Phantasie: The Temple of the Gelnor Priests

Area 2, "Pineville"

 

South of Pelnor, monsters were a bit tougher, but not yet a problem. Bears are tough, drawing out the fights, and hit inaccurately but cause worrying damage when they land. Sting beetles are the opposite, numerous, hard to hit, more accurate, and will gradually cause hurt. Badgers and baboons were also seen but didn't last.

A town in the hills, Pineville, also functioned much like Pelnor. There wasn't much new stuff, but the free inn is always welcome, and the armory sold wooden shields light enough for Minmax the wizard to carry. They're not great, but better than nothing.

A pool by the hill region's northeast base "changes" my characters, but I couldn't tell what actually happened.

The cathedral/dungeon by the lake's edge was my undoing.

 

The main chamber here has four monks' cells who do not mind that you pick their locks and enter, and give some shady warnings about the temple and high priest. "We have very few secrets," mutters one of them. Few ain't none, my man.

South of it is a teleporter room, where portals send you to the different areas of the cathedral. Such as the crypt, where Minmax got torn apart by zombies.

Maybe this was a fluke. Maybe I was careless. And maybe I was underleveled, or even understatted. But I decided that for now, I'll stick to exploring and training on the overworld. The battles might get more difficult, but at least you're never too far from an inn.

Area 3, "Greenville"

Out of my element one screen east

Friendly devils. Lucky me.

Area 3S: No town, just an inn and a dungeon

Here be dragons. And too much ocean.

One problem with this plan is that although there's no shortage of encounters on the overworld, ones that bring cash rewards are scarce. Bears, coyotes, and killer bees, etc. tend not to have any gold, and it didn't take long before all of my characters had earned enough XP to level but the training cash just wasn't there. Occasionally I'd loot a few bucks from brigands, skeletons, and baby dragons, and it bought a training session or two, but I hit a wall.

I gritted my teeth and went back into the cathedral dungeon.

Surprise! I had a pretty easy time exploring it this time, and mapped out most of it in one pass. It helps to conserve your magic except for when you actually need it.

• In the jail area in the northwest, orcs sitting in one cell offer a key to a locked cell, where trollkins sell a scroll.
• The living area in the south has a number of rooms.
• The Earth Guardian's chamber has an unopenable safe box. "Burn it" is presented as an option. For now I chose not to.
  
• In the maid's room, three scrolls lie on her bed, which turned out to be another copy of the History of Gelnor.
  
• A secret door in the janitor's room opens to a natural cavern, where I found a key at the end of it.
• A gnome in the kitchen responded to "Nifle Scro," telling me his name was Nisconat.
• The southwest antechamber opens with the key found in the caverns, and robed men guard the inner door. I tried to bribe them, and they responded by teleporting me back to the exit.
  

 

I decided to head back to town and save/rest/train before exploring any further. With the gold found, Minmax could level up twice, and learned several new spells, including quadruple fireflash, mindblast, ninja, and fear. A few minor weapon upgrades were picked out from the haul too.

The scroll found in the jail read:

I returned and fought the antechamber guards - just a pair of scrawny magic users who didn't even squeeze off a spell before getting Kruncha'd. The high priest sat within and didn't seem to mind.

His pair of scrolls read:

The state of my party:

• Kruncha - Level 4 fighter. Will need nearly $7000 to level up again, thanks to the ugly troll tax. Wields an axe, wears scale mail, carries an Md. Shield +1, giving gear states of 9/6/9. Still only knows Monster Evaluation. Is 18 years old, which is slightly worrying as he started the adventure age 14 and trolls have a life expectancy of 40-50 years.
  
• Lambert - Level 5 ranger. Gear stats 8/5/8. Knows a few spells but only Healing has proven useful so far. Would need about $3000 to level up, as would everyone else except Kruncha and Minmax.
  
• Robert - Level 4 priest. Gear stats 8/4/8. Knows Double Healing, Sleep, and Awaken, which have been useful, and Confusion and Binding, which have not been useful. Would need about $3000 to level up.
• Greg - Level 5 monk. Gear states 8/4/8. Only knows fireflash - mostly useless - and Double Ninja, which rules.
• Dennis - Level 6 thief. Gear stats 8/4/8. Only knows charm, which has been no use whatsoever to me yet.
• Minmax - Level 7 wizard. Gear stats 5/1/2. Needs 20,000 XP to level up. Has some half-decent HP now, and knows many spells at this point.
• Quadruple Fireflash - Untested, but triple fireflash did powerful damage to a single creature at great MP cost. I expect the quadruple version is even more so.
• Double Quickness - A terrific party combat enhancer.
• Double Strength - Boosts Minmax's own damage output somewhat for a low MP cost. Okay if there's nothing else to do.
• Confusion - Causes spellcasters to fail more often. It sucks.
• Weakness - Reduces monsters' damage output. Useless.
• Mindblast - Untested damage spell.
• Charm - Allegedly makes monsters "forget to fight." Seems useless.
• Fear - Untested spell that makes monsters flee combat entirely.
• Ninja - Good combat booster. Haven't tried it with Minmax yet.
  
• Transportation - Instantly travel from one town to another. Untested.
• The mystic evaluates us as power level 10 - experienced adventurers.