Part 7: We Broke The Dungeon, Guys

Update 007: We Broke The Dungeon, Guys



Alright, so we have at this point cleared out everything in the Shire between Ishad N'ha and Brimloch Roon except:

Killing Shrew Chishi for the Bushi Dojo.
Hunting down Grue Morde for the Thieves' Guild
Hunting down Brahmar the Bandit King for the mayor
Kill a fish Colanth
Disabling the Bronze Beast
Meeting Erathsmedor and getting the goddamn Mavin Blade

Except for Shrew Chishi, all of these are in the same place, since Brahmar and Grue Morde are both behind the Dragon Spire that's Erathsmedor's dungeon home, which might well drive you insane because nothing anywhere indicates this and I feel like most of us are at this point conditioned to do as much optional content as possible before doing story content, on the off chance that something blocks us off from returning to the optional content.

So let's deal with Shrew Chishi first.





He's across the lake, like the Boogre caves were.





Once again it's like... why even throw these single enemies at us. They're not challenges, they're not interesting, they're just literal roadbumps.

Anyway, while I'm up here I remember I have the Lamp of Alababa from Doshi Gin. It's slightly unusual to use, since you don't "invoke" it from the inventory like most beneficial items that aren't potions, but instead one character has to Use it like a consumable on another character, who then interacts with the Genie.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_QDaV6gIZs

Alababa is, I'll note, the worst wish-granter in videogame history. Let's go over his offerings in brief before we get back to what I chose and why. I'll note that I hadn't checked up on what the offerings were ahead of time.

Weapon - recieve 'Sword of Argus'
Ability - raise all attributes +1
Power - gain trait 'Arms of Argus'
Armor - recieve 'Chain of Argus'
Health - gain 25 hitpoints
Ward - recieve 'Amulet of Argus'

The Sword of Argus will be outclassed by the time we leave the Dragon Spire, pretty much, and the Chain of Argus is already outclassed by the dragon plate we got from the Stout Mines. So these two are terrible options already.

25 hit points is an incredibly measly amount, and won't matter jack shit.

The Arm of Argus gives you +25% damage... with melee weapons, already confirmed as the weakest option which is often-times a non-option when some enemies are instant death at melee ranges.

The Amulet of Argus is actually quite decent, probably the best amulet-slot item in the game.

Ability points are at a premium, especially if someone's having a hard time reaching the point limits for a promotion, so the Ability wish option is quite good as it's roughly the equivalent of six level-ups(sometimes you get two ability points for a level-up but it's really rare).

Of course, not having read this ahead of time, the only one that was obviously good was Ability, that went to Hierophant to cover for some of the lost ability points from last time he had a Disease, in the Stout Mines. I was then going to do the same for VG Rondor... but it turns that in addition to the usual three wish maximum, you can only pick each wish one time. Ostensibly there are ways to completely break this by dropping the lantern every time you summon the genie, but this game is broken enough without me breaking it more on purpose.

Then I wished for Power for Gizzord, thinking that buffing up my best blaster was clearly the wise choice. Whoops, is all I'll say. But fucking look at it, he never says what kind of power!

Lastly, I grabbed the Amulet of Argus and tossed it to Gizzord as a consolation prize and also because he's a vital linchpin for the party's ability to own nerds.



By the time I get back and get my measily 1000XP for killing a dangerous assassin, the sun's up. Also at this point I have to make a confession... it turns out that it is possible to join multiple guilds with a character once they're a hybrid class, and that they can, in fact, train in both guilds once per level, rather than merely one piece of training per level. The reason I thought it was impossible was that the game had apparently bugged out when it refused my hybrid characters multi-guild membership back in Valeia, and I made the foolish assumption that anything in this game was working as it should be, at any point in time, and thus didn't think to try again.





Time for the Dragon Spire, which will be the most broken dungeon experience yet for multiple reasons. Not the worst dungeon experience, it's not a tough dungeon or a dungeon you really get lost in, it's just... broken.





The entrance is calm and safe, which raises a bit of tension as you probably realize by now this is the Beast of Bronze cave and wonder what is lying in weight for you. A massive golem with flamethrowers? A mecha dragon?







