Completed Let's play Dark Heart of Uukrul! -- Dead and done!

[chzr]

apparently it doesn't depend on gender but on second question where answers 3 and 4 alter 3rd and 4th question.

 

[Crooked Bee]

apparently it doesn't depend on gender but on second question where answers 3 and 4 alter 3rd and 4th question.

It's like that thing Vault Dweller was talking about.

 

[Azira]

Looking forward to the next update!

 

[Hobo Elf]

Groovy

 

[Mrowak]

I approve of this exquisite LP Do continue.

 

[Hell March]

Possibly the only good implementation of pre-game questions after Ultima IV.

And the graphics in this game are great especially for a first-person RPG during it's time, so I doubt the Codex, who finds nothing wrong with Wizardry IV's graphics, will be very offended.

 

[Cenobyte]

Great characters

 

[Kz3r0]

Seems promising so far.

 

[Crooked Bee]

Possibly the only good implementation of pre-game questions after Ultima IV.

Yup, it's fun -- even though I generally dislike this kind of character creation.

And the graphics in this game are great especially for a first-person RPG during it's time, so I doubt the Codex, who finds nothing wrong with Wizardry IV's graphics, will be very offended.

Nah, I was just fooling around. On the other hand, I think you overestimate the number of those who "find nothing wrong with Wizardry IV's graphics" and underestimate the number of real graphicswhores around these parts.

 

[Crooked Bee]

Let's get this LP started, shall we? I'm not sure I'll be able to convey this game's awesomeness to you via an LP, but I'll do my best to. We'll be making it halfway through the starting area today; it isn't too exciting or anything, it's basically an introductory area that will allow us to learn the basic mechanics of the game. What kinda surprised me as I started exploring it, is that it's quite intuitive and comparatively user friendly. Truth be told, I had imagined something like the start of Chaos Strikes Back, if you know what I mean, and thought the hardkore would start right away, but -- fortunately, I'd say -- it didn't. This update will cover some basic aspects of exploration, and the next one, of combat. I've decided to break it in two so as to avoid too much tl;dr.

2: Exploration basics

I'll be posting manual bits and pieces as we go, related to the interface, the actions we take, the spells and prayers we use, and generally the situations we find ourselves in. I plan on doing that in the next updates as well -- instead of bringing down the whole manual on you at once -- so that, if you for some reason read the updates carefully, you could be gradually introduced to the increasing complexity of this game as we advance in it.
There's nothing too complex in the beginning, though. After creating the party -- which we did in the last update -- we find ourselves in a linear northward corridor:

The graphics are minimal, as you can see, but that's good enough if you ask me: no fluff, only gameplay. Let's take a look at the information we can get from the above screenie. On top is the list of our party members: Lord Rocket the Fighter, Bee the Paladin, Kalos the Priest, and Spekkio the Magician. We also see their status -- they're "Healthy", which won't last long -- and the health bar, broken down into three sections -- the red, the brown, and the green one. So: a health state and a hit bar; let us consult the manual.

Health state.
"The health state shows whether the character is suffering from any afflictions." There're the following health states in this game:
HEALTHY: "the character acts and fights as normal."
WEAK: "the character has sustained sufficient wounds to impair his actions somewhat."
HUNGRY: "the character will become starving if food is not found soon." (Just like myself at the moment. )
STARVING: "the character will lose hit points and eventually die unless food is found." (I'd better go fetch myself a sandwich!)
STUNNED: "the character has been temporarily stunned and cannot fight or act coherently for a short time. Stunned characters may move around normally." (I HATE this status! The character is rendered totally useless.)
POISONED: "the character will lose hit points gradually until the poison wears off or is cured." (It's pretty hardcore, but overall manageable.)
PLAGUED: "the character will lose hit points steadily unless cured. Plague is contagious and may cause other characters to become infected." (Now THAT's what I call hardcore.)
CRITICAL: "the character has sustained so many wounds that he is incapable of acting or fighting, and can only move. A critical character is close to death."
DEAD: "the character will be carried by the others in the party. A dead character can only be resurrected at the Mausoleum, but the chance of resurrection succeeding declines as the corpse ages. A special corpse bar, replacing the hit bar, shows this state." This is, of course, the worst state of all.
Not all the character's states are shown simultaneously. "The most serious health state for each character is shown in the status area. If any others apply as well, a small triangle will show in the status line, and you can find out all health states in the Character Profile." (We'll turn to the Character Profile a bit later.)

