Last time our parties had just won the contest and cleared their castle and the surrounding countryside of hostiles. Our butler suggested we seek out the nearby dwarven settlement, to petition for help in restoring our castle.
We can easily travel to The Barrow Downs on foot. Exiting the Harmondale map to the south lets us do this.
Barrow Downs are named such after their most notable feature (excepting Stone City), the Dwarven Barrows. Before getting to those, we run into a few of the overland map monsters.
Shade, specters and ghosts are low-level enemies. They're not too difficult to deal with, as normal weapons deal full damage, but they do posses annoying abilities, namely the instant-KO ability of the ghosts, and the ageing ability of the specters. They trigger randomly when they hit the party, so killing these enemies at a distance is the best option.
You don't have to travel far on the overland map before you find one of the entrances to the dwarven barrows.
This is just one out of three entrances to the barrows. These barrows are interesting and special, in that instead of being one large dungeon, they're broken down into 16 seperate segments, and navigating them requires one to actually take notes.
Each barrow has a navigation stone set into the wall nearby the entrances/exits, to make it a bit easier however:
At the right side of the stone you can see a keyhole. The stone itself tells us that we're currently in barrow number 9, and we can exit the system by taking the right exit, or travel to either barrow numbers 5 or 7 by taking the left. A simple lever system switches which destination is chosen.
The keyhole is important here, as this stone is hidden from sight until you find the key and use it. There are three such keys and corresponding keyholes in the barrow system that need be found and used before all the stones are visible. The keys can be found in the barrows that also have exits to the outside. Other barrows only allow acces to other barrows, such as this one:
Barrow 4 lets us travel to barrows 12, 3, 15 and a special barrow denominated by the Ankh symbol. Now, the barrow 4 navigation stone isn't currently hidden beneath a stone slab, as by this time I'd found and used all three keys. But if you barge ahead, you can find yourself somewhat lost.
The monsters inside the barrows come in different types.
The gogs are devil-type creatures that hurl bolts of fire at the party, and they explode when killed so they're best taken down with ranged weaponry. The third tier "Magog" isn't encountered inside the barrows.
The skeletons are simple melee enemies. The warriors can cause fear, the lords curse. Aside from that, nothing to note.
These flesh-eaters are also simple melee enemies, but the revenant in particular has a nasty habit of inflicting paralysis on succesful attacks, so taking these down should be a high priority. Thankfully, their low AC makes them easy to hit.
Zombies can cause disease on attack. Nothing specially intimidating.
The most dangerous enemy type in the barrows is the wight type. The wraith special is their attacks can drain all the SP of the character they hit. This can range from being a non-issue (thief, monk and fighter) to being critical (cleric). The barrow wight can cause ageing, and the ordinary wight fear. They are quite beefy with respectively 61, 93 and 145 hitpoints.
There are two more enemy types I have not shown, bats and rats. They're minor inconveniences as best.
Now, when I showed you the navigation stone in barrow 4, you could see it led to a special Barrow.
Zokarr's tomb. We will be returning here much later. For now, this barrow is also a point of interest, as it is here we must meditate for our monks to advance in rank.
Of course, this quest serves only as an exp dispensor for the light group, whereas Kayerts in the dark group is actually promoted here.
In barrow number 2, we come across something else of note.
It might not be immediately apparent from this screenshots, but the rats and zombies are actually fighting eachother here. Neat, huh?
Of course, as could be expected, the rats don't last long, so we need to clear the zombies ourselves, and find a quest item:
With that in our inventory, our business in the barrows is concluded.
Now, for the maps of this place:
This system of dungeons take a long time to navigate and clear out, so I'm rather glad that's behind me for both parties.
We will be returning later for a specific task, so keeping ones notes handy is a good idea, so you can plot the shortest course to the destination.
Once outside again, we resume our trek towards the underground dwarven city. Before actually reaching it however, we run across a lump of ore on the ground.
There are six types of ore that can be found in your travels, each of varying potency. This kergar laced ore ranks as the third strongest IIRC.
Shortly after picking up this lump of ore and shooting some shades and spectres, we finally reach Stone City.
As stone city is an underground map, it features an entry screen just as if it were a dungeon.
