My Top Ten Games

I don't have an update on Orthanc this week.  In addition to NaNoWriMo, I've developed an unhealthy obsession with the Legend of Zelda series.  Playing Orthanc has taken a back seat to all of that, and I haven't made a lot of progress since my last post.  I've mapped out the remainder of level two, and lost a few characters along the way, but it hardly merits a full post.

So instead of that, I'm going to break out the hoariest of chestnuts that a gaming blogger can break out: a list of my top ten games.  It might not be the most original thing, but I actually think it's beneficial to what I'm doing here.  If I'm going to give my opinions about a bunch of RPGs and adventure games and expect anyone to listen, it probably helps to lay out my all-time favourites so you can get a grip on my tastes.

So here goes, in no particular order.

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past

I could very easily have chosen Ocarina of Time, but I had to give the edge to the SNES classic.  I just finished playing through it again for the umpteenth time, and even though I know it back-to-front it still reeled me in.  This is the Zelda franchise at its best, with the perfect balance between non-linear exploration and plot progression.  It's not as obscure as the earlier games, and it doesn't railroad like the later games can.  It just has one great big world to dive into, with more areas opening up as you progress and gain new items.  It's a masterpiece, as close to flawless as a game can get.

Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny

There had to be an Ultima on this list, and I went with this one over Ultima IV.  It was a close call, but I'm trying not to let one series dominate the list.  As much as I loved Ultima IV, I don't think a game has ever sucked me in as hard as Warriors of Destiny.  I was physically shaking with anger at certain parts of this game, and I don't think I've ever wanted to kill a video game antagonist as much as Lord Blackthorn.  It's another game with a large, open world to explore, and that always wins points with me.  One of the best RPGs ever made.

Super Metroid

I fell in love with this game as soon as I loaded it into my SNES and that menacing, eerie music crept in.  Super Metroid just oozes atmosphere, and once again it has a large world to explore that opens up as you gain new items and abilities.  I spent countless hours combing this game for secrets, bombing walls and floors, and scanning everywhere.  I had to find everything, and eventually I did.  Man, just writing about this game makes me want to go back to it.  It's been a long time.

Pool of Radiance

There was inevitably going to be a Gold Box game on here, and despite its flaws I went with the original.  You might be noticing a pattern here, but it's the non-linearity of it that swayed me.  At first there are only a few areas to explore, but eventually the whole of the city of Phlan is open to you, and there's nothing stopping you from trying your luck in Valhingen Graveyard, or any other place too deadly for your party.  This is the best implementation of D&D yet done as a PC game, especially when it comes to the combat engine: they got it right the first time, and it's never been bettered.

Bard's Tale 3: The Thief of Fate

It could have been Bard's Tale I, but it took me while to warm up to that game's steep difficulty.  It was the third installment in the series that first grabbed my attention, as possibly the very first RPG I was utterly obsessed with.  Most of my high school years were spent playing this game, with coke and chips on one side and pen and graph paper on the other.  I still have those maps, and to this day I never quite feel right when I'm not mapping an RPG myself.  I never got all that far as a kid, but I roamed around those dungeons killing monsters for hours, making maps and amassing XP.  I eventually finished it, some 20 years later, and it was a hell of a satisfying experience.

Wonder Boy 3: The Dragon's Trap

The best reason to own a Sega Master System.  Wonder Boy 3 was a break from its platforming predecessors, presenting (let's say it again) an open world ripe for exploration.  You start the game being cursed into the form of a dragon, and must cycle through a number of forms during your quest before becoming a boy again.  It's a cracking good game that doesn't get enough love.

Mario Kart

The SNES original.  It's my favourite racing game of all time, and my favourite multi-player game of all time.  It still holds up, and Nintendo have yet to outdo it.

Quest for Glory

I had to include a Sierra game, and I agonised over the choice.  It could have been a King's Quest, or a Space Quest, but...  I went with Quest for Glory.  Or, to be more accurate, Hero's Quest, as I'm writing about the EGA original and not the VGA remake.  It's just a perfect adventure game.  The humour works, the puzzles are pitched at the right difficulty, and the skill system is integrated really well, providing a number of solutions to every problem.

Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss

I'm kind of breaking my own rule here by including another Ultima, but this game is just too good.  If I'm being honest, the sequel is better, but there's something about the first one I just like more.  It gets points for innovation, being one of the earliest 1st-person 3D games (it beat Wolfenstein 3D by a few weeks, I believe, and with a much more advanced engine).  I love the dungeon setting, and the ability to interact with the environment.  I especially love the beginning, where you are thrown into the Abyss with nothing, forced to scrounge for weapons and food before being killed, or starving to death. So good.

The Last Ninja

I was an 80s kid, and the 80s there was one thing cooler than anything else: ninjas.  The Last Ninja was the best ninja-based computer game out there.  The soundtrack was killer.  Fighting past samurai, jumping from stone to stone over raging rivers, running from giant spiders in the prison, running past the samurai so that they commit seppuku...  The Last Ninja was rad!

Orthanc: What Level Am I On Again?

I haven't had a lot of time to play Orthanc this week, as I've been furiously prepping my novel for NaNoWriMo.  And, you know, playing The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess.  I can't write all the time, you know.  I did manage to squeeze in a few hours of old-school gaming, though I wouldn't say that my progress was all that positive.

The most important discovery I made about Orthanc is that the dungeon is not purely linear.  Stairs going down from level 1 don't necessarily lead to level 2.  So, whereas I thought the level that I'd been exploring was level 2, it was actually level 3.  I discovered this when I found a new set of stairs leading down from level 1, and ran into a mapping discrepancy.  Alas, about the time I did discover it I ran into a Werewolf, and was promptly eviscerated; my Magic Missile spell wasn't enough to stop it.

So now when I use a new set of stairs, I also cast a Depth spell to figure out what level I'm on.  Orthanc has a good selection of non-combat spells, albeit ones culled pretty heavily from D&D.  The aforementioned Depth tells you what dungeon level you're on.  There are a couple of Cure spells of different levels, a Levitation spell to avoid pits and chutes, and a Light spell to reveal secret doors.  There's a Find Traps spell, though I've yet to encounter any traps just yet.  There are a whole bunch of spells I haven't tried yet, though some of them seem self-explanatory: Speed, Protection, ESP, Passwall, Pass Ceiling, Pass Floor, Invisibility.  I'll do some experimentation and get back to you.

I had a lucky break with my next character, as I found two stashes of gems that quickly got me up to 4th level.  Treasure provides XP when you haul it out of the dungeon.  There isn't a lot of variety: just coins of varying values (copper, silver, gold, platinum), and gems.  Gems can be worth a lot, and are the best ticket to gaining levels.  Carrying treasure adds to your weight, though I haven't figured out what effect this has.  Perhaps an increase in monster encounters?

Anyway, my current character's luck hasn't exactly held true.  While exploring level 2 I fell through  a chute and ended up on level 4.  Then, while frantically looking for some stairs I fell down a pit to level 6.  Currently I'm trapped on level 6 with not much spell power or hit points.  It's going to take miracle for me to escape, but I'm about to take a crack at it.  Wish me luck!

Postscript: I got murdered by a Dwarf without ever finding my way out of level 6.  If there's an upside to this scenario, it's that I got a good amount of levels 6 and 4 mapped out.  Huzzah for mapping!

Game 3: Orthanc (1975)

In my last post I said that I was going to be starting Moria, but sadly that isn't the case.  For some unknown reason I can't get that game to run on my PLATO emulator.  It worked a few months ago, and now it doesn't.  With any luck it will be up and running again by the time I've finished my next game, the similarly Tolkien-inspired Orthanc, but if not there are plenty of other games for me to kick on with.

 Orthanc was developed by Paul Resch, Larry Kemp and Eric Hagstrom for the PLATO system, supposedly at some point in 1975.  It plays quite similarly to The Game of Dungeons (aka pedit5), and it was in fact inspired by the deletion of that very game.  It's much more involved and expanded, however, with a larger dungeon, more monsters, more spells, and just generally more of everything.

