Part 55: Bonus Update 35.5: That Wasn't So Perilous
Bonus Update 35.5: That Wasn't So Perilous
Schizoguy posted:
What DO those giant chess pieces do? (See also: why do you keep stumbling on rooms painted like chess boards? What's the deal with those bits of messages you keep finding?)
Funny you should ask all of that at once. Those three questions are related to each other, although the third is less closely related than the first two.
Psion posted:
Go see if the king is like Lord British!
If you're asking whether he's a jerk who sends you off on stupid missions that waste your time, then the answer is yes, but that's true of all the lords in this game.
tree fell on truck posted:
Do queens, and then you'd better do your god damned BEST to get that lazerbow.
The party doesn't ask for much
Sadly, Lone Wolf never visited Varn.
All those encounters with liches, vampires and mummies are in the western part of the swamp. Apparently there's also a chance of a party member stepping into quicksand and dying if you walk into the wrong spaces, but I don't ever remember seeing it happen. If you're going to wander the swamps, it's probably a good idea to cast Levitate just in case.
Attacking Dragon City isn't necessary in order to enter the dungeon, by the way. It's purely a challenge for parties that are tired of living.
The room in the southeast corner holds the stairs down to the fourth floor. You can't enter from the front without the Crystal Key, but you can always just Etherealise around to the back entrance, skipping the second and third floors anyway.
That long series of rooms connected by doors is where we fought most of the monsters in the game, fifteen at a time. I've heard you can find Thundranium at (x15, y15) if you don't already have any in your inventory: this is important, because without Thundranium the big maze that takes up most of the dungeon will teleport you around like a pinball, if pinballs could teleport.
Of course, you can just Etherealise one space to the west from where you enter the level and skip the maze entirely. If you're starting to get the impression that Etherealise breaks a lot of puzzles in this game, well, why are you only starting to get that impression? We've been breaking puzzles with Etherealise for as long as Jostiband's been able to cast it.
This has one of the most interesting-looking maps of any dungeon level in the game, but there's not much of interest to say about it. Basically you're going to get teleported around a lot and fight a few monsters. Your destination is the stairs up at (x13, y5). You can reach that part of the level either by stepping on the right teleportation space or with, you guessed it, Etherealise.
The completed rooms have fixed encounters with various groups of monsters in them: they tend to be moderately difficult and yield loads of experience. The goal here is to get the White Queen Idol at (x0, y15). And before you ask, yes, you can just Etherealise through the east wall of that corridor and skip all those dragon fights.
Voting is currently 6-3 in favour of dealing with the queens before the king, so unless there's a sudden turnaround that's what the party will be doing next time. We're not far from the endgame now!