Hit bar.
"The hit bar shows the number of hit points that character has left. It reflects the amount of damage that the character is able to sustain before being slain. It is divided into three sections, which indicate if the character is CRITICAL, WEAK or HEALTHY respectively." So the green part of the bar is the "healthy" part; once we go into the brown zone the character becomes "weak", and if his HP is depleted to the red zone, his status becomes "critical". After that, it's "dead", folks. "The hit bar shows a character's hit points relative to his maximum, not the actual number of hit points. Thus the same blow would remove more from the hit bar of a Magician than from a Fighter, because the Magician has fewer hit points to lose." Which is only natural.

The next thing we should pay attention to is the "Food" bar to the left.
Food.
"As you walk through the passages, you will gradually use up your food supply. An indication of the food your party carries is shown by pips in the icon area during exploration." Actually, from what I've gathered, you require food for every physical action you take, including turning around and searching walls for secret doors. Hardcore! "Once your food runs out, your characters will become HUNGRY. If you don't find food quickly they will become STARVING and will lose hit points until they die." Uh-oh, that doesn't sound good. "Food can be bought readily at the Shop, but it's much harder to find in the depths of the maze. There is a limit to the amount of food your party can carry." Actually, there will be another way of procuring food -- via prayers. (I'm looking at you, Kalos!) There are, if I'm not mistaken, two special prayers for that. But Kalos won't really be able to invoke those prayers until he reaches higher levels -- and overall, invocation is a costly matter in this game, making the priest run out of Virtue points rather quickly, since prayers tend to be left unanswered by the gods -- or "answered" by smiting the unfortunate priest. Arrogant beings, those gods!

Compass and other thingies.
By the way, how do I know we're facing north, you could ask? Well, that's what the Heading check option is for:

We press the "H" button -- and something awesome happens a compass appears! "The party carries a compass which you can consult by doing a Heading check. This will show a compass face with a needle that points in the direction the party is facing." Yay, it's a nice thing to have! We'll run into spinning plates soon enough that confuse our sense of direction, and the compass will be our only saving device.
In the same area of the screenshot as where the Heading check option is, you can see other symbols and phrases. The yellow arrows indicate the directions you can move to from the square you're currently occupying. Also, "while you are exploring, your Magician may Cast a Spell, your Priest may Invoke the gods through a Prayer, and any character may Use an item being carried." Overall, the interface is pretty intuitive, which is good.


Secret doors.
Pressing "M" for Map brings up an automap; we'll consult it later, for now there's no sense in doing so. (Only regular areas can be auto-mapped, by the way; puzzle areas can't, as we're to see in the next updates.) The Search walls option lets us discover secret doors in the walls adjacent to the square we're standing on. "Secret doors are not visible while walking through the passages, though careful searching where you suspect a secret door will often reveal it. Some secret doors may be hidden with magic and will require a Spell to locate." The spell is ALTIS, a silver spell in the Arkana of Knowledge. Spekkio will learn it later, but I may as well post its description here and now:

4 ALTIS The Psychic Key

Many secret doors have been bound shut by magic. This Spell will attempt to use a great magical force to open such doors to you and your companions. It can also release doors that are held with some physical obstruction, but this may require more than one application.

Overall, secret doors in this game are pretty hardcore; they really are well-hidden for the most part and sometimes hard to open, so given my thorough approach to dungeon exploration -- evident even in my other LP -- we're gonna waste A LOT of food, as well as virtue and psychic points, obsessively checking around for secret doors and trying to pry them open. "Choosing the Search walls option will manually search all the walls of the square your party stands on, thus you may find a door that is not on the wall you are facing. Searching takes time, using up food and making you more likely to be disturbed by wandering monsters." Yup, searching for secret doors increases the random encounter rate, to boot.

Character profile and inventory.
"The character profiles and inventories can be examined by choosing the Examine party option. This will display the party's exact food and money and allow you to look at any of the characters by pressing 1, 2, 3 or 4." Also, "you can find out the exact number of hit points and the maximum in the Character Profile."
First we press "E" to Examine party:

From here we can access our profiles. Opening the first profile, we see that Lord Rocket, being a Fighter, has the most hit points...