As you wander deeper in, you also find Hephaestus' letterbox. Posting Erzebette's letter is probably the most optional sidequest yet. The guild sidequests get you a pittance of XP and better training access, at least, Kerielle would have gotten us a potion to resist Xydusa, Scanthril got us the assassin promotion. This one gets you... a wand worth like 500 gold that you will never have a reason to use. Erzebette herself never actually acknowledges that we posted the letter, I went back and checked, she just repeats her usual dialogue.





...ah, it's just a dragon-shaped flamethrower on a rail.

Anyway, even wearing the Dragon Plate it absolutely fucks Kuros up. I'm not sure if that's busted scripting or just the Beast doing that much damage, since FAQ's seem to imply we should be taking almost no damage with the plate on.




Note that the text at the bottom suggests "MAYBE THERE'S A BETTER WAY" but there is, in fact, none. The only option you have here is to wear the dragon plate(or, theoretically, repeatedly enchant gear for fire resistance. I had Gizzord fire-enchant his robes and gloves so he's practically fire-immune. I named them all Asbestos [Item] because I'm very clever and funny.) and mash your face forwards until you can get behind the Bronze Beast. The problem is that at several points in the irregular corridor, the beast is impassable, and that sometimes, but not always, the fire blast pushes you back. Eventually, though, after a try or two, you should be able to squeeze past(with a constant feeling like you just exploited a glitch).






And yes, that is the fire coming backwards out of the beast to track the party once we slip past it.





This leaves us in the Dragon Spire proper, with two directions to take and a hole in the ceiling that implies this is gonna be one of those dungeons with one-way passages that require you to loop around multiple times to get everything.

Or, at least, that it's intended as one of them.




Going left brings us to a small cave with the most common Dragon Spire enemies in it, fuming fungi and "mollipoddies." I have no idea what a mollipoddi is, but it's functionally indistinguishable from a fuming fungus or creeping spore. Exact same model, seems to do the exact same amount of damage and take exactly as much punishment as fuming fungus. We also run into an odd thing here, though, which I've only ever seen in the Spire. A lot of enemies will just stand around, not reacting to the party, until attacked, at which point their AI starts functioning again. It's strange.



Blasting them from range is also a necessity since they can do a surprising amount of damage if they manage to get up close, just look at poor Kuros and Trap Option.



This leads to the river that the entire dungeon is sort-of built around, specifically the end of it. You know it's the end because it's the only body of water in the game that has a current, and the current always tries to carry you here. This is also the only place where the current actually carries you and can't just be casually ignored. Plus it carries the party in the weirdest way. In most games, a current in the water just moves you in a certain direction, here it also tries to point the viewpoint in that direction, which is odd and disorienting as you fight it with your mouse.



Thankfully we don't need to fight it.





The next tunnel also deposits you at the river, but farther upriver. I believe that what's intended is that you hop in the river and the water carries you downriver, and you then clamber ashore at a midpoint between the two landings to get into the dungeon proper. I only found this out later, though, I, uh, do things differently.




See, there's this narrow walkway that makes you think you're meant to head upriver, which sort of peters out after a bit. Then you drop into the water and realize that, inexplicably, the current is much weaker here and you can just swim upriver by flailing your mouse around a bit.





Descriptive text seems to indicate that these "gaps" in the water are meant to be where waterfalls are cascading down from above. Why aren't they rendering? I have no idea. All other water in the game renders just fine.






So you're meant to have a crank here, to turn this wheel, to extend the bridge and cross. I, however, think that this is the only way I have to progress(after having scoured the nearby riverbottom and found a couple of chests, the only underwater chests so far in the game despite all the water). So I jump.





Splash, into the drink. Back up again, try again... and succeed. It's really hard to illustrate just how immensely fucky the jump felt with pictures, so I turned it into a brief video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDKZc2w4LZU

As far as I can tell I jump, get caught in the "invisible waterfall" and swim upwards briefly before popping into place. It's... extremely weird. But whatever, I'll take it.





https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HI125FBzH_0

And here's Hephaestus, Erzebette's friend! He's remarkably non-important except for giving us a wand for delivering the letter and pointing out that we need to find three crystals to unlock the way to Erathsmedor from inside the caves. Still, seems like a nice enough guy, let's go rob his hut.






Welcome to the one chest in the game I don't bust open, because I need Erathsmedor to be friendly at least until I get the Mavin Sword, and the text here implies that it'll piss him off unlike every other chest in the game which no one gives a fuck about unless it's literally the dwarf king's treasury. I do swipe the potions off the table, though, because blue potions can be mana regen potions and those are the only consumables I regularly use because there's no other way to reliably get mana back mid-battle.

