Next time I'll be clever enough to escape! Let's Play Wizardry IV: Return of Werdna!

Especially for its time the concept was a good one. It's just too bad the result is one of the worst RPGs ever made.

As far as I can tell, it was designed to serve as the Mt. Everest of computer RPGs. And much like Everest, you attempt it for no reason other than because it's there.

Also, in defense of Wizardry 4, it was designed for expert-level Wizardry players, and advertised as such, so the puzzles and gameplay challenges aren't quite as crazy as they appear at first glance. The first room is a case in point: if you don't know that MILWA can be used to detect secret doors, and you don't know the general characteristics of the 12 different monsters you can summon from the first pentagram, that's a sign that you might want to spend some more time with the earlier games in the series before you tackle #4. On the other hand, anyone who's played to the second level of Wizardry 1 knows that priests can cast MILWA, and that Creeping Coins are by far the best monster available. Basically, Wizardry 4 is a ROMhack-difficult version of Wizardry, and like many modern ROMhacks, it assumes that you're already intimately familiar with the original game.

As for the keystroke limit, I never had any problem with it; I think it's there more as a scoring mechanism than as a time limit. Even if you type one keystroke per second, you'd have to play continuously and without dying for 11 days before you ran out of keystrokes, which is unlikely to happen; the game's not that long, and saving the game has enough drawbacks that most players are unlikely to do so unless they've accomplished sometehing useful, which helps cut down on the number of keystrokes you expend on pointless wandering.

While this LP is doing a good job of showcasing what makes the game unique (and there are a lot of things that make it unique), I do have one minor nitpick in regard to how adventuring parties work. So far as I know, wandering adventurers don't actually pick up corpses. My understanding is that the named parties (like the tenth level's Jiri's Jaguars and Rendor's Roughnecks, pictured in the LP) have fixed rosters; however, you can also encounter their members individually or in smaller groups. Since the party rosters are fixed, if you kill one or more members of the party before you encounter them en masse, the deceased party members will still appear in the party (and can potentially be resurrected) despite being dead. This does work to your advantage most of the time, as it makes it impossible for fixed parties to recruit new characters to replace their casualties (since dead characters count against the 6 character limit).

In any case, it's good to see someone LP'ing this beast of a game, and the whole LP is entertaining and informative thus far, so good job! These first few posts really do a good job of conveying what it's like to play the game, and to deal with the 10th level's unfair but straightforward bullshit. I expect it'll become even more entertaining once the game takes off the kid gloves.

EDIT: I just now realized that those two parties, Jiri's Jaguars and Rendor's Roughnecks, probably constitute a half-assed Starship Troopers reference. I can't believe it took me this long to figure it out.

One thing to note is that the keystroke limit does cause problems if you attempt to speed through combat (with the delay increased, naturally; if you lower it you don't need to do this) by holding Enter it will use keystrokes at a rate of hundreds per second.

I wasn't aware that the game tracked fixed party casualties in that way. I think I have seen parties containing dead characters who are not part of a larger adventuring party, but I can't be certain. If I don't encounter any in this runthrough, we can consider that more than debunked.

It's good to see someone who's familiar with the game reading the thread. And at least you know even if it is designed for expert Wizardry players, it is still quite bullshit at times.

I actually think level 9 is easier than level 10. Level 8 is when it gets bad. But I don't think anyone will argue that levels 3, 2, and 1 aren't the worst part of the game.

I'm kind of glad I'm not in this contest for once.

I don't have a problem with a game having crazy puzzles or challenges requiring knowledge of earlier games, or expert-level skills, provided it advertises itself as such, as this game does. The sealed envelope is a lovely troll, for instance.

What I do have a problem with, however, is the sheer amount of RNG luck you need to make it through. Occasional unlucky deaths are part of the whole RPG experience, sure, but here it's just... well...

I'll readily admit I could have made things less luck dependent for myself by simply restarting the game and fighting my way back to the Guardian. But that would not make them any easier, and there's still a strong element of luck in dealing with the Guardian because of his powerful ranged spells, not to mention successfully reaching the Guardian with all one's monsters intact.

Welcome back to The Return of Werdna! In today's episode, we will tackle...



Level 9: The Catacombs. I am personally of the opinion that level 9 is the easiest level in the game, easier even than the first level of the game. There are no real tricks that will end an otherwise promising run, such as secret doors without a light source; the monsters you can summon here are very powerful relative even to the stronger do-gooders you meet here; and the level layout is fairly simple.



First point of difficulty: Finding the pentagram. As in other levels, after reaching the stairs you will most likely have dried up at least a good portion of your supply of spells, and have slots of monsters either near empty or empty. Level 9's layout is fairly simple: it is a spiral shape containing a large number of two-square nooks. At the corners of the spiral are scripted groups of do-gooders.

Shown above is a rough map of level 9: of particular note is that the smaller nooks are not displayed -- they are all typically two squares long on either side of the current hallway, each one behind a door -- nor are the actual encounter areas -- most of them can be found behind a doorway on the other side of one of the smaller two-square nooks, but two are behind otherwise normal-looking doors. The encounter areas are square-shaped and contain a series of four encounters.

Above is an encounter area facing northeast: each X is a fixed battle with six fighters (or rarely a samurai). The $ is a battle with the strongest group of do-gooders in that encounter area, which will typically leave either a key item or a fairly useful piece of equipment.



The pentagram is six squares north and two squares west of the level entrance, behind one of the many identical nooks. It wasn't particularly hard to find on my first runthrough but if I did not already know where it is on this runthrough it would probably be a source of frustration to find it.

The monsters available here are quite varied and most of them are very battle-worthy: anacondas at least are one of the worst choices and died very quickly when I summoned them, but they hit hard and inflict poison. Other notable monsters are mummies (hardy undead that inflict level drain on hit and have high accuracy -- at least, they very rarely miss against this level's do-gooders), witches (capable of casting mage spells such as Dilto to reduce their AC and Halito to do autohit damage, coming in groups rather than alone as level 1 mages), huge spiders (much like anacondas but all around a bit better, I believe -- I didn't bother summoning them), No-See-Ums (upgraded coins, appearing in groups of 9, calling for help, and breathing for multiple points of damage a pop; they do waste time normally attacking for little damage sometimes), and finally level 3 priests (capable of reducing the entire party's AC by 2 with Matu, silencing enemies with Montino, and paralysing them with Manifo, in addition to weaker but still useful priestly magic such as Dios and Badios).



Reaching it increases Werdna to level 2 -- 20 HP, attributes of 10, and 2nd level spells. Most Wizardry mages do not have HP quite as good as Werdna's but I suppose that's one of the very few blessings he's been given in this game. He recalls Sopic, which reduces his AC when cast by 4 by rendering him less visible, and the more useful Dilto, which raises enemy AC by covering them in darkness. Neither of his level 2 spells are particularly powerful (Wizardry V revises the spell inventories of characters considerably, including adding a lower-level version Molito to this spell level).



While the game doesn't announce it Werdna amasses quite a bit of gold in battles with do-gooders. He doesn't have many places to spend it, however, so I've purchased three hints from the Oracle so far (one in a future update). Note that the Oracle, while one of your few sources of hints, is typically not very helpful. See if you can actually decrypt his silly hints any!

In any case after giving Werdna a hint the Oracle always vanishes. But he shows up frequently enough that we will probably have purchased all of his hints long before each one becomes relevant.



The do-gooders are really not large threats on level 9, either. While they are higher level you can typically kill them quite quickly with a good number of monsters, and they drop equipment Werdna can sometimes equip and use (again, remember that his equipment selection is very limited). There are only a few do-gooders to watch out for: Raistlin, who is a weak and sickly mage but knows the powerful Lahalito spell (a level 4 spell that torches a monster group for a hefty sum of 6-36 damage each), and Greyhawk's Ghostbusters ("Bell Werdna!") who have no items Werdna should be interested in that he can't get elsewhere, consist of several powerful spellcasting characters and high-level fighters, and just generally are what roguelike players would call an "out-of-depth encounter". The other wandering adventurer party is quite weak, and the other named groups on this level are all fixed encounters.

After defeating a few groups of do-gooders one of them drops a beanie that Werdna automatically identifies upon taking it as a Novice's Cap (AC -2) that casts Montino when used as an item in combat, allowing Werdna to silence pesky adventurers on command. As with other items I believe it breaks if overused, I do have level 3 priests who spam Montino even when it's already been cast or is useless, and it is a rather nice piece of equipment, so I probably won't use it too often.

Invoking items can have a variety of effects and is usually safe with most non-cursed equipment pieces. For example to use the Black Candle for its Lomilwa spell, Werdna has to equip and invoke it. In other, fairer games invocation can even increase character statistics or change their classes (the Thief's Dagger in Wizardry I allowed its user to class change into ninja, which is normally alignment-restricted and requires 17s in all attributes).



