Part 15: Scouring the Iron Prison

Last time, we were spectacularly rude to someone and destroyed their favorite bit of jewelry, but that person was Sauron, so it's okay. Now let's go kill him.



Sauron's hanging out in Angband, the last "main" dungeon of the game. As such it's chock-full of captured princesses and missing swords.


(Pictured: a princess captured by Harowen the Black Hand, a souped-up thief type who is utterly harmless as we're so dextrous we're theftproof).

We start on level 67, and have to dive all the way down to level 99 to find Sauron. Fortunately Angband's a vertical dungeon, so that's easily done...

Some powerfull force prevents your from teleporting.

It's almost like they want people to actually play the game or something. Oh well. We'll just head back to Gondolin's Thunderlord nest, and



What the hell, Angband isn't present. We can still type in its name, but the teleporter dude just says "This place blocks my magic!"

I guess we'll have to do things the hard way then. Damn. This is where taking 98 quests can really come around and bite you in the ass; some of the Princess quest layouts can be spectacularly unforgiving, especially for melee types who have neglected to access some means of blocking line-of-sight. Imagine having to step into a room and eat spells from five Skull Drujs simultaneously.

It's absolutely possible to make melee characters work, but I would definitely not recommend making a pure melee character. Mix in some prayer; Tulkas is probably your go-to option because, in addition to his other fighter benefits, he grants access to the Earth school, which includes the Earth Prison spell which generates granite walls.

For our part, we can obliterate pretty much anything with a waggle of our pinky or a yawn; the quests are more a speedbump than anything else. On the other hand, this level could take a bit longer:

Looks like a forgotten crypt...



The Crypt is the first of two special levels in Angband. It's not too bad; the monsters are mostly not that dangerous, and there's some reasonable chokepoints where you can fight without having to deal with lots of enemies at once. Though, the monsters are leveled up (as they are throughout Angband). Nothing like having to face down a horde of level-60 Giant Gray Rats moving, and breeding, at lightspeed. At least Black Hole can reliably one-shot all such hopped-up scrub monsters, and the monsters that are already level-appropriate don't get any bonuses.

The starting area has a number of curved corridors leading to Void Jumpgates, which lead to side areas that lead to each other and make a giant non-Euclidean loop. You have to keep an eye open for the single-tile granite walls in the maze of permanent walls to find the path forward.

At times, it seems like the level designer is unclear on the concept of glass walls. This horde of vampires could actually be dangerous with their Cause Serious Wounds spell, except they won't cast it because of the wall in the way.



The right-hand side of the map eventually leads to a Void Jumpgate that takes us into a small grid of rooms filled with higher-level undead:



This includes a pair of Undead Beholders (brown "e"s) which are basically never worth fighting because of the crap rewards and their annoying melee attacks: sanity drain, charges drain, and experience drain. There's also several Black Reavers (gray "L"s), which are nasty things that can bore through solid rock and wield top-tier offensive magic, and the level boss: Thuringwethil, the Vampire Messenger. Flavor text: "Chief messenger between Sauron and Morgoth, she is the most deadly of her vampire race on Middle-Earth. At first she is charming to meet, but her wings and eyes give away her true form."

However, not everything is reachable from this entrance. We can clear most of the rooms, and access the stairs off the level, but not reach Thuringwethil:



She must be accessed from the other half of the northern part of the map, which contains a Void Jumpgate that drops us off here:



Guess what? It's an invisible maze! Everyone's favorite! Fortunately there's not that much room for the maze, so it's not very complicated. It's still dumb. For best (i.e. only useful) results, exit the starting room through the north wall.

The worst bit is when we're accosted by a Black Reaver in the middle of the maze:



This is bad because Area spells refuse to work when there's no open spaces to target the "submunitions" onto, and illusory walls don't count as open, so the spell is just a no-op. We have to tediously wear this guy down with bolt spells instead, which does a real number on our mana supply.

Of course, once the fight is over, I discover that the Meteor Bolts we were pelting the reaver with have created a tile of ash, which we could have used to cast a precisely-targeted Black Hole. Oh well. Past him is Thuringwethil and her re-dead entourage.



Thuringwethil, the Vampire Messenger says: 'No point asking who's to blame.' Thuringwethil, the Vampire Messenger is destroyed.

Behind her is the artifact of the level:



It's quite nice, but our current Cloak of the Magi is giving us sound resistance, and with it, protection from being stunned. Stunning sucks, so we want to keep sound resistance. Note that in Vanilla, protection from stunning is a separate flag. ToME conflates several abilities; shards protection also protects you from cuts of all types, and chaos resistance also grants confusion resistance, though there at least you can also get confusion resistance separately.

