Spellbreaker: Rummy cubes

Spellbreaker seems like a deadly game - I've barely begun to map it out, with only 14 rooms visited, and already found two locations where you die if you do the wrong thing, or even just wait around too long.

To recap - magic is failing, all of the land's guildmasters except myself have been turned into frogs, and a mysterious cloaked figure has selected me for some mysterious purpose, but left no clues; just a magical white cube that represents some kind of pocket dimension with four passages and a hole. The north passage is invisibly sealed. East leads to a stone hall where a massive serpent devouring its own tail blocks off a circular passage. South goes to a precarious cliff, with avalanche-triggering rocks at the top, and a grumpy ogre at the bottom.

 

I restarted, quickly reobtained the cube, used the Blorple spell to enter it, and quickly discovered there's not much more to explore! The west passage goes nowhere new - it just leads directly to the ogre's cave, and the hole is a very long drop to the bottom, which the game shows uncharacteristic mercy by telling you instead of just killing you for trying to take it.

I tried to find productive use for any of my magic - in particular, it seemed like Throck, a spell to make plants grow, might be weaponized against the allergic ogre, but to no avail. Half of the time my spells just failed outright, and Throck didn't seem to do anything the other half of the time.

The girgol spell - a one-time use scroll to freeze time - proved useful. After deliberately triggering an avalanche, I cast girgol, and was able to climb a series of free-falling boulders to reach the clifftop! Here, a Ƶ500 coin lay on the ground, and a hermit's stone hut was perched by the edge. Inside, another white cube was embedded in the walls, but the hermit wouldn't let me take it. The malyon spell, which animates inanimate objects, fatally demonstrates that this is a load-bearing cube.

I couldn't see what else to do here, or find a use for the coin, so I turned to a walkthrough. First, it says to write a "1" on the cube - I assume this helps distinguish it from any other cubes we find. But second, and I have to call this unfair, you actually do have to jump into the hole! Go down once and be warned that this is a bad idea. Go down a second time to actually do it. And there's still a chance that you die from doing this.

I didn't die, but fell some distance, until a roc swooped down and picked me up, and dropped me into her nest, where a scroll of Caskly - "cause perfection," could be found and Gnusto'd, and another cube, which the roc wouldn't let me take, was wedged underneath an egg.

I returned to the stone hut and cast Caskly on it to give it a little more structural integrity. After this, I could take the new cube and Blorple inside.

 

This cube, which I wrote "two" on, goes to a different pocket dimension with only two exits. One is sealed, the other goes to a meadow, where I find garden sheers and a conspicuous ragweed.

It's pretty obvious what I need to do here. I pull - not cut - the weed, and return to the ogre's cave, where I could replant and Throck it, sending the ogre into a sneezing fit long enough to steal his cache - another cube, and a scroll of epnis - sleeping.

Espnis does not work on the mother roc and allow me to take the cube in her nest, so I Blorple this third one.

The third cube's hub world is a watery one and has three exits, two of them unsealed. One leads to the bottom of an oubliette. The other leads to the middle of the ocean, where your spellbook gets waterlogged, you drop your cube (which soon gets eaten by a grouper), and a bottle is seen floating.

I reloaded, and knowing what would happen, I first memorized Blorple, then put the spellbook inside the magic zipper so that it would not get ruined. I stepped into the ocean, grabbed the bottle, and Blorpled the first cube, knowing I could never return here.

The bottle, which I then opened, had a "liskon" spell, which shrinks living things. I knew where this would help - the ouroboros reacted as promised, letting me slip past it and into a temple adorned with a very large basalt rat statue featuring a prominent mouth. Malyon would animate it, and espnis would make it yawn, letting me reach inside and grab a fourth cube.

The fourth cube is air-themed, made of solid clouds, and has four passages out, including a gap downward.

North takes me to a deadly frozen glacier, where a freezing scroll of "tinsot" lies in the snow banks.

South drops into thin air, where the roc once again picked me up and dropped me into her nest. Tinsot seemed like it might let me freeze her in place long enough to take the cube here, but it does not.

West goes to a busy bazaar, where a wheeler-dealer (threader-vendor?) carpet salesman can be lowballed and bartered down to Ƶ500, but he'll try to push the red one on you. Don't accept this - insist on the blue. He won't allow you to cast jindak (detect magic) in the shop, but trial and error shows that the blue carpet is magical and the red carpet is just a threadbare rag.

I put the carpet down on the ground and sat - and it flew! Up into the clouds, where it eventually took me to a mountainous wilderness. Although the carpet responds to directional commands, it seemed endless, and landing here is immediately fatal.

At this point, I'm stuck. I did discover two things, neither of which is immediately useful - first, that the magic carpet has a tag on its underside, which if removed, causes the carpet to lose its flying ability. Second, that in the middle of the ocean, the grouper can be fed with smoked fish taken from the guild's banquet hall, allowing you to retrieve both the cube and the bottle. I have some ideas about things to try next, mostly involving the magic carpet in various places, but for now I'm calling this a stopping point.

My Trizbort map (so far):