It's a dead end, though, so let's see where the other passage goes.







An elevator and an angry fire dog.



I do like that it's built into an existing structure that's just had its ceiling knocked out. I wish they had gone with that aesthetic for the entire Dragon Spire, old ruins that had been repurposed by Hephaestus' machinery and inventions, that would have been moderately interesting, at least, rather than a shitload of sand-coloured caves.






How the hell did anyone even get around here before Hephaestus built this crap? And for that matter, why build an elevator into a dead end attic you need to drop down a one-way passage to get out of?!





The passage down below runs in two directions, and of course I pick the less important one first.



And get severely owned by mushrooms. Augh fuck. In this case it's because the nausea kept preventing anyone from finishing off the last mushroom that had reached melee range and it just had free reign to keep dumping war crime gas on the party over and over.




And yes, that narrow dumb-looking ramp IS the way onwards, and not just a room divider(also if you have lava walk there's a hidden chest around the side at the end of the magma).





A bridge over a gorge down to water.







Past the gate there's an even larger gate on the right, and the place where we need to slot in the three crystals on the left. Don't be an idiot like me and be confused why you can't interact with the lectern to place crystals when it's the heraldric shield sorta thing you need to interact with, in reality. The lectern just looks more important at first glance!






Heading back and going the other way, there's the cave lake with the Colanth that Xander from the mages' guild wanted us to check out.





Oddly enough he never used his much-hyped "turn you to stone, fuckerrrrrrr"-gaze on me. Instead the fight was just a bit of a generic numbersmash since I can't use 99% of my spells underwater and the few I can would have a negligible effect in this particular engagement. He's accompanied by a bunch of "dartha eels" which are oddly well-modelled considering that most of the other fish enemies in the game just look like textured cylinders.

The fight was made a bit annoying by a "feature" of W&W water "physics" which is that while you're on the suface, you just rest on the surface, no need to maintain buoyancy, but the moment the party ducks their heads underwater, then they start sinking and you gotta make an effort to stay afloat, so I had to keep backing up to avoid sinking down too deep to hit the Colanth.

Once the fish are done, however, it's time to go for a dive.






It's odd that the underwater parts of W&W are in general so sparse, barren and under-utilized considering that it's the one place where the game's terrible view distance and generally dark lighting actually works out by making dark underwater areas feel moody and spooky. Anyway, the point to diving down here is that a unique sword spawns at the bottom of the lake which is, so far, the best weapon we can find other than the Mavin Sword and the sword that Alababa could spawn for us. Considering that Kuros uses swords and Trap Option main-hands swords while off-handing daggers(though it took me until like... mid-being-an-assassin for Trap Option to learn the talent and skill that actually allows him to strike with his off-hand weapon. Because of course you need a special feat AND skill to use off-hand weapons. Not to equip them, just to actually swing them in combat.), it's nice to get them an upgrade.



There's also a small cave underwater in the lake that you're meant to reach to be able to complete the Dragon Spire at all, but, uh, since I'm technically doing the Spire backwards, I don't actually need that either.




Then there's a little jumping puzzle over some platforms above lava. It's trivial jumping, and with lava walk on, all I have to worry about if I fall down is a bit of minor falling damage. There are no actual apparent paths out, however, so I saved and checked whether a fall meant getting stuck. It turned out it didn't because you can literally just walk up the nearly-vertical walls like who gives a fuck and reach one of the exits.





This leads to a narrow network of cave tunnels at right angles.




It's populated by "Taranta Larva" spiders which would theoretically be scary if I couldn't easily blow them up with fireballs and also if the tunnels weren't too narrow for them half the time. See, this guy in the screenshot up there? Can't actually path to me because he's spawned so his legs are clipped inside the walls and I can point at him and laugh and then blow him up. This happens with almost every encounter in these tunnels.

There's a "Taranta Queen" boss in here, too, which looks and works exactly like the other giant spiders, except for having more HP, so I almost completely missed that I killed her except for her loot chest.




It contains one of the three "Dragonshards" needed to unlock Erathsmedor's lair. You have to wonder why Hephaestus didn't just, you know, build a code lock or something slightly more secure that couldn't just be brute-forced by anyone with sufficient swords and idiocy.



