The Game of Dungeons v8: VICTORY (AT LONG LAST)

It feels weird not to be playing this game.  I started playing it on August 28th of 2015, and I finished it on August 28th of 2016.  One year.  And when I say that I played this game for a year, I mean a whole year.   I didn't take any breaks, I didn't go on hiatus.  I played a bunch of other games in the interim, but I always had The Game of Dungeons going in the background.  I played it almost every day.  So when I say that it feels weird, I mean it, because it became a sort of permanent fixture in my schedule.

My last post left off with my capture of the Grail, which is one of two items needed to win.  The other is the Orb, which sits at the bottom of the Caverns, one of three 30-level dungeons in the game.  The instructions mention that the Orb is guarded by a Dragon, but give no guidance as to how strong the Dragon might be, or how it might be defeated.  Version 5 of The Game of Dungeons had a special Dragon Spell that would kill the Dragon instantly, but at the cost of draining every last bit of your magic.  That spell isn't in Version 8, and to be honest it was more trouble than it was worth.  I didn't use it to win Version 5, so I won't miss it here.

The Caverns, despite being the third dungeon, were easier to map than the Tomb of Doom.  There were a few hairy ones; Level 25 was nothing but one-square rooms with doors on every side, and Level 30 was full of hallucination squares, making it impossible to know what was adjacent to my character.  Level 30 was also chock-a-block with teleporters leading back to Level 29, and the constant random teleportation was really frustrating.  There was nothing as bad as the worst levels of the Tomb of Doom, though, which still take the cake as the most difficult mazes I've ever had to navigate.

Level 25 of the Caverns.  Brown lines are for doors, black for walls, 
blue and green for teleporters up and down.  Good luck navigating 
this sucker: remember, every time you enter you'll be in a 
random location.

Looking at my notes, I just noticed that I either forgot to map Level 15, or it got deleted somehow.  I must admit to some small temptation to grind up another character and finish that last map, but there's no way.  I can get obsessive about these things, but even I have limits.

After mapping out the Caverns (with the aid of many Astral Potions), it was time to make the final foray.  As I did when going for the Grail, I made sure to drink a Potion of Revival before heading to Level 30: it would ensure my resurrection if I died, albeit at the cost of all my magical items, including the Grail.  It's not ideal, but it's better than outright death.  This is a hard game, but I'm thankful that there are safety nets in place for players that want to use them.

Level 30 can be accessed quickly by use of the Excelsior Transporter (found on Level 1), at the cost of a small number of hit points.  Getting back up is more difficult.  With an Astral Potion you can easily move up and down between levels, but without one doing so eats up your spell slots.  I was being careful, and the whole process should have gone easily, but I had one last scare that almost ruined everything.

After buying a Revival Potion, I left the Potion Shop and started teleporting myself down, not using the Excelsior Transporter but using my own spell power.  This is what I would normally have done while Astral, and I had gotten into a routine with it.  By the time I realised my mistake I was on about Level 20, and I started frantically teleporting back up.  My spell power ran out on Level 13, and I had to make the long slog back to the surface with no magic to protect me.  I managed it with about 50 hit points (out of 800+), despite one heart-stopping moment where I fell in a chute I hadn't marked on my map and tumbled from Level 4 back to Level 10.  It was one last bit of stupidity and suspense from a game that's provided me plenty of both.

Finding the Orb and the Dragon was, as expected, a bit of an anticlimax.  There's no warning that they're nearby, and I'm not even sure that they're always found in the same square.  They just appeared suddenly as I was exploring, and even though I was actively looking for them it still took me a few moments to register that I'd reached my goal.

The poor old Dragon doesn't even get his own icon.

Killing the Dragon was similarly anticlimactic.  The game's two most damaging spells are Fireball and Lightning Bolt; I wasn't about to try casting a fire spell on a Dragon, so I opted for the Lightning Bolt.  It was enough to kill the Dragon instantly.  Like I said, anticlimactic, but in a game that's so long and time-consuming I'm not going to complain that the final battle was too easy.

With the Orb in hand, I started teleporting back to the surface.  My magic ran out on Level 9, but I had no trouble in making it cautiously back to the surface.  I took a quick snapshot of my character on the verge of success, to preserve for posterity.

It should be noted that the name 'npm' was something I typed in accidentally (it was meant to be my password).  I could have changed it to something more evocative, but I ended up just going with it.  I also didn't begin the game as an Elf: I was polymorphed when I read a cursed book.  I hate elves on principle, but being polymorphed costs a point of Endurance.  As much as I hate Elves, I don't hate them enough to compromise my stats.

And now, the long-awaited victory sequence:

See that, above?  That's what I got for my efforts.  One word, marred by a bunch of vector lines.  There's an extreme pettiness to this, as though the creators of the game just refused to graciously congratulate anyone who beat the game.  There's also a certain amount of humour to be gained from the fact that I strove for a whole year just for this.  I laughed, anyway.

This is more like it: a leaderboard!  There I am, at the top, and even though my character had a terrible name, it's the second-best name on there.  Huzzah!  Huzzah for npm!

Having finished version 8 of The Game of Dungeons, I'm glad that I played it.  I very nearly didn't bother; I assumed that it would be slightly altered or improved from version 5, but basically the same game.  While there are similarities, the two are different enough that I would consider them different games.  It makes me wonder about the other versions, and in what ways they might have been different.  At this point in time they're lost to the ages, which is a damn shame.

The main reason I decided to play Version 8 is that I loved Version 5 so much: it's currently ranked second out of all the games I've played on the blog, and it's the top-rated RPG.  Version 8 is larger, longer, and more difficult, but there's one thing it isn't: better.  The earlier game was tight, and although it was difficult and featured perma-death, it wasn't so long that it felt like a slog.  Version 8 is a poster-child for the idea that bigger is not necessarily better.  It has a total of 90 dungeon levels, which would be a lot even in an RPG where you can save your game.  With perma-death, it's just way too many.

I guess I have to do a Final Rating for this, don't I?  It's a strange feeling to be boiling a year of my life down to a few numbers, but that's the nature of the blog, innit?  Besides, it's not like playing The Game of Dungeons is all I did in the last twelve months.  Watched a lot of pro-wrestling as well.  It's a life well lived.

FINAL RATING:

Story & Setting: Like most games of this vintage, these categories are virtually non-existent.  There's not so much a story as a goal: get the items from the dungeons.  Why are those items there?  Why are they important?  Why are those monsters guarding them?  Pretty basic questions given the set-up, but there are no answers forthcoming.  The story is the game, and the game is the story.  Rating: 1 out of 7.

Characters & Monsters: The game has a strong variety of monsters, with differing strengths and weaknesses, but by the end those differences get smoothed away because you can brute force your way through most encounters with little regard for tactics.  The monster variety is on a par with those in Version 5, with the main difference being the addition of the various slimes.  I'm not even sure they qualify for this category, as they're more obstacles than characters, so I'll rank this game equal to its predecessor.  Rating: 2 out of 7.