The dwarves are just that badass.
Inside the city we chat up the dwarven king, and he's willing to help us, provided we help him first..
So he wants us to venture into a mine of his that has been invaded by medusae.
I wonder what his subjects have to say on the matter?
Not much. Though they do give us the location of the mines. Ohwell, we need the castle fixed, so we don't have much choice. Beggars can't be choosers.
Mission accepted. Actually, there's no choice here. You have to do this mission. The whole game is rather railroaded, but not quite as much as MMVI was. You'll get to see in the next update.
As is though, being railroaded into accepting and doing certain quests is nothing special or new in CRPGs. And I certainly didn't think much about it back in 1999 when this game came out. I guess we've been spoiled since, with Choice and Consequence.
There's another small quest to be done while we're in Stone City.
It's literally on the same map as Stone City that these troglodytes reside, so it's a quick and easy task. As to the tunnel to Nighon, that's importan. We will have to brave it, if we wish to get there. And we do. In the next update.
For now, we catch an elevator down to the trogs.
Troglodytes are not much of a challenge if you can handle wights, so they're easily dispatched. In these tunnels you can also find an obelisk.
We need to find a whole lot more if we wish to find the special treasure. But that treasure is worth it. We'll just have to wait until we've unlocked all areas.
You see, contrary to MMVI, we cannot learn Town Portal until our wizard has reached mastery of water magic, and even then, we can only use the TP spell to reach cities we've already visited and where we've drunk from the main fountain, necessitating getting there by other means first. To make matters more interesting, the NPC who can teach us mastery of water magic resides in Nighon, which is why we're going spelunking in the next update.
Back up on the first floor, we turn in our quest.
We'll take any rewards you can offer, freaky little bearded fellow.
Anyways, here's the map of Stone City:
Number 21 is the dwarven treasury. Crossing the blue line with the x above it will turn all dwarves hostile, so we let that idea rest for now. Number 24 is the entrance tunnel to the Nighon tunnels. The rest of the numbers denote various NPCs and shops etc.
Having done what we could for now, we exit Stone City and set the course for the Bracada Desert. You can walk there on foot, by exitind the overland map by the western border. Before getting to that border however, we find a chest containing a letter.
Many more letters of this kind is scattered around the overland maps. Apparently, they tell the story of some Priests of the Sun who weren't too fortunate in their travels..
The mansion mentioned sounds interesting however.
A haunted mansion! Of course, we enter to clear it of its hostile inhabitants. There must be loot inside.
The mansion contains enemies of the ghost, wight and ghoul varieties. They come in large quantities, so clearing the mansion is a slow and careful process. The reward is clearly worth it however:
So worth it!
In one of the rooms of the mansion, we also find this picture:
This is one of the places FRAPS played a trick on me, so our righteous dark brethren are the ones collecting the picture here.
This picture will be part of a later quest. We'll hoard it until then.
As a rule, anything you can pick up is worth picking up. Especially if the description says "quest item". M:
Here's the map of the mansion:
1. A book opens the secret door at 2
2. Secret door
3. Portrait, quest item.
This dungeon is much harder than the barrows, but it's also done faster as it's only one map that needs clearing. You just need to show more caution here than in the barrows, as the monsters are packed closer and are more dangerous (due to high numbers of wights in particular).
On the way to the west exit of the overland map, we encounter some new enemies, and a chest with a quite unique content.
Gargoyles are annoying, especially the third tier variety, that is immune to normal weapon damage. The first two tiers however are quite vulnerable to normal weapons, and pose no particular problem. The golem chest is interesting indeed, especially as it rates as a "quest item". We hang on to it, and make our way to the western exit.
Bracada desert is rather uninteresting. It has a load of buildings built on ridges that you can either acces via teleporters or via jump or fly spells. It is also protected by griffins:
Griffins are rather straightforward melee creatures. Whittle them down at a distance, then finish them off if they manage to get close. No extra tricks or special features. They have a somewhat bloated hp pool if compared to other recent enemies, but nothing too extravagant.
One way of navigating the ridges in Bracada is using the teleporters. Most of which are handily labelled.