We encounter Greyhawk's Ghostbusters with a member we already previously killed with them. They're still too much of a threat for us, so we opt to flee.



I don't keep track of my gold, so the Oracle refuses me when I offer to pay.



The do-gooders in encounter areas are as noted fighters with the occasional samurai. This means that half of the enemy party will be forced to parry against me during combat while they're being breathed on and having priest spells flung at them. This removes most of the bite from these battles: the only risk is having Werdna attacked too often, which is unlikely when I have three monster groups and less of a threat when my priests are casting Matu in battles with typically low level fighters.



After cutting through and looting a group of enemies I receive this message. And while technically correct, there are two issues that make this message a lot less pithy. One is that most master adventurers have forty-eight item slots at their disposal and I have eight. The other is...



That I can just come back and take the item (Lander's Turquoise, key item), one of several in a series of important precious stones. Carrying it around is of course a pain, given that I only have so many item slots.



But fortunately, Raistlin appears and I elect to attack him. He ashes Werdna and I'm simply allowed to call my taking the turquoise a test run, which is of course to say that I'm not going to go back and take it until I need it.

Death count: ~28 (~10x longsword, ~4x molito, 1x mahalito, ~7x mahalito, ~3x halito, 2x entrapment, 1x Trebor).
Next time: More exploration and the mechanics of stealing!

Hello, ladies, gentlemen, and everyone in between! Welcome back to The Return of Werdna!



The update starts off promisingly enough -- an encounter with Talon's Tigers will make things a lot easier for us, given that they'll be dead long before we start running out of spells and monsters. And they're certianly not a threat right now.



I managed to get autocomplete to actually work, by the way. I'm probably not going to bother with it because there's a bit of delay after hitting Return and it's faster for me to just type the spell.



A member of the Tigers drops the Cone of Silence (Dunce Cap), which isn't a very good piece of equipment but can be used in combat to cast Montino. I said in the previous update that the Novice's Cap casts Montino, which is untrue: it just casts Halito.



Here's our inventory at this point.



Unfortunately, our next few battles don't go too well: I enter the nearby encounter area and fight several battles, but during my final battle which includes a Captain (G-Samurai), my No-See-Ums are destroyed with a Mahalito spell and my remaining monsters and I are finished off with sword swipes.



After cutting my way through another portion of the level 9 army, I find not a key item, but a notable piece of equipment: the Twilight Cloak reduces Werdna's AC by 1, and when equipped and invoked, grants him a small bonus to-hit. Its effect isn't amazing, but is an advantage, and Werdna will gradually become a less pathetic melee combatant as time goes on.



After this, I just barely survive several difficult battles thanks to the priests in my party constantly casting Matu. I have had Werdna's AC reach LO (-10 or lower) during protracted combats before, and it really shows just how important defensive magic can be in this game: it's the only reason I survive fights like this one.

Granted, AC doesn't help against magic.



Frustratingly, thieves begin to rob me at this point -- even stealing my Black Candle -- and I know more dangerous enemies could be waiting on me, so I make a beeline for the local pentagram, refresh my HP and spells, and summon a new set of monsters.

Then I descend to the floor below and crush the Pyramid Guard with ease. Not even Molito saves him from being breathed and magicked to death this time.



So I obtain another Black Candle and a second Jewelled Amulet.



While walking back to my destination, I ignore the stairs momentarily to walk past them and loop around to the other side of the Pyramid's narrow final layer. At the other end, hidden well on level 10, is the Bloodstone (key item).

Here is the issue with thieves stealing from me: I am not sure if I can actually re-obtain key items by backtracking to where they were originally found. I can certainly find them again if they were dropped from an adventurer, but this is true of all items. Finding dropped key items is possible in Wizardry V but may not be possible here. I have not on previous playthroughs bothered to do this, simply reloading when the stones were stolen, but I'd rather not do that here. That said, if my superstition is correct, reloading is preferable to rendering the game unwinnable.

Death count: ~29 (~11x longsword, ~4x molito, 1x mahalito, ~7x mahalito, ~3x halito, 2x entrapment, 1x Trebor).
Next time: Completing level 9 and reaching level 8!

Wow... This game must be so damn frustrating to play.

Not yet.

...I think I'll stick to this nice, light-hearted game I'm playing. (And wait to see how truly horrible this game gets to be to its players.)

...That's kind of terrifying.

Why man?

WHY?