Aesthetics: The graphics are simple, and there's no sound, but I do love that orange-and-black PLATO colour scheme.  There's a lot to be said for graphics that are functional, as well.  Rating: 2 out of 7.

Mechanics: While combat and spellcasting in this game are simple (involving little more than a few keystrokes), the game has a lot of functions and implements them flawlessly.  Just think, how many times have you screwed up a keyboard-based game because of an errant keystroke?  It's happened to me more times than I can count, but in this game, which I played for a solid year, it didn't happen even once.  The key commands are set up in such a way that the really important ones are paired with the SHIFT or CTRL keys, which makes it really hard to screw things up.  I don't think I've ever played a game that has considered this so carefully, and I have to give it kudos for that.  Rating: 5 out of 7.

Challenge:  This is where this game is going to take a hit, because it's just too long.  I really like perma-death as a game feature, but it only works for very specific types of games.  While this is the right style of game to feature perma-death, it's exactly the wrong length.  I was prepared to rate this at the minimum score, but the ability to buy potions saves it.  If I'd figured that out earlier I would have finished this game months ago. Rating: 2 out of 7.

Innovation & Influence: I'm struggling to think of anything this game does that wasn't done better in other, earlier PLATO RPGs.  I was thinking that it might be the first RPG to feature multiple dungeons, but then I remembered Moria, which has four.  The use of slimes as a hazard is a first, though not a particularly notable one.  Rating: 2 out of 7.

Fun: I vaguely recall enjoying this game once, in the dim dark days when I first started playing it.  The fun long since drained out of the experience, and it simply became something I did.  It was part of my schedule, and by the end I was playing just to win, not because it was fun.  Rating: 1 out of 7.

Does this game earn the bonus point?  HELL NO.  The above scores total 15 , which doubled gives a Final Rating of 30.  That puts it fourth from the bottom, and the lowest-rated RPG on the list.  That's perhaps unfair: a lot of care went into the interface of the game.  It's a better game than, say, Space or Dungeon Campaign. It's just a shame that it was hurt by being so difficult and so, so interminably long.

ADDENDUM:

Somewhat later in this blog I made the decision to overhaul my Final Rating system, so I'm going back through and fixing all of the games I've already played as of March 2020.  I've ditched the Innovation and Influence category, and replaced it for CRPGs with a category for Combat.  I've also changed the purpose of the bonus points, saving them for games that are important, innovative, influential, or have features that are otherwise not covered by my other categories.

Also, the Final Rating is a boring name.  The CRPG Addict has his GIMLET.  The Adventure Gamers have their PISSED rating.  Data Driven Gamer has his harpoons.  So I'm ditching the generic name and calling my new system the RADNESS Index: the Righteous Admirability Designation, Numerically Estimating Seven Scores. It's a pretentious mouthful, but I'm going with it.

Combat: This version of the game's combat isn't all that different to that it version 5, so I'm giving it the same score.  Rating: 2 out of 7.

Bonus Points: 1. It's a significant part of the dnd lineage, and it's possible it was played by more people than v5.4. These games were in constant development, and at this point it's impossible to know which version was the most influential.

The Game of Dungeons v8's RADNESS Index is 31. That puts it equal 8th so far, and 5th out of seven CRPGs. It's significantly below v5.4, but I think it changed most of the things I really liked about that game for the worse.

NEXT: I've started Moria again, which is another PLATO RPG and could be another multi-month affair.  I'm pretty sure, though, that it might be the last massive mainframe RPG I have to tackle.  There's Oubliette, but I've heard that game is basically unwinnable as a single player.  My current plan is to go hard at Moria and get it out of the way.  It's going to harm the blog in the short term, but I really want to get these huge games behind me.

The Game of Dungeons v8: Late Night Victory Post

It's too late to post in full, but I just have one thing to say.

I DID IT.  I WON.  I BEAT THE GAME OF DUNGEONS.

I started playing this game in August 28th, 2015.  I finished it on August 28th 2016, exactly one year later.  (Well, technically it's 3AM on the 29th, but I'm still counting it as a year.)  It's been a hard slog, but it's finally over.  I'll post a proper wrap-up soon, but I wanted to mark this occasion, and let my loyal readers know that I ain't dead yet,

In your faces, Dirk and Flint Pellett!  Victory is mine!

The Game of Dungeons v8: Two Down...

I took me ten months to complete Whisenwood Dungeon.  A lesser (or perhaps I should say wiser) person would have quit a long time ago.  The second dungeon, thankfully, took me just one month, and it's all thanks to the Potion of Astral Form.

Seriously, from now on I am going to read the documentation thoroughly before I start a game.  The Game of Dungeons has been running in the background for almost a year of this blog, and there's no doubt that it's seriously impeded my progress.  Now the end is in sight, and it's all because the Potion of Astral Form allows me to map in near-total safety.  If I'd been paying attention, I'd have realised that a lot sooner.

The second dungeon of the game (although you can tackle them in any order, and switch between all three whenever you want) is the Tomb of Doom.  The goal at the bottom is the Grail, which is guarded by a Vampire.  The documentation is vague regarding the Vampire's abilities, and whether he's stronger than the game's regular vampires.  As you'll see later, I never really found out.  The cursory nature of combat in this game makes it hard to know exactly how strong your enemies are.  Either you kill them, or they kill you.  There are no drawn out fights, which is a blessing and a curse.  (In a game of this length and difficulty, I would say it's more of a blessing.)

The maps are more complex in the Tomb of Doom than they were in Whisenwood.  The trick they most often rely on is repetition: lots of interlocking areas that appear exactly the same.  This is especially effective in The Game of Dungeons, because moving from one level to another always puts you in a random location.  Getting lost is easy, and even with a map getting your bearings can be difficult.  Here's an example of what I'm talking about, level 21 of the Tomb:

As you can see, it's repetitive as hell, and super-frustrating to map.  Without the Potion of Astral Form it would have taken me hours.  In addition to the repetition, pretty much all of the doors are one-way; you can pass through in the direction of the arrow, but you can't go back through from the other side.

Below is a map of level 19 of the Tomb, which may be the single most difficult RPG maze I have ever had the misfortune to encounter:

Seriously, just look at that thing.  How do you even make sense of it?  It's nothing but walls that exist on one side but not on the other, and I found it almost impossible to keep my bearings while exploring.  Without the Potion of Astral Form I'd have had no chance.  I very nearly gave up on mapping it, until my stubborn streak kicked in and I refused to be defeated.  I ended up mapping it systematically, starting in the bottom left corner and mapping row by row.  I'm not convinced that it's perfect, but it's as good as it's going to get.

Finding the Grail proved to be a bit more difficult than the Fountain at the bottom of Whisenwood, mostly due to the nature of Tomb level 30.  The tricky thing about this level is that it's loaded with transporters that send you back to level 29.  It's hard to move more than a few steps without stumbling into one.  I got it mapped eventually, but I know I haven't marked down every transporter on the level.  I got enough that I can navigate the map, but even on my last game I walked through one that I had missed.