... whereas Spekkio the Magician has the least:

Magicians are frail, truly. Bee the Paladin has 40 HP, and Kalos the Priest, 30 HP:

Now let's cast a glance at Lord Rocket's inventory:

The starting weapons and armour are very basic, of course. The options below are pretty self-explanatory. "Armor" lets you choose which pieces of armor to equip; "weapon" does the same for weapons. "Inspect" examines an item, but it doesn't really yield any useful info. Let's, for example, inspect the rope Bee has in her inventory:

Or the yellow gem Kalos has in his:

No specific info, alas, only the things you can tell by just looking at the item. Realistic, yay.
Spekkio carries some stupid shred of cloth, which is apparently totally useless:

Why are you carrying meaningless stuff around, spek-kun? Is it a cloth fetish or something?

But anyway, let's move forward down the corridor a bit, okay?

And so the story begins.

Moving one step to the north triggers a scripted event:

The Ancients were hunters, it seems.
This is a text event, of course, no cinematic cutscene. Oldskool. There will be many text triggers as we explore Eriosthe -- in fact, they are what mostly constitutes this game's "story", along with visions and inscriptions. I say it's cool.

Going further north...

spekkio sure is an inquisitive type.
The air becomes more stale -- we're moving into what seems like a dead end:

Several steps later, the air becomes heavily scented with mould:

And we do reach a dead end -- which turns out to be not quite as dead as it initially seemed:

(It looks like spekkio gets the most out of all this exploration.)
We're presented with three options: a silly "push against the wall" one, and two more feasible and logical ones. First we try to trace the groove by hand:

But nothing happens. What if spekkio -- you essential bastard, you! -- applied his staff?

spekkio's pretty intelligent, and perceptive to boot.
So yeah, a door appears:

By the way, we've spent 3 units of food going down this not exactly lengthy corridor:

And so we enter the door! There's no turning back now.

We press Enter for more text:

It is again spekkio who is the most knowledgeable. I'm getting kinda jealous, you know!

We're breathless. Our task has begun. The myriad passages await us.
We see an inscription right ahead of us. Let's approach it:

An option to read the inscription appears. We press "R":

Cool.
This looks to be something like a huge pillar right in the middle of the room, adorned by inscriptions. Turning around the pillar's right corner, we face another inscription:

There's no mention of this Suraqis fellow in the manual; he probably was someone of the Ancients. As we can see, there's yet another inscription on the right wall of the pillar:

(We're facing north at the moment.)

Moving one step to the north, we trigger a text event:

Mara, as you may remember from the prologue in the first post of this LP, was the head of the previous expedition to Eriosther, captured by our foe, evil Uukrul. Let's read the inscription to the left now:

Hmm, not particularly legible. But we see a new option: "Translate with NGOS". We consult the manual: "The Translate with NGOS option is a shorthand way of casting the NGOS Spell, and still requires the appropriate ring and Psychic Points." NGOS is a low-level (Iron) spell in the Fifth Arkana -- the Arkana of Knowledge:

1 NGOS The Glowing Script

On casting Ngos, a beam of light will fly from your hand to the closest written word. The light will course along the runes and search for the meaning behind them. Ngos is a simple Spell and has not great power.

As you can see in his character profile above, spekkio does indeed have the iron ring (Fe) in the Arkana of Knowledge, meaning he's able to cast the NGOS spell. There are two more powerful versions of NGOS -- NGOSMUR and NGOSLAZAR:

3 NGOSMUR The Glowing Copper Script

Like Ngos, Ngosmur will prise from inscriptions their meaning. Ngosmur is a more powerful Spell, and mighty is the inscription that will not eventually yield its meaning to the glowing copper script.

8 NGOSLAZAR The Glowing Golden Script

This Spell is the most powerful and advanced translation Spell. Any inscriptions that do not yield their meaning to this Spell had already lost all sense before recorded history.

But they require the copper and gold rings of the Knowledge Arkana respectively, which spekkio hasn't got yet. The inscription we face is a basic inscription, however, so we manage to translate it by casting NGOS:

So there's a secret to this pillar, yay!
spekkio has lost 1 psychic point in casting NGOS, by the way:

Okay, there's only one wall of the pillar that is free from inscriptions -- the north wall. I bet there's a secret to it. We face it and press "S" to search for a secret door:

As always, it's spekkio's job to be clever and perceptive.
Now that we've found a door, we're presented with several options to make it open:

First, we can cast an opening spell -- which is ALTIS -- but it requires the silver ring of Knowledge, so it's not really an option at the moment. We can also ask Kalos to invoke a prayer. There are two secret door-opening prayers -- HOYAMOQ and BELAMOQ. They are prayers to Drutho, God of the Underworld and the youngest of the gods:

Drutho, God of the Underworld, Goddess of Stealth, Seducer of the Earth Spirits, Queen of Corruption, Ethereal Hermaphrodite, Demon Lover, Lord of the Portals, the youngest of the gods, hides far from the light of the older gods. Within the lowermost caverns of Lithane, Temple of Darkness, Drutho's Priests toil to supplicate their god. The work of these shaven Priests has made Drutho grant these Prayers to all who recognize his/her dominion in the dark kingdoms.