The title screen can best be described as utilitarian, but I can't say that I have a lot of expectations for these PLATO games in the graphics department.  The documentation, on the other hand, is something that I have come to expect great things of, and Orthanc does not disappoint.  It's incredibly thorough, right down to a complete list of monsters and their statistics.  On the one hand I applaud the work that's gone into it, but I'm also slightly let down by the sheer levels of transparency on display.  For me, part of the fun of an RPG is figuring out how best to fight the monsters through trial and error, and having it all at my fingertips before the game even begins is a bit of a downer.

The one place where it is a bit vague is just how you win the game.  You play as a knight (of course) whose goal is to retire and go live in luxury with the king.  Unfortunately the king only wants to live with proven fighters, so you have to venture into the Orthanc Labyrinth and amass enough experience points to retire.  It's all a bit nebulous, and there's no indication of just how many points you need to achieve your goal.  With a bit of trial and error I found the Hall of Fame, and discovered the option to retire in there.  As it turns out my current character already has enough points to retire; it seems that all you need to do is beat the person who is last on the list.  (Funnily enough, that person is Chester, of The CRPG Addict, the very blog that inspired my own efforts here.)

I'm not going to complete the game just yet, however.  Orthanc Dungeon is ten levels deep, and I plan on mapping them all.  The documentation says that the dungeon is periodically redesigned, but I get the feeling that such maintenance has probably fallen by the wayside.   I hope so, because I don't want the dungeon to change before I've mapped it all out.

Like the other PLATO games, character creation is dead simple.  You have scores in Strength, Intelligence, Constitution and Dexterity, all rolled between 3 and 18, and all working very much as they do in other RPGs.  Though you are said to play as a knight, you also have access to a wide array of spells.  You have the ability to cast any spell when you begin the game, but higher level spells use up more spell units.  Naturally, you gain more spell units as you amass experience points and gain levels.

For some reason, my character's icon isn't displayed properly. 
It happens sometimes.

Gaining experience is the main goal of the game, and it's achieved in the most obvious ways: killing monsters and taking treasure out of the dungeon.  Like the previous two PLATO games I've played, most of the time is spent exploring the dungeon, getting into a few fights and high-tailing it to the exit when resources run low.  Also like those games, death is permanent, so there's always that little bit of tension and danger.

That said, the danger is sporadic.  I've gone for a good half-hour in the dungeon without a single combat.  I've also had periods where it seems like there's a battle every step.  It's hard to gauge just how difficult this game is, because the difficulty varies with no obvious rhyme or reason.  Right now, it feels like the easiest game I've played on the blog so far, but that could change as I delve into lower levels of the dungeon.

Currently I'm exploring level two of the dungeon, and have advanced to experience level five.  The monsters I'm encountering aren't all that difficult to handle.  In most encounters I act first, because my character has a high dexterity, and if I can fire off a sleep spell or a magic missile then I've probably won already.  The occasional tougher-than-usual monsters pop up, but even then I haven't had much trouble dispatching them.

Orthanc does have a very similar vibe to pedit5, but there are a few features that stand out.  The most obvious is the automap, which displays in the bottom right of the screen if you want it to.  It seems to have been added in a recent update, but it's impressive nonetheless.  You can also apparently encounter other players in the dungeon.  This hasn't happened to me yet, and given the amount of people likely to be playing it in 2014 it probably won't, but again it's an impressive feature.  I will undoubtedly flip out if I ever get to experience it.

I'm having fun with Orthanc so far, though it lacks the addictive, frenetic quality that The Dungeon had.  I'm hoping that it gets a little more interesting and original as I explore further.

Dungeon (1975)

This post is going to be a short one, folks.  The business of finding games from the 1970s can be a tricky one, and this is my first encounter with this problem on the blog.  You would think from the snazzy title screen above that I got this game running, but no such luck.  Try as I might, I can't get it to do anything but display that screen.  It is rather good, though, isn't it?

So what do we know about Dungeon?  It was designed in 1975 by John Daleske, Gary Fritz, Jon Good, Bill Gammel and Mark Nokada.  This site describes it as a 3-D first-person maze with multiple players, but also says that it was incomplete.  It's described as a predecessor to Moria, which is handy, as that's the game I'll be tackling next.

