Part 8: Putting All Our Eggs in One Basket

EOTB 6: Putting All Our Eggs in One Basket



New level, new party. The south entrance to level 6 goes right into a door that can only be opened from the other side. We'll need to go through the teleporter puzzle in level 5 for the north entrance.



There, we come across this door with pressure plates on each side. You must place a weapon on each one to open the door. Bows and slings won't work for this. After that, it stays open permanently, so you can take the weapons back.



The main enemy of this level is kenku. They have noticeably more HP than previous enemies, an can cast Magic Missile. Due to an error, they are worth a LOT more experience than they should be. Each character in this party of four gets over 1000 XP for killing one.



One of the chambers in the northeast corner has this kenku egg. It can be eaten to restore a small amount of the hunger meter, but it's needed for other purposes.



The way into the central portion of the level has a lock of the same type seen in the greed puzzle (I didn't have a shot of them there).

At a corner of two short hallways, we meet some nerd with delusions of grandeur. Listen to his voice crack here.




This is the game's mid-boss of sorts, who can be totally missed or skipped. His threats are not completely empty, since he can cast spells that damage the entire party.



The scattered blue pixels indicate that this was a Cone of Cold, thankfully a weak one. What you want to do is lure him to one of the open areas to the west or north. I back down the corridor, firing projectiles at him along the way. Enemies with spells or other ranged attacks will not use them unless they're within your sight range, so you can use that to your advantage even in a narrow hallway. Once he's in the open, I do the classic melee square dance, which no enemy is able to counter. He drops a wand and a Potion of Extra Healing.



There are two 3x3 rooms in this level with pressure plates in the middle and walls that look like this on both sides. Stepping on the plate will cause a total of four darts to be fired toward the middle. You can quickly step back to dodge them, making them land in front of the opposite walls. I collect them for later.



The key to the central area of the level is right in front of the door to the south stairs up to level 5.




These things can be found there. The portal's key is technically in this level, but in an isolated portion that can only be accessed from level 7.



In the north there are four rooms each containing multiple kenku. They are connected by a long hallway, so I use the same strategy as for the mage by firing projectiles to soften them up before getting them into the open. It's actually a bit riskier than with him since they could potentially attack from multiple sides.



Those rooms also have eggs in them. There are a total of ten throughout the level.



Getting them all into the nest is this level's fairly intuitive special quest. Doing so removes the walls surrounding that tile.



The prize is this, our first +5 weapon.



It doesn't have longer reach than any other melee weapon, until the third game makes polearms usable from the middle row.



To get to level 7, wee need some keys. They can only be obtained by going down pits to a subsection of this level.



Tod is wearing the Ring of Feather Fall and thus doesn't take damage. The keys are in small rooms that can only be opened from the pit side.



The southwest has a series of corridors with dart launchers. Each one can fire two or three times. When you pick up the darts from the northernmost one, it will reload when you step on a certain tile. This can provide an unlimited dart supply, right before a place you need a lot of darts:



A room full of shelf walls. Placing a dart or dagger on each shelf will remove the wall behind it, along with the item you used. Any other items on these shelves will be moved to another shelf at the beginning of this section.



This shield is +1. I left the normal one that looks like it behind so they don't get confused.



Here is the only magical weapon that starts out identified. There is also a small button here that opens the east wall, making a shortcut to other parts of the level.



The way to level 7 is barred by locks that move walls. This dwarven key will fit even though it's not the gargoyle lock they were used for previously.



Another copy protection checkpoint. The password is "wizard" here but the GOG version makes that irrelevant.