The main square hosts a lot of teleporters to different parts of the bracada desert. It also holds a single chest with some interesting contents.
Two heads delivered, and the one in the chest called "abbey normal". Loosely disguised referral to frankenstein junior, I pass on this head. In another chest in the desert, one only reachable by flight or jump spell, we find this:
This head looks less angry, so we use this instead. We keep a hold of it until we know what to do with it.
One of the teleporters in the main square leads somewhere interesting.
So collecting the golem parts is the quest leading to sorceror promotion. This takes precendence!
We immediately head off to Erathia, where we pick up some nice quests, (turns out, one of them we already completed, score!).
The arcomage quest is somewhat tedious, as it requires that we win a game at each and every tavern in the game. That one will sit for a while, as some maps are still closed to us. The cavalier quest we've already done (hooray!), and the fedex quest is painfully simple.
Now, let's go visit the dark siders, as the light siders missed out on quite a few screenshots from here on out...
Here they've found some of the next-best ore, and travel to Erathia for the quests mentioned above.
Here they've gone to Tatalia where they find another letter from the Sun Priests, and enter The Tidewater Caverns. These caverns are important, as we'll find a specific piece of loot inside which will mean the promotion of our cleric.
First though, we need to kill a lot of foozles, some being thieves, others being shades and skeletons. Nothing too challenging. The special attack of a thief is a steal attack, where you lose gold instead of health. Meaningless at this point.
The prize in this dungeon is this map however. This is tricky though, as it is not labelled as a quest item, so you might pass it by completely. At some point however, you will be sent to the Tidewater Caverns for this very same map, and if you do not know to search for it, you'll be wise to have wizard eye cast at all times, as this will show you there is treasure to be found behind a nondescript wall. Either this, or a high perception score. Or meta-knowledge.
Anyways, we got the map, and here's a map of the caverns:
1. Hidden chest with map to Evenmorn Islands.
This dungeon is rather easy and straightforward, almost deceptively so, as it is easy to miss out on the secret door leading to the real prize of the dungeon. The map that will allow the promotion of your clerics.
We left the dungeon, and went to Deyja (see the world map on page 1) via Erathia, making a short stop to collect a bounty.
Collecting bounties is only really important for our darksides, but thankfully, they are also the ones that have already gotten started.
When we finally get to Deyja, we seek out the two golem legs we know have been left here. One is at the top right, the other the top left parts of the map:
Not pictured is that we also collected an arm in Tatalia. Even with two parties having gone through the same things, I still miss out on stuff I wanted to show in this LP...
In the northwestern part of Deyja (travelling by coach brings the party to the southeastern part of the map, lucky for us, the overland map is largely populated by harpies and zombies, both monsters that aren't too much of a threat, in particular if they can be engaged at range), we find the cleric trainer.
This is the dude our darksiders want to return to, when they've committed themselves to the dark side. So far though, he will promote both our light side and dark side clerics to priests, unlocking mastery training in all cleric spell spheres. This also unlocks the mighty Protection from Magic spell, in the body sphere..
Aside from finding the two golem legs and getting the priest promotion, we are thus far done with Deyja. We will return later, but for now, we set our sights on the Tularean Forest.
For some reason, goblin males are ridiculously hideous, while goblin female NPCs have somewhat attractive portraits. Racism anyone? I guess it doesn't matter if you're against greenskins.
Anyways, in the Tularean Forest, we pick up a single quest, the head off to Avlee.
In Avlee, we know we need to pick up the last golem piece, one of the arms. Aside from this, there's a quest to pick up, we visit a dungeon, and finish a few quests of our own.. I believe I missed a quest in the Tularean Forest, which told us to visit the Faerie Mound, for promotion as hunters (promotion quest. Seeing as none of our characters are rangers, I guess it's OK I didn't get a screen of the quest screen.
).
The Hall under the Hill houses surprisingly few (and weak) monsters, but getting in is the trick. You'll soon find yourselves inside a small circular room. The tric is to run counter-clockwise until you get to an entrance. Once you crack this "riddle", you're in.
