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

My wife has told me that my touch is chilling unto death. Her feet are colder than mine, though.

Bonus update!

I'll be updating in full (with quite a lot to say) later on today, most likely. In the meantime, here's what happened in one of my recent "deaths".



I made my way through level 9, backtracking to collect the stones now that I have the inventory space to spare for them. This went well: when I ran low on monsters I returned to the pentagram on level 9 to refresh them. I still had more than the necessary firepower for level 9 thanks to Mahalito.



Eventually I found the tower mess hell where Lander's Turquoise was kept, and took it back.



But shortly after, a thief appeared and stole the Black Box, forcing a reload. I discovered later that it is possible to take back key items on event squares, even after they've been stolen or dropped. But I still don't like that as an option: if my Black Box is stolen and I choose not to reload, I must first go to level 8 and kill Glum, go back through the minefield, get the turquoise and chimes from level 9, get the Black Candle and bloodstone from level 10, and collect anything else I lost.

Opinion time: Should I be allowed to reload after losing the Black Box to thieves? If not, should I skip over each time I regather the key items I lost?

Yes, of course you should be able to reload. Why on earth shouldn't you do that? Everyone else would do that.

This game is clearly not playing fair. Why should you feel you should have to?

I agree. Anyone who disagrees deserves to be biscuit-punched once for each time Asema has to re-gather the key items.

Why on earth would we want to make this harder on you, Asema?

Normally I am all in favor of anything that brings an LPer more pain and suffering, but in this case I'll give you a pass on reloading.

Good evening! I'm tired, but I'm writing this update come hell or high water! Welcome back to The Return of Werdna!



As noted I made my way through level 9, looking for Lander's Turquoise. After that I collected the Chimes and all of the other associated paphernalia, but while making my way back to level 8 I was attacked by a thief, and the Black Box was again stolen, necessitating a reload. Unfortunate, but I've played through this section quite a few times by now, so I make back my lost time quickly.

I collect Potions of Dios on my way through the minefield from the various do-gooders populating the level. It's a rather intensive process clearing the place out, and I actually head back to the pentagram several times, at one point dying because I completely lost my sense of direction, and by the time I'd used a Jeweled Amulet didn't have enough HP left to survive another landmine.



When I reach my destination I use the potions I've amassed to regain 1, 2, then 8 hit points, healing up from half hit points to nearly full. I then wade in the pool surrounded by majestic oaks.



I take only 14 damage from the pool of acid, but I thought it would be much higher. Again our collection of key items grows: the Witching Rod (key item) won't be used for ages yet but I don't need as much inventory space as I've been provided and I would rather minimize the amount of backtracking I have to do. It's already a fairly significant portion of the game.



I return to the level stairs, where I display the level's second fixed encounter: if you attempt to bypass Glum while reaching the stairs, by stepping into the other square adjacent to the stairs, you'll fight a fixed encounter with a Golem -- still pretty weak for a solo enemy, but really more of a threat than Glum. Doesn't really drop anything besides a Potion of Dios, which I do take.



With that I make my way to level 7. Walking through the dark zone dispels my candle's light, which means I either find someone to cast Lomilwa for me or risk burning down the Candle. The adventurers here are tough, but at least AC/DC is alone.



The pentagram is located in one of the rooms to the east, in front of a door.

The monsters here are all fairly decent, I suppose. The Priestesses cast higher-level priest spells and have slightly better stats, the Goblin Shamans can use both arcane and divine magic like a Bishop, the Cockatrices (at least I thought) could petrify enemies with a strike (but didn't ocme in groups larger than two; thus were they quickly dropped from my roster), Ogres hit hard and take lots of damage, and so on and so forth. I will admit I preferred my previous team, but they simply don't have the raw strength to last here the way this pentagram's monsters do.

Reaching level 4 boosts Werdna to 40 HP, 12s in all attributes, and has him recall the Lahalito and Dalto spells, which increase his offensive firepower again by giving him the ability to torch or ice-storm his foes to death with another 9 spell slots. This means I can even sometimes afford to fire off Mahalito in routine battles.



Sorriman's Sorcerers ("Bubble, bubble, toil and cuddle!!!") kill me very quickly. As their name implies they're a force of powerful spellcasters that wastes no time in unleashing powerful spells that rip through my front ranks. In the end, I'm killed again by a sword blow -- although this time it's a high level Dragon Slayer, so that gets a separate notch on the death count!



