Phantasie Island

Area 9: "Dragonor"

Continuing my exploration of Gelnor, all that remains are the four sectors on the east coast. I started at the bottom, where I am clearly overleveled for the encounters present. I found nothing of interest - just a town and inn, and a lot of empty terrain. But the experience gained from the various snakes, orcs, and occasional devils was enough to level up Lenny, as if he needed more.

Area 7: "Trollport"

One screen north held a town, more unchallenging encounters, and a second bubbling pool.

We took the plunge.

The results:

• Lenny's strength increased from 20 to 23!
• Lambert's charisma increased from 12 to 14.
• Claude's intelligence increased from 18 to 22.
• Rasputin's intelligence increased from 15 to 18.
• Dennis' dexterity increased from 22 to 24.
• Minmax's strength increased from 3 to 5.
  

The experience gained also leveled up Lambert, who learned an outmoded spell (Double Fireflash), and Rasputin, whose newfound intelligence let him learn three new spells. I picked Double Mindblast, Vision, and Transportation.

The Vision spell, as it turns out, reveals a portion of the map sector. Convenient, but with only two sectors left to map out, a bit late to really take advantage of.

I finished mapping out the last two areas with relative quickness and no real difficulty.

Area 10: "Northford"

Gelnor's northeast corner

Before going to the dungeon in the serpent-shaped archipelago, I had a bit of unfinished overworld business. A portion of the map in the southwest remained unexplored, surrounded by deep, unswimmable waters. Two of Gelnor's eleven towns also remained undiscovered, Asgard or wherever the gods lived notwithstanding.

I returned to Northford and Minmax cast Transportation, selecting town #5 as a destination. This brought me to a new town, "Appleton," but as I left, I got a surprise.

 

"Appleton" is just an inn on the southwest coast, where I've already been! If you teleport there by magic, it behaves as a town, but if you walk there (or leave and come back), it's just an inn.

We walked north to Greenville and cast Transportation again, going to area 8 - Phantasia.

Checking out the armory, which had long ceased to offer interesting wares, there was another surprise.

Ah, so this is where one of the missing rings wound up!

I bought the ring, and left town to map the surrounding area.

Great. Another Brigadoon that vanishes when you set foot outside of it.

Recalling the scroll concerning the magic pools, I knew a third one could be found here, and I found it, hidden among the ocean tiles, but revealed by its irregular oval tile pattern among the waves.

The area is surrounded by deep ocean, which you normally cannot cross, and without any town to go back into and cast Transportation, we seemed stranded, but there's a way out, thanks to a quirk in the game logic. By leaving on the east side of the screen, the party is deposited onto the west side of the next screen, onto a normally impassable "deep ocean" tile, and allowed to swim away from it, onto the shore.

 The results from the third and final pool:

• Lenny's charisma increased from 12 to 15.
• Lambert's dexterity increased from 13 to 15.
• Claude's intelligence increased from 22 to 26.
• Rasputin's charisma increased from 12 to 15.
• Dennis' constitution increased from 14 to 16.
• Minmax's dexterity increased from 15 to 17.

 

Not terrific, but my party isn't exactly struggling.

 

My basically complete map: