Part 32: Bonus Update 17.5: Cave of Illusion

Bonus Update 17.5: Cave of Illusion

There were quite a few votes for both options this time around, but the Tower of High Magic has a fairly comfortable lead, so that's our next destination.



In total, there are enough stat boosts in the Cave of Illusion to grant your characters +22 Might, +17 Intellect, +17 Personality, +29 Endurance, +12 Speed, +32 Accuracy, and +24 Luck. That's 153 points of extra stats! For comparison, a freshly-rolled starting character's stats will add up to an average of 84. You'll need a total of 1840 gems to afford all the stat boosts, and another 300 to buy the key, so bring about 2500 gems to this cave so that you've got some left over for spells. The monsters in the cave drop a few gems when killed, so that helps a bit.

Speaking of monsters, the hintbook says that Water Golems will be "replaced" with Guardians when you pull the plug, but that's sort of misleading. The Water Golems don't transform into Guardians or anything: they just all disappear, and a bunch of Guardians appear in various places around the cave. I'm pretty sure you get the same number of Guardians whether you killed all the Water Golems or not.

There are five safes in the cave: one on each level except the last, which has two.



Pretty much every little 1-space-wide dead-end in the cave has a stat-boosting skull at the end of it. The layout of the cave isn't too bewildering, but there are a couple of false walls you can break down, so watch out for those. Note also the small isolated areas in the northwest of level 2 and the southeast of level 4, reachable only by Teleport: if you're not in the habit of keeping Wizard Eye active when you explore, you can go through the whole cave and never even know they exist.

Tune in next time for a high-powered update!