything else nearby, and realize that the black with white dots is just referring to deep water. So not space like I was thinking.

We sail northeast a bit and bump into Magincia. Thanks to the sextant, we can now find it from any direction.

From here we sail farther northeast to Moonglow, where we stock up on any spells that we’re running low on. Then it’s off to Lord British.

Lots of levels. In addition to these three, Julia and Jaana also gain a level. There’s no way ol’ Jeff Joff won’t join our party now!

Finally, now our hero can stop giving money to all those dirty beggars. The shrine’s nearby, so we may as well handle it now.

It’s that time of the quest again…

Spoiler

http://jayhawkmommy.com/10-thoughts-on-compassion/
http://jayhawkmommy.com/10-thoughts-on-compassion/

10 Thoughts on Compassion
by Denise Friday,January 30, 2015

In a few short weeks, thousands of bloggers worldwide will be writing about compassion. It isn’t the first time compassion has been discussed. For centuries, people have talked about the importance of compassion and the role it plays in our lives! Today, I share 10 thoughts on compassion that highlight what it means to me.















Do you have a favorite quote about compassion, mercy, kindness, or empathy? If so, please share it in the comments!

lol nice font colors, i can't read the words on half this shit

There we are, six virtues finished and two more to go.

We board our boat and start making our way to Jhelom. Time to pick up Geoffrey!

Here’s another visual element it took me far too long to notice: locked doors have red spots on their handles. Once we use the magic key, the spots disappear. Neat little way to identify them besides using the open command.

Nice, we’re a seven-member party at last. Whether or not that’ll ever increase to eight depends on whether or not I’ll care enough to go looking for a shepherd.

We shove Geoffrey up to the front, and buy him some chain mail and a crossbow from the local stores.

Let’s track Jude down and ask him about the skull. From Jhelom we teleport to Skara Brae, grab some cheap food while we’re there, and then teleport to the moongate next to Minoc.

I hope the mouth of the abyss is very obvious to spot; I’d hate to accidentally choose the wrong spot and lose all our avatar eighths.

“It can be found lat-P’F” long-M’F” on the darkest night!”

Perfect, that should easy to track down. By darkest night I assume he means during two new moons.

While waiting for the moongate to return, we decide to rest and end up ambushed. Slimes are nothing to worry about, though. There’s Geoffrey’s character sprite, if you’re keeping track of them.

Our hero, Dupre, and Shamino end up napping through the whole fight while the other four fend off the slimes.

Where to from here? I remember being told a while back that we should step into the full-moon moongate to find the shrine of spirituality. So let’s see what happens when we do.

That’s neat, the shrine’s inside the moongate; or at least hidden somewhere entirely inaccessible through other means. Haven’t mastered the virtue yet, but we can still get a useful hint from meditating.

“If thou dost seek the White Stone, search ye not under the ground, but in Serpent’s Spine!”

Hmm, not sure where that is. Doesn’t look like there’s such a region on the world map, unless I misread the runes. We still have another lead on finding it, though, so no worries.

We’re plopped back outside the gate after the meditation concludes. From here we’ll teleport to Yew. I ctrl-f’d through the previous updates and found out that we’ve spoken with a Calumny before, who lives in Yew. Hopefully we’ll finally know how to acquire mandrake root.

This fellow also told us that we only need one portion of bloodmoss for the quickness spell, rather than two. I will probably never use the spell, though.

Both the Fens of the Dead and the Bloody Plains can be spotted on the world map: the fens are some islands just off the coast, nearby Trinsic and Paws, and the plains are in the northeastern section of the main continent. I suppose he’s talking about marshlands when he says damp ground, which will be loads of fun to deal with.

I’ll call it quits there. Up next we’ll continue with some more overworld exploration, see what else we can find.

 

[ore clover]

Chapter 42: Groundhog Day

Spoiler

What else can we find before we return to dungeon crawling? Jude told us where to locate the skull, so we might as well fetch it now.

Last time I teleported from Yew to Jhelom to save the game, since we’d left our boat there. Also, here’s a general lat and long coordinate for Jhelom, if you’re interested.

From here we’ll sail to Skara Brae to buy some more food and spell ingredients.

In particular we’re investing in some Wind Change spells. I plan to work that balloon and reach the village hidden in the lake someday, and we’ll probably need to control our drift with magic.

Also, notice that beggar over there to the northwest? While buying ingredients I realized that we’d never spoken with it up to this point, so we may as well find out what the npc has to say.

“I beg for food and money.” When we ask about food, “To eat!” When we ask about money, “To buy food! Wilt thou give me food or money? In return I will tell thee that the ankh knows of the rune and my friend Ambule knows the mantra!”