A tranny god, eh? The god of Fair Codexia, then.

HOYAMOQ The Temple Passage

Drutho, Gol Draqur, moraseth kanu,
Open this way for your servants;
Having discovered the portal you had hidden,
We now must pass through.

BELAMOQ Translucent Passage

Drutho, Lord of the Portals, this way resists
Our most urgent attempts.
Take its outline, hinge and bolt,
And disolve its stubborn form into ether.

However, as you can tell by looking at his profile, Kalos doesn't have any ring of Drutho yet -- and it's gonna take relatively long until he has enough skill for the god to even answer his prayers. This leaves us with only three options to open the secret door we face -- force it open, look for a device, or speak a secret pass-word to open it. We don't know any password, and so decide to try looking for a special device -- but to no avail:

Okay, let's make an attempt at forcing the door, then. The task is up to Lord Rocket, of course. He's the strongest one of us.

It looks like this is indeed the way to go. However, every attempt makes Rockety lose a bit health, which is ... hardkore! Okay, one more time:

We succeed at the expense of Lord Rocket's HP. :/ Ah well, whatever it takes. There is indeed a key inside, just like Mara's inscription told us:

We approach it:

A message pops up telling us we can pick up the key and should decide who's gonna carry it and use it when need be. We decide that Lord Rocket will be our key carrier:

And Rocket picks up the key.
There're two more inscriptions on the west side of the pillar. The first one is in gibberish:

I don't have a screenshot with a translation, so I assume our attempt to translate it with NGOS was unsuccessful. Or maybe I just forgot to capture the result. Who knows. But anyway, the second inscription is perfectly legible:

So Suraqis was apparently the master of this hall or something back in the ancient times. Good to know.
Heading west from this hall down a certain passage, we come to another section of this area:

Advanced technology!
So there are two further paths -- to the north and to the south -- as well as one more inscription. We come closer to it:

It isn't an inscription, it's "a map or drawing". Maps and drawing do not require translation, we can read them as they are:

We aren't really supposed to have the slightest idea of what this map represent at this point, but in fact -- as I think now that I've studied the automap screenshots in my screenshot folder -- and jumping a bit ahead of ourselves, it's a map of a secret room which we'll access later; not in this update, though.
A grate to the south is closed, and our key doesn't fit, so let's try the northern grate:

It is locked, of course:

We press "O" to try opening it...

...and we're given the option to choose the character who's gonna try the keys we have. We've got but one key, carried by Lord Rockey, so we press "1":

Some time passes and...

Unlocked!

There are three further rooms we can access from here: straight to the north, to the southwest, and to the east. Let's head north first:

Whenever we approach a door, there's an option to Listen at door by pressing "L":

No sound. Okay, let's enter the room.

An ancient dining hall, huh? Also, the text *says* there're tables here, but we can't really *see* any tables. Oldskool!
Exploring the room, we stumble upon something in one of the corners:

So I find the money, and Kalos takes it!? Some priest you are, KK!


There doesn't seem to be anything else of interest in this room, so we turn back and then east from the entrance grate:

There's another door there. We listen at it: "You can't hear anything". Okay, we're in.

An ancient kitchen. Makes sense, given that we've just been to a dining hall. We don't find anything in this room, not even a secret door or anything. So we head back and then to the southwest, to the third room:

Intrigued, we enter the room...

...only to be ambushed by a pack of rats.
Nothing like killing rats in a starting area of an RPG!! Oldskool indeed.

Next time: we'll show those rats what we've got, yay! And make it to the first sanctuary.

As a bonus, here's an automap of the starting area (not yet fully explored):

Stay tuned!

 

[Crooked Bee]

To those who've been wondering: yeah, this update has turned out to be quite short. It's just that I don't really have the time to write long updates at the moment, but I want to keep this LP going. Oh, and shorter means easier to read through, amirite?

 

[Fowyr]

Pity what you don't have screenshot with partially translated inscription, it looks cool.
Please continue.
And don't forget to manually backup saves. I lost many hitpoints when died in the "gases and poisonous air".

 

[Orgasm]

I hope the combat is not blob, does not seem like it.

