The Bard's Tale: Mangar's Tower, part two

 

My party for assaulting Mangar's tower now looks like this:

• Sunfall the bard leads the way with a magic-resisting Lucklaran song. Speed boots are equipped for improved fleeing chances - I want to live, not gain levels - but she also has a frost horn for inflicting group damage when running fails.
• Ahab the paladin fights in the front row with Arc's Hammer, which gives free light spells, but his main damage dealer is a Dragonshield, which does comparable damage to Sunfall's frost horn.
• Viila gets surprisingly low AC for a wizard thanks to magic bracers and an assortment of AC-lowering accessories including a sorcerer's staff, but his main damage dealer will be Mind Blade, along with Repel Dead and Demon Strike for their respective targets. He can summon demons at will too. His Lorehelm gives free clairvoyance spells, a magic broom means dubiously useful free levitation spells, and he also has the useful conjuror spells of Trap Zap, Magic Compass, and teleportation.
• Scribe has the most SP of anyone in the party and can cast any Wizard or Sorcerer spell that Viila can, but also has the old Magician spells of Mystic Shield (passive AC boost for the party), and crucially, Restoration.
• Magic Mike and Houdini are lower-level conjuror-wizards who offer some extra firepower. Kiel's Compass, carried by Magic Mike, gives free locate spells that work in antimagic zones.

 

Floor 3 begins in darkness, and Phase Door & teleport magic don't work! You can teleport back down to floors 1 & 2, and you can teleport directly to the stairs on floor 2, but the only way to progress is by walking.

A Stairs down B Message C Combat D Trap E Mongo F Teleport G Spinner H Keymaster I Magic Mouth J Stairs up

Lurkers 2560 Fire Giants 2560 Berserkers 2560 Azure Monks 2560 Hydras 2560 Green Dragons 2560 Wraiths 2560 Shadows 2560 Ivory Monks 2560 Weretigers 2560 White Dragons 2560 Magicians 2560-2816 Conjurors 2560-2816 Wizards 2560-2816 Sorcerers 2560-2816 Ice Giants 2816 Phantoms 2816 Ogre Lords 2816 Eye Spies 2816 Xorns 2816 Body Snatchers 2816 Fred 2816 Lesser Demons 2816 Ghouls 2816 Evil Eyes 3072 Ghosts 3072 Mimics 3072 Golems 3072 Vampires 3072 Basilisks 3072 Grey Dragons 3072 Master Ninjas 3072 Bone Crushers 3072 Demons 3072 Warrior Elites 3072 War Giants 3072 Mongo 3328

 

A maze of darkness and spinners runs through this level, and I learned the unhappy way that Ahab's light-emitting hammer does expire when used too much. As does Kiel's Compass.

Several solitary "Mongo" enemies await in the many otherwise empty rooms here. They're mostly harmless, but there's always a chance of losing someone to their stoning magic, so I learned to run as much as possible anyway, and unload on them with magic when that fails.

I did some experimentation with the speedboots after finding a second pair. It's hard to know for sure, with probability being non-deterministic by nature, but it seems to me that the greatest determiner of whether running succeeds or not is who leads the party. Running seems to succeed more often when Ahab (who can't even wear the boots) is in the lead than it does when Sunfall is, and even more often when Viila is in the lead. Having a party member wear them seems to also help, even if that party member is not in the lead, but having two members both wear them doesn't seem to make a difference. Perhaps the Rogue could be useful after all? Or perhaps not - unless he succeeds at running 100% of the time, he's going to be utterly wasted in the front position whenever he fails.

Seven evangelistic-flavored clues are hidden here:

• Do not scry, the first is lie.
• The One God's second is surely with. 
• As the One God has said, the third is passion if you have love and life. 
• In all the land, the fourth is and.
• We speak of One God, eternal is he, his fifth is almost certainly be.
• On the many levels, several are ancient but the sixth is forever. 
• The One has said that the first man is blessed and the last is damned. 

It's strange that Mangar would be indoctrinating Aristotelian virtues within his own tower. But then again, maybe Cranford had a theological beef. I'm not really sure what he was thinking.

Hidden within a dark spiraling corridor, an elderly chap sells us a key for lots of otherwise useless money.

It opens Mangar's iron gates, but it's faster just to teleport through the sewers.

 

The magic mouth in the center-south of the map demands Mangar's passphrase for passage forward.

 

...but because we can't have nice things, entering it doesn't get you anywhere. Oh, no. It just makes the staircase up on this floor become visible, and the mouth isn't going to tell you where it is, or even acknowledge that anything happened. I confess that I looked at an online map to find it instead of searching every corner of the map all over again, and I don't feel bad about it.

 

A Stairs down B Message C Combat D Trap E Ghouls F Wraiths G Spinner H Teleport I Wind J Lesser Demons K Vampire Lord L Mercenaries M Vampires O Spectres P Sleeping Dragons Q Thor R Switch S Chute up

Mercenaries 220 Wraiths 2560 Magicians 2816 Conjurors 2816 Wizards 2816 Sorcerers 2816 Ice Giants 2816 Phantoms 2816 Ogre Lords 2816 Eye Spies 2816 Xorns 2816 Body Snatchers 2816 Fred 2816 Lesser Demons 2816 Ghouls 2816 Evil Eyes 3072 Ghosts 3072 Mimics 3072 Golems 3072 Vampires 3072 Basilisks 3072 Grey Dragons 3072 Master Ninjas 3072 Bone Crushers 3072 Demons 3072 Warrior Elites 3072 War Giants 3072 Mongos 3328 Maze Dwellers 3328 Mind Shadows 3328 Bandersnatches 3328 Master Magicians 3328 Master Conjurors 3328 Master Sorcerers 3328 Master Wizards 3328 Titans 3328 Spectres 3328 Mandar Guards 3328 Gimps 3328 Beholders 3584 Vampire Lords 3584 Greater Demons 4096 Cloud Giants 4736 Red Dragons ?

 

I just love the fact that I'll have to go through level 3 again every time I need to return to level 4 for whatever reason. Actually, I hate it. So instead I just make a save at the start and reload as necessary - my goal is to map out the dungeon, not make level gains.

And I reload quite a bit. The monsters are getting nasty. Giant stacks of heavy hitters pound my front row into pudding. Red dragons, though rare, tend to one-shot half my party before I get a chance to do anything. Usually I can run, and usually I can handle whatever I can't run from, and the monsters are dropping some strange and interesting treasures. But it only takes one bad encounter to ruin my day.

Titans are bad news. Two dozen backup gimps make it worse.

Answer this riddle and you can summon him like a Pokemon.

A relay of teleporters takes us to the northeast corner of the map right near "something special," and it is indeed special.

Every wall on the map has turned into a door. And most of the doors have turned into walls. Given that there had been a lot more walls than doors, I can basically just finish exploring the level lawnmower-style, though this takes several tries with the deadliness of the encounters here.

Crap. Crap. Crap!

 

The way up is in the southwest corner, accessible by levitate spell.

 

To be continued!