And we're back! With the life points I built up in level 2, I max out my wizard skills and level up my strength and stamina some. At this rate I'll have no place left to put points but dexterity soon. I guess then it'll be time to try out some ranged weapons. I won't be upping my intelligence any time soon, rest assured. Johnny's smarts are part of his charm.
I managed to hold onto a decent selection of treasure, too.
I've already got everything I need from the armory, so I spend up big at the witches lair. I add magic to my armor and blade, and buy a sphere of essence (the weak magical attack item I tried out as Mogri), the Ring of Zeus, and a Spell of Gigos.
SCROLL.OLD
The ring of Zeus be a very useful and powerful magic item.
It transforms monsters to monsters two levels its junior.
You must be a level 15 wizard to use the ring of Zeus, and it
be a permanent item.
This is a pretty good deal at 500 silvers. It'll make a bug into a skeleton, a leech into a bat, and so on.
SCROLL.OLD
The spell of Gigos be an interesting one. It rearranges the
internal organs of monsters. This kills many of the lower
level monsters, but some monsters can still function, albeit
wounded, with rearranged organs. You must be a level 11
wizard to use the spell of Gigos, and it be a one-use magic
item.
Gross! I pick this up just because I have a little money left over.
Here's room number 1 of level 3. What do we know about level 3?
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Level three was the meeting level. There be some wandering
monsters in level three, but no hidden doors.
No hidden doors! That means I won't have to use my Cap of Merlin in every room. That oughta save us some time!
SCROLL.USE
Monsters come in two basic types. One type of monster guards
a particular room. The second type of monster wanders about
the cave looking for intruders. Neither type will follow you
out of a room. They consider themselves winners by driving
you out.
We'll be seeing wandering monsters for the first time in this level, and (spoiler alert) we'll be seeing a lot of them.
Here's my inventory of magic items. It's important to know which thing is in which pocket when you're casting.
I enter room 2 and start talking before I see what's coming at me. Turns out it's a skeleton. Once we're friends, I kill it. Then:
What? Two monster types in one room?
Looks like these are the wandering monsters I've been hearing about. Ordinary monsters come in one type per room in fixed number. Wandering monsters, as you can see in the .gif there, apparently come in one type per room at random intervals and unlimited number. I assume if I were running on a machine closer to 1985 specs they wouldn't be appearing quite so quickly.
I take a right, breaking with my hug-the-left-wall maze strategy. Starting this level, I'm drawing maps as I go, so I'll be able to see if I've missed any rooms by looking for unexplored doors. I'm also gonna try to be a bit less thorough in my write-ups. If you wanna know exactly what was in each room, check the map at the end. For now, though, this room had two skeletons and ten coppers.
Sorry for the extremely long .gif there. The downside of me drawing a map as I go is that my playthrough video is full of long pauses as I draw it. On the plus side, against a harmless enemy like these bats, I can just draw with my right hand and hit the S key periodically with my left for effortless life points.
I carry on up the right side tunnel, facing mostly bats in the hallway and scoring some loose change. Not all of the rooms have wandering monsters in them, fortunately. I'm not worried about bats, but an endless stream of something tougher might wear me down after a while. Actually, let's step back in time to when I entered that right side room:
Rats! Now that my armor is enchanted, that initial attack didn't manage to do me in, but it came close. Luckily there were only two and I was able to get rid of them quickly. There were two rats on the other side, too, but I got them without event. If I find a room with wandering rats in it, I'm gonna have to be careful that I don't run out of stamina. Good thing I'm so charming!
This looks a lot like the previous section of the hallway, but this time there was a giant bug in the middle (rats again on either side).
I carry on and come to a corner. The enemies are getting tougher: a leech to start with, and infinitely spawning bugs to follow. Bugs are no threat at this point, though.
As I make my way across the northern corridor and its branches, I meet a new foe:
SCROLL.OLD
The Great Slime be a very slow monster, but can seep through
the most secure armor!
Grody. But like he says, it moves slowly. These upper rooms are full of 'em, and the rewards are commensurate: the treasure in this room is 50 gold, and once I go through the southern exit from this hallway I'll get 100.
I decide that since I'm fighting tough foes, I should try out my magics. I talk this slime into submission, then hit it with the sphere of essence. That doesn't kill it, so I try the ring of Zeus, converting it into a giant leech. The sphere also fails to kill the leech, so I use the ring again to make it into a bat. Then I accidentally fire off the cap of Merlin, failing to find any secret doors, before killing the bat with the sphere. It works, but so does hitting it with my sword a couple times.
The next room has another slime and then infinity skeletons. I rack up some kills while I work on my map. Although I've completely failed to keep to scale, it looks like I'm directly north of the entrance, so I guess I'm halfway through the area.
The next room is a short hallway with like a bajillion bugs in it. I use the ring of Zeus to convert one into a skeleton, and the next enemy to spawn after it is also converted to skeleton. I guess since they were all in the room waiting to attack one after the other it makes sense. Then wandering bats show up.
The next room contains quite a few leeches, followed by wandering bugs. It also has 1000 silvers. Quite a haul!
The next room, at the center of level 3, has an unprecedented four slimes in it. I take 'em out, but my restedness starts to run low. Last thing I need now would be for wandering monsters to show up.
Oh no! Leeches start appearing from everywhere. Leeches were still able to damage me when I was in level 2, but I didn't have magicated armor on then. I'm not sure if they can hit me or not now. I try out the ring of Zeus, converting one of them to a bat, but the ones that appear after it haven't been converted, I guess because they weren't in the room when I cast the spell. The smart thing to do would have been to convert one to a bat and then ignore it, since bats can't get through my armor.
Instead I keep on fighting leeches and pick up the 1000 gold (!) I find on the floor. From the looks of things, I've got too much defence for leeches to even touch me now.
I make my way back up to the T-junction at the top of the level and carry on leftwards. All these rooms have slimes and decent amounts of gold in them. I'm expecting pretty much a mirror of the trip into the level as I carry on. The toughest part of the level is behind me, and it's a good thing, too, with all the weight I'm carrying now.
I carry on around the corner. At this point my map ran off the edge of my page. I'd started drawing on the left side. Johnny's not the sharpest.
On my way back down I let a rat get a hit in. Sloppy. It'd be a real shame to get killed now, when I'm all loaded down with treasure.
I reach room 31, the mirror of room 9 on the other side. I didn't explore the branch from 9 on my way in, but I assume it's just another small room.
Turns out I was wrong! There's a middle passage connecting the two sides. The center hallway has 1000 coppers, matching the 1000 each of silver and gold in the center rooms branching off the upper hallway. The branched rooms have mostly bugs and leeches guarding 50 or 100 silvers.
As I make my way back through room 8 I don't even bother with the bat that comes at me.
Going this way gives me the chance to explore the branches I didn't take on the way in.
I eventually reach the bottom left corner of the map, and room 31. That's where I branched out into the middle corridor a little while ago.
I turn for the exit, and remember I haven't used my spell of Gigos yet. I rearrange this bat's internal organs. Sorry, bat!
On my way out I notice that I've got 348 kills for this run. I knock off a couple bats to get myself up to a nice round 350. Sorry, bats!
Here's what I have after clearing out level 3. I'm rich!
Toodle-oo!
Here's the map Johnny drew:
And here's the same map after I crudely rearranged the bits to go where they were supposed to:
And here's the scene when I returned to room 8:
And that's level 3!
Next time:
Level 4!
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