 

[Crooked Bee]

It isn't blob, it's top-down and more or less tactical -- and imho quite addictive, despite being kinda slow. I'll explain the combat system in the next update.

And don't forget to manually backup saves. I lost many hitpoints when died in the "gases and poisonous air".

Heh, I remember that place. I didn't venture too far into it, I just kept searching the walls for a secret door and managed to find it before the gases started killing me.
And yes, I do back up my saves whenever I enter a sanctuary.

 

[Crooked Bee]

Okay, I've managed to conjure up another update somehow, so expect it in a few minutes or so. I mean, we need to make it at least to the first sanctuary to justify this LP's existence, right?

 

[Kz3r0]

Okay, I've managed to conjure up another update somehow, so expect it in a few minutes or so. I mean, we need to make it at least to the first sanctuary to justify this LP's existence, right?

Undoubtedly.

 

[Crooked Bee]

3: Combat basics and the first sanctuary

Okay, so we got attacked by a group of rats at the end of the last update, which is a good opportunity to introduce the way this game's combat system works.

"The passages are no longer safe. Many evil things have crawled into Eriosthe since it fell, and Uukrul has taken the most evil and warped them to his purpose. As you journey east the strength of your opponents and their cunning will increase. To survive you will have to grow in power and fight as a hundred men."

"Many evil things?" Rats are evil, true story. :twisted:
Alright, this is our first combat encounter. The game switches to a top-down view:

According to the manual, the combat grid "is like a magnified section of the maze, with one square of maze divided into four squares on the grid." Realism strikes again. "The location of your characters and opponents is important, as positional strategy is a crucial part of combat." Yup, positioning is indeed p. important in this game's combat -- you can block the enemy's way to fleeing, or surround him, or many other things like that.
The monsters you face have a hit bar and a name. "Each monster's name is shown along with its hit bar. The hit bar, like your characters' hit bars, indicates the amount of damage that the monsters have sustained relative to full health. When you encounter an adversary, its name will tell you what it looks like: once it has attacked, you will know its true identity." For instance, a "Rat" may turn out to be a "Plague Rat", an "Armed Man" may turn out to be a "Bandit", etc. This makes a difference because some enemy subclasses are tougher than others, yet sometimes there's no way of telling who is who at first and who you should strike first. "Occasionally, you will surprise your enemy and have the initiative in combat; this will enable you to make the first move unopposed. Similarly, it is possible for your opponents to surprise you." This also makes sense. Overall, I like this game's approach to combat; it's fun, even if slow due to its more or less complicated nature.


Any turn in a combat encounter is divided into two phases: a movement phase and a fighting phase.

Movement phase

"The movement phase allows you to move and position your characters, while fighting allows you to act against your enemies. In each phase your turns will be interspersed with those of your enemy, although the speed of your foes and some magical Spells will affect this ordering." Sounds good. "A character can move to any surrounding unoccupied square, including diagonally, unless the move cuts across a corner of the room." We can move diagonally, which is nice. Our characters move once per combat round, whereas some enemies can move more than once. Not fair. "The monsters move at differing speeds and will adopt different movement strategies when fighting you. Some will move more than once in a round, some will hardly move at all."
During the movement phase, we can also flee from the encounter, but only if a character whose turn it is to move is standing near a door. Running away gives our foes one additional turn to strike us and generally deal damage to us. Hardcore. "Running allows the monsters to strike at you while you flee, but it is often the wisest course of action if a combat will be too difficult. If you get away, your party will regroup on the other side of the exit. Sometimes you will be able to use this to get past a powerful monster without having to fight it." We will resort to fleeing, that much I can promise you.

This is the way we position our heroes in this particular fight during the first movement round:

Lord Rocket and Bee try to block the foe's access to Kalos and spekkio. They partly succeed, although I'd prefer to have Kalos and spekkio switch places (btw, you can't just switch places in this game), but oh well, it's merely rats we're fighting, after all.
Now comes the fighting phase.

Fighting phase

"The fighting phase allows each character to make an action against its opponents or to defend against attacks. Naturally, the monsters will also be doing their best. All characters may strike, parry, use an item, or examine their profile and inventory in a move. In addition, certain characters have special actions available."
It's Kalos's turn to act first, so let's see what combat options he has.