Another game, also called Dungeon, was designed by Don Daglow for the PDP-10 mainframe.  Daglow is a pretty big deal in the early days of gaming, and his description of the game sounds pretty amazing: apparently it had "ranged and melee combat, lines of sight, auto-mapping and NPCs with discrete AI".  Sadly, the PDP-10 system doesn't seem to be running anywhere on the internet, so this game appears to be lost to the ages.

Next up I'll be tackling Moria, which thankfully is available to play on PLATO.  Hopefully it's as surprisingly enjoyable as pedit5 and dnd have been.

The Game of Dungeons v5.4: Victory!

With more a sigh of relief than a shout of triumph, I can finally declare that I have beaten The Game of Dungeons.  Not that it's a bad game; far from it.  For the time it was made it was absolutely revolutionary, and I still had fun playing it in 2014.  That said, I wasn't looking forward to the prospect of starting over from scratch had my character not proved up to the task.  Thankfully he was, and I can report how it all went down.

When last I posted, my character Belal (the 208th character I had sent into the dungeon) had around 2,700 hit points.  My goal was to grind him up to 100,000; the game manual said that the Dragon could dish out up to 100,000 points of damage, so I wanted a character who could withstand that much punishment.

During the course of that grinding, I discovered where I had been going wrong with my other characters.  The Fireball and Lightning Bolt spells are all well and good, pretty much guaranteed to destroy the foes you meet.  The problem is that they occasionally rebound on you, and the damage done increases along with your power.  I was having Fireballs rebound on me for 5,000 points of damage.  What I discovered is that, after a certain point, your other spells are strong enough to deal with any foe.  I started to vary my offense, using spells like Flaming Arrow and Holy Water instead, and I found myself hardly losing any hit points as a result.  My dungeon forays became a lot less tense.

I gradually built up my hit points and made progressively deeper forays as I got stronger, though two things hindered my progress.  One, I had no Bag of Holding, so the amount of gold I could get was limited.  Eventually I found one, and was pleased to discover that the tougher enemies I attracted were still being killed by my weaker spells.  Two, I couldn't grind on Level 19 or 20 of the dungeon; both of those levels are rife with secret doors, and a layout that makes it very difficult to figure out where you are unless you have a Magic Lantern to reveal those doors.  I found the lantern as well, and was set for hours upon hours of grinding.

I found the Dragon and the Orb on level 20, when I had about 75,000 hit points.  As you can see, my Magic Amulet was telling me that it wasn't a good idea for me to fight this guy yet.  I fled, continued to gain more hit points, and periodically came back to see what my Amulet said.

 

At 90,000 hit points, my Amulet's message altered slightly, saying "Danger" instead of "Farewell".  It was not exactly an encouraging sign, but any progress was good progress, and I was getting closer to my goal.  Just a few more dungeon delves, and I would be there.

So, armed with 100,000+ hit points, I entered Whisenwood Dungeon with the purpose of killing the Dragon and retrieving the Orb.  I decided not to have my character pick up gold; you can toggle it on and off at any time you want.  The manual warns that the Dragon is extra-ornery when you're carrying treasure, so I opted not to do so.

My amulet's message was encouraging when I found the Dragon; "Warning" is one step less deadly than "Danger" where the amulet is concerned, so I felt pretty good about the impending battle.  At least, as good as I could feel with permanent death on the line.  If Belal lost, I would be going right back to the start of the game.  This one was for all the marbles, folks.

As I've mentioned before, you can kill the Dragon instantly using the Dragon Spell.  This sounds like a great idea, but it drains nearly all of your spell-casting ability.  It's what I did the last time I fought the Dragon, and it left me with too little spell-power to make it back to the surface.  This time, I was going to use my regular arsenal of spells.

With my hit points at maximum I wasn't worried about using Fireball or Lightning Bolt, and I wanted to deal as much damage as possible to ensure victory.  I decided against Fireball; some monsters have immunities, and I figured that if anything will be immune to fire it's a Dragon.  So I crossed my fingers, held my breath, and let loose with a Lightning Bolt.

Success!  My Lightning Bolt killed the Dragon, and you can see above that it damaged me as well: that's the gigantic ZAPP! running across the screen.  You can also see the words "Swiss Cheese" written underneath; I haven't mentioned this yet, but whenever you win a fight there's a mildly amusing message that pops up depending on what spell you used.  I don't really know how swiss cheese is relevant to a Lightning Bolt, but I'll go with it.  I was just happy not to be dead.

