Dungeon Master: Won

This is it, its the end of the game one way or another. There was no water down here and I'm running low. Its not far from the end of the game, which meant I was either going to win or I was going to be trapped without being able to recover.

A nerve-wracking sight when you're low on supplies

The opening section doesn't really lead anywhere, beyond the area one falls in that revolving trap door. So I begin exploring. Which leads me to a group of the black flame enemies. They're not blocking anything to my knowledge and I am just exploring at this point, so I rush past them. Wouldn't you know it, the stairs to floor 14 are two blocks south of the area I entered?

Reminds me of the Dark Forces dragons, wonder if there's a connection?

Downstairs there's a lot of treasure lying around. Because its a red dragon lair. Naturally, he is hard to kill. He fires off fireballs that take out my two rear characters instantly, and he takes like 3-4 hits to take out a front character. However, he has one big weakness, namely, he turns around very slowly, so the combat waltz is safer here than with other enemies. To a certain extent. He's a slog to kill, and I check a guide to see if this is really what I'm supposed to do...and stumble upon some more worrying information.

An obvious place to put a key

I don't have the key to the door he's guarding, and the key is back on level 7. There's no way forward without it. Which means I have to reload the earliest save I have and work my way back up to the latest water fountain, which is level 9. I also figure out that these skeleton keys I have are supposed to be used on the skulls I keep seeing around. This saves me some time, though I still have to repeat a bit of game in order to get back to where I left off. The 11th floor is just filled with oh, so fun fights. Including ones with respawning spiders and three suits of armor.

A crueler game would make the door trick not work here

After that floor, I have another RA key, which means I can return to the Tomb of the Firestaff. This finally allows me to get into it, or at least some kind of forechamber. Its pretty cool being here...although there are a lot of locked doors I don't have the key for...and rock golems. I hate rock golems. I encounter two behind doors I can close, but I doubt my luck will hold with them. They're brutal to fight. They don't attack as fast as the suits of armor, but they take as much damage and deal out plenty.

I'm not sure these words mean what they think they mean, but whatever

There's only one locked door I have the key for, and its one with a warning on it. Its got supplies in it. Some empty flasks, which I make room for, and some scrolls. They're just telling me to maintain balance, unfortunately, I was spoiled that the game would involve capturing both Lord Chaos and Lord Order. I don't think I mentioned the backstory much since it doesn't matter much in gameplay. Then there's some more of the room, leading to a key hidden in ash, and a secret room with more papers and another key. Outside of something telling me to use Zokathra to open "amalgam" to get the staff, its just more stuff telling the player what to do.

The biggest fight of Gothmog and Syra's life

That one key gets me pretty sweet gear, and the other opens the door to the Firestaff. Its a long walk to it...a long walk. Once at the end, there's another stone golem, unmoving. There's a locked door that I have the key for, and then the Firestaff. Taking it awakens the golem, but I run back through the long length of corridor. Guess that's what that was for. However, I don't have any more keys, and I know I missed the key, so I must have missed a switch or a hidden door. One hidden switch and long hallway later, I'm fighting another golem. This leads to a set of stairs down, directly to the floor above the dragon. Which meant I had to search again for a missing switch, which I found in the last long hallway.

Fighting the dragon is long, and I don't think the ful potions did anything. Seems a shame I kept them around so long for no purpose. He's just a big slab of meat to move around, literally, he drops a ton of meat. Have to switch out my mages to the front, so my fighters don't get tired. After a good chunk of time, he's dead. I run around checking the stuff on the ground. Some coins, but no great horde, and a key under a pile of ash. Don't tell me I wasted my time searching for the other key? I did.

Not the most impressive dark lord I've seen

Past the door, I can reach the power gem rather quickly, just a few paces in front of where I left off. The only other thing on this floor is a resurrection chamber locked by a gold coin. And each time I leave it, the door closes. Oh, well, haven't felt the desire to deal with that, and I doubt I'll need it now.

That would have been a question if the game didn't tell me

Lord Chaos isn't really a fight, more of a puzzle. He doesn't take damage, and the Firestaff is used to capture him, not kill him. You have to get it so he can't teleport away, which means using the Firestaff to create four boxes around the area he's in. You can also use walls. From there, Lord Order pops up, but you can fairly quickly fuse him, since he teleports exactly where Chaos was. (perhaps this is automatic) Then the Grey Lord returns and all is well. Then it shows my character and everything just sort of ends. That mostly ends well. Not everything went as well as it should, but that's more related to the information I was told more than anything else.

This Session: 2 hours

Final Time: 15 hours 40 minutes

Dungeon Master: Dwindling Supplies

Level 10, which is just about where you'd think the game would end. Its business as usual from a playing perspective, another message on the wall saying turn back. In a room with no doors or anything, just a hallway around a central pillar and the stairs back up. So I have to check the walls...only, no, the puzzle is considerably different than that. Moving around in the room teleports you to a similar, but different room. I don't really know the specifics of it, but I have to use two keys in two different versions of the room. This opens a secret wall. I know this even before seeing it, since the wasp enemies suddenly start appearing.