With the mapping done, it was time to make a run for the Grail.  I was being extremely cautious; just as I had been using the Potion of Astral Form to help me map, I wasn't going to explore Level 30 without a Potion of Revival.  This meant grinding for treasure occasionally between forays, but it's worth it.  Even with the Potion of Revival dying is a setback: you lose all of your equipment, as well as a point of Endurance (which can result in a significant drop in hit points).  That said, it's better than losing your character altogether.  (Also, I've just realised something: it's possible that if I have to use a Potion of Revival from now on, I might lose the Grail.  I'll have to keep an eye on that.)

For my first ten forays into the dungeon, I wasn't able to find the Grail.  I'm not sure if it moves around like the Fountain, or if it's location is fixed.  With perma-death in effect, I'm not about to go back in to find out.  My character actually died on one my tenth foray: teleporting back to the surface backfired on me a few times, and I ran out of spell power on level 13.  I tried in vain to navigate my way out the old fashioned way, but without magic I was losing hit points with every battle, and I had to walk through slimes rather than kill them.  I didn't make it, but my Revival Potion saved me.  I lost all of my gear, one point of Endurance and about 100 hit points, but my caution had saved my character.

I'd like to say that the final, successful foray I made was the stuff of legend, but it was something of an anticlimax.  I stumbled across the Grail and the Vampire in the upper left of the map, and without thinking I cast the cleric spell Holy Word.  The Vampire died instantly, I claimed the Grail, and then I teleported back to the surface.  It's hard to get a good story out of it, you know?

So that's another dungeon down, but I feel more relieved than excited by it.  It will be a massive weight off my shoulders to put this game behind me.  I just mapped level 17 of the Caverns, so I'm well on the way.  As long as I can avoid stupid mistakes, I'm on the home stretch.  Thank fuck.

The Game of Dungeons v8: A Third of the Way to Victory

I've done it.  I've finally done it.  After ten months of constant grinding, mapping, and frequent character deaths, I've completed one of the dungeons in this game.

It seems ridiculous, when I think about it.  Ten months?  Really?  But you know what, I have other things to do besides play games.  And this game is especially frustrating and difficult.  It's long, its hard, and every death sends you right back to square one.  A smarter person than me would have moved on from it long ago.

My last character died while mapping level 29 (of 30), at the hands of a slime.  I had gotten to the point where the monsters were no longer any threat, but the slimes remained deadly.  Because of this I'd decided not to map out the very lowest levels, and instead concentrate on finding the fountain.  After another look at the game's instructions, I changed my mind.

Here's the thing about The Game of Dungeons, and PLATO RPGs in general: their documentation is thorough.  Just about anything you want to know about the game will be in there.  So I was giving it a re-read, and I noticed something about the Potion of Astral Form: it makes you immune to slimes.  Sure, you can't collect gold while using it, but you can walk through walls, teleport up and down between levels without using spell slots, and avoid slimes completely.  It's the perfect item for mapping and exploring.

You can find potions while you explore, but the better option is just to buy one from the shop on level 1 of the dungeon.  An Astral Form potion costs 48,000 gold, but you can stash gold on level 1 and use it to buy thing from the shop.  I made a stash of about 200,000gp and set about exploring.

It took me two trips to map out level 29 and level 30.  Two trips!  Before that, without the potion, it would probably have taken me twenty or thirty.  I can't believe I never figured this out sooner.  It's going to make mapping the Tomb of Doom and the Caverns a lot easier.

I was a little puzzled after mapping level 30, though, because I never discovered the Magic Fountain.  I figured that it was probably because I was in Astral Form, but later on I discovered that the Fountain isn't always in the same place.  It could just be that I never hit the right location while mapping.

With mapping done, it was time to hit level 30 for real.  This time I wasn't taking any chances, and I bought a Revival Potion from the shop: if I died, it would resurrect me and take me back to the surface.  I'd lose all of my magic items, but that's a lot better than losing my character altogether.

I had stroke of good luck, because I entered level 30 only a few steps away from the fountain.  Drinking from it restores all of your health, grants you as much gold as you can carry without being encumbered, and sometimes bumps one of your stats up.  The documentation says that you might encounter the Grim Reaper, but I took two trips to the Fountain and never met him.  At this stage of the game, I'm not about to risk it.

So now I have two dungeons to complete, but I'm attacking them in a wiser fashion.  With smarter tactics, I expect I'll have this game finished pretty soon.

The Game of Dungeons v8: Dirk and Flint Pellet Are Bastards

Deciding when to stop doing something can be tricky.  When it comes to something you've sunk a lot of time into, it can be even trickier.  We've all been there, I'm sure.  It's easy to drop something early on; if you decide that The Walking Dead sucks three episodes in, you can dust your hands and walk away without a problem.  But if you decide it sucks five seasons in...  That's a decision that's more difficult to make.  How do you justify the time spent on those earlier seasons if you're not even going to make it to the end?

This is something I'm guilty of a lot.  If I start a book, I finish the book.  I don't walk out of movies.  Basically, if I start a piece of media, I'm going to finish it.  It's a compulsion.

That's where I am with The Game of Dungeons v8.  I've been playing this game since August last year, and I've probably sunk hundreds of hours into it.  I'm not really enjoying it any more.  I should give up, and move on to something else.  And yet... it's so much time!  If I don't finish it, what was the point?  You could say that it's a waste of my life to keep playing, but to me it feels like a waste of my life if I stop playing. 

As you may have guessed from the above paragraphs, my character died.  Again.  Joe Average had reached the lofty heights of level 160, and had almost 1,000 hit points.  I was in the process of mapping level 29 of Whisenwood Dungeon, and eagerly anticipating the prospect of finishing one of the dungeons off.  With extreme caution, surely it was only a matter of time before I completed the game.

That's what I thought anyway, and I had a reasonable cause to believe it.  Monsters weren't much of a threat.  I was able to escape from the deep levels of the dungeon without much trouble now that I had complete maps.  I was ignoring chests and books, so traps weren't going to kill me.  There's one factor in this game that always remains a threat, though, and can't really be planned for: the slimes.

You may recall that slimes killed my last character.  They killed Joe Average as well, despite his having nearly 1,000 hit points.  Once you hit the deep levels, there are slimes that do 400-500 points of damage per hit, so they never stop being deadly.  And while you can avoid them by moving carefully, there's always the chance that you'll find one on the other side of a door, and those can't be avoided.

That's what happened to me: I stepped through a door into a puddle of Living Mercury, which ate my sword.  Normally this would be my cue to rapidly magic my way back to the surface, but I only had a few squares to explore to fill out a section of the map.  So I went through another door, right into some Orange Glop, which dropped me from 700 to 200 hit points.  Orange Glop can only be killed with a sword, so I frantically started tapping arrow keys to escape.  I managed to get out without taking further damage, but my zealous tapping sent my character racing down the passage, right into a Roving Sludge.  So died Joe Average: in the end, he lived up to his name.