As I discovered last time, though, the game was not over.  I still had to make it to the surface, with super-powerful monsters on my tail.

Much like the Wizard shown above, the foes that beset me on my way out were all about level 6,000.  I was feeling confident with my first such foe, and I decided to test out one of my weaker spells.  The Wizard fell to a Light Candle, and that was when I knew I'd have no trouble getting out.  I had plenty of magic power, and I wasn't going to have to rely on the dangerous Fireball and Lightning Bolt.  Nothing short of my own stupidity could stop me now.

This is Belal on Level 1 of the dungeon, right next to the entrance, literally one step away from victory.  I'm surprised looking at it now at how few hit points he had left, but now I remember that at least one of my enemies survived the spell I chose, and I had to fight in melee.  I'm probably luckier than I thought to have survived to the end.

Upon exiting, I got the victory screen displayed at the top of this post.  It was satisfying to know that I'd won, but it's not the most rewarding conclusion.  I'm not really a fan of having my character forcibly retired, and I'd like to know what the Orb actually does.  That said, seeing this screen was pretty cool.

 

So that's that, I'm a Finder of the Orb!  I may be the only legitimate player on that list; those other names sound like fakes to me.  Either way, my time with this game is done, and it's time to reflect back on my likes and dislikes.

WHAT I LIKED:

Unexpected Depth:  There's a lot to this game.  On the surface it's a pretty simple dungeon delving game; enter the dungeon, grab as much gold as possible, survive, and get out.    Dig a little deeper and you'll find a variety of monsters, spells and treasures that add new facets to the game in the ways they interact.  Then there's the scaling difficulty: the more gold you get, the harder the game gets, and finding the Bag of Holding can ramp up the difficulty unexpectedly. as can finding a treasure chest.  Finding the Orb ramps it up yet again (though I found that, with the amount of grinding I did, it wasn't too hard).

Tension: Like The Dungeon before it, this game features permanent character death.  Also like that game it means that your actions have real consequences, and here it's amplified.  The Dungeon has one level; The Game of Dungeons has twenty, which makes it that much more difficult to get back to the surface.  The resulting anxiety makes for fun, rewarding gameplay.

WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE:

Confusing Start: As I mentioned in my first post, it took me a while to come to grips with this game.  The squares that teleport you to different dungeon levels are hard to identify, and it's not immediately apparent that they transport you to a random location each time.  I spent a lot of time being disoriented, and it wasn't until I started mapping that I twigged to what was going on.  It's not exactly a flaw with the game, but it did mean that it was a while before I could really enjoy the game.

Permanent Death: I know I've praised this feature above, but after a while it can get pretty deflating to lose a good character.  I spent three-and-a-half months on this game, but without permanent death I'd have been done in a couple of weeks.  Overall I feel that permanent death is an integral part of the game, but by the end I was ready to move on.  Going back to the start would not have been welcome.

FINAL VERDICT

For the time, this is an amazing game.  I'm not surprised that it became so widespread, and ate up so much of the time of computer programming students in the 1970s.  It's addictive, it's surprisingly involved, and, keeping in mind that my gaming tastes are old-fashioned, it holds up well today.  Every old-school CRPG fan should try it, if only for some historical perspective.

ADDENDUM: FINAL RATING:

Some time after finishing The Game of Dungeons I decided to create a rating system, and give the games I play a score to compare against each other.  The time has come for me to definitively rank this one, so here goes.  (Ratings are out of 7, with a discretionary bonus point to be added to the total if I still want to play the game after I finished it.)

Story & Setting: This game has even less story than The Dungeon, which wasn't exactly bursting at the seams with narrative to begin with.  Basically, there's a dungeon with an orb at the bottom that's guarded by a dragon.  If you bring it to the surface, you can retire to the Elyssian Fields.  It's another backstory that does the bare minimum to set up the game.  Whisenwood Dungeon is a collection of featureless rooms and corridors, so it's not adding much to the rating either.  Rating: 1.