I get a panicked moment, trying to find someplace safe on this level to rest. The wasps aren't hard so long as I can throw a fireball at them. Actually fighting them in physical combat is a losing proposition, since they dodge well and I don't seem to deal much damage. Oh, and the poison. I luckily find a sealable room soon enough. With a new sword. Well, the Vorpal Blade is nice, but I don't think I'll need that one anymore. I continue exploring, encountering another gremlin item-stealing monster. It startles me, and I in a panic slap Z twice...which with my new sword summons a fireball.

The north area leads to a cross hallway with three locked doors. There's a key there that might open one of the doors, but I decide to chance it and go to the southern area first. One I avoided the first time, owing to the suspicious design of it. At the end of the hallway with these suspicious holes, is a sword. Its not that hard to figure this is a trap, but it turns out to be just a poison trap. So I take it and walk out, until my game crashes near the door. That's a sign for me that this sword is not worth it.
 

Back at the crossroads, I chose the west door. This leads to a throng of blue goblin-like monsters. Holy crap, just so many monsters. It practically turns into your standard hack and slash, except there's this blob creature roaming around. He automatically dodges ranged attacks, and after several fireballs shows no signs of being hurt. I have no idea if its even possible to hit him. The door trick doesn't even do anything to him. The damn thing puts me in an awkward position should I have to return this way.

Unlike on previous floors, it seems the choice of door is exclusive, as I reach the area I think connects the three back together. Must be some kind of treasure there. The whole floor has been a letdown since that opening section. And it doesn't get any better, as behind two gates I see more wasps. They're just so annoying, I opened up the gate to take one group out and in the femtosecond they were in they poisoned my two fighters. And then there's just the stairs down. There's still more on the level, but it feels really disappointing. There's a room containing copper coin slots. From those I get bomb potions, which are yet more items I'm saving for boss fights.
But there is one more area. A hallway with "Enlarge my view", written on it. Pressure plates that teleport me back block my path. At first I think there's some walkable wall here, and there is, but that only leads to Boots of Speed, which I assume increase speed. But soon enough I find something on the wall to press, revealing the whole thing to be a fairly mundane puzzle giving me another key.

Level 11, after the last floor, I hope there's something more interesting here. There's this thing, which is another creature that can't be hit by physical attacks and dodges all ranged attacks. Only this one casts fireball and poison cloud. Good...just what I needed. And I left behind the Vorpal Blade somewhere and I haven't a clue on how to find it again. And when you cast the destroy non-material creatures spell they need to be in a specific state or it won't do anything.

Continuing inward, the level gets...interesting. I bit it to a combination of some weird spider things and the non-material one. So I reload, and the spider thing is alone. Interesting...kind of. There are an extensive amount of safe areas too, in which I can safely hide myself in to recharge mana. They have food in them, but my more pressing concerns are towards water. Still I continue exploring until I have tried every key on every locked door I can find, and tried to bash down every door that didn't have any way of opening it. Took a bit of searching the walls to find something and even then it was just some silly staff.

My thoughts turn to the pressure plate I stepped over as I walked into this floor. Aha, I think, this must activate something, like a door. As I begin walking around to see what it changed, I fall down a floor. Yes, I went to all this trouble just to accidentally reactivate a pit trap. Invisible one too, meaning this was especially devilish. The way back up is guarded by some sort of flame creature. It stays in place, and doesn't hit me with ranged attacks, unlike so many other characters. So, that's out.

It takes some time, but I eventually find a switch on the wall that I missed. What does that open? A door inside a big chamber, which reveals a walking suit of armor. He's pretty tough, shrugging off physical attacks quite well. He drops a complete suit of plate armor when I eventually manage to kill him. He was guarding a key...but wait, it opens a room with another suit of armor. So instead of fighting him, I cleverly have the armor fall down a level. Then I check where he was guarding. Nothing. Oh, don't tell me he had something in his inventory? One long fight later, and I have another key.

The section that key unlocks seems innocent enough...at first. Long corridors with nothing much inside. But then there's another spider-thing. And then there are two suits of armor. Which turns out to be the hardest, most annoying part of the game. Because they just eat up damage and it seems like they can hit me in melee before I can hit them. I was already running low on water, but this section just hit the oh crap threshold. Out of water, and the nearest known water fountain is many floors higher.
And then it gets worse. The spider-things respawn, constantly. But I manage to finally kill them all and break through. The empty hallway afterward doesn't make me feel any better. There's a fork in the hallway that doesn't matter much right now. To the south, three doors, with a thing on the wall saying something about cowards. Walking into a room and then out causes all the doors to open, but you can close them pretty quickly. To the west, a pair of non-material beasts. They kill me the first time, which is just great. But I manage to make my way past them eventually.