Losing all the food in the party would mean more if the monsters inside actually warranted a night of rest, or food was expensive to come by. As it is, you can easily clear this dungeon without the need to rest, and Avlee has a tavern in which you can buy 14 days worth of food cheaply.
A special prize you can collect here, is this ring:
To get to grandmaster level in any skill, you need at least 10 ranks. This means that we'll get to cast 15 rank spells for only 10 ranks worth of skillpoint investment. Well worth it.
Having visited the Faerie Mound, here's the map:
The green arrow denotes that you need to run counter clockwise here. Aside from this, the dungeon is quite straightforward. You might miss out on number 4, if you cannot find the hidden lock at number 3. Again, either high perception skill or metaknowledge will help you here. M:
After this, we return to bracada by way of the Tularean forest (to turn in a quest):
Back in the Bracada desert, we make a bee-line for the School of Sorcery.
Having put all the parts together, we visit Thomas Grey and have our golem animated and our sorceror promoted to wizard level.
After this, we can chat up our friendly golem.
He isn't big on words however, and is only awaiting a chance to serve in our very own castle.
Before we get along on the main quest line thingie, we chat up an NPC and learn a bit about the light-side capital, Celeste:
Hidden in the skies, only accesible by teleporter. Said teleporter is even broken until a certain turning point in the game has been reached..
Not deterred, our stalwart parties continue onwards to the Red Dwarf Mines.
Inside we find two types of enemies.
Oozes are immune to physical damage, and as such, the Fire Aura spell is incredibly useful here. The oozes aren't the most dangerous opponents however...
The medusae are much more challenging opponents. The ordinary medusa can cause paralysis, tiers two and three can cause stoning. They all have ranged attacks, so the most useful strategy is to use all buffing spells and get in close and personal. I manage to clear the mines with both parties, but the potions found in the dungeons (cure paralysis and stone both) are quite helpful.
We don't have Protection from Magic yet...
In a corner of the mine, we find a scrap of journal. After that, we encounter a slew of statues, all of which animate after we apply a bit of the special salve (which we can't use on party members in case of petrification... it can only be used on the statues, and disappears after all statues are released).
Now, the interesting part is that you can rescue all the dwarves without venturing to level two of these mines and encountering medusae. But a certain gentleman in Avlee let us know, that if we wanted a promotion (from archer to warrior mage), we needed to go deeper into the mine and sabotage the lift, preventing any medusae from making it to the top floor and thereby possibly escaping from the mines.
Don't know if you notice, but all party members are grinning like madmen, and not pictured is the exclamation (let's go!) just voiced over the speakers. Supposedly, tarrying too long will get you stuck. I've never tested this, but wouldn't be too surprised. This is an older CRPG after all.
Here's a pic of the dungeon map:
1. Mechanism for the lift, sabotage with special rope.
2. Dwarf statue. Apply salve, solve quest.
Simple dungeon. If you're prepared, it shouldn't be too tough. But the unwary adventurer could be slaughtered here.
We travel back to the Barrow Downs and tell the d0rf king that we done right by his subjects.
Our dwarven bro warns us that other courts have taken an interest. True to his word, his lackeys fix up our castle.
On the way back to our castle, a random NPC has some insight to offer on the conflict between elves and humans. Think this might impact on our quest?
Back in Harmondale, we deliver the lantern we found in Barrow number 2.
Now, to check out our newly refurbished pad. Or not quite refurbished, but at least cleaned out...
No more refuse piles on the floor, and even the small rooms have been cleared out and are ready for inhabitants. You might also have spotted a jolly golden fellow in the distance. That's our friendly golem, let's chat him up!
Yeah, that's what he says. But we will never have any commands to input to him. If we'd used the Abbey Normal head, he would've attacked us. M:
Now, let's check in to our throne room and meet with the emmisaries.
The elves and humans both wish to meet with our teams, and on their home turf even. Nothing fishy here, eh? There will be choices to be made in the next update.
Finally, having rescued the dwarves from the RDM, new entries have been jotted down in our history book:
So. Even more foreshadowing that we need to pick sides soon. I will not put this up to a vote just yet. Wait for the next update. For now, I'll just entertain some questions, if people have them. Otherwise I hope to get cracking on the coming content soon.
s in it! 