Characters & Monsters: There aren't many monsters in the game, but the ones that are there are distinctive.  Demons are immune to fire.  Death is a monster you can't run away from.  Each monster has its own immunities and vulnerabilities, and working them out is a vital part of the early parts of the game.  Rating: 2.

Aesthetics: It's another orange-and-black PLATO game with no sound.  It looks almost exactly like The Dungeon, so I have to give it the same rating.  That's not necessarily a bad thing: there's no flash, but it's highly functional.  Rating: 2.

Mechanics: In many ways this game is an extension of The Dungeon: it has random character creation, and a very basic combat system.  It shines in other areas though.  The spell system is where the game excels tactically, and the way the game scales up in difficulty as you acquire more treasure keeps the game tense.  The various elements of the game combine for a fun experience.  Rating: 5.

Challenge: Make no mistake, this game is hard.  Permanent death combined with a twenty level dungeon makes for a grueling experience.  Most of the process of getting good at the game is learning what not to touch, and what not to interact with.  It managed to stay fun for a decent length of time, but after a while it started to wear me down.  I probably would have ranked it higher early on, but the sheer length of time it took me to complete broke my love of the game somewhat.  Rating: 5.

Innovation & Influence: A lot of this game is taken directly from The Dungeon, but on the other hand this is like the second CRPG in existence.  And while it owes a lot to its progenitor, it improved on every single aspect of that game.  Rating: 6.

Fun: I enjoyed the hell out of this game, especially in the early stages.  It's a punishing experience, but it rarely felt like a chore to play.  You can load it up for a quick five minute game, or you can settle in for a few hours, and I often found that once I got started I couldn't stop.  A dungeon delve doesn't take much time, so it was easy to justify "just one more game".  A year-and-a-half removed from it, I'd be more than happy to play it again.  The only thing that brings it down is the repetitive nature of the game. Rating: 5.

The above scores add up to 26.  I'm going to award this one the discretionary bonus point, because it's by far the best of the PLATO CRPGs.  This gives a score of 27, which doubled gives me a final rating of 54.

Final Rating: 54 out of 100.

ADDENDUM THE SECOND:

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: Melee combat is The Game of Dungeons isn't all that different from that of The Dungeon, with the same three options: fight, evade, or cast a spell.  Fighting simply calculates the winner in the background, and the game lets you know who won.  Evasion is much more useful, because this game doesn't distinguish between rooms and corridors, so you can try to flee whenever you want.  The amount of gold influences your chance of getting away, because gold is kind of the game's difficulty setting: the more you have, the harder it gets. The spells are more plentiful here as well, and it's a little more difficult to figure out which ones work against which monsters.  Also, I love that this game has autocombat: you can set a level, and any monster you encounter of that level or below will be fought automatically.  The combat here is fast and frenetic, but there's enough here to make it interesting.  Rating: 2 out of 7.

Bonus Points: 2.  The Game of Dungeons gets the full array of bonus points. It's an early CRPG, and one of the most popular and influential ones that came out of the PLATO community.

The Game of Dungeons v5's RADNESS Index is 46.  So far it's on top, with The Game of Dungeons after that.

NEXT: I have four games to choose from: two that are called Dungeon (sensing a theme?), one called Moria and another called Orthanc.  I'll play around with them for a bit before choosing the next one, but I'm leaning towards Moria, yet another PLATO classic.

The Game of Dungeons v5.4: Magic Items

I'm still plugging away at this game, trying to grind my character to a super-high level.  Belal is my 208th character, and he's currently sitting on close to 3,000 hit points and 10 million gold.  It's not a massive total, but it's enough that I can delve into the dungeon and return with the maximum amount of gold that I can carry, without a great deal of risk.  I'm exercising patience, and trying not to extend my playing sessions too long, because as long as it's taking, starting from scratch is going to take longer.

The Chosen One!

Reading back through my posts on The Game of Dungeons, I realised that I haven't discussed magic items much.  There is quite a good variety, with some significant effects on gameplay.  One item in particular completely changes the way I approach the game once I've found it.

There are the staples, of course: swords, armour, helmets and shields, all with bonuses ranging from +1 to +3.  As you'd expect, these increase your effectiveness in combat.  They're not that essential, given that most monster-killing is done with spells, but having a good set of arms and armour increases the level of monster that you can kill without suffering damage, and helps you to conserve those spells.  So they are pretty handy.

