Part 14: Basements within basements.

Time to give the second floor basement a proper look through.



Taking the six million crystals like last time was a bit stupid. We're only gonna need two of them for the time being. And we'd best be sure to bring the crystal flute, a mortal and pestle, a shrunken head and a box of matches with us. Y'know just in case that assorted collection of seemingly useless clutter comes in handy at all.




Now that old nosey has gone space fishing, we can come and go as we please to the second floor basement.



In the door up ahead of us we find a collection of food and some rock salt for extra flavor. Both items are of no consequence to us.



And we're still finding keys, and I'm not even sure what half of them do anymore, there aren't that many locked doors left.



At a dead-end room we find a an ancient tome of some kind.




All glory to the Alberoth! Doorman to Belthegor! Concierge of Evil! Valet to the parking lot despair! Ia! Ia!



Upon leaving the room we meet our old friend the Death Leech. He's not so tough now that we've a Katana. Not that he was so tough to begin with. I'd also like to point out that the hallway leading up to this room is a real pain to navigate. Every time you walk forward you get turned 180 degrees, so you have to either turn around again or alternate between walking forward and backwards.



This room is a total lie. That book, whatever it contains is unreachable. As soon as you set foot in the room you are transported a different room and a death leech is spawned in with you.



But don't fret, there's plenty more unread pieces of paper lying around for us to collect yet!



Good old Ellen still giving us now redundant advice from beyond the grave.



Aha! The final museum plaque. This is the one for the Mayan Jade Effigy. We'll be wanting that before we traverse the planes. It's not strictly necessary, but we may as well get it when the time comes.



Hmm well this basement seems somewhat smaller than the other levels. It also doesn't appear to go further down...



That's because this floor, actually has two different areas that are disconnect from one another. The other entrance is back up top. This one would also be guarded by Alberoth if he were still knocking about.



And the floor design is different too. That's kind of neat. I think the developers forgot to worry about the lighting design for the rest of the game, there's no breaker boxes down here, which makes sense I guess. But the whole area is fully illuminated which is a bit silly. But whatever, you probably wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't pointed it out.



And look! It's another one of those strength boosting potions. We drink it down because it will serve no other purpose. Again, I've no idea whether its effects are permanent or not.



And we come across the monsters that frequent this side of the Basement Level 2. The Hellions!

This trick to these guys is that if you are wielding the Assegai spear and Zulu shield you are more accurate against them and their attacks become less accurate.



Of course, the only problem with this is that I've a magical Katana that wrecks their shit regardless. So it's not really worth the effort of bringing such bulky equipment down all this way. They aren't that good at hitting us anyway.



What is this? Why, it's a freshly preserved octopus is what it is!



We'll be finding use for that later, as we will for this hand mirror too.



At the end of this room there's a note next to a gun.

You might also notice that the text prompt is telling us that our kitchen knife has been following us around. It probably just misses us.



I honestly found this note a touch disturbing the first time I found it.



As soon as you finish reading it, two Hellions spawn behind you. They are quickly dispatched. Let's take a closer look at that gun.



It's a S&W M29 revolver. In other words a .44 Magnum!



This is the second most powerful gun in the game, and ammo for it is kind of plentiful at this point. You find bullets for it all over the basement levels. There really isn't much call to use it though. I carry it around for a bit for completions sake but it'll never see action at all.



No! Bad kitchen knife! Go back to kennel now!



What up Lurker buddy! Gone lurken as usual?

I actually got rather curious about these guys recently. I had a hypothesis about what happens when you kill them and decided to test it out. It yielded some interesting results. I'm gonna do a bit more testing and I'll share my findings with you a bit later.

He appears to be guarding a new spell for us whoopee!

Arcane Tower of Reason



Pfft, it's a spell that protects you from the effects of fear. Utterly, utterly, useless.



There's also a secret switch that takes us down to the next level.

You might notice that my cursor has become a cross-hair. As I mentioned way way back in the first few updates, this is what the cursor looks like when you've hit the aim button. Problem is, I hit it accidentally and there's absolutely no way to get rid of it until you target a monster of some kind. You can still kind of pick things up but you have to right click them and it makes dragging items around rather difficult. So be careful where you click.



Before we do that though, there's a few things we need to do on this floor first. Like push more conspicuous buttons on walls.



Revealing more areas and books to read!




This aforementioned sea cave is important. Kind of.



We find ourselves an incense burner, this thing will come in very much handy.



This door appears on this wall when you push the top button. If you push the bottom one, you get an electric shock. Pavlovian conditioning at its finest. I believe it's the only way to get out of this area too. Some of the doors in this area are one way.



Lastly we have this secret room. It's a real pain to navigate as you get teleport and turned around to different squares wheneven you walk in any direction. The real reason to come in here is to collect that green thing in the top left corner of the room.



It's a pile of Mogana leaves. We'll be crushing them up and adding them to the incense burner. As you might have remembered from a previous chapter, Sea Daemons don't like the smell of Mogana and will happily fore go all plans of world domination in the presence of such smells.



Here's me hurling the magnum away in digust. Well not disgust really, more indifference.



And with that final gesture of indifferent disgust. We're ready to hit the last floor of this accursed mansion. And hit it we shall...











Next time.