This is easily the deadliest dungeon so far. The pervasive anti-magic means there's no way to heal damage or cure any conditions. This converts the usually pointless traps into death sentences. The only time I exited the crypt alive was the last time, after solving the snare.
For the fun of it, I hacked together a high level rogue to journey around with me in place of one of my archmages. I knew rogues were really weak in this game, but I didn't know they were pointless. The only thing they can really add to a party is the minor spell points savings from finding and disarming traps found on chests. Except... they suck at it! I have to cast TRZP more than half the time anyway as my bumbling rogue can't find his own ass, let alone traps on chests.
I'm glad I got that off my chest. Now, to business. Cranford continued with his annoying system of having hidden stairs appear after you solve a riddle. I thought it was tedious this time, too, but at least it was obvious that that's what was happening, unlike in Oscon's Fortress.
On the plus side, I thought it was cool and bad-ass that the exit stairs disappear after you venture far enough into the crypt. You have to figure out how to get them back if you want to leave without being dead. It was awesome to blunder into a trap, getting my whole party poisoned, and to have no course of action but to try to find the exit before everyone succumbed. As they all perished one by one, the desperation intensifies.
If you want to be really anal, the previous wand segment can be used in this dungeon to find traps, specials, and other features. Unfortunately, you'd have to re-use it every step of the way, which means I eventually just took to blundering into things. I got my party destroyed a few extra times as a result, but I really enjoyed the being lazying.
The monsters in this dungeon are extremely easy if you've got decent AC and a breathring. Due to the anti-magic, there are no annoying casters, and the number of monsters that hide at a distance is minimal. Unfortunately, the XP rewards stink.
The game engine's general inability to create interesting "boss" fights is again on display here.
The snare is a fun one. Possessing a nospen ring removes one of the minor difficulties, but that can be seen as a perk. You have to tinker with it until you understand everything, and then it is easily solvable. That's one of the recipes for a good puzzle, in my opinion. There are useful clues to this puzzle scattered around the crypt, but I think it would be possible, though more difficult, to solve it without them. To me, that's the right tone for the snare clues to set.
The final dungeon awaits!
(And yes, Darendor, I will get back on board with your project quite soon.)
The Grey Crypt unencrypted.
The Grey Crypt unencrypted.
Death and drek? WTF?
Having my front four dudes all with Spectre Snares made combat a breeze in here and giving my mages each a Staff Of Lor took care of any poisoning and HP problems. I found this much easier than Oscon or Dargoth for that matter. Dargoth was impossible until I finally found a No Spin Ring by fighting endless fights in The Crypt.
Death and Drek
The path to the stairs to the 4th level, I remember, is surrounded by these. A real joy.Marco wrote:I have to go back and look, but I think Dargoth's Tower has a couple of those really irritating areas where you have spinners & darkness together. Oscon's Castle definitely has a few of these.
Marco.