The wonderful situation my party finds itself in is compounded by a...rotating pit, I guess. And those non-material things can get past the closed door, which just increases my problems. There's another key, and another fork, one of the paths lead directly downstairs. And after a brief jaunt downstairs I know that's not yet for me. And the other path leads to nothing. And I check to make sure of that. Which puts me in a bad position. Okay, time to look at someone else's map. Where downstairs is there a water fountain? Nowhere. Somewhere I missed on this floor? Nope. The nearest water fountain is a few floors back, and certain death fighting my way back there. I may be screwed here.

This Session: 3 hours

Total Time: 13 hours 40 minutes

Dungeon Master: Put it Back

I make sure I have as much food as I can before proceeding back down. It'll be greatly inconvenient to return here later. By the same token, I make sure Sonja's priest skills increase. Since Zed is acting as a second wizard, it only makes sense to have a second priest. Especially since Syra is running out of mana quite quickly now. I need my party to get their mana up, and getting some points in underused skills is a good way of helping with that.

That's one hell of a mustache

Level 8, or there abouts, starts off seemingly just an enclosed small area. A scroll telling me how to cast lightning bolt, which requires all 4 runes. But writing on one of the walls helpfully implies that one wall is false. Inside are the usual new enemies, giant rats, weird rock rat things, and a gnome wizard. He shoots fireballs. Two drop food. Making my trip back up mildly pointless. Its fitting into the usual routine I have when things are getting too easy. Map some, fight any enemies, retreat, rest, repeat.

Thrown items seem to go the same way 100% of the time, making for amusing visuals like this

But then it gets...interesting. Another set of stairs up. An area I missed one floor up? Not unreasonable, given that area's potential for undiscovered secrets. But no, its just a closed off area containing some skeletons guarding some food. Then after a near death encounter with some gnome wizards, I find the stairs down. Its not actually the stairs down, its just an area underneath a closed off room. There's a level next to that room which opens a pit trap. I assumed I had screwed myself slightly, but no. This gives me even more food and a green gem, along with a note telling me to put it back. Like...in the chest or somewhere else? No matter, I can take anything the game dishes out at me.
Its eventually pretty clear that I'm missing something. Not a hidden button or a hidden wall, because I go through that pretty quickly. Maybe I'm supposed to toss the gem back in that room or put it down in front of it? I can't get in there yet. I put it down, nothing, I throw it and all I get is walking back down to it. There's even a pattern to throwing it, as you have to throw it through the grates. But even at the farthest back you can be that still doesn't work. It just won't go on the spot the chest was. It takes a while before I finally realize, wait, what about that one staircase up? That had a hole in it. And that hole leads down above the exact spot the chest originally was.
 

Rarely have my TPK been in such a swift fashion

It worked. Next is a puzzle involving pressure plates linked to a fireball thrower. The objective is to weigh down the pressure plates with items instead of trying to rush past them. From here there are two paths. To the north, a few enemies, effectively just guarding some food. Man, I really miscalculated there. Those gnome wizard dudes are tougher than I thought, because it seems like every encounter with one forces me to stop to rest. Thankfully they don't seem to be respawning. I do find something called "corbamite" though, which seems to be a Star Trek reference. I'm guessing its going to be useful soon enough.

In-universe, what kind of sicko creates rats of this size?

Sure enough, there's an alcove in front of a door with a message next to it, "Lighter than air", as the corbamite has no weight. I ignore it at first, since its not the only path forward, and this locked door seems the obvious way down. RPG logic, ignore that, look for loot. There really isn't any. I do find a big room full of the big rats, which in theory respawns, like the mushroom ones earlier. But that seems strange since there are regenerating rats near the stairs up anyway. Not really much of a concern. The corbamite door, on the other hand, opens up the stairs down, and another key. A key I know opens another door in the firestaff area. Which I decide to use since I'm smart.
I still need another key, and all I really did was frustrate myself running up and down the stairs twice, reload a half a dozen times, and generally waste time.

Its really hard to show this in screenshot form

Level 9 starts off with a monster in my face. Its a skeleton. I'm giving this game too much credit as a RPG for not criticizing this. Or maybe just no load time not criticizing this. However, I will criticize the font on the wall messages. "Beware my twisted humor. The Deceiver. The Snake." Which in this font is hard to decipher. It doesn't click for me until I start looking at the level. Oh...no, a series of alternating pillars. I imagine the idea is to find the right path...but I know this is going to be twisted.

Doesn't really convey the true terror of a scorpion this size, but what does?

Its not, its just go all the way down, then up, then down. The tricky thing about this is the game stuffs beholders in my path. Then two locked doors, and a note on the wall saying to pick a door. Knights and knaves, without the knights and knaves. Interesting. I choose the southern door, inside is a scorpion. It hits like a dump truck, but at least it didn't poison me. My party is dead, but at least they're not poisoned. I'm forced to retreat from this fight, as its very hard. Hopefully he doesn't respawn. Its bad enough that those beholders respawn, forcing me into an awkward position.
After a couple of attempts, I kill the scorpion and make it through the area. Curious, its led behind the starting area, to a pressure plate. Is this a one-way path? Is it a trick? I found another key for the door I missed, but it seems it could also be used here. Interesting, making that path optional. Which means I should check that other door. And its gremlins again. I'm getting sick of them.