I always like it when npcs tell us their reward before giving us a chance to help them. We still give her some coins anyway, just in case the powers that be decree that I should lose an eighth for not doing so.

We take a quick sextant reading of Skara Brae’s location, and then it’s off to find the skull.

Eventually we find three islands of lava, and the sextant coordinates look to be very close (P’F” and M’F” for the skull). Now all we have to do is wait for the new moons.

Oh, so it really is his severed head. Guess we’ll just, ehm, just shove that into our backpack…

Ick, I think it’s staring at me.

Where to next? I think maybe we’ll head back to Magincia. We’ve lots of Cures now, and we still need to learn humility’s mantra, as well as where its virtue stone can be found.

I forgot that we already have Magincia’s coordinates, but we found it a bit to the northeast of this island before. So we’ll go from there.

We sail west a ways, and notice a landmass that’s too large to be Magincia. New location? Let’s check it out while we’re here.

We sail south along the coast until we see an opening. Wonder where this leads…

Shit!! Let’s be taking ourselves away from here quick as we can!

Before running we engage one of the boat’s crew, leaving the derelict vessel as a cork to keep the others at bay; we also snag some coordinates in case we need to return here. Guess it’s some sort of pirate’s cove, like that shit in Pirates of the Caribbean with the pirate king or whatever.

Now that we’re out of immediate danger, let’s check out the rest of this island.

Just south of the boats we see this hazardous zone. I sure hope nothing important’s in there.

Oh, it’s our old friend; unfortunately the water’s too shallow for us to get at it. So we’ve been here before via Hythloth. We haven’t confirmed it, but I was wondering if this is perhaps the isle of the abyss. If that’s the case, then the humility shrine will be somewhere along the northern shoreline.

May as well go look for it, even if we can’t meditate yet.

We circle around east and north, and find a spot to disembark. I’m thinking we’ve found the right island.

A few routes to choose from, and we decide to explore them all. We’ll search each of the squares, in case anything valuable’s buried around here.

Taking the northeast route eventually brings us to these branches, but we don’t find anything.

Once we’re back we notice a shrine down to the south; humility, I presume. No harm in taking a peek, right?

We take another step, and a group of demons suddenly pops up right in front of us and attacks. Uh, maybe they were hiding around the corners? Whatever, they’re no match for our septet.

The moment we defeat them another group attacks. Hmm, where did they come from? The balron complicates things a bit, but we’re still in no danger.

More? We still haven’t been given a chance to move yet. I guess some demon groups were on each of the three squares directly adjacent to us, so they took turns attacking us. Kind of annoying, and two balrons are a crowd, but we’re still doing fine.

Eh??

These battles are starting so quickly after the previous that I don’t have a chance to see what’s immediately around us.

We’re going into this fight with most of the team sleeping, but we take out the balron first and wake up everyone else afterward.

What the hell, this isn’t funny! Three’s not exactly a threat, but combat’s irritating enough without so many fights in a row.

Just what the dickens is going on here? Am I supposed to come here last? Is this your idea of challenging endgame, Mr. British?

WHAT THE FUCK, I WANT OUT!

Damnit, release me from this torment! Even one is too much!

Finally, they’re all gone; free at last. I was starting to think the game would keep throwing enemies at us until we were dead.

Hmm, looks like all the treasure chests from the fights are right over there. We’ll just pick those up and then get out of here before -

Will our septet ever escape this prison they’ve stumbled into? Or will they succumb to the insanity that inevitably results from prolonged exposure to Ultima 4’s combat system? Find out next update!

 

[ore clover]

Chapter 43: Magincia Revisited

Spoiler

Welcome back to the lp. Last we left off our septet had blundered into a sequence of unavoidable battles, and then started the torture anew because of their greed. Will they survive this ordeal, both physically and mentally?

I’ll skip the tedium. Long story short, we did survive. I fought many more battles than I should have, because I wanted to get at the chests. We basically were forced to fight eight battles for every step we took toward the shrine. Since our hero hasn’t mastered humility yet, and we don’t even know the mantra, we decided to not bother approaching the shrine directly. We left those chests and fled north as quickly as we could.

Because I’m a glutton for punishment, we also decided to fight the pirates for a while to see if we could clear them out. I suspect that the game was spawning more ships throughout; every time we sailed to this square three ships would pop up in those positions and begin moving toward us. Whatever’s hidden in this cove can wait, let’s get out of here.

Like before we leave an abandoned boat to block the entrance, and high tail it to safety.

We sail northeast a ways, and find what I think are a group of seven islands south of Skara Brae. A landmark to gauge the isle of the abyss with, although we don’t really need it thanks to the sextant.

