The Bard's Tale: The day the music died

I made the decision to bench Sunfall for now. I know this is supposed to be the bard's tale, but her only useful ability has been the AC-lowering Traveler's Tune, and while it's been handy to be able to lower party AC by 2 (which stacks with Scribe's Mystic Shield) before monsters have the chance to attack, an extra spellcaster would be so much better.

I roll three new gnomish conjurers, prioritizing IQ, and then constitution, and have them shadow my fighters for some quick(ish) level gains. Whoever has the most impressive SP and HP at the end of it will receive full-time employment.

After a few trips to the sewers to watch the big boys fight black widows, and four levels gained, the clear winner of this audition is Magic Mike, at 22HP/47MP, and I keep the runner-up Houdini around in case Viila could use a bit of competitive incentive. The loser gets deleted from the disk.

As long as I'm in ruthless manager mode, I roll up a few new monks for tryouts. RedSlayer's been great as a glass cannon, but I'll bet it couldn't hurt to have an alternative who can take a hit too. By the time they reach level 4, it's clear who the best is - Conrad has 40HP, beating out the other two by a large margin, and is already getting close to RedSlayer's 43HP at five levels behind. The losers get deleted, and RedSlayer is on notice.

I also learned something during this training session I wished I learned much sooner. Combat messages can be sped up by using the right arrow key. It's in the quick reference card, but I missed that the first time I read it.

 

This newly reformed party explores the second level of the sewers. It goes by much faster than the first one, now that I realize I can skip most of the combats and speed through the rest, but it's more of the same. There aren't even any new monsters, nor do they appear in greater quantities, apart from a few fixed locations where as many as 13 spiders can appear at once. Sunfall's AC-lowering music is somewhat missed; now we almost always get poisoned in the first round of combat against black widows, but having two people who can cast Flesh Restore almost makes up for it.

Incidentally, the temple fee to cure poison is ridiculous. $3200 per cure - that's almost as much as it cost us to learn the spell to do it ourselves!

There is a special encounter in the southwest corner of the map:

If you recall, a clue in the floor above said "Pass the light at night." Too bad there's no way to check the time in the sewers! So we return to the surface - sure enough, it's only noontime - and wait (in turbo mode) for nightfall before returning.

The light beam isn't there, and beyond the passageway, a clue.

 

As for the rest of the level:

A Stairs up B Message C Combat D Spiders E Trap F Chute down G Light beam H Black Widows I Teleport

Monster XP Magicians 100-512 Conjurors 100-512 Orcs 100 Skeletons 110 Nomads 120 Spiders 150 Mad Dogs 180 Barbarians 200 Mercenaries 220 Wolves 256 Jade Monks 256 Half-Orcs 256 Zombies 512 Swordsmen 512 Sorcerers 768-1024 Black Widows 1024

• Two big dark areas are a pain to navigate and contain damaging traps, but they don't seem to hurt that much.
• Instead of stairs, there are two chutes down; one concealed in the northwest dark region, and one in the eastern side of the map. The levitate spell lets you ascend back up it.
• There are more clue-like inscriptions here and there:
• Thor is the greatest son of Odin.
• There is no exit until the seven words are said.
• Heed not what is beyond understanding.