Its really hard to show this in action

There's not really anything there except another key. Not really surprising that they didn't have anything interesting, there was just as much chance of heading there first. Back at the rejoining of paths, the door leads to some pressure plates in front of a wall scrawling that just says zoom. What does that mean? You get teleported along a series of pressure plates, around and around, like a weird, noisy train. Getting off is a pain, if you don't time it right, you're going to hit a wall. Those sick developers even put some food down next to a teleporter, only that one takes you back to the start of the level.

The most dangerous hunt

These big, open monster filled arenas are starting to get me down. Its one thing that they tend to have monsters that can stop me dead, but its another that they have those AND these gremlins. This section is interesting because you have a safe area you can stay in with a door you can close. Beholders can open them, which makes them first targets. If a scorpion tries to get into the door, and a gremlin is behind him, he's stuck, which means he's trapped as the door is closing down on him. This means you're actually just as likely to die in this situation than if you didn't use the door. Meanwhile, the gremlins are a pain in the butt. Oh man, gremlins are a pain in the butt.
This brings in a curious pattern for the rest of the level. A gremlin appears, which causes me to chase him, which leads me to a scorpion, which causes me to retreat to assess, whether or not I killed the gremlin or not. Then solving both issues, and finding a pair of open doors, and repeating the whole process. I end this entry after dealing with a trio of scorpions, only to discover they're just guarding a whole bunch of nothing. Well, the stairs down, but otherwise nothing. There's a magnifying glass, and a button which creates a teleportation field. Which gives me a bunch of confidence that I have to walk back here later. That's just going to be great if it ends up being true.

This Session: 3 hours 00 minutes

Total Time: 10 hours 40 minutes

Dungeon Master: Chasing Gremlins

Last session, I had finished by getting some more food, and then returning to the area with all the skeletons and beholders. I'm not sure how many enemies are in there, but they do respawn, making any trips back potentially annoying. This turns out to be not much of a problem since there's no path out of there except where I came from. I guess that third key was needed after all.

So the left path. The first thing I see here is another key slot. Fortunately, there's another door past that, an open one leading to a pressure plate. Hmm, I wonder what this does. Oh, no, the way back is locked...wait a minute, how do I get back? Well, there are two doors out of here, but one is locked via key, and the other has a teleporter in front of it. The teleport shifting in and out. This is actually seemingly impossible to get past, which is just great.
I should explain the issue. Dungeon Master has great responses to the first button press, works lovely, smoothly. The second button press, is delayed, can't be canceled and generally wouldn't be accepted if the game wasn't that good otherwise. I think it might be functioning on a turn system like a proper Dungeons and Dragons video game. This creates a weird artificial difficulty in that I'm not sure if its possible to get through this. Which turns this into an unwinnable situation.

I suspect I need another key, as I have two key slots I don't have one for. It takes a while for me to figure out. My natural starting point are the areas in the safe section of the map. Checking walls, seeing if I get another key by inserting another gold coin in that one slot. Turns out that putting the item in the the fourth riddle opens up a niche, with another key. Only that doesn't work on the door forward, just on a door with a single item in it. An item I have no use for. Turns out my first plan of bruteforcing my way through the teleporter is the right way, though it could be that the session I was on was making my life hell.
After solving this puzzle, the way back is opened by a pressure plate, making the situation less sticky. The area I found has a lot of paths, some quite closed off to me, others opening seemingly endlessly. There's a puzzle involving a pressure plate that activates a teleporter on its own spot. No idea how to solve that one yet. There's a teleporter, guarded by skeletons, that I'm holding off on exploring until the rest of the area is clear. The other stairs down is found in this section, its opened by a hidden switch. And it, itself opens on the pit trap maze, that very, very awful one. There's a particularly cruel option that's actually locked off, containing a quartet of bees.

That's actually about it for this level. There's nothing much to talk about after this, just hordes of skeletons and beholders. A lot of them are respawning too, I died a few times in this section thanks to some popping up behind or to the sides of me. A good chunk of these areas are off to the side though. Most of them don't seem to be worth the effort, except for experience fodder, but one has the Vorpal Blade...which doesn't seem to be doing any more damage than a regular rapier. So, down to level 6, if I'm not mistaken. The Tomb of the Firestaff, which is the item I've been looking for all this time, which I forgot to mention since I didn't read the backstory. That seems rather quick, and there are stairs down too.

Well, there's a reason for that, it needs more keys than I have. Even a hidden note mentioning hinting at that. Feels weird having to leave a level before finishing it, but I guess the rest of the keys are down somewhere. Gonna be a lot longer than planned if I have to go back up.
Downstairs it takes a few seconds for me to be glad I got that Vorpal Blade. It might not do any more damage, but it has a disrupt function that takes out non-material beings. Without that an already messy area would turn into a nightmare. The second you walk off the stairs there's a pressure plate that opens a pit in front of the stairs, which I didn't realize at first and fell. And in addition to the ghosts there are skeletons. This whole area is just a mess. Since I have to stop mapping half the time to fight another monster. Its big too, You can't see one wall from another wall. Also there are things that steal items. Thankfully, it just stole a shield, but I hate these things.