We sailed around in that general area for a while, fighting numerous sea monsters in the process, before finally reaching Skara Brae to buy more food.

Where to from here? I think I’d rather track down a few more items while we out here, before returning to stone hunting in the dungeons. We had planned to visit Magincia, before that strenuous detour, so that’s a good place to start.

Here’s some neat trivia: sailing directly west from Skara Brae will quickly take you to Moonglow and its surrounding islands. The two settlements are on opposite sides of the world map, so this is proof that Britannia’s world is round. Or at the very least, whatever shape you get when you connect together the north and south sides of a square, and the east and west sides together. A torus, maybe?

With a lot of help from the sextant we find our way back to Magincia. Off the top of my head, I remember that we still need to speak with a snake and a skeleton hiding in the top left corner of the town. We’ll start with those npcs and work from there.

Lol, BRO. I wonder if we’ll eventually fill up the entire section with items.

There’s dat fucker, charging straight for us just like last time. We’ll have to be tricksy, and find a spot where he’ll position himself adjacent to us so that we can initiate the conversation.

Ah, so he was Nate all along. Let’s see if he’ll talk to us about the stone and mantra. Or was it the stone and rune?

“Those who seek the black stone need ask at the pub in Britain!” Easy enough. Guess we’ll ask about the rune anyway, even though we already have it.

“The sacred rune of humility was banished from this city. Ask Barren in Paws!” Okay, so that’s how you’d find it besides accidentally discovering it like I did. Now, what about the mantra? “That I cannot help thee with.” Darn, we’ll have to keep searching.

We give Nate our adieu, and he tries to eat us like last time. Dies in one hit from Dupre. We loot his chest and make our way to the skeleton we ignored last time we visited.

Along we way we speak with this ghost, whom I don’t think we interacted with last time. He tells us that the first great test is humility, and asks if we seek to know humility. He then tells us that we’ll need the rune (duh) and to, “Ask the snake of the rune, just before it strikes!” Done and done.

“I once held the silver horn.” Hmm, haven’t heard of that before. What’s it for? “The silver horn must be used to pass the daemon guard of the shrine.”

... oh, so I wasn’t supposed to fight a trillion demons. oops

He doesn’t mention where to find it, so I start bouncing some topics off him. When I ask about the shrine: “Wierdrum has been to the shrine of humility! Seek ye the horn? Ask Demitry!”

We’ve already spoken to Wierdrum, who told us about the shrine’s location, but I don’t remember if we’ve seen Demitry yet. Guess we’ll keep asking around.

Fortunately both Wierdrum and Demitry are standing right next to Banter (Demitry’s the one on the left). Demitry tells us, “The queen of love has a lady in waiting, she can tell thee more of the horn!”

Neat. If there’s a queen of love, she’ll be at the Empath Abbey for sure. If you remember, we encountered a lady in waiting while we were there, though I didn’t know what to ask her at the time. We’ll just mark that down as another spot to return to.

We still need the mantra, though, and some other npc must know about it. This would be easier if everyone here didn’t look alike.

We ask around a bit and gain a lead from this ghost. I don’t remember who’s Faultless, but he’s probably another npc living in this town. Guess we’ll start with the ghost behind the counter, since he’s closest.

There you are; hope the poison was worth it. Mantra naow!

“The mantra for pride, being the antithesis of humility, is ‘MUL’.” Hmm, hopefully that means the mantra for humility is just the opposite. If we reverse it we get LUM. Guess I’ll try that whenever we return to the shrine of humility.

Pretty sure that was everything; we have the rune, the mantra, know where the shrine is, and know where to go to keep searching for the stone. Time to leave Magincia and never return.

If I haven’t posted it already, here’s some coordinates to reach Moonglow with. We make a quick stop to mix some more Cure spells, and then sail back to Lord British to check for level ups.

While here we duck in to check with Hawkwind, and learn that our hero is ready to enlighten his spirituality eighth. We’ll get around to that later.

Our heavy hitters gain a level, putting everyone whose name is not Geoffrey at least at level 6.

Before leaving we decided to chat with Shawn the shepherd again, to see if she’d join us. I asked her specifically because she said she’d come from a proud city. If that was Magincia, then maybe she’d be the humility npc we could add to our party. She refuses, though.

On our way back to the main gate I notice a secret passage, to the right, that I must’ve missed before. Where will this lead?

We wander outside the castle walls. Heading south we notice a lone npc hiding within some trees.

“I can help.” Oh? “The riddle!” Huh, what riddle?

“If the eight philosophies of avatarhood combine into and are made from truth, love and courage… More?” Yes, hurry up and get on with hit!