(This death is depressingly similar to the one that killed my last high-level character.  I need to take a hardline stance, and leave the dungeon straight away when I lose my sword.)

Needless to say, I've started again, and I'm back to grinding for XP during the wrestling.  I have a new plan.  Slimes are bastards, but they don't get really deadly to high-level characters until you hit level 25 (or thereabouts).  So I'm going to ignore those levels completely.  I'll map the three dungeons to level 25, and after that I'm going straight to level 30 to look for the goal.  There's also a magic rod you can find that prevents you from stepping in slimes.  I've rarely found one, but I might just purchase one from the shop for when I get deeper into the dungeon.  I need to get smart about buying the correct items.

So, my war continues.  Go to hell, Dirk and Flint Pellett!  You'll never break me!

The Game of Dungeons v8: My Secret Stash

Once again, I'm progressing in The Game of Dungeons v8.  Losing Strider, the character that I had advanced to beyond level 100, was a harsh blow, but I've picked myself up and started again.  My current character, the poorly-named Joe Average, is currently on Level 38.  I'm advancing quickly, perhaps even more quickly than I have been in this game so far.

(About that name.  Yes, I realise that Joe Average is a terrible name.  He had decent stats when I created him, but only 3 hit points, so I never expected him to survive.  Now that he's higher level I should rename him to something like Joe Noteworthy.)

There's a reason that I'm advancing a bit faster than before: I've discovered a feature of the game that stops me from wasting excess gold.  Every character in this game has a carrying capacity based on strength, race, and a couple of magic items.  Once this capacity is exceeded, excess gold will be discarded every time you move.  This was really annoying, because whenever I found a sizable haul of loot, most of it would be gone by the time I reached the surface.  Occasionally a chest will contain some astronomical sum from 100,000 to 500,000 gold pieces, which is often enough to advance a level or two.  I was being forced to drop a lot of gold.

What I figured out, after a careful reread of the manual, is that you can keep a stash of gold in the dungeon protected by magic, by pressing CTRL-ALT-H.  That stash remains so long as you don't start another one elsewhere, and you can keep going back to it and taking more gold.  So now whenever I stumble across a hoard of over 100,000gp I can claim every last bit of it over the course of multiple trips.  It's really helpful.

If you keep a stash on Level 1, you can use it to purchase items from the shops.  I'd often wondered at the astronomical prices of the magic items, but it makes a lot more sense now that I know I can establish a bank of sorts.

I give it another week or two before I'm going to start mapping again.  As I've mentioned before, I'm going to have to map the whole damn game, all 90 levels.  It's the only way to guarantee a safe exit to the surface, and it's going to take a while.  I'll get there one day.

The Game of Dungeons v8: Of Course You Know, This Means War

So.

I died.

Regular readers will be  aware that I've been playing this game since about August last year.  It's been humming along in the background while I polished off a bunch of shorter games.  In early January I started carefully grinding a new character, with the intention that I would level up to a point where I could quickly knock the game off my list.  I should have known it wouldn't be that simple.

Before I get into the ill-fated details, though, I should talk a bit about The Game of Dungeons, more commonly referred to by its filename of dnd.  The game was developed in 1975 by two students, Gary Whisenhunt and Ray Wood, for the PLATO mainframe.  Later on it was expanded by two more guys, the ultra-manly-sounding Dirk and Flint Pellett.  Two versions of the game are currently available to play at cyber1.org: version 5.4 and version 8.  The former is a version of the original game, and the latter is the expansion by the Pellett brothers.

The Game of Dungeons version 5.4 is a hell of a game.  It's currently sitting at the top of my Final Ratings, and is by far the most enjoyable game I've played for the blog.  The goal of the game is to delve to the bottom of Whisenwood Dungeon - twenty levels deep - retrieve the Orb and return to the surface.  It's really well designed, and has an elegant system for increasing the difficulty: the more gold you carry, the tougher the monsters that attack you.  When you begin the game your carrying capacity is limited, so the difficulty is capped at a certain level.  Later you will find a Bag of Holding to increase the amount of gold you can carry, but this also makes the game harder.  Finding the Orb ramps it up again for the endgame.  It's really well done.

 

The halcyon days of version 5.4

The game also deletes your character permanently if you die, which can be frustrating.  But it's short enough that I regard this as a feature rather than a bug.  The tension of perma-death can be a beautiful thing.

Fast-forward to my gaming present, and The Game of Dungeons version 8.  The core of the game remains similar, but there's much more to it.  Rather than one dungeon of twenty levels, there are three dungeons of thirty levels each.  Not only do you have to retrieve the Orb to succeed, but you also have to find the Grail.  There are more monsters, more spells, more items.  Just more of everything.  At first glance, this looks like it should be better than the earlier version.  More stuff equals more good, right?

There are other changes, though.  The elegant difficulty levels I outlined above are gone, replaced by a more traditional system where the strength of the monsters is determined by dungeon level.  There are slimes everywhere, almost impossible to avoid, that eat your magic items.  There are magic runes, most of which are great but one of which can just kill you outright, with no chance to avoid it.

Hate.

Worst of all, it has perma-death.  I know that I praised that very feature earlier, but like I said, version 5.4 isn't that long.  It has twenty dungeon levels.  Version 8 has ninety.  Ninety!  And if you die, it's back to square one.  Version 8 has removed almost everything that made the game great, added a bunch of things that are just frustrating, and made the game four times as long.  It's still a good game - the attention to detail paid to the interface is outstanding - and it's fun to play.  It's just not fun to play all the way from start to finish.

With the preliminaries done, I'll get to my recent travails, and my ill-fated attempt to take a short-cut to the finale.  My character, Strider, had reached the heady stratosphere of level 110, with close to 700 hit points (for the sake of comparison, my winning character in v5.4 had over 100,000; it really is a different game).  I felt confident that this was enough, as most of the characters sitting in the Hall of Fame are at about this level.

I also had a plan.  This plan involved the potion shop on Level 1 of each dungeon.  The shop sells every potion in the game, and my plan was to buy a Potion of Revival.  This would ensure that if I died while attempting to complete the game, my character would be whisked back to the surface alive and well.  This part of my plan worked, although there were some nasty, unforeseen side-effects that I was none-too-pleased with.

Buying a Potion of Revival.

The other part of my plan hinged on the ability to teleport quickly up and down between dungeon levels.  Getting to Level 30 of a dungeon is no problem in this game: the Excelsior Transporter found on level 1 of each dungeon will transport you to any level for the price of a small number of hit points.  As for getting back up, I figured that I'd use my teleport spells; by pressing Shift-PgUp and Shift-PgDn you can quickly move between levels.  It uses up spell slots, and sometimes moves you in the opposite direction you intended, but I've found it fairly reliable, and I thought I had enough slots to get me back up to familiar territory (I've mapped all three dungeons to level 12).