And it just keeps going. Its only a bad thing from a mapping perspective, but this is by far the biggest open area I've seen here. And it will be, because its seemingly the entire level. There's a big section that's just open space, only a key, which is fun if you don't find it. Oh, and in addition to all the monsters in this wide open space, that constantly respawn, there are also things that shoot fireballs randomly. Woe be to the person mapping this out who makes a mistake. I double back to make sure there aren't anymore missing things in the walls. Lead to a few puzzles that are more annoying than fun, but I got a sweet sword out of it. If I missed anything here, well, that's going to be a fun trip. Meanwhile, I have to go back up, again, because guess what? I'm running out of food and water. I like this game, but this is becoming more of a liability than a boon.
Before I end let me talk about some of the aspects I've been neglecting.
The RPG aspect of the game is a bit simplistic. You have attributes, like strength, dexterity and wisdom, and some of these govern health and mana. Then you have skills, which you increase by using them, there are four, fighter, ninja, (ranged weapons, and using ranged weapons in melee curiously) wizard and priest. These in turn increase attributes. Ending this session I decided to increase Gothmog's fighter, since he's been over draining his stamina constantly, and increase Sonja's magic skills somehow. I haven't managed to increase that, as without any magic she has 2 mana, although the Vorpal Sword increases that to 6. She can only cast one spell with 2 mana, and that still requires a rest between runes. Either way she hasn't managed to actually succeed in a spell yet.
Speaking of runes, I've settled into a pattern of mostly just using fire magic and healing potions. You use mana as you cast runes, so you can store them in case of an emergency. Or if you want to unleash 4 fireballs in rapid succession. Priest and wizard spells are seperated by the element rune, but I could be wrong.
The party system is interesting, if slightly useless for its purpose. You can move characters into any position, back left, front right and so forth. This actually has some reasoning to it, as characters can attack enemies depending on where they are. Though preference is given to front-facing enemies, and spells are always forward.

This Session: 2 hours

Total Time: 7 hours 40 minutes

Dungeon Master: Eye of the...oh, Wait...

Floor 3 started off with a few small but heavy encounters. New here was a giant wasp, which I didn't notice until he had me trapped in a small section of the map. His sprite is deceptively small, but he packed a mean punch, including poison. Then after that, for a good chunk of the level there was nothing. This was suspicious, but I didn't notice anything there. I'm not sure if there really wasn't anything there or if I just missed something.

Unfortunately, I didn't take a picture of the ghost, so here's more rock monsters

Then came the first real challenge. A ghost. An actual, classic-style ghost. No using swords or arrows against this guy, and believe me I tried. Magic goes straight through him too. So this is either a puzzle, unlikely, or I need to do something else. I know the spell system is designed in such a way that if you have a vague idea of what you're doing you can do other spells...but my idea depends on whether or not fireball actually works like the typical DnD fireball. It works...sort of. Its very easy for my wizard to run out of mana casting a fireball above the weakest level, which presences problems on multiple levels. The first is I don't know if that did anything. It goes past the ghost like usual, but it doesn't seem to have done any damage. The second is I don't know how to get better mana consumption. It seems the characters are quite strictly limited in their stats, and the low starting mana seems to be all I'm going to get.
At which point I realized I was screwed in some way. Turns out that is a legitimate way of dealing with the ghosts, but that only deals 25% damage. There's a weaken non-material beings spell. Checking the spell's words, I think I could figure it out given enough time. In theory there might have been a different way of dealing with the ghost, as there's a gold slot that summons a field nearby.

Joy, more worms

But surprisingly, that's not the end of my troubles, I find a pack of worms soon after. They are not easy enemies to kill. I found a way to sort of deal more effective damage against them...but its slightly slower. Characters don't get just one attack, they get several, including a parry function. My two melee fighters currently have a generic attack and a melee function. The melee consistently deals 30+ damage but takes a while to recharge. Its extremely draining, but I win. I go to retrieve my thrown weapons...and there are more worms. Huh. I retreat, get my health and mana back up, and return. Another pack dead. Then there's another pack of worms. Its not that they keep respawning, its that they respawn so fast. At this point I'm running low on water, and the only way to get more is to trek up several dungeon levels and then return here. Hopefully there's another fountain down here somewhere, because its going to get annoying if I have to trek through this level again.
 

Here are Zed's attacks, a light attack, I guess a block function, and a strong attack

Once I picked up my thrown weapons its fairly easy to get around the worm spawner. There's even a convenient room to rest in nearby. And a door after this area to prevent the worms from sneaking in. The rest of the level proceeds smoothly. There's another spawner, this time for the mushrooms, but that's not quite as fast as the worms to respawn. There are some more items, most notably more potion vials. The game is getting too generous with those, as my priestess is already out of space, and I'm not about to put potions in a chest, but I guess it isn't a bad thing...yet. Zed gets a rapier, which gives him a better low damage, but I'm not seeing as good highs.