Good morning! I'm horribly sick and should probably be doing my best to fix that, so here's more The Return of Werdna!



I'm going to be cutting out a decent number of do-gooder battles from here on out, except for those that are genuinely dangerous. For example, Ice Fighter, who is as his name implies just a single fighter, obviously won't challenge me at all solo, so I'm not going to even bother giving him a passing mention. Only a level's notable adventurers or parties will get a glance from Werdna the utterly fucked mighty.



One such notable adventurer is behind this door. Because I am not stupid, I am not going to enter it. We'll be back here later, but for now, our only goal is to leave, since we've got ourselves the two hats and the Twilight Cloak from this level, and I don't need either of the stones just yet.



I'm not sure why I did this at the time, but I carve a path through more of the level 9 army and presumably loot a potion or some such from them. At this point I'd decided against taking the stones, so I don't imagine I had the Lander's Turquoise or Bloodstone from those battles, certainly.

The Oracle's hints are still not very helpful. This one does mention Glum, who is actually fairly important, but it's unlikely I would miss what I need from Glum even without this hint. We'll be meeting him later, in any case: you can't meet Glum until level 8 but the Oracle will cheerfully provide you hints that pertain to areas much later in the game if you've already purchased earlier hints.



We're getting to the point where I'm honestly not quite sure what's been killing me because I didn't bother to take a screenshot of it. In any case whatever progress I made (besides the hints I saved here) was lost, but since I didn't reach level 8 I can't have done anything too useful with my time.



While searching for the level exit I'm feeling a little suicidal, so I challenge Greyhawk's Ghostbusters. Much to my surprise, I actually defeat them, but they don't drop anything good.



But removing the annoyance they present makes it much easier to find this secret passage: when you run from an encounter you are moved back a square, and enemies as noted do patrol the level, so if you attempt to simply move back to the location where you previously ran from a battle, you will likely encounter the same party again. In other words there was a chance that I simply wouldn't be able to leave the level without fighting a party like Greyhawk's Ghostbusters.

Note that this passage is, for the record, technically hidden behind a secret door, but because of my permanent Lomilwa, the only real issue in finding it is that it was located in one of the level's many identical nooks.



There is nothing else to be done on level 9 for the moment. We will come back later, but for now, we enter...



A very wide-open level with a very ominous name.

Death count: ~30 (~11x longsword, ~4x molito, 1x lahalito, ~7x mahalito, ~3x halito, 2x entrapment, 1x Trebor, 1x unknown).
Next time: Level 8: The Death of a Thousand Cuts!

Okay, let's get this BS over with. Welcome back to The Return of Werdna! This will be a very short, but fairly text-heavy update, owing to the nature of The Death of a Thousand Cuts. In fact, the level's mechanics, rather than my exploration (such as it is) of the level will be the focus of this update.



Point #1: The level is extremely open. There are no walls except for the level edges to the north, south, east, and west: Werdna starts at the northern edge of the map, and makes his way south. The level exit is not located directly to the south, but is in that direction. That said, there are several things that can be done on this level that necessitate not simply making a beeline for the level exit.



Point #2: The level is full of landmines. They deal damage each step, and are not destroyed: if you move back to a tile containing a landmine you previously detonated, another landmine will detonate, dealing damage to you again. The landmines near the level entrance deal 1 damage; as you head further south their damage scales up quite sharply.



Point #3: The pentagram is placed on the outer edge of one of the large clusters of landmines. It can be found by hugging the wall to the east, heading south a bit, then moving west one tile. Since the mines aren't very damaging this part of the level, this should generally not be too much of a problem, but it is good to have saved at the beginning of the level.

There are many strong monsters on display here, including Ronins (samurai who cast spells and fight with swords like the player equivalent), more monsters that drain levels and monsters that cast powerful spells like Mahalito, but unfortunately none I can see that cast Dilto (it is possible to increase the AC of an adventuring party well above 10, to 30, with this spell, and this was one of my staple tactics in level 9). This is the point in the game where I no longer recognize monsters like Looters, but I do remember Shades, Ronins, and level 5 Priests, and summon these to make up my new group.

Reaching level 3 also grants Werdna 30 HP, 11 in all attributes, and access to Mahalito and Molito for mass damage (although Mahalito is generally preferable -- I don't recall Molito ever being very useful).