Following a reload, I begin my exploration of the level in earnest: the party's Priestesses cast the spell Maporfic, which permanently reduces Werdna's AC by 2, and I believe that of his monsters as well. This passive protection spell isn't amazingly important, but again, every advantage helps in this game (and it means that when priests or priestesses are summoned, his AC reaches LO that much faster). You'll note that level 7 is a temple, but this is just one of its two defining features, and for the purposes of a dungeon explorer, the less important of the two.



The dungeon's gimmick (in addition to its very powerful adventurers; Thorin's Tramplers features a bishop with 300 hit points, but the group drops the MordorCharge item -- a credit card, of all things, that has one very silly purpose and is otherwise just a burden) is that it's a ziggurat, and it treats north as up for the purposes of climbing the ziggurat. Reaching the edges of the ziggurat -- the corners of the level on the east and west, initially, although it narrows as I progress -- causes Werdna to "fall off the ziggurat", taking damage and typically returning to the entrance of the level.

Eventually I encounter a group with a mage capable of casting Makanito, a spell that asphyxiates weaker targets. It's a very powerful spell that in the main Wizardry series serves its purpose best when clearing out groups of "weaker" but still dangerous enemies like ninjas. Here, since Werdna is 4th level, it serves its purpose best when the mages target him with it and kill him, with 100% likelihood, when their turn comes up. It is by far the biggest threat the do-gooders provide here, and kills me.

P.S. I backtracked through the mines and died again.

Death count: ~40 (~12x longsword, 1x Dragon Slayer, 1x dagger, ~4x molito, 1x makanito, 1x lahalito, ~7x mahalito, ~3x halito, 2x entrapment, 3x mines, 2x Trebor, 1x theft, 1x unknown).
Next time: The wonderful secret of the Ziggurat!

Good fucking god this game.

Ha! I love it. Fuckin ziggurat. I can't tell if it's a terrible idea or a brillant one.

I'm having a little trouble visualizing the ziggurat - is it so that you're only climbing one face of the ziggurat? So that the level is something like

That's what I got too. And if you step off any of the # spaces the game deals damage and sends you back to start.

This is correct. The doors are laid out weirdly, though, so it makes navigating actually rather complex: each bit of the ziggurat is a two-by-two room, and some rooms contain doors only to the east, west, north, or south (so you have to go down, then go up, to navigate successfully, and keep track of your vertical and horizontal movement). Naturally the goal is at the top of the ziggurat.

Now the question is, how the hell did they fit this thing into the dungeon?

It's a very spacious dungeon.

Also: Vorpal Bunnies?

AC/DC? What?

Remember that SirTec pulled the good guy groups from player's disks they had sent in for repair. Hence some of the weird names. Also, it's spelled wrong. They forgot the lightning bolt.

Now that I think about it, it's completely possible to project 4 faces of a ziggurat to a single plane. Just think:

...this doesn't of course explain how exactly you fall off the ziggurat.

Vorpal Bunnies are very weak critters I remember from level 2 or 3 of the Wizardry dungeon. I think their normal attack can decapitate but really you shouldn't even think about summoning monsters that weak by this point.

Sensible gameplay mechanics be damned, you could have had a party of murderous, decapitating VORPAL BUNNIES, and you rejected them?

And to think I was enjoying this LP!

If you insist. I'll use a party of Vorpal Bunnies for one or two updates.

I do insist, and I thank you.

Octo,



All your fault.

XOXO

Ashley

P.S. Update coming soon.

Level 7 already? Dang, Asema, you're just blitzing through this game! Insofar as it's possible to blitz through it, of course. While Level 7 is kind of dumb conceptually (since there's no reason it should be possible to fall off the ziggurat), the interconnected small rooms of the ziggurat's "interior" make for an interesting map, and the level's secrets are both interesting and useful. And I've always had an irrational fondness for the phrase "extremely art-deco ziggurat," to the point that I actively seek out opportunities to use it in real life (current success rate: 0%!) I'm not sure how Werdna knows about art deco, considering that he's an evil wizard living in a generic D&D fantasy world, but I suppose that's a mystery for the ages.

Also: holy crap, Thorin's Tramplers is probably the worst group of adventurers that you face in the first half of the game. They're so bad that the mini hint guide that came with the game actually suggested coming back to level 7 after you have the Tiltowait spell, just so you can crush them with it.

Finally, I couldn't help but notice that your Black Box keeps getting stolen. Is there any particular reason you're not equipping it? I think it counts as an accessory, so maybe you couldn't equip it in conjunction with the Twilight Cloak, but given the choice between receiving the bonuses for having the cloak equipped, or making the Black Box impossible to steal, I'd pick the latter option every time.