Couldn't he just jump down the pit at any time?

Well it turns out that was a bad thing, because not long after I find a bow. Previously my priestess has been throwing arrows, because that's entirely logical. This feels like the fantasy equivalent of getting a shotgun. (I mean, it is in Heretic) But interestingly enough, I find a mummy across a pit, with the message above. Is this a puzzle or just for my viewing pleasure? I'm not getting anything back if I attack him, but he's standing on a pressure plate. After further exploring the area, I decide, hey, why not? That kills it, and opens a wall behind him, in addition to creating text on the right wall: "You will regret that". Oh, I get it, since they're going to be connected to the door I didn't bash open a little way down?
This gives me ample opportunity to test the bow. Its not that much better than throwing them as of yet, but I figure that's just because my two mages are only apprentice ninjas, assuming ninja governs bows and throwing weapons. Curiously, the rapier does much more damage than the axe Sonja had. I also figure that I'm supposed to use some of these items I don't know what they're for in an unused slot on the character equipment.

Gee, I wonder where this leads

As soon as I step down the stairs to the next level, I see a blessed water fountain. Well-done game, you knew exactly when to do that. I see another, and another, and then a stairs back up. Huh. That leads to a pit, which is...interesting. And by interesting, I mean it takes you exactly in front of the stairs up. It gets more interesting, because pretty quickly I see the way down. Is this level optional? I mean, its obviously not optional if I want a fighting chance against later enemies, but nevertheless.

Hydra because it has many heads

My mind is doubtful towards that. Continuing to explore this level, which is 4 or so, I come across another Tricks 'n' Traps-style section. This one says treasure rooms. Really ought to be a better name for that than referencing Doom again. There were monsters at the hub, but hopefully they're non-respawning. There was a new one, not a hard enemy by any means, but hard enough should I come back nearly dead.
Starting from the west, there's a teleporter maze. Ah, teleporter mazes. How I hate you. I especially hate it here because I'm not used to mapping these things myself, I just brute-force these. And it wasn't really worth it. I get another gold coin, which is starting to be a problem, another gem...wait, that's gotta be something important. Not liking the transfer value yet, I used three poison potions to get there. Turns out the weird snake thing, a hydra I guess, has ranged poison attacks. I'm getting poisoned darts, but I'm not sure how well they work yet. They've only hit the hydras and I doubt poison attacks work well against poison monsters.

This is always the "fun" kind of maze

Going clockwise, now north, a pit trap maze. At which point I hoped that would be the only kinds of maze I found, heaven forbid there's a regular maze...or a spinner maze. You go on a tile and trap doors open, and you're supposed to take a specific pattern. I'm not worried about falling as much as I'm worried about falling into enemies. Speaking of which, while attempting to figure out how long the room was, I was attacked by a giant dragonfly. This continues, and I also discover that I messed up my map. Huzzah. It feels like there are respawning dragonflies, which is annoying, but not ruinous. Until you factor in trying to navigate this confusing place. There are two exits out of here and while one is easy enough to get through, the other is by no means close to obvious.

As you can see, Syra has her hands full

The dragonflies are tough, but are like glass, a little bit of damage, compared to other enemies, and they go down quickly. They can kill you if you aren't careful. They're not truly deadly on their on, though they are fast, but in combination with this section's intentionally screwy design, they're not easy to fight. My mage has been able to consistently start off fights with a prepared fireball, but sometimes that combined with 80 points of damage, isn't enough. I'm just going to point out that the east door has nothing really of value in there, its the west you want. There's nothing really valuable here, I already have way too many potions, and the game is just handing them to me like they're candy. Fun fact, the game doesn't include a FUL, or fire bomb potion, because the designers were worried about making unwinnable situations. Which doesn't make sense since you could screw yourself on poison bombs, and I've already got an inventory full of potions. Real worries now include there being multiple stairs down, which makes me think the stairs down is as much a trap back at the start as the unusual stairs up.

Open spaces make me nervous, you don't know how big it is or what's there

So backtracking, I needed to do that anyway, takes me to a riddle room. Is this a treasure room too? Who knows. They're not hard riddles, I got two of them straight off, and the third I got after some thinking. I suspect this might just be because I already had those items.
Returning to the mini-hub, I go east. Unsurprisingly, its another maze-like area, surprisingly, its weird. The room is 6x7 tiles in size, and the way it works is that on the fourth tile you teleport back to the second. Its got a really clever trick in getting past it, which I liked more than the other two areas so far. Beyond that it didn't offer anything interesting or helpful to the puzzles, unless a staff is all and nothing.

You probably shouldn't be poking holes in walls since there's more likely to be creatures than switches

Finally, south, which compared to the other areas doesn't seem very interesting at first. Then the concept of the area is made clear, hidden buttons. It first came to me in one of the smaller rooms, one with a gate. That contained a cross, another gem, and a mace. The mace doesn't seem to be doing any more damage than the axe, so I dumped it not long after. Not long after, there is a series of these hidden buttons, revealing a treasure cache. That's it for this level, surprisingly enough, I guess I have to figure out that final riddle.

