Deathlord: Finishing off Kawahara's dungeon

Last post I ended in front of these two staircases in Kawahara's dungeon:

I couldn't remember which one was correct; though I could easily figure out which was which by checking the map I'd previously made, figuring I'd end up going through both anyway, I went through the left one.

Whoops.

...And I picked the wrong one, getting dumped through a chute all the way to the bottom level of the dungeon. Those fire tiles to the east do 4 damage per step--not that much, but more than enough to kill off Tomoe and Frank before I reached safety. However there was a secret way out of here--the left wall is illusionary, and allows you to bypass the flames. Now I needed to find my way out.

The right side is where I wanted to get to, but there's no way there from where I am.

There wasn't much here; I get in a fight with some ogres and then some Kaibu but the level is generally pretty empty. There's a 1-tile spot of "good" water; I drank there with Gio hoping to boost her combat stats but it didn't appear to do anything. (Likely it refilled her MP or something)

The way out of here is actually in the big empty room in the northwest area of this level. One of the tiles is a teleporter which will transport the party one level up, to level 5 (the 5C on the map above indicates a teleportation to the lower-case c square on level 5)

If I just wanted to leave and go up one level, that would be fairly easy, since there's one pathway that leads directly to the stairs. However there are actually some hidden goodies here that shouldn't be overlooked. First is an illusionary wall to a room full of pots:

Deathlord trolls the player once more...

Of course, all these pots are completely empty so there's not really any reason to be there. In Deathlord, not every hidden chamber has something of value in it.

The second secret is behind a secret door near the stairs. There's a hall with a hidden pit beyond it, and past there, a door into a chamber with four "good" pools in it. This chamber is guarded by a Will o' wisp, a relatively nasty enemy that deals hefty damage, can summon allies, and can paralyze you. Fortunately this time there was only one of them which I dispatched quickly. Again I tried to get Gio some stats, and she did relatively well--her INT got bumped to 18 and her STR to 13--but one pool hurt her and another completely depleted her MP. Even the "good" pools aren't always good. Fortunately Shizen spells aren't too useful here so the MP drain isn't that big a deal.

The third secret is behind a secret door in the east wall of a room with pillars. The room beyond it has two alcoves, one of which teleports you to an identical-looking room. Had it not been for the chance presence of an Ogre Mage at the destination wouldn't have been any indication that I had been teleported:

The Ogre mage here happens to be standing in the middle of an illusionary wall, giving away another secret. 

Ogre Mages are not an easy enemy--they can cast a damaging spell that hits your whole party. Rather than engage them, I ran. Going down the secret pathway that the Ogre mage gave away, I come upon another room with a new hazard, acid:

My party would have to be significantly stronger than it is now to try to cross this

Acid is bad news--it's twice as nasty as fire/lava, dealing 8 HP of damage every turn you stand in it. There are coffins on the other side that might have treasure (though you can't see them from here) but it would kill half my party getting to them so I didn't bother. Acid and fire tiles are some of the prime reasons you want a Shizen in your party--Shizen have two level 4 spells that negate damage from acid and fire respectively. There are some plot items you can use to have the same effect, but you won't gain them until much later in the game, and in the interim you'll need ways to deal with these sorts of damage tiles.

There's one last secret on this level to find before going to the next level; there's a secret door right north of the tile I teleported to before finding the ogre mage. It leads to a room with a significant amount of treasure; one of the boxes had a blade trap that shaved off half of Yoshinaka's HP but I came out nearly 5000 GP richer.

Climbing up to the next level, I was greeted by a confusing sign:

Given its placement by the staircase down, it seems to indicate that the stairs down are the way further into the dungeon--but it's the way I came up.

Level 4 is well-designed area, with lots of little rooms off a central hall. It's swarming with Kaibu and Skeletons so you need to be careful, but the rooms are good places to rest if you need to. There are some "good" water pools to drink from, and a few notable features. The first is a room with a sign in front of it saying "STONEHOME," the purpose of which isn't immediately obvious until you go in:

Well, that explains it.

Stonebrows are hard to hit and there are a lot of them so these fights could wear your party down, but if you have a Genkai they'll make short work of them with the HIBANA spell--it doesn't do much damage, but the Stonebrows don't have a lot of HP.

The second room of interest is a trapped room full of pits:

These pits can easily kill a low-level party

These are nastier pits than most as they can do upwards of 15 damage to the whole party if you're unlucky. The room seems totally empty apart from the pits, but there's a hidden passageway in the southeast that leads to a hall full of acid:

Not as dangerous as it looks!

Going down this hall seems like it would be suicide, but there's actually a trick to it--all the walls to the west of the acid are illusions, so if you walk through them you only have to spend two turns in acid to get down the hallway. That's still 16 HP of damage, but you can rest at the other end if you need to.

At the other end is a really nice treasure trove, but it's also guarded by a small army of Mahotsukai:

Mahotsukai can hit characters in the rear row with their spells so they're quite dangerous this early in the game

After trudging through acid--even just two tiles worth of it--Mahotsukai are a dangerous enemy to face, but somehow I managed to kill them all without any of my own characters dying. (though it got close a few times there) A Mahotsukai coming through an illusionary wall in the northwest corner of the room of pots also gave away a side chamber with even more treasure in it. In that side chamber I camped for a long time to restore MP and HP.  Incidentally at this point my party started to run out of food so I knew I'd have to leave soon.