“What one thing creates and is created by all truths, all love and all courage?”

I suck at riddles. I almost ended up trapped in the penultimate dungeon in Elder Scrolls Arena because I couldn’t figure out its dumb riddle. Provide no multiple choice answers and I’ll flounder like a… well, like a flounder.

Anyway, I’ll end the update there; feel free to ponder Joshua’s question. As for our septet, they’ll continue tracking down important items and mastering virtues next time.

 

[Darth Roxor]

running from the pirate cove is SHAMEFUR DISPRAY

 

[ore clover]

Lol, I had to for my sanity's sake. I was ready to hulk smash anything within reach after all those demons.

Chapter 44: Bein Spiritchull

Spoiler

With Joshua’s question logged away, our septet continues the quest of the avatar. Since Britannia’s next door to the castle, we’ll visit there next to learn more about the black stone of humility.

Merlin? I definitely think I’d remember if we’d spoken to him already. I’ll bet he’s hiding in the village in Lock Lake, along with every other plot-relevant npc left unaccounted for.

We can deal with that later. For now, our next order of business may as well be meditating on spirituality. We use the moongate by British’s castle to teleport over to the full-moon moongate.

Spoiler

https://www.mindbodygreen.com/articles/how-i-learned-that-i-was-a-healer

How I Learned I Had A Spiritual Gift

by Lauren UngerJuly 18, 2017 5:25 AM

Photo: @hintofgreens

It wasn’t until seven years ago that I began exploring the idea of being "a healer," and it wasn't until one year ago that my healing "powers" began unleashing at warp speed.

My journey started with a simple itch to do something different. I was a 20-something working in corporate America as an event planner. On paper it was my dream job, but I was never genuinely happy. I had a very full life with lots of friends and a great family, but something inside of me never felt right. I was living in a state of anxiety. I had fear that I would be fired regularly even when I had done nothing wrong. I was constantly worried, constantly feeling guilty for seemingly no reason.

A broken foot was the sign I needed. I took a leave of absence from my job and never went back. I enrolled at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition (IIN) in NYC to become a health coach with a plan to help people like me heal. I didn’t realize it then, but helping people heal would become part of my soul's purpose. That was the beginning of my awakening.

The spiritual spiral.
I received an opportunity to cook at upscale recovery homes during my IIN program. I had never been much of a cook, but my gut was telling me that I was supposed to do this, so I agreed to a trial run. That trial run took me through the next three years of my life. I worked with one recovery group and then a second. I was cooking for clients who were recovering from food, drug, and alcohol addictions. It was my first time stepping in to be a coach and giving guidance and knowledge. Food became my first healing tool and a gift that I could share with others.


Photo: @hintofgreens
Yet even though I was more content in my work, I was still in a dark place personally. I was staying in a tumultuous relationship out of fear. I had been living two lives: sober and happy recovery worker during the day, smoking weed to numb my reality at night.

It is true; we teach what it is we need the most.

The Universe has a way of intervening in things, and eventually my ex was arrested inside my home. I remember crying on my bathroom floor, asking what I needed to do to be happy, to no longer feel like my mind was constantly racing with anxiety and fear. I didn’t want my gut, my heart, or my head to hurt anymore. I was in full surrender mode. That was the moment I first spoke to God.

I began opening up to spirituality and letting the Universe guide me. It started with the simple things—I began taking 30-day challenges, reading books, turning off the TV to listen more. I started doing much more for myself and less for others; I stopped going to bars to watch football on Sundays and instead went to sound baths. I started doing more yoga and less linear activities, I began to embrace my whole body. I began to love myself the way I taught my clients to love themselves. It is true; we teach what it is we need the most.

During this time of regrouping, I lost my best friend, I would later come to learn that he was my Twin Flame. My first love passed away after years of sobriety and addiction, and my world was turned upside down. I had just spent the last two years learning to love myself again and finding inner peace and my person was gone. In that moment I had a choice; I could go back to being that girl on the bathroom floor who was begging for help, or I could grieve for the loss and figure out the true meaning of life. I chose the latter.

After the funeral, I spent about a month in a cloud, just trying to feel and understand, and that’s when a friend called me with a plane ticket to Northern California. It took going to the West Coast and to get quiet, and I set no intention other than to take care of myself. What I thought would be a week away ended up being weeks of healing, spending time in nature, cooking for myself and feeding others from a place of love, crying a lot, asking questions. I continued my journey by completing Reiki healer teacher training, moving on to become a Holy Fire Reiki master, and launching my entire business to be in line with my soul's purpose.