Bright yellow is a bold color choice though

I'd like to say I figured it out, but I really only used items until something happened. Made sense afterward, so I feel silly. Didn't even need to put down all four items, but since one of them was the bow my priestess was using, I'm glad they had that small amount of mercy. This level seems to be increasing the amount of puzzles tenfold. In the level? Puzzles. Enter a room, there's another puzzle. While there are indeed monsters on this floor, now featuring beholders, they're small potatoes compared to the last floor's enemies and while they do damage to all party members, I'm not having the slightest amount of trouble killing them one by one. Each room here gives me an iron key for figuring out the puzzle, and while two doors were easy enough for me to figure out, the third was surprisingly difficult and I couldn't crack it.

To the city of refuge?

Fortunately, only two doors are necessary. But after that comes a note on a fork in the dungeon, telling me to turn away and run. If I go to the right, there's a message saying he doesn't like to be ignored, and the other just has coward. That doesn't really matter, since it leads to a locked door I don't have the key for. To the right seems to be quite an ample supply of monsters, including an encounter with two beholders. Surprisingly, not hard. What really causes me trouble are the skeletons, of which there are many. They all have swords and shields, and they drop both always. There are four to a group, and I've taken out two groups. That's a lot of swords and shields to shift through just to get my thrown weapons off the ground.
This game is really picking up. The puzzle aspects of this game are really what sell it to me. Combat is fun too, but against those worms man, there was a good chance this game could have been given up there and then. Its a funny thing, its the exact thing I would criticize Doom's nightmare mode for, having too much meatshields in the way. Nothing is new under the sun.

This Session: 2 hour 20 minutes

Total Time: 5 hours 40 minutes

Dungeon Master: Wine of Fate

The collection of challenge rooms start off this session being disappointing. First, I was had to wade through two encounters only to discover that they were guarding a door I had no clue how to open. Fair enough. Then the next room over was a series of blocks, the first appearance of spinners. These were more annoying than dangerous, probably because there weren't any enemies there. The end goal was to find a switch on the western wall, which revealed a gold key. I assume that opens the big door near the start, but would anyone really do that before checking the rest of the rooms.

Then, things get interesting, with an area called Hit and Run. The intended idea is to press a button, rush into a room that opens up at the end of a long and twisty hallway. In practice, this particular bit is too easy. I went past the point I was supposed to go to reach a pit, a pressure plate and another button. Thinking I was to use the original button to keep the pit closed, I spent several attempts trying to think along these lines. The death screen is just a blank screen with THE END on it in fancy text. No, the real pathway forward is to press the new button, and throw something into the teleport field it creates. This gets me another gold key...huh...interesting, surely there is a purpose for this. Because of all this I end up not filling in this section of the map, though that seems easily fixable if absolutely necessary.

Combat in particular continues to be troublesome. Every fight seems to require the utmost precision, preparation in the event of poison, and post-combat clean-up, to pick up the items I have thrown or otherwise dropped. Sometimes these processes are stopped by yet another monster, potentially requiring me to just retreat. This is making me nervous about the game in general. I can handle this now, but with the incredibly rare stat increases along with the gradually reducing food items, for how long?
Well, the answer as I continued to fight through the level was, pretty well. At some point I got another sword which seems to have solved my problems. The overall perceived enemy strength remains the same, though through being spread out through two or three groups of enemies. I'm not so much combat waltzing, but attacking, rushing back, and repeating. This doesn't work perfectly all the time, hence the odd retreat. My time is slightly wasted by having to redraw my map, thanks to making a few mistakes in the early part.

Areas here after aren't terribly interesting, maybe a token puzzle or hidden switch. Its mostly fighting. One area in particular has respawning enemies, which I don't view as a bad thing, though don't go assuming my opinions on them have changed in actual FPSes. I'm wasting more or less the same resources I am by just walking around up here as I am fighting. Its not even hiding any secrets, I'm just tapping walls for no reason. That's how you discover fake walls, by tapping them. I've also attempted to bash doors via attacking, but it doesn't seem like my party is doing anything. Speaking of which, magic is proving to be very slow increasing indeed. The fellow I'm using as a wizard functions exclusively as a walking torch and my cleric burns out of mana after a few potions. Heaven help me if I forget which sequence is for the cure poison spell, or I have to rest.

 

Interestingly, rooms in the area continue to hide things from me. A few of these are solved by pressing buttons I missed or by figuring out that the unlocking spell is a ranged attack. This finishes off this section with 5 keys. Which is interesting since there are 6 rooms. Is this a trick? No, I only needed 4 keys, the 5th was for another door containing some poison monsters and a nice piece of armor.