So I took the transporter down, and started exploring the bottom level of Whisenwood Dungeon.  The monsters were tough in battle, but my spells were able to kill them easily.  I didn't find what I was looking for, though, and it wasn't long before my spell slots started to deplete and I felt the urge to retreat to the surface.  So I started spamming Shift-PgUp, to see how close I could get.  It didn't go so well.  I had a bad run of luck with my teleport spells reversing, and by the time I had used up my spell slots I was on level 17 with no idea of how to escape.  I wandered around for a while looking for the exit, but my death was inevitable.

I wasn't overly worried: I had my Potion of Revival, and it did its job in resurrecting me and returning me to the surface.  What I didn't know is that I would lose all of my magic items, and also 1 point of Endurance.  I should have known, it's spelled out in the documentation, but I obviously hadn't read carefully enough.  Losing my magic items was a blow, but the Endurance loss was worse, as it dropped by hit points total by over 100, from about 670 to 530.

Needless to say, my plan was shot.  There was no way to reliably and safely short-cut to the end of this game.  I was going to have to map the whole thing, so that I'd have an escape route ready.  The potion hadn't been as useful as I'd hoped. but I still planned on using it; it had helped me escape perma-death, after all.

With my character over level 100 there was no more need for me to grind for XP, but there was a need for me to map.  I'd been grinding while watching copious hours of professional wrestling, because that sort of TV requires minimal attention.  I watch basically every WWE show, so I'd had plenty of hours to get my character strong.  I figured, hey, I did my grinding during wrestling hours, why not my mapping?

It was a terrible mistake.  With one window open for rasslin', one for the game, and one for Excel, I had minimal space to work with.  And my focus was split.  It was one thing to play the game on autopilot while wandering around on dungeon level 3, but for mapping I needed to be on level 12 and 13.  I needed my wits about me.

It went okay for a while, and I managed to map two levels during an episode of Raw.  Monsters weren't a problem, as I was strong enough to kill them automatically.  Disaster struck in the form of a slime.  The slimes on lower levels are tough, and were draining me for about 100 hit points at a time.  Every slime has its own specific weakness, but I have those memorised, so it was never a massive problem.

That is, until I walked into a puddle of Living Mercury that ate my sword.  Normally I would exit the dungeon when this happens, but my character was strong enough to kill monsters with his bare hands, so why would I leave?  What I hadn't taken into account were the slimes that can only be killed with a sword.  I stepped into a Roving Sludge, and with no sword I wasn't able to kill it.  I should have tried to break free by moving, but instead I just kept spamming ineffective Fire spells at it.  I think it was my split focus, and a bit of confusion from my sword not working, but soon enough I was staring dumbfounded at the Death Screen, while Ryback wrestled an interminable match against the Wyatt Family in the background.  Over a month's work, down the gurgler.

A few posts ago I had dramatically foreshadowed suicide if I lost my character.  Obviously I haven't taken that drastic action.  Instead, I am declaring war on The Game of Dungeons.  I'm back to grinding during wrestling, and I am going to grind the shit out of this game.  I'm going to map every damn square, and kill every damn monster, and take every damn treasure, and I am going to do it cautiously, methodically and spitefully.  Dirk and Flint Pellett: screw you both, and screw your game.  I'm going to beat all of you, no matter how long it takes.  The war of attrition begins anew.

This guy will definitely finish the game and not die at all I am certain of it.  Probably.

Game 12: Voyage to Atlantis (1978)

It's difficult to find any information about Voyage to Atlantis.  What's out there is sparse, but it had me eager to play it.  After all, how many commercial games were designed by a twelve-year-old boy?  Yes, apparently designer Greg Hassett was twelve when he wrote this game, and there are a bunch more by him to come in the next few years.  I'd love to learn more about Hassett, but a Google didn't turn up very much.

Released through Mad Hatter Software (which I'm pretty sure was set up just to publish Hassett's games), Voyage to Atlantis was originally on the TRS-80.  I wasn't able to find that version of the game, so I've had to settle for the Commodore 64 version released in 1983.  It's far from ideal, and I can't shake the nagging fear that I'm playing a version that's different to the original.  Nevertheless, there's a lot of nostalgia for me in firing up a C64, even as an emulator.  My very first computer was a Commodore, and it was on that machine that I had my formative gaming experiences.  I still have it, but I don't have a copy of Voyage to Atlantis, so there's no point in firing it up just yet.  Perhaps later.

But, I digress.  Voyage to Atlantis is yet another treasure-hunting text adventure, much in the vein of Colossal Cave Adventure, Adventureland and Pirate Adventure.  Indeed, one would be forgiven for mistaking this for a Scott Adams game: the instructions on the intro screen are almost identical to Adams' games.  Not only that, but the opening area features a sign that instructs the player to bring any treasures back there and say "score".  I doubt that Hassett ever saw Colossal Cave Adventure, but there's no doubting that he played at least one of Adams' adventures.

Is that you, Scott?

The game begins with the player in his submarine, having docked in the sunken city of Atlantis.  The goal is to find all of the treasures, and bring them back to the sub.  I wasn't able to find a copy of the manual, so I've got no idea how many treasures there.  I've located nine so far (some of which I haven't yet been able to take), but I'm certain there are more.

Having explored all of the areas that are open to me, I have to say that I'm a little disappointed.  Not with the game itself; it's perfectly well-designed.  But there's a certain expectation that comes with a game created by a twelve-year-old.  I was hoping it would be a little crazier, you know?

The version of Atlantis presented here is in the vein of Ancient Rome, and quite a few of the locations draw on Roman mythology: the Pillars of Hercules, Prometheus' Chamber in Olympia, and so on.  This is mixed with a bit of Jules Verne (the sub, some mentions of Captain Ahab).  It's thematically tight, with the only real incongruity being the presence of a rail station.  Admittedly that's a big one, but in this era of adventure games you expect at least one area that makes no sense.  At least I haven't wandered into the insides of a computer yet.

As the city of Atlantis is underwater, you have to carry an air tank around at all times in order to survive.  Drowning without the tank is the only way of dying that I've discovered so far.  I live in constant fear that the tank is going to run out, but so far that hasn't been a problem.  I also thought it might be annoying to have an inventory slot constantly taken up, but I've yet to hit a limit on the number of items that I can carry.

I do love a game that insults me when I die.

I've found a few treasures lying around unguarded, and returned them to the sub: a Platinum Pick, a pair of Gold Scissors, a Silver Key, a Golden Apple, and a Jade Medallion.  Treasures are denoted by asterisks, so there's no mistaking them.  Some are needed to solve various puzzles, as you'll see below.