This does, however, leave us with an issue of what to do next. We're missing two more dragonshards to advance into Erathsmedor's lair.




The only way to get back if you've gotten here without all the shards is to jump off this ledge into the water below.




It's shallow water, but the current carries the party to a drop at one end.




Halfway down the rushing water, there's a ledge to the side that you can sort of swim towards and land on to find a chest.




This contains a second Dragonshard, but further progress down the tunnel is blocked by a pair of boulders that we're A) meant to have approached from the other side and B) can't blow up without the magic item from the tunnel back at the Colanth lake that I missed. Also do NOT approach the boulders, I got stuck in a tiny bit of Physics(tm) and vibrated at terrifying speeds for about three minutes before managing to wriggle my way out.

The intended way out if you end up here, appears to be to ride the waters farther down.





This is meant to drop you out one of the two "missing" waterfalls pouring into the river from earlier, allowing you to reset your exploration. However, for ???? reasons, the actual gap you're meant to pop out of is too small to actually exit. I'm not sure if it's always been like this or if it's some weird interaction with modern framerates and CPU cycles or what, but this means that this is absolutely a dead end. I have just soft-locked myself.

Or have I?



Enter Vanish. It's a spell I only picked up because it was the only Moon magic option Trap Option had left, and you can't save spell picks, and they get you bonus mana when you pick a new one. You can either cast it on enemies to randomly teleport them away, great if a Jungle Lily has you pinned into a narrow corner, or on the party to randomly teleport them around. Figuring I have nothing to lose, I cast it.



I pop up in some anonymous corridor and peek around the corner in the direction I land facing.






Nice try, game, good thing this hardcore gamer is too clever for you.




In the other direction is this stone arch bridge that's above where we needed the crank earlier. Theoretically I suppose you could leap off here to get down there, if you wanted to.





Past the bridge, more fungus to fight and an old friend to meet again!




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxZ5ByJMI1g

Kol and H'tark make me think a lot about what the original blueprint for this game might've been, because I feel like it wasn't what we ended up getting. I feel like originally it was going to have some hot takes about prophecy and fate in general, that perhaps prophecies weren't to be taken at face value, and didn't necessarily lock you into following them. Since we've already met two other people who seem to have gotten the exact same message that we did, judging by their actions, but have just been less lucky in going about them. Hell, maybe they've even met Nivius and have their own signet rings rattling around in their pockets.

You could do a lot with the concept, the idea that the prophecy is just mass-produced to aim as many idiots as possible at whoever you label as "the great evil" rather than actually being a genuine divine message.

Either way, Kol definitely seems to feel like he's the only genuinely fated one, and considering that he got this far on his own, when it took us a full party to do it and we had some close calls, maybe he's not wrong. Still, he's standing in the way of our potential glory, so we can't let him run away with this one.




I blow up the interfering dogs and give chase.






And if you ever needed proof that I was doing this in reverse, just look at this. I've only now gotten the item that would allow me to get to the two dragonshards I've already gotten, the crank that turns the bridge which was the very first gap I leapt over because I'm a moron.




Just around the corner is the top of the hole that I found just inside the entrance of the Dragon Spire.





And the way you're meant to get here is by floating downriver as I mentioned earlier. I have really bungled this dungeon hard.




I explore a bit more and oh no! A giant unique scorpion bug enemy! I'm sure he's going to come out of his cave and fight me!



Ha ha, no, like the taranta larva, he's intentionally spawned in an area that he's too large to actually leave and has no ranged attacks. Game design! I really can't tell if things are getting jankier as the game goes on, because it feels like they're just consistently wonky.





And past the mighty Scorthidon, or rather its corpse, is the chest containing the third and last dragonshard. Now we can finally go annoy Erathsmedor.




First, into the river and back downstream to the bottom-most landing.




Then a walk up-cave and up-stream.





Extending the bridge that I should have done as one of the very first things, now as one of the very last things.




A quick wave to Hephaesthus as I walk past him headed upstairs.






Hopping on up and clapping all the dragonshard pieces into the overly elaborate locking mechanism worthy of a Resident Evil mansion.





Why are the inner doors this big if the corridors past them are too narrow for Erathsmedor to wriggle into, anyway?