The third floor throws some interesting changes in combat. We still have the old rock poison snail things, but now we have poison worms. These lovely fellows are actually difficult to kill in one sitting, even with an axe I found down here. Good thing there's enough room for waltzing or I'd never win. That one sitting thing isn't a joke either, Zed and Sonja nearly ran out of stamina fighting the damn things. They drop worm rings, sort of like the mushrooms did, but its hardly satisfying to eat. A couple of interesting things popped up in the brief period I spent on this floor. Doors can definitely be bashed down, there was a hint next to a door and the axe. The other was a multi-part puzzle. There's a button on the floor, because of game logic, I can't weigh this down, nor can I rush to the door it opens. The solution? There's a button on the wall that teleports you a square to the right, thus reducing the amount of squares I need to rush.

This Session: 1 hour

Total Time: 3 hours 20 minutes

Dungeon Master: Terror

It sure is nice to look forward to playing a game again. Dungeon Master, if not the most ideal title to play on a blog relating to FPS games, is certainly the most fun I've had in a while. I've definitely curious as to how this is going to go on the ol' rating system. This level starts off in an unfortunate position. Behind a door I just opened is a pit, closed by a pressure plate. Unfortunately I've been operating under my standard principle in games without money and limited inventory space, dump crap I don't need. Turns out I should have been keeping the useless swords and armors I've been finding around, just for pressure plates. I don't know precisely how I'm going to handle this, but I'm definitely going to keep something.

Water and food continues to be abundant. Its more reasonable to say the hunger meters function more as a soft time limit than anything else as of now. I might have to start putting items down if this keeps up. I would like more than one water skin though. I have to refill at fountains, and while there are plenty of them around, it is annoying not being able to drink straight from the source. What's potentially more pressing is potions. I can regenerate health via resting, but I'm sitting on some untapped magic potential. I don't know what it takes to cast a healing spell, but I think I've figured out how to make a healing potion...but I didn't get a vial until later. This is funny, usually that's not a problem.

Mapping continues to be fun. I haven't actually had to use it to recall the location of an item yet, but its cut back on backtracking significantly. It either isn't helping with secret doors or the game just hasn't had any yet. I can only see buttons and switches if I face the wall directly, at least that's the theory. In practice I haven't seen anything. Just puzzles. They're all fairly simple on the face of it, but they're effective. One puzzle, though they tell you, has you drop an item in order to turn off a pit. I think they give you the item back too, but its cool.

I had my first real combat experience in this session. A quartet of mummies. The bastards surprised me. I had the space and I had the time to throw all my rear row's weapons at them. To little effect. Thus began a terrifying few minutes. I tried combat waltzing, that is attacking, sidestepping, turning, repeat until dead. I don't know if that's the correct order, but if it was I failed to perform even those sometimes. I missed a lot. I think this nearly killed Zed Duke of Banville and Sonja She-Devil...and my reward is nothing but progression forward.

Stat and skill progression is slow, it took me quite a while to get anything. You don't really have any way of figuring out how much progress is between the current level and the next level. That means you don't really know when you should get another level. Equipment seems to be stalling, but I'm still on level 1, so its not that big a deal. I've got a maximum dealt of 20 points of damage which isn't a good time with the monsters I've been encountering. Their stats have gone sharply from a joke to every encounter being dangerous.

I've found a few interesting items though. First, was a chest, which I couldn't figure out how to get the contents of. Nah, just put it in your hand. This gives me a little more room, for now anyway. By the same token, I also figured out how to get stacked ranged attacks, as there's a slot for those. Next, were cubes, which cast "frozen life", which seems like it could be interesting in combat. I'll have to see if it does anything of value on the next floor, since I found the stairs down. I have no idea if I've missed some secret walls, but I know two paths are blocked to me for some reason, and I have no way of getting past them. Perhaps its just a puzzle I missed, they have been clever.

Level 2 starts off with a really long hallway. The first feature here is a freaking secret button. Eight whole blocks of nothing. I'm lucky I found that, otherwise it would have been even longer. The secret area this opens up is interesting. There's a timed barrier that teleports you away if you touch it. Behind it is a [item]. I don't think it was that impressive, but whatever. The main hallway continues into a locked door, this time with a gold plated lock, and a side hallway leading to many others. Its one of those rooms where there are lots of little challenges, best exemplified by the Greece section in Tomb Raider. Wait, Tomb Raider, is this a British thing? Huh.

I open up my first door, and am greeted by the actual hardest enemies yet. By the time I think to do the combat waltz, Zed is nearly dead again, and I have to retreat. Its interesting how despite not intending to do so, each fight is as pulse-pounding as one I'd get in a survival horror game. So much for my early jokes about combat. Its not even the only combat in this section, there's a second one with a single shell monster, who can poison me. Good thing I know how to cure poison, because that could be disastrous otherwise. What were they guarding? Well, a treasure chest, also hidden behind a puzzle, which has a mirror in it. That means one of two things, this is a puzzle item, or this is useless. Remember, I have no way of knowing what items actually do without looking it up. I used these cube things I had, and I don't know what they did.

This Session: 1 hour 20 minutes

Total Time: 2 hours 20 minutes