I've located a bunch of other treasures that are guarded by various forms of hostile undersea life.  I'll run through these below:

• A chest guarded by an Octopus.  The octopus can be killed with a spear that's found nearby, but you also need a spear-thrower that's a found a little further afield.  This was the first puzzle I solved (not that it was exactly a head-scratcher).  The chest contained a pearl (one of the treasures) and a note.  More on the note later, when I outline the various clues I've located.
• A platinum plaque guarded by a Black Manta.  I don't have any ideas on getting rid of the Manta, but I haven't put much thought towards it yet.  The Manta doesn't let you take the plaque, but you can read it, and doing so gives you an ad for Hassett's other games.  Presumably this wasn't in the original version, as it mentions games designed well after 1978.  It also caused a syntax error that crashed the game, so I won't be trying this again.
• A Giant Squid guarding a pile of coins.  There's a hint elsewhere in the game that the Squid doesn't like loud noises, and I was able to scare it away by typing YELL.
• A Minotaur guarding the golden fleece.  I suppose the Minotaur isn't aquatic life, but it does fit the mythological theme.  The Minotaur lives at the heart of a maze, which is mercifully easy to navigate compared to those found in Colossal Cave Adventure. 

So I've returned seven treasures to the sub, and there are two more that are still guarded by nasties that I've yet to defeat.  I could be close to finishing the game, but honestly I have no idea.

The city is strewn with various papers, books and journals that provide clues.  Here are all the ones I've found to date:

• There's an area designated as "Captain Ahab's Quarters", and his journal is found there.  It contains this cryptic note: "LEE SAID POW AND DIED".  So far this is meaningless to me.
• Inside the chest there is a note, as I mentioned above.  It says "PUT SHOT IN GUN".  This is easy to figure out.  There's an old cannon in an Atlantean fort, and elsewhere on an Olympic Field there's a shot put.  I've been able to load the shot put into the cannon, and I've even fired the cannon, but it had no discernible effect.
• An old newspaper found in a dark cave had a number of cryptic messages for me: "USE CRUST TOOTHPASTE FOR SHARPER TEETH (SNAP!)  SQUIDS HATE LOUD NOISES (W O P T O N).  The bit about squids and loud noises helped me obtain one of the treasures, but I don't know what the rest is about.  Toothpaste?  W O P T O N?  I'm baffled.
• A book in the library contained the following: "WHAT IS THOUGHT TO BE ISN'T WHAT YOU SEE! NORI".  Again, baffled.

There are a few other mysteries and things of note that I want to point out as well.

• I found a giant clam, and I was able to prise it open with my platinum pick.  Inside was an iron statuette that I've yet to find a use for.
• One room contains some Fierce Piranhas (and kudos to Greg Hassett for getting the spelling correct; old text adventures are usually terrible for this).  They don't do anything, and are seemingly pointless.
• There's a gate between the Rail Station and the Jail that can be unlocked with the silver key.
• I've found an area that's at the top of a cliff, and the text indicates that there are signs of life below.  I haven't been able to figure out a way down yet.
• One room has walls with figures on them that look as though they've come to life.  I'm not sure if this is important, or just flavour.  It's right next to an area with mirrored walls, so it could just be foreshadowing.
• There's a street with a post in the middle of it, and I can climb to the top of the post.  There's nothing up there, though, and the view doesn't reveal anything useful.
• As well as the air tank, the submarine also contains a peanut butter cup.  I haven't found a use for it, and the thought of eating peanut butter is too horrible to contemplate.  I may not have the necessary cruelty to force even my digital alter ego to consume it.  Perhaps if I pretend that it's Vegemite.
• One area is a whirlpool, and if you enter it all of your inventory items are sucked away, except for the air tank.  The items are thankfully not gone forever, and you can find them in the "Electric Eel's Room".  Curiously, this room doesn't have an electric eel in it, and you can just take your gear back with no trouble.  It does only have one exit, though, and that leads to the Jail.  And if you end up here without the key, and the gate still locked, there's no way out.  Unless I haven't found it yet.

I guess I can do this underwater?

So that's my progress through Voyage to Atlantis.  I've enjoyed the initial exploration phase, but I am finding the game to be a bit sterile.  The descriptions  are very sparse, and none of the creatures interact with you outside of preventing you from taking the items they guard.  It's all well and good to describe the octopus as "fierce", but it doesn't come through when all it does is sit there.  I'm hoping that I can have this one done by next week.

DND v8 UPDATE!!!  I've been grinding diligently while WWE programming plays in the background, and my character Strider is riding high at Level 70.  Not long to go now...

Pirate Adventure: Victory!

Well, that didn't take long.

At the end of my last post, I had just constructed a pirate ship and was ready to sail to Treasure Island.  I took a break there, because I had assumed that the bulk of the game lay ahead of me.  As it turned out, there were only a few locations left to explore, and just a couple of puzzles to deal with.

Treasure Island consisted of a mere four locations: the beach where my ship landed, a graveyard, a barren field, and a monastery.  (This was incorrectly spelled as "monastary" but I'm going to have to stop now when it comes to pointing out bad spelling in text adventure games.  I'll just say that there's a lot of it to come, and leave it at that for the sake of my own sanity.)

Before I took off for Treasure Island, I made a point of loading my ship with every inventory item I could find.  Everything from maps to tools to a parrot to a mongoose to a big pile of sand got shoved in the cargo hold.  I was convinced I would need it all.  The pirate from earlier in the game, who was now serving as my sole crew member, refused to take off so long as the magic book was aboard.  The book was the only way I had of returning to my flat in London, so I was reluctant to leave it behind.  I had no choice in the matter, so it became the sole item left on Pirate Isle as I set sail.

I disembarked on Treasure Island, and the pirate followed me into the beach.  He looked expectant, but at this point I had nothing for him, so I headed south.

He didn't follow me into the graveyard, which was full of broken glass for some reason.  I did a bit of digging with my shovel, and turned up some moldy bones, which I dutifully added to my inventory.  I considered trying to rebury them, but couldn't come up with any verbs that would work.  The upside of having a simple two-word parser is that you can rule out any actions that seem too complicated.

I headed east, into a barren field.  There was nothing here, and digging didn't help.  There was nothing for it but to head north.

There I found a monastery, and the first of the treasures I needed: a pile of "dubleons".  (Funnily enough, if you google this spelling of the word, a walkthrough for Pirate Adventure is one of the first hits.)  Alas, they were being guarded by some deadly mambas, and any attempt to get them resulted in my death.

My first instinct here was to release my mongoose; as soon as this guy showed up in the game I knew there would be snakes.  It was a red herring though.  My mongoose was actually a squirrel, and the snakes poisoned him to death.  This was a momentary head-scratcher, but then I remembered back to the snake in Colossal Cave Adventure, which was dispersed by a bird.  I threw my parrot at the snakes, and sure enough it drove them away.  The "dubleons" were mine, and I had just one more treasure to claim for success.

Swerve!

There weren't any places I hadn't explored, and there was no obvious location for the second treasure.  I tried digging everywhere.  I tried dying, and dropping the mouldy bones in Never Never Land.  Nothing worked.  It was only when I started examining my inventory that I remembered the treasure map, and the message scrawled on it: "30 paces then dig!"  I was in the graveyard at the time, and I typed GO 30.  Rather to my surprise, I got a positive response, but upon digging I found nothing.  When I tried the same thing in the barren field, though, I found the second treasure: a set of rare stamps.

I still can't quite believe this worked.