Kalos has no foes in the adjacent squares, so he isn't given the option to attack melee. Here are the options he has:
Parry attacks: "this parries, using your current weapon to deflect the blows being delivered by an opponent. Pressing the SPACE bar will also parry. You will continue to parry blows until your next fighting turn." This is basically like choosing to defend.
Invoke: "a Priest may invoke the gods through a Prayer."
Call elemental: "a Priest may attempt to call forth an Elemental spirit to fight with the party. Elementals range in power from AIR, EARTH, WATER to FIRE." We won't really be able to do that until Kalos's skill level is higher.
Use an item: "you can use any of your special usable items."
Turn undead: "a Priest may attempt to turn any undead that are present. If successful, this will make the undead flee from the party." It also damages the undead; the amount of damage depends on the Priest's skill level as well as the power of the cross he wears.

Let's begin by attempting to recite a prayer.

We choose RALKOR, the most basic prayer to Ufthu, God of War; after all, Kalos has an iron ring to Ufthu.

Ufthu, God of War, Tongue of Iron, Qanak Dasoro, Priest of the Scarlet Assassins, Dragon Lord, Master of the Abyss, is the most powerful of the gods. Proud in his strength, unpredictable in his weakness. Ufthu is a wary god, careful in his dealings with mortals, but his greatest weakness is vanity. Take this warning, but know that Ufthu, Silent Huntsman, will heed the calls of one who serves him truly. These Prayers are yours.

The prayers to Ufthu are battle prayers, and RALKOR is no exception.

RALKOR Divine Arrow

Ufthu, O Bow of the Stars,
Hear this low voice,
Send down your bolt,
Against the one who stands against you.

Luckily, we don't have to manually input the entire prayer, just the name. Which is what we do and...

Lol, epic fail. Kalos is a weakling for now. During the first time, only Bee and Rocket will be of real use. Things are bound to change later, though.
One of the rats gets to attack Lord Rocket:

And now it's Rocket's turn to act:

Rocket has the Strike command available. Per the manual, "you can strike if an opponent is directly beside you. You cannot strike (or be struck) diagonally... Striking uses the weapon you are currently wielding; if you are without a weapon, gauntlets or bare hands are used." We press "S" to strike a rat, but since there're 3 rats in the squares adjacent to Lord Rocket, the game wants us to indicate the direction for our attack -- "if there is more than one opponent within reach, you will be given a choice of which to attack":

We choose to strike the rat standing close to spekkio, to prevent him from taking damage. Lord Rocket swing his hyper weapon and hits the rat. We see the rat's health gradually depleting and finally get the following message:

This is our first slain enemy, folks.


Now it's spekkio's chance to prove himself:

His class-specific combat command is, of course, Cast a spell. For some weird reason, I chose to cast STRAL:

STRAL is an iron (first-tier) spell in the Second Arkana, that of Frost.

1 STRAL The Frozen Hand

All beings within your sight will be immersed in a chilling frost. Their strength will be sapped, they will fight less effectively, and the shock may render them stunned and confused. This is one of the simplest Spells, and can be used frequently.

Well, the problem is that spekkio doesn't have the Frost ring yet. I probably chose to cast STRAL to demonstrate you, my readers, that you cannot cast a Frost spell without the Frost ring. Anyway, here's spekkio's failure:

After that, Bee hits at a rat, but misses. The same rat bites Lord Rocket for 5 hp. Another rat tries to attack Rocket, but he manages to block the attack:

Kalos tries to recite RALKOR again next turn. However, Ufthu is pissed at some lowly priest trying to invoke his aid -- and smites Kalos in return.

The god's wrath is represented by a blinking red cross, followed by a message and a loss of HP:

Kalos loses ca. 1/3 of his HP.

Bee, however, proves more useful. She kills a nearby rat. Here's the attack animation, by the way:

Bam, and the rat is gone. To rat's hell, no doubt.
It's spekkio's turn to act now, and this time we'll do our spell-casting properly. We've got the iron ring of Fire, and so are able to cast the AMRAS spell:

AMRAS is an iron spell in the Arkana of Fire, which is the First Arkana.

2 AMRAS The Snake of Fire

A bolt of flame shall grow from your staff and strike one foe. This and all snake Spells have speed and range, for they can reach any who would stand against you, but they must follow a straight path: they cannot travel through rock. Though this snake is but iron, it can burn a deep wound.

(The number prefix before the spell is its phychic point cost, by the way.)

We choose an unfortunate rat as spekkio's target.
Bam, and the rat is slain. Now it's killing time for Lord Rocket. Just one rat left:

He kills the vile beast in one swing. We emerge victorious from our first combat encounter!