There are loads of different magic rings as well. The ring of protection works just like armour.  There's one that lets you float over pits, and another that increases the power of your spells.  The ring of invisibility helps you flee from enemies, as does the ring of swiftness.  The ring of regeneration heals you with each move you make, and the ring of luck increases your chance of finding more magic items.  They're all useful, and the ring of levitation cannot be dispensed with.

There are magic boots that reduce the frequency with which you encounter monsters, and increase your chance of running away from them.  The magic lantern lets you see secret doors.  There's an amulet that tells you when you're next to a transporter to another level, and also gives you a rough idea of how likely you are to succeed in any combat; I find it especially useful, and it was even moreso back before I'd mapped everything.

The bag of holding is the real game-changer, though.  As I've mentioned before, the strength of the monsters you encounter increases based on the amount of gold you're carrying.  With a Strength of 18 you can carry 1,800,000 gold, and the enemies max out at around level 300.  Eventually you'll get to a point where you can handle anything the dungeon can throw at you.

The bag changes that, by increasing your carrying capacity a hundredfold.  With the ability to carry more gold comes the attention of stronger foes, and they just keep getting stronger the more gold you carry.  Without the bag, you can afford to get a little complacent.  Once you have it, the rewards are bigger, but the risk returns in spades.  It's really easy to get carried away and overwhelmed by hordes of powerful enemies.

It's actually a really clever little bit of game design.    Just as I thought I'd mastered the game, I found the bag and suddenly it got difficult again.  I don't anticipate getting back to a point of complacency, either; I've not even come close to carrying my maximum gold with the bag.  And not only does the game get harder with the bag, it gets even harder again once you find the Orb.  I continue to be impressed by this game.  It has a surprising amount of hidden depth for such an early effort.

The Game of Dungeons v5.4: Back to Square One

Since I began this blog, I have been praising the way that these early games use permanent character death.  I've waxed lyrical about the tension of knowing that every step could be my last, and that should death come there will be no way to bring my character back to life.

All of that has come back to haunt me.

Since my last post, I lost Godric.  I had managed to map out the whole dungeon with him, and gained over 48 million gold pieces in the process.  He had over 12,000 hit points.  I decided it was time to find the Orb, and the Dragon that guarded it.

What could possibly go wrong?

I had actually encountered the Dragon while mapping Level 17 of the dungeon, but not being prepared to finish the game I fled.  The manual says that you can always run from the Dragon, which is great, because it also says that it can dish out 100,000 points of damage.  When I returned to fight him for real, though, I wasn't worried by that.  Because, as you can see above, there's a little thing known as the Dragon Spell, which will kill it automatically.  It does so at the cost of almost all of your magic, but I thought I might be able to fight my way back to the surface through sheer muscle.

My first battle while carrying the Orb dissuaded me of that notion pretty quickly: a level 6,000 Ghoul.  For comparison, the strongest foes that Godric was normally encountering were around level 300.  I tried to run, but failed, and died in the ensuing melee.  I have to assume that it wasn't even close.

Naturally, there's only one solution to my problem: grind, grind and grind some more.  Which I did, eventually building up a very strong character who was unfortunately named Fred.  (I've used a lot of characters.  Good names are getting scarce.)  Fred accumulated over 125 million gold, and about 30,000 hit points.  I was planning to build him even further, but...  I can't even explain what happened.  I was on a routine foray, laden with gold and heading for the surface.  I was wounded, but I thought I had plenty of hit points left.  Then, when encountering a Ghoul, I let loose with a Fireball that backfired on me, and...  I was dead.  I suppose I got cocky, not bothering to check how many hit points I had left.  It was a shock, to be honest.  I think I stared at the screen for a good minute before rolling up the next guy.  (The next guy didn't do so well, as he died with a grand total of 0 gold.)

Currently I have a character with about 400,000 gold, which is a good base to start from.  Barring stupidity, a lapse of judgment or plain old bad luck, I should be able to get him to the point where I want to fight the dragon again.  I'd like to get my hit points up to 100,000 before I do that, but that could be way too much grinding.  Time will tell if I have the patience.