With both treasures in my possession, all I had left to do was to return to my flat in London.  For this, though, I would need the book, and the book was back on Pirate Isle.  I couldn't sail back, because the pirate was waiting around on the beach for some sort of payment.  The solution was actually quite simple: all I had to do was dig on the beach, which uncovered a cache of rum.  The pirate drank some, then went for a nap in the graveyard.  I woke him up, we sailed back to Pirate Isle, I used the book to return to London, and placed both treasures in my living room.

Totally worth it.

So that's the underwhelming ending to Pirate Adventure.  I shouldn't complain too much about it, as I only devoted about three hours to the game in total.  A short game can get away with a lackluster finish.

All in all, I feel like Pirate Adventure is a very slightly better effort than Scott Adams' first game, Adventureland.  The progressive structure makes it feel like it has a more in-depth story, even though it doesn't.  My only real complaint is that the game felt far too short, and too easy.  I was just gearing up for it, and it was over.  I'm interested to see where this falls in my ratings, so let's do it.

FINAL RATING:

Story & Setting: The progression of this game from London, to Pirate Isle, to Treasure Island made it feel like there was a story, but in retrospect it was just another treasure hunt.  The pirate vibe was refreshing, and the setting was much more cohesive than that of Adventureland.  I'm tempted to rate it higher than that game, but that would put it on equal footing with Colossal Cave Adventure, which doesn't feel quite right: the setting of Colossal Cave had a lot more atmosphere.  Rating: 1 out of 7.

Characters & Monsters: The annoying parrot and the wicked-looking pirate are the sole characters in this game, with some snakes and crocodiles serving as obstacles to victory.  The pirate shows a bit of personality, but his one character trait is "pirate", so I can't exactly award extra points for that.  Rating: 1 out of 7.

Aesthetics: It's a text adventure game with no sounds and minimal descriptions.  The pirate setting gives it a modicum of atmosphere, but not enough to elevate it.  Rating: 1 out of 7.

Mechanics: This has exactly the same parser and screen layout as Adventureland, but despite its simplicity it works very well at what it sets out to do.  I rarely had trouble figuring out which verb to use in a given situation, and that's always a bonus for me in any text adventure.  Rating: 4 out of 7.

Challenge: This game was short, and it was easy.  Perhaps I have an advantage in that I've played the only two text adventure games that precede this one, but none of the puzzles troubled me for more than about ten minutes.  I like my games to be a bit more challenging.  Rating: 3 out of 7.

Innovation & Influence: This one is a bit hard to gauge.  It's a very early game in the text adventure style, and it's the first such game in the pirate milieu.  That said, it's derivative of Adventureland, and doesn't offer much new aside from the setting and some structural flourishes.  I think I'll split this one right down the middle.  Rating: 4 out of 7.

Fun: Again, the brevity and ease of this game bring it down.  It started well, and never became frustrating, but it didn't last long enough to really engage me.  Rating: 3 out of 7.

I won't be returning to this one, so it doesn't get the bonus point.  The scores above add up to 17, which doubled gives a score of 34.

Final Rating: 34 out of 100.  This puts it significantly below Adventureland, which was unexpected.  I guess the areas in which it exceeded that game weren't improved enough to gain it extra points, and it lost out on innovation, challenge and fun.  At least it rated higher than Space.

ADDENDUM:

Somewhat later in this blog I made the decision to overhaul my Final Rating system, so I'm going back through and fixing all of the games I've already played as of March 2020.  I've ditched the Innovation and Influence category, and replaced it for adventure games with a category for Puzzles.  I've also changed the purpose of the bonus points, saving them for games that are important, innovative, influential, or have features that are otherwise not covered by my other categories.

Also, the Final Rating is a boring name.  The CRPG Addict has his GIMLET.  The Adventure Gamers have their PISSED rating.  Data Driven Gamer has his harpoons.  So I'm ditching the generic name and calling my new system the RADNESS Index: the Righteous Admirability Designation, Numerically Estimating Seven Scores. It's a pretentious mouthful, but I'm going with it.

Puzzles: The puzzles in this game were fair, but none of them were particularly clever or gave me all that much trouble.  Rating: 2 out of 7.

Bonus Points: 0.

Pirate Adventure's RADNESS Index is 30. So far that puts it 7th overall, and 3rd out of the three adventure games I've played so far.

NEXT: It's back to the world of proto-RPGs, with a look at Dungeon Campaign.

DND v8 Update: I'm still conservatively grinding away during the times I watch pro-wrestling.  Strider is level 22, and advanced enough that I can farm XP without any danger.  Only a lack of patience can stop me now.

Game 10: Pirate Adventure (1978)

It's a brand new year, and what better way to kick off 2016 than with a text adventure from 1978.  Pirate Adventure is the second game from Scott Adams.  I enjoyed his first effort, Adventureland, well enough.  It was short, not too difficult, and a fine diversion for a day or two.  It wasn't a classic, but nor was it the terrible game I'd expected based on Adams' reputation.

Pirate Adventure was released on all the major platforms of the late 70s and early 80s, and even a few not-so-major ones.  (What's an Exidy Sorcerer?)  Its original release was on the TRS-80, so that's the platform I'm emulating it with.  (Not that it really matters for text adventures, but I like to keep things as authentic as possible.)  Some sources cite Pirate Adventure as a 1979 game, and others have it in 1978.  I've gone with 1978, because that's what's in my database, and I can't remember why I chose it in the first place.  I'm not overly fussed about the dates at this point, because all of these games have an official date of "prehistoric".

Much like Adventureland (and its inspiration, Colossal Cave Adventure), the goal of Pirate Adventure is to find various treasures and return them to a set location (in this case, your flat in London).  Whereas Adventureland had thirteen treasures to gather, this game has a mere two.  That hasn't made the game any easier, though; I've yet to find either of the treasures I'm looking for.

As mentioned above, you begin the game in your London flat.  The time period is a bit ambiguous.  The game has all the trappings of the pirate genre, but a "flat in London" hardly feels authentic to the 1600s.  Nevertheless, that's where the game begins, and in said flat there is a sign that says: "Bring *TREASURES* here, say: SCORE".  That's it for setting up the plot.  There's a sign in your house, and by golly you're going to obey it.

The flat is pretty small, with only a few areas to explore: a downstairs room, and upstairs room with a bookcase, a window ledge and a secret passage that opens when you take a book from the bookcase

The downstairs room contains a bottle of rum, a sack full of crackers, a pair of sneakers, and a rug.  Adventure game veterans will be trying to lift that rug straight away, but for the moment it can't be done, as the rug is nailed down.

The upstairs room contains an open window and a bookcase.  As mentioned above, taking a book results in the opening of a secret passage.  The book, inevitably, is a copy of Treasure Island.  The word YOHO is written in blood in the flyleaf, and there is another message inside:"Long John Silver left 2 treasures on Treasure Island".

The secret room contains an unlit torch, a smashed rum bottle, and a pirate's duffel bag that contains a box of matches.  There's also a sign that tells you how to extinguish your torch, because UNLIGHT isn't the most intuitive command.  The torch and matches are the obligatory adventure game light source, and the smashed bottle is a mystery for now.