We also gain some experience:

The greater a character's contribution to the victory, the more experience he or she gets. spekkio and especially Kalos are relatively worthless for now, so they get the least experience. Oh, by the way. Experience is gained not only in combat, but also by doing such basic things as finding and opening secret doors, reading inscriptions, and picking up items, i.e., via exploration as well as via combat.
Combat encounters also tend to land us some money for loot:

Not exactly much, but still nice, yay.
Having slain the rat pack, we finally access the room to the southwest of the grate we opened in the previous update:

There's a key on the ground here.

Lord Rocket, being our keymaster, picks it up. So far, so good.
Now that we've got a new key, it's time to revisit the grate to the south that was previously locked:

We order Rockety to try the key:

The grate isn't locked anymore! Behind it is a book lying on the floor:

Lord Rocket picks it up. He's our hoarder.

It might be, or it might not. For now, it is a mystery. Anyway, spekkio's our local scholar, so we give the book to him.
Going back to the main room with the pillar and then heading to and down the northwest corridor, we can reach a teleporter:

Once again, it's spekkio who enlightens us. The Ancients' technology was indeed pretty advanced.
Anyways. We approach the teleporter:

Press me! says the "X" button. Which is what we do.

Oooh, something awesome happens.
We're, uhm, teleported to some place with another teleporter; it looks the same but has a "Y" button on it instead of "X" -- lest we should get the two teleporters confused. We turn around and enter a new area:

A decayed storeroom, then.
We find some kind of ointment in here:

Lord Rocket picks it up.
Disturbed by the commotion we make, the local rats attack us!

Oh well, it's another rat fight.

It's six rats this time. Meh, piece of cake.
This is the position we take after the first movement phase:

Bee and Lord Rocket should have most of the rats, uhm, covered. If you know what I mean.
Rocket one-hit kills the rat next to him, spekkio casts AMRAS again (his psychic points regenerated back to 9 as we explored the area) killing another one:

See the blood splash? This game is no less grimdark and mature than Dragon Age! Kalos, having merely 4 virtue points -- which for some reason regenerate MUCH slower than spekkio's psychic points -- attempt to invoke RALKOR, but Ufthu doesn't care enough to answer.
During the next turn, we try out Bee's (that is, my) special paladin ability, Lay hands:

"Your Paladin's goodness allows him to lay hands on another. A Paladin can only lay hands during combat, as it requires a trance-like state brought on by the presence of an evil enemy. If the Paladin lays hands on another character, that character will be healed. If the Paladin lays hands on an opponent, the opponent will be wounded. Laying hands will always drain some hit points from the Paladin. The strength of the effect depends on the skill of the Paladin."
This time we've used our Lay hands ability for healing, but we'll use it to deplete a foe's HP as well at some point, I promise.

Next turn Kalos desperately attempts to summon Ufthu to his aid again, but the latter, alas, remain silent. spekkio, laughing at Kalos's futile attempts, casts AMRAS to slay yet another evil rat. Kalos again tries to say a prayer to Ufthu, but his remaining virtue points aren't sufficient for that:

:/
A rat attacks Lord Rocket for 3 hp, and then another one, for 4 hp. Rocket kills one of them in retribution, and then spekkio calls it a day with another AMRAS spell.

Wow, Rocket sure gets a lot of exp.
We obtain 38 gold and ... a bone for loot:

I decide to leave the bone be. I guess I just dislike bones and other scary stuff like that.
Here's an map of this small area:

(The teleporter is to the south.)
Not being able to find anything else in this room, our party makes it back to the teleporter and presses the "Y" button:

Kewl.
Let's have a look at our character profiles to see just how many experience points we've acquired in our exploration so far:

Lord Rocket has 188 xp.

Bee has 120 xp.

Kalos, 124 xp.

And finally, spekkio has 167 exp.
It looks like Bee's the least experienced one.

Another not yet explored room is to the northeast of the main hall:

Well, a sword could always come in handy, I guess. We make Lord Rocket pick it up:

It has a "?" in front of it, meaning we don't know what kind of short sword it is exactly. We'll find a means of identifying items later; no way for us to do it now, though.
Let's also take a look at the ointment we picked up earlier:

This being the starting area, I figured we might as well try using that ointment. I mean, no harmful thing can be found in a starting area, amirite?
From the exploration menu, we choose "Use an item", and then "Ointment":

Uhm, so what do we choose?
Let's try swallowing it first! (Yeah, yeah, I know an ointment isn't generally supposed to be swallowed, but I like experimenting on my party!) Luckily, nothing happens:

Then we try applying it to Lord Rocket's skin:

His HP is restored a bit. Good.