The silence through the noise.
If it seems like a lot happened in a short time, it’s because it did. I am on an accelerated healing path for two reasons:

1. I am open and accepting and surrender to the Universe.
2. I love nothing more than helping others heal, so I am willing to dive deep into my own healing in order to help others not have to go so far into the dark.

I know this isn’t your typical "how to know you are a healer" piece, and I really can’t tell you what tools you need to become one yourself, but the power really does already lie within each of us. Trust your gut, listen to your intuition, trust your heart, and know that there is an entire world that we may not be able to see but is very much present.

Think you, too, have a spiritual gift? Here's how to harness it to help others.

Seven virtues enlightened, only humility remains. Our hero is now seven eighths avatar; I’m pretty sure that’d be enough to net some welfare perks for the team. Also, check out the symbol that’s forming between the food and gold counters. So holy.

If you’ve kept up with the shrine visions, you’ve probably pieced together that we’re being provided some word that we need to translate. Right now we have a partial anagram, but we do know that the word will be eight letters long due to eight virtues.

I’m pretty sure I’ve figured out what that word is, even without the eighth rune. If you want to have a crack at it yourself, I’ll include all the rune visions we’ve seen up to this point in the order that we found them.

Spoiler

Honesty

Justice

Honor

Valor

Sacrifice

Compassion

Spirituality

Lol, feels like I'm intro-ing some Captain Planet knockoff. When the virtues combine Captain Avatar will be summoned!

We can only guess how it’ll factor into the quest, although perhaps the game has already left clues...

From there we use the moongates to teleport nearby Yew; we’re headed back to the Empath Abbey to track down clues on the silver horn.

We speak with the lady in waiting, but she’s just another stepping stone in the investigation. I don’t remember if we’ve spoken to a paladin with that name before, but hopefully he can also be found here. Otherwise we’ll have to scour the land for paladins.

"What's Where's a paladin?"

Here he is, at Empath Abbey's healer. Either we didn’t talk with him last time, or I didn’t bother to note his name. “I solve quests. My last quest took me near Spiritwood. Art thou on a quest? Best of luck to thee!”

We’ll need more than just luck. What u know of the silver horn?

Checking the world map, the spiritwood is a region of forests just southwest of Lord British’s castle; it’s where we first encountered liches and demons, if you’ll recall. There’s a cluster of seven islands south of the wood, which will be a good starting point to search for the horn.

We then spend the next fifteen minutes or so aimlessly wandering in the general area of the abbey; this is a spot northwest of it. The reason being that, long ago, I was told that I could learn of nightshade at the bar in Vesper. Thus far I haven’t found such a town. It’s entirely possible that that’s the name of the town in Lock Lake, but if not then who knows where it lies. Might as well check around for a bit.

During these travels we encounter some more zorns, whom we effortlessly stomp. Takes me back to when Iolo had to flee a fight due to an encounter with one of them. How the tables have turned.

After several more fights I lose interest, and we return to our ship. We’re going back to Lock Lake, and we’re going to find out once and for all if it can only be accessed with that air balloon.

This time we’ll infiltrate from the east side. We’ve brought plenty of Cures in case we need to tread through marshlands.

There’s some water over there, but it’s looking like we won’t find any that extends to the ocean. Let’s move in for a closer peak.

Some nixies swim over and attack, but they’re no match for us. It looks like there’s a bit of inaccessible land below the water.

We follow along on our side and end up back at the small riverways to the north of the lake. That’s a bust.

There’s one other route we haven’t taken. A bridge leads east toward the lake, with marshlands on both sides of it. Guess we’ll need to brave some poison.

Before checking we wander about the area north of the lake; this spot’s almost directly north. Supposedly there’s a hermit near Lock Lake, that can tell us about the white stone, so maybe that means he has a hut of his own in the wilderness. After ten minutes or so of searching we come up empty handed, so it’s back to the lake we go.

As we approach the bridge we’re treated to this new combat map. Very restrictive, forcing us to either risk poison or wait for the enemy to place themselves within our sights. Once again I’m glad that we’re all using ranged weaponry.

On the other side we can finally get a clear view of the entire lake. There’s the village over there, in that patch of green south of the lake, and it’s clearly impossible to reach without floating over mountains. Too bad a pirate ship didn’t spawn within the lake; that’d solve our problem.

At least we can leave the lake alone until we have the balloon.

To avoid the marshes we blink instead of walking back across the bridge. Hopefully we won’t hit the mountains on the other side…

I should test whether Blink has a specific teleport distance, or if it’s randomized. Although I don’t usually need to use it, so I probably won’t bother.

From the lake we teleport over to Skara Brae, to acquire some more cheap food. And that’ll end this update. Up next we’ll see about making that balloon float.