The goal in the flat is simply to gather all the items you can, and read the word YOHO from the book.  The first time you read the word it transports you to the window ledge, and this can be deadly.  If you aren't wearing the sneakers you can slip and fall, which results in death and a trip to Never Never Land.  This doesn't necessarily mean your game is over: you can use the book to escape from Never Never Land.  But if you hang around in there for too long, you are declared dead and that's that.

About to escape Never Never Land.

If you say YOHO while on the ledge, you are transported to a beach on Pirate's Isle, and that's where the adventure really begins.  There is a ship's mast and a keel on the beach, and it soon becomes apparent that your goal is to build a ship (The Jolly Roger, what else), and sail to Treasure Island.  There are a number of interesting locations on Pirate's Isle, which I'll list below.

• Near the beach is a lagoon, with a rusty anchor half-buried in the sand.  The tide goes in and out fairly frequently, and if you get caught here when the tide comes in it's off to Never Never Land.  A sign on the beach warns you about the tide, and you can even look at it from afar to see where the tide is before you enter.  The only way to be really safe here, though, is to carry a set of Water Wings.
• At the top of a hill there's a crack, and you can squeeze in here as long as you're not carrying too many items.  The cave beyond contains many of the items you'll need to build the ship: a set of sails, some lumber, and a tool shed where you'll find a hammer, a shovel and the above-mentioned water wings.  You can't fit the shovel or the lumber back through the crack, but there's a door here that they can fit through.  Unfortunately, it's locked from the other side...
• There's a wicked-looking pirate who lives in a shack with his parrot and a treasure chest.  The pirate won't let you take the chest, but he's easy enough to get rid of by giving him the bottle of rum.  You can take the parrot, and he'll stick around as long as you have crackers for him to eat.  Occasionally he speaks, but so far it hasn't been helpful, just messages like "Pieces of Eight!" and "Check the book!".  The chest is locked, and you can't open it without the key.
• At the base of the hill is a network of caves, and when I entered I felt a cold shiver of dread at the following room description: "I am in a maze of caves."  It wasn't as bad as I feared.  The maze only had four locations, and a pit full of crocodiles.  Beyond the crocodiles was a locked door, which presumably led into the tool cave, but first I had to distract the crocodiles.

The first task here was finding the key, and that wasn't too difficult.  With the claw hammer from the cave in my possession, I returned to my flat and pulled out the nails holding down my rug.  (The nails were also an inventory item, and needed to build the ship.)  Under the rug was a set of keys, but before I could return to the island I was distracted by a noise.  I decided to investigate the secret passage, and I found the pirate from the shack asleep there, with an empty bottle next to him.  (I guess this explains why there was a smashed bottle and a pirate's bag in the room earlier.)  I took the bottle and woke the pirate, who said that it would soon be time to set sail.  Then he vanished, which was weird.  A magical pirate?  Lazy writing?  Or just system limitations?  I guess we'll find out later.

Equipped with the keys I needed, I was able to open the chest.  Inside was a set of plans that told me what I needed to build the Jolly Roger: a hammer, nails, lumber, an anchor, sails, and a keel.  I knew where all this stuff was, I just needed to gather it together.  There was also a map in the chest that showed the location of Treasure Island.

Now it was time to deal with the crocodiles.  This was the trickiest puzzle so far.  I figured that I needed to feed the things, but giving them crackers did nothing.  When I threw the parrot at them, the bird actually tried to fight them off for me, but it wasn't successful.  (A call-back to Colossal Cave Adventure? Probably.)  Nothing I tried was working, so I wandered around just trying random things.  That was when I tried using the water wings in the lagoon, and discovered that they allow me to survive high tide.  From there I swam further out to sea, and found a fish.  This was obviously the solution, so I gathered some sea water in my empty bottle (the fish would dry out otherwise), took the fish, and fed it to the crocodiles.  Sure enough, the crocs let me past, my key unlocked the door, and I was able to retrieve the parts I needed to build the Jolly Roger.

Getting past the crocodiles.

With the ship assembled I climbed aboard, and was a little surprised to see the pirate waiting for me.  I wasn't entirely sure what to do next, but the pirate helpfully told me to WEIGH ANCHOR, and then to SET SAIL.  With the help of the map we sailed to Treasure Island, and that's where I left off.  With the final adventure location ahead of me, it felt like a good time to take a break.

Treasure Island awaits.

  

Pirate Adventure is a leap ahead for Scott Adams, and feels a lot more sophisticated than Adventureland.  Not that it's any better technologically speaking: the parser and interface are exactly the same.  But the structure of the game feels far more advanced.  I like the way it's separated into distinct areas, it gives the game a flow and a sense of progression that was lacking from Adventureland.  I'm actually rather looking forward to getting back to it, and unless a puzzle really stumps me I expect that I'll be done with it by next week.

DND v8 Update!

I was going to do a full post on DND, but instead I decided to forge ahead with my list.  Rather than devoting full psts to DND, I'm going to give a quick update on my progress at the bottom of my posts on other games, which could be amusing given how balls-hard this game is.  I wonder how many other games I'll get through before I finish this one?

As of New Year's Eve, I was doing very well.  Axebeard (a dwarf, naturally, and successor to his brother Beardaxe) was 53rd level, and I was exploring level 11 of all three dungeons.  The earlier version of DND had a twenty level dungeon, so I figured I was about halfway through.  Later on I used a potion of Astral Form to take a quick trip to the bottom of Whisenwood Dungeon, and discovered that the dungeons are 30 levels deep.  Bugger it.

Most of the chests in this game are trapped, but if you're on one of the easier dungeon levels it's not a problem.  I was doing most of my XP grinding on Level 3 of the Tomb of Doom, which has a nice spiral pattern conducive to random wandering without needing to consult my map.  (Incidentally, I've discovered that wrestling is the perfect thing to watch while XP grinding.  I watch a lot of wrestling every week, so it works out well.)  On the deeper dungeon levels the traps can kill you, but if you have a ring of protection or some sort of magical armour you will usually survive an otherwise fatal blast (albeit with the loss of said item).  I had gotten complacent, and while exploring level 11 of Whisenwood with no protective items I opened a chest and was obliterated instantly.  On New Years Eve!  On my bloody birthday!!!  That was fifty+ levels of grinding down the drain.

I had to go back to the start, but I've managed to get my new character Strider up to level 20 by grinding on the first level of Whisenwood.  It's slow going, but now I am taking no risks.  I'm not even going to touch chests when I'm deeper than level 3.  My plan is to grind myself to about level 100, then make a run for the three items at the bottom of the dungeons (the magic fountain, the grail, and the orb).  Before I tackle each item I'm going to buy a Revival Potion from the alchemy shop - this ensures that if I die my character won't be erased.  It's going to take a long time, but I have patience, and I'm determined to beat this bloody game.  All I have to do is resist the urge to take risks.