Progress is slowing down now that I have to deal with Trebor going from "W... E... R... D... N... A..." to "MY REVENGE IS AT HAND" in a few turns. Maybe it's the way the Ziggurat is laid out, or his spawn point on this level, but holy crap he's an actual problem.

And I still have to go back and walk through the mines for the stone. Sigh.

No, I figured that out. It's because I didn't have any new equipment to bother with up until a certain point so I didn't bother trying to equip it. I didn't remember you could equip it. That certainly makes things easier and the previous vote redundant. But it is mutually exclusive with the Candle and other items.

Welcome back to The Return of Werdna! In this episode, we will be collecting Potions of Dios! And, I suppose, exploring the Ziggurat.



The update starts off with a battle against Killer, the first ninja one will typically find in random encounters. As his name implies Killer is a pretty strong fighter, but once again he's solo and when he doesn't die to sleep he dies from having all of Werdna's attacks piled on him. He rewards a victorious archwizard with the Shadow Cloak, however, an item that reduces Werdna's AC by a further 2 and presumably provides miscellaneous bonuses I am unaware of.



Unfortunately, I die to a Dalto spell shortly after finding it. This necessitates that I restart my item collection and exploration from the beginning, but at least I don't lose my maps when I die.



This run goes a little better but this level has a lot of adventurers and Killer makes himself scarce, so it may be a while yet before I find and keep the Shadow Cloak. It's really not hard to find its alternative on this level, though...



The **Use Me** Cape (Cape of Jackal) is cursed and, when equipped, reduces your hit points by 5 every round in addition to inflicting other penalties I'm unaware of on Werdna. It's very badly cursed, and it makes that pretty obvious. The game doesn't have very many cursed items (its predecessors have more, including Damien Stones and Cones of Fire that both do some very nasty things when invoked).



Unfortunately I die again, this time to Trebor. He moves fast on this level, apparently.



In later runthroughs I make some headway before Thorin, with his 300 hit points, simply has more stamina than do my monsters, and even after he runs out of spells, it's a losing battle for me to keep futilely striking at him, and he kills me with his staff in short order.



Fortunately, other battles earlier in the runthroughs prove to be little threat: there are a lot of lone fighters, like Taz here, who pose little threat. Unfortunately the same thing is true of the Vorpal Bunnies Octo requested me to summon. They have very little health and don't deal much damage. They have a chance to decapitate on hit but it is really quite low. And while they have an advantage in numbers over other melee monsters on the level, a single Mahalito will wipe them all right out. They become an increasing liability as I adventure.



I buy more Oracle hints, but unfortunately I'm quite belligerent about not saving on my various runthroughs, the one runthrough where I cleared the level of adventurers, Trebor appeared to kill me in short order. I imagine he speeds up, or some similar mechanic, in order to prevent you from ever navigating a dungeon level completely peaceably. This means that I've spent a lot of time regathering Potions of Dios and fighting Killer, and probably will until I make some genuine progress on this level.

Death count: ~44 (~12x longsword, 1x staff, 1x Dragon Slayer, 1x dagger, ~4x molito, 2x makanito, 1x lahalito, 1x dalto, ~7x mahalito, ~3x halito, 2x entrapment, 3x mines, 4x Trebor, 1x theft, 1x unknown).

What are those jeweled amulets you're carrying with you?

They're the same kind of Jeweled Amulet the Pyramid Guard dropped: they cast Dumapic and have a chance of breaking when used. Very handy for the minefield.

I suspect the layout of the level is the main culprit here. Trebor doesn't move terribly fast, and the previous levels have enough open space that you can dodge him pretty easily. By contrast, a large portion level 7 is inaccessible (being outside the ziggurat), and the way the rooms are laid out, you can travel through a dozen rooms and end up less than 10 spaces away from where you started. This is one of the few levels where Trebor's ability to ignore obstacles more than compensates for his relatively slow movement speed.

One possibility that comes to mind: if Trebor starts getting too close to comfort, it might work to head to the bottom of the ziggurat, and move east or west to the opposite side to give yourself some breathing room. Heading to the bottom row of rooms also makes it fairly easy to return to the pentagram, which can be useful; I don't think I ever managed to kill Thorin on my first visit to the level without making at least one trip to the pentagram to reload on monsters and spells.

Good idea stocking up on Jeweled Amulets, incidentally. I think I mostly relied on casting Dumapic manually, which meant that I tended to run out of spells at the most inconvenient times. Using amulets to cast it is a much smarter move.