And now we're done here, never to return. Hooray!

You enter a maze of down staircases. You hear someone shouting: 'Leave me alone, stupid Qlzqqlzuup, the Lord of Flesh.'







Hunh, she wasn't kidding. Qlzqqlzuup is the unique Quylthulg, which I'm lead to believe were invented by the Angband devs one particularly drunken night as a way to have a monster for the Q letter. Quylthulgs are stationary, pulsating mounds of flesh that cast summoning spells; Qlzqqlzuup, naturally, has access to every summoning spell in the game. We could farm him for uniques to kill, but why bother? We just stuff him into Black Hole and move on.

Sometimes Angband likes to generate wide open spaces:



These are dangerous as hell. There's no cover and plenty of monsters that would like to flambé you. Stay out of such areas if you possibly can.

Somewhere around the fifth quest to kill a bunch of Great Wyrms, each of whom can drop upwards of 16 items, I grow sick of the gigantic piles of loot we're generating and start throwing chaos balls at everything. Chaos will destroy any item that's not an artifact and doesn't give chaos resistance, so that can really thin things down in a hurry. Of course, that also means missing out on things like *Defender* boomerangs and high-powered Rings of Speed, but I think we have enough power now, really.

On level 82, we run into the second-beefiest monster in the game, Ungoliant the Unlight, who has captured a princess and then inexplicably not eaten her.



Ungoliant is mostly notable for having the second-largest HP total in the game: she has 13,000 HP, and Morgoth has 30,000. We cast our Area - Meteors spell (new name: Tunguska Event), the most powerful spell we have (assuming the target doesn't resist), and she's 80% dead. And we screwed up our targeting, so not all of the blasts hit her! I know I've been mashing that "Mitch's spells are super overpowered" button a lot, guys, but Mitch's spells are super overpowered.

Anyway, we hit the second special level in Angband: the Dimensional Gates.



The gimmick here is a bunch of over-large chambers, connected by Void Jumpgates, and usually staffed by Quylthulgs inconveniently at the other end of the room. Of course, there's a little of the the usual illusory-wall fuckery, and if you find the right jumpgate you can head to the southern half for a chance at one of the elven Rings of Power.



Four of these five jumpgates take you to tiny cells with quylthulgs of various flavors in them, for example:



two Greater Rotting Quylthulgs, which can summon greater undead. Fortunately they waste their only turns doing nothing. The bottom of the column of 4 gates, though, takes us to the southern half:


(Not pictured: two deceased Greater Draconic Quylthulgs)

The gate we aren't standing on takes us to that lava path, which is full of Great Hell Wyrms. But we're immune to fire, so who cares? A single Tunguska Event can kill one, or two, or however many you can bunch up in range. Like here, for example, where we get 7 of them plus a Master Quylthulg:





Delicious. Naturally, at the end of this lava path filled with fire monsters is the cold-themed Ring of Power.



In comparison to Flare, Narya gives smaller, but more broadly-distributed bonuses; gives stat sustains; has resistance to nether; but doesn't give the Swap Positions ability or flight. We like being able to fly.

Anyway, the rest of the level is an unremarkable pain in the ass. Let's just move on...to a level with a quest for Greater Rotting Quylthulgs:



This is a good example of why taking 98 quests is a bad idea. Sigh. At least they summon some Ringwraiths for us to re-kill again. Alas, even with the One Ring destroyed, the Ringwraiths are still immortal; you have to kill Sauron to be able to kill them permanently.

Turns out Angband has not one, not two, but three special levels, and we hit the third, creatively named "Nameless".




You know how this goes by now -- chambers separated by Void Jumpgates, kill everything, there's an optional sidepath to an artifact. This time the theme is dragons and the artifact is Razorback, a suit of multihued Dragon Scale Mail that's really pretty awful, if only because it aggravates. I can't be bothered; let's just leave via the stairs we start on, and then head back down and try again -- special levels can only be generated once each.

Finally, after far too many princesses and lost swords, we hit level 99 of the dungeon...and Sauron's not here. But there is a staircase downwards. So what's the deal, is Sauron dead? It doesn't say "you have slain this foe" on his monster record. Well forget it! If there's stairs, we're taking them!

You enter a maze of down staircases.



Aaaand Morgoth's not here either. What the hell, game, what the hell.

Next time: we beat the game, come hell or high water.