Point #4: But even with all of these relative advantages, Werdna's biggest enemy is still the dungeon, not the do-gooders. The dungeon is not huge, 20x20 as is standard for a Wizardry dungeon, but consider that most of it is filled by landmines: as a matter of fact, there is only one path through the level to the exit. To illustrate:

For reference, * represents a landmine, < and > represent the stairs up and down, and # represents the pentagram. This is not, of course, accurate to the path that must be taken through the level (or its size). And there's one last thing to note.

Point #5: There are important things on this level. If not the item drops from the adventurers, then at least two of the level's most prominent features. I don't recall them being easy to miss, but I will be replaying this level as best I can without access to maps. I'll know that, if I miss either of the two important things here, I have to explore the Land further.

And that is really just an extremely unpleasant prospect.

Death count: Same as previous update.
Next time: The next update may or may not be tomorrow, depending on how quickly I fumble through level 8. In any case it will detail the adventurers and notable features of level 8, besides the landmines. Hopefully then we'll head onto level 7.

I'm pretty okay with the fact that you're being flanked by magic, animated coins that can breath fire (or what have you).

...but why are they called No-See-Ums?

No-See-Ums aren't coins, just equivalent enemies. I don't actually remember what No-See-Ums are, just that they breath really hard.

From the SFC remake.



Some kinda ghost I guess. I like fire-breathing change better.

However, the first Apple port (with the REALLY bad portraits) has this as the image:



So I guess they're suposted to be some sort of insect swarm.

Hey Asema, I've got to say I'm loving this LP. Each time there's a new update it's like a buterfly hatching in my heart. And fuzzy caterpillers march up and down my left-arm. I really like your informative no-nonsense take on this infamous game. I haven't commented on every post but I wanted you to know I'm devouring them with glee.

Probably!

I've gotta say, this LP is pretty awesome as someone who spent part of his childhood mapping out Wizardry 1/2/3.

Some side trivia for those who care (probably no one):
Halito family : Fire based damage
Molito : Lightning based damage, don't remember any enhanced versions
Dalta family: Cold based damage
Now what I'm not clear on is whether or not the game ever accounts for the different elements, and whether or not different monster/classes have different resistances to the elements. I'm pretty sure this is implemented in the later wizardries (6 and up for sure).

Regarding the lack of light spells/entrapment deaths, there's no way to go through the door without seeing it first? My impression from the earlier ones is that the door should still be there or could be walked through even if you didn't have Milwa/Lomilwa active.

This game is nuts. Nuts!

In the first three you could go through a secret door without a light. As always, things were made more difficult in IV.

In Wizardry VI and VII at least, elemental resistances are implemented as a percentile chance for the spell to fail -- an enemy with 75% fire resistance has roughly that chance to ignore a fire elemental spell. I'm under the impression that at least in Wizardry V, elemental resistances are implemented: Dalto sometimes does less damage to undead than its spell description states is the minimum in that title.

No, I can't move through secret doors without light. It's not a problem anymore, because I don't recall any dark zones in this game.

Thanks, this is really great to know! I'll be headed onto level 7 shortly after I get my precious Black Box.

I technically reached level 7 today! "Technically," you ask? You'll have to find out what I mean in today's update to The Return of Werdna!



First off, the battles I fought on this level were reasonably difficult. The solo adventurers did not pose much threat and did not tend to make very many teams. The two adventuring parties were more dangerous: Abduul's Artful Dodgers ("Die, infidels!") has a priest, a mage, and a bishop, all of whom can pose problems for Werdna's group, but its leader Abduul is a thief with a fair number of hit points (36). He and the lone thieves (Oger and Memole) combine to make for the level's biggest adventuring threat: thieves who take their turns long before you, steal an item and run, and force you to watch as the Mahalito and Halito spam you threw out hits nothing. It is not actually possible to avoid thief attacks, strictly speaking: short of fleeing (which has its own problems described in a previous update and evidenced in this own), there is a high chance a thief will simply take an item and leave. And if you are ambushed, yes, a thief can steal from you and leave before you are even prompted to take action.

On several unsuccessful runthroughs of the level (three deaths to landmines, thieves stole the bloodstone, which evidently I still had upon saving, novice's cap, candle, and amulet -- they cannot steal equipment, but there is only so much you can have equipped, and equipping the candle would mean not having the Twilight Cloak equipped.



During his travels, Werdna encounters a fountain! It looks rather interesting, doesn't it? By wading in it, Werdna can obtain a key item. Since I don't need this one just yet at all, I elect to simply skip over the fountain for now. We will, as ever, be back here later.