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9Pd2OhmXlk

Also how the hell did Kol get in considering that he had scattered the key crystals all around the cave and certainly didn't have them with him when entering? Anyway, we now have a VAST, HOLY, ARTIFACT. Let's check out what it does for us.




So these two are our current baselines for swordosity, Kuros and Trap Option's swords respectively.



...and of course it's only barely stronger than Trap Option's Nightblade. Don't get me wrong, it's still an upgrade! But if I'd asked Alababa for the Sword of Argos, it would actually have been slightly stronger than this. So it's not exactly super-impressive. I'm expecting a Xeenslayer thing or something where it's the only thing that can do damage to Pharaoh Cet.

I had also almost completely forgotten about the Shroud of Elsera, I kind of tuned out most of D'soto's whining and had just been using it as a magic shield for Rondor.



Anyway, the nearby chests contain some bitching armor, like the Divine Chain of D'soto(less basic armor than the Dragon Plate, but provides 20% resistance to pretty much everything you can imagine being hit by, so if not in a fire-heavy area, it's definitely the superior choice), which I really have to wonder how the hell it ended up here, and some Willpower ankhs. For some reason all the ankhs I find are goddamn Willpower ankhs.





So, interesting fact. There's no on-foot path back to Ishad N'ha from here without dropping down the mountainside and having to do the entire run through the Dragon Spire again to get back up here(though we did most of the hard work already and won't have to redo that, it'd still take roughly ten minutes, I'd estimate, more if enemies spawn and need to be dealt with). Thankfully at this point I have Portal and Teleport, basically the Mark and Recall of W&W, so I can pop back and get rewards for Ishad N'ha quests and then just return to a portal set at the Dragon Spire exit or by the Brimloch Roon gates, but I could very easily not have those spells. This goddamn game.





A narrow path curves around the edge of the Spire and leads to the path to Brimloch Roon, which is normally entirely featureless, but currently contains two special enemies because we have the quests for them.





https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6yTkec5EzA

First up, it's GRUE MORDE, the LEGENDARY ASSASSIN, who casts SHADOW, a spell that makes him almost impossible to target. Thankfully I have Reveal, in fact both Kuros and Gizzord do, a Fire spell that exists to do nothing except counter Shadow. It's a spell I've had most of the game, again just for the bonus mana, since this is the first enemy in the entire game where there's been a reason to cast it.



What now, dork?



Turns out what's now is that Brahmar the Bandit King and his like 10 Banditos show up behind me and join in the fight.

Normally this would not be a great challenge.



I laugh at Brahmar and tell him to get bent when he asks the party to surrender. I have no idea what happens if you do surrender, I presume either he attacks anyway or you just lose all your gold.





And then Grue Morde silences the entire party.

Now, normally, either situation would be fine. If it was just Grue Morde and I was silenced, we'd just beat him to death with swords and sticks. If it was the entire swarm, and we weren't silenced, we'd just war crime them all to ashes with a variety of fun AoE spells. But both at once is a problem since I can't even heal. I suddenly find myself digging deep into my stash of Restore Health and Great Healing potions since a single unfortunate round can drop someone down to 25% health and, surprise, I can't resurrect anyone during the fight either!



I focus on Grue Morde first and then turn to the bandits once he's down, just look at all those goddamn spent arrows.





Every one that goes down makes the going easier, but honestly this was probably the most fun and challenging fight(except in the "run away from jungle lilies"-sense of challenge) the game has had since the dungeons of D'soto where we got the mixed squad of undead and minor demons showing up.



Also note that like half of this shit on the ground from the banditos is stuff they stole out of the party's fucking inventory, and the resulting inventory tetris to get everything fitted back in again isn't very fun.

Anyway, let's get to Brimloch Roon so we can get to the third and final part of this game.





Finally.




I have fond memories of this place and the next section of the game forcing extremely janky "sailing" mechanics on the party in which it's more painful to pilot an entire sailing vessel than it was to hop around on the little raft back on the narrow waterways around Valeia. I think that was actually why I dropped the game the first time, because I somehow managed to soft-lock myself with the ships, hell if I can remember how, better hope it doesn't happen again.

And here's the world map for the last part:



The vote also seems to have been narrowly in favour of letting the big green dolt live, so unless there's an overwhelming request for it now that we've actually met him, I'll let Erathsmedor remain in one piece.