Still, despite the good outcome, I swear this was the last time I used an unknown substance on a member of my awesum party. Word.
Turning around the corner, we come across a pit of some sort:

We approach it and choose the "Look down" option:

Hmm, "very easily", you say? Let's try climbing down, then!

Phew, I got scared there for a moment.
We turn around and...

Ugh. I hate foul slime.
A couple of steps later, we're attack by rats. Again.

Oh-kay. You aren't really much of a trouble, are you, little buddies?

This time spekkio's AMRAS spell fails to kill a rat, however:

It still has some HP left, as you can see on the above screenshot. Bee is more successful than spekkio -- she slays another rat. Then Lord Rocket finishes yet another beastie off:

A rat attacks Rocket for 3 hp, and then Kalos for 5 hp:

Next turn Bee and Rocket bring this fight to a glorious victory, however.

We discard the bone, of course.
Finding nothing of further interest in this abandoned well, we get back to the pit:

We climb up safely.
Now we've explored almost all of the starting area:

After having mapped the remaining squares, we can finally enter the sanctuary -- which is a door to the east with a special symbol on it:

We enter it -- and are confronted by this game's shitty copy protection system:

To "activate" a sanctuary, we need to match the presented symbols with the corresponding letters on the "soul amulet" -- which looks like this:

Ugh, I hate this shit.
Still, I finally manage to input the correct word:

And the sanctuary is activated. Once a sanctuary is activated -- that is, the first time we enter a sanctuary -- our party's HP is fully restored:

Eriosthe is so large that the Ancients created special rooms to rest in, called Sanctuaries. These are safe havens which evil's power cannot penetrate. Because you possess the Soul Amulets, your party is also able to use these Sanctuaries. Each Sanctuary is indicated by a special symbol on its door.

"When you enter a Sanctuary for the first time, all the wounds and ills of the party are healed. If you return to a Sanctuary, you may Rest to recuperate and recover strength. This heals a party's wounds, but uses up time and food."
Pressing ESC, we access the save and backup menu:

There's also a cache here in which up to 7 items can be stored. It's empty now:

Examining our party, we see that we've got 217 gold:

As well as 349 units of food left.
The brass and ornate keys are already used, so we deposit them here:

("A character may Drop an item. Items dropped in the maze are gone forever; but you can store items by dropping them in a Sanctuary, where they are kept in a cache. Items dropped in a Sanctuary remain there safely until you retrieve them from the cache.")
By pressing "S" from the sanctuary main menu, we can see just how many experience points our characters need to progress to next level:

"If a character has gained enough experience to make a new skill level, he will be awarded this upon entry to any Sanctuary. To see how far your characters have to go to make the next level, choose the Skill levels option."
Pressing "L" to leave the URTAS sanctuary, we're presented with three options:

The western exist is the one we entered the sanctuary from. The eastern one leads deeper into the Eriosthe dungeon. We can also access the URTAS teleporter from here:

We haven't yet encountered any of the other named teleporters, so we can only teleport from here to here now. Back in the sanctuary...

...we're ready to brave the eastern exit!

So far there hasn't been anything too challenging, but things will start getting tougher eventually. Foes will get stronger, our spells and prayers, more varied, status effects, nastier, dungeons, more confusing.

And then, it'll turn to pure hell. :twisted: So stay tuned!

 

[Mrowak]

Ahh, good old dungeon crawling at its best :tearofapatriot:



Do carry on! If I were not swamped with work now, I would get that game myself. At least, now I don't have to...

 

[Kz3r0]

I am already in love with this game.

 

[Azira]

Moar!

 

[Yeesh]

I'm posting to support your endeavor.

 

[Fowyr]

Action has started. MOAR.

 

[Crooked Bee]

I'm posting to support your endeavor.

I see what you did there.

A quick question to Fowyr: what is the "Medal of escape" for? (It's found in the maze after the URRAN sanctuary, behind the 5x5 room with a lot of electricity spikes striking you if you step on a wrong square, near the MELAS teleporter.) And can it be used only once or more?

 

[Fowyr]

It teleports you back into Sanctuary.
May be used only once, but you can find several medals in the game. Some mazes may be leaved only with help of Medal.
I have very vague memory what place where you found medal may give you another one, but only after visiting next sanctuary or something.
I wish you luck on your way to URSHAS. You will need it

 

[Crooked Bee]

Thanks!