The level's other interesting feature is Glum ("An Assassin"), whose presence camping out near the stairs up is rather fishy, almost like he was waiting for Werdna. It's rather opportune that he's a fixed encounter, however: not only is he fairly weak (he is a high-level ninja with 220 hit points and -3 AC, but does not have any equipment and will rarely if ever target Werdna), but he is vulnerable just like anyone else to spells like Sopic... and, apparently, to Katino, although its chance of hitting is abysmal. On my first battle with him, one of my Spirits slept him at 180 hit points and that ended the battle: if all members of a party are disabled, by sleeping, paralysis, or stoning, the party is killed. On my second (because there was a second -- I was killed by Abduul's Artful Dodgers, I believe, with a normal attack from a dagger) I simply plowed through him with a lot Mahalito spam and AC reduction (Werdna's AC was below -20 by the end of the battle).

So why is Glum so interesting, so notable that even the Oracle hints at his existence?



He drops the Black Box. This item allows you to store up to 19 others inside of it. They cannot be accessed during combat and are not usable during puzzles, but are secure from thieves -- at least, unless a thief steals the Black Box itself (possible but rare), at which point you really ought to reload. This gives Werdna some much needed inventory space and will allow me to gather up key items and even some niceties like potions and scrolls without sweating over every space they use.

In any case, here's the path I had to take through the level.

I do recall taking some damage from landmines during the trip, although that might just be my imagination, so this map may not be completely accurate: the point is that it got me to the other end of the level. The Xs represent the path taken through the landmines, the & represents the fountain, and the / represents Glum.

Wait a minute, does Glum respawn? And if so, does he drop another black box?

Before we do anything on level 7, though, I head back to level 9. Now that I have the inventory space to deal with the stuff up there, I have some unfinished business to deal with.



Behind the door at the centre of level 9 is...



A blatant request to do something suicidal...



... That I do anyway. Fighting the Hellhound (E-Fig, 222 HP, -2 AC) and winning here results in Werdna finding the Demonic Chimes (key item, initially identified as "wired bones", oddly enough). These go in the Black Box, along with all of the other miscellaneous items that we will not be using for half the game but are expected to find and store regardless.



Okay, okay, jeez. That's all I need to do here right now anyway.



This is one of the Oracle's hints that is actually useful, although in a backhanded way that does not really take the bite out of one of the game's cruelest puzzles. We're getting to the point where the hints I purchase for him actually have some explicable significance... However, this one will not be relevant until the very end of the dungeon.

At this point I elect to collect Lander's Turquoise. However, my mapping of level 9 was less than stellar, so I spend a fair amount of time wandering about looking for it. My monsters from the first pentagram last for many adventure encounters and two towers worth of sentries... that is, until I encounter Greyhawk's Ghostbusters.



Their Dalto spells freeze my spirits, ronins, and priests all alike into a fine snowy mist and they do a really good number of me in successive rounds. I am quickly forced to flee, but therein lies the problem: although I did not encounter them in the pentagram's nooks initially, they now block the doorway there (i.e. adventurers in this game can effectively teleport), meaning I have no way to heal or summon monsters: it's either downstairs through the Pyramid Guard, who will kill me, or upstairs through the minefield, where the adventurers or mines will kill me.



So Werdna strips naked and runs right into Greyhawk's sword.

When I said that I "technically" reached level 7, I meant that I did find the stairs, so it should be no problem for me to go down there after I navigate through the minefield again, get the Black Box again, head back upstairs, get the stone and chimes, go back down through the minefield, and then head to level 7. The thought occurs only now that I could have went through level 7 beforehand... but here's the thing: the staircase at level 7 is surrounded by dark zones. Actual dark zones, of the sort I'd forgotten are in this game. And honestly, I really wasn't up to fighting that level's do-gooders and dealing with dark zones at the time. So I suppose I'll have to do some backtracking before I'm ready to update again. In the meantime:



I coaxed Trebor into killing me, and set the delay to 99 before doing so so I could take a screenshot of it! You're welcome.

Death count: ~35 (~12x longsword, 1x dagger, ~4x molito, 1x lahalito, ~7x mahalito, ~3x halito, 2x entrapment, 2x mines, 2x Trebor, 1x unknown).
Next time: Level 7: The Ziggurat!

I'm actually not sure, but I get the feeling that if it were possible to have more than one Black Box, other, savvier players would've caught onto this before me and I would know by now. So I think that if he does respawn, then he won't drop a second box.

EDIT: I think I will test this, though, along with the ability to re-obtain key items found in event squares, in a bonus update!