Back through the acid passageway and resting another few hours thereafter, I drank the four "good" pools on the level to little effect--Yoshinaka gained one point of Constitution, lost one point of Size (I forgot pools could cause stat decreases) and the other two didn't seem to do anything. This level was now taken care of so I climbed up:

The start of this level has the party walking along the shores of a giant underground lake. It doesn't happen often, but Behemoths can spawn in this lake--quite nasty monsters with a that pack a punch, have a lot of HP, and can summon allies.

There's not much in the way of secrets in this level, but they're easy to find. If you map out the level there's a very conspicuous empty spot in the eastern side, and in that spot lies the main treasure room. Past a few secret doors I found it.

After looting this hoard I have almost 25000 gold between all party members.

As you can see from the above image, by this point I had gotten enough experience to level my party again--it looks like the magic number this time is 400 EXP, so it looks like levels are finally going to start to come more slowly.

The north half of this level is a crypt, I think--there's a lot of undead like ghouls, skeletons, and zombies. There's also an empty coffin in a room filled with darkness, with an "out to lunch" sign nearby. One of the walls of this chamber is illusionary and hides two small chests, with little gold and a crossbow bolt that nearly killed Yoshinaka, leaving him with just 1 HP.

So it's up to the next level...

Hey, wait a minute...

I've been here before. It's the room with the "One path leads to the next level, the other to your doom" sign. I went down the "wrong" staircase, and eventually found my way back up through the "right" staircase. Of course that raises one important issue: at no point during the trek back up here did I come across any way to get to Kawahara, and I searched those levels pretty thoroughly. It would appear at first glance that neither pathway leads to Kawahara and I'm just being led on a wild goose chase.

This isn't the case, and there's a trick to this dungeon in general, but before I do anything I need to go back to Tokugawa and train, as now my casters can learn their level 3 spells:

Shigeko:
MOAKARI: Like the level 1 AKARI spell, only it has a better light radius and longer duration. The mainstay light spell for the rest of the game.
MOTUNASU: Cure Paralysis.
ONKEI: Another E-J'd spell, this time for "Bless," Raises to-hit chance for everyone in the party.

Gio:
BYOKINASU: Curses disease. ("Byoki" means "sick") Really nice to have, especially later when you're far from a healer.
KONPASU: When cast at sea, gives you a general indication of what direction the closest landmass is in. Given how easy it is to get lost at sea in Deathlord this is a great spell. E-J'd, but extra amusing because the word they got was a loanword from English--"Compass."
YOBUZUMA: Nice group-target attack spell that unfortunately only works outdoors. Derives from "yobu" (to call) and "inazuma" (lightning), in other words "call lightning."

Tomoe:
ZUMA: Another nice group attack spell. Derives from the aforementioned "inazuma." (lightning)
ISOGU: A haste spell that gives every party member an extra attack in battle. Doesn't double your attacks; if you're using a weapon that strikes twice a round normally it'll only attack 3 times with this spell, not 4. Is the Japanese word for "to hurry."
KUMO: Temporarily paralyzes enemies. "Kumo" is Japanese for "spider" and this is a "web" spell.

Frank:
KAWA: Basically a more powerful version of the Mahotsukai's KOWA spell; makes 1-3 enemies flee.
NIGERU: Like a more powerful KIRI or MOYA "escape from battle" spell. "Nigeru" is the Japanese word for "To Flee."
MAMOTU: Like the Shisai MOTU spell, only more powerful as it affects an entire enemy party.

These spells are nice and will increase the party's survivability a lot, but I wasn't actually quite yet ready to take on Kawahara; I needed a few more levels first. So I headed to what's left of the Yakuza guild in Kawa. The Yakuza guild is one of the best places to grind for levels because the enemy spawn rate is out of control there. Nothing's all that dangerous (with the possible exception of Ninjas) but there lots of enemies and an easy route to safety if your HP and MP run low. While down there I stumbled across something unexpected:

I've played Deathlord a lot but I somehow always overlooked this.

There's treasure in the Yakuza guild! Two vaults actually. There are two fire squares in the Yakuza guild and both of them are teleports, each sending you into a separate treasure vault. I guess I should have figured there'd have to be some sort of reward for going down there, but I'm pretty sure I never discovered it before. Another thing I noticed while fighting enemies down here is that not once did a ninja get lucky and instakill a characater, though I got poisoned numerous times by Ansatsusha parties. I suspect that the rate of success for certain status attacks are scaled to the party's level.

For thoroughness' sake I brought the party up to level 9, figuring that should be more than enough to kill Kawahara, unless I get really unlucky with some of his spells. It's back to the dungeon to finish him off. A hint on how to get to him is available in the palace. Remember this guy?

This was an important hint!

Remember how the "wrong" staircase on level 2 dumped the party all the way on level 6 through a series of chutes? The east wall on the 4th floor (hence the second drop) is illusionary, and if the party walks through it rather than dropping down you end up in a secret garden of sorts:

This place is crawling with monsters.

A lake separates the west and east sides of the garden, but there's a boat on the west shore that you can take to cross it. That's not the only way across, either; along the south edge of the lake there are three secret doors that you can find that will also take you around it. I think they put this option in here so that if you left your boat on the east side of the lake and then got killed or dispersed your party, you'd still be able to get back without needing the high-level Genkai waterwalking spell.

It's nice they give you an alternate path, but there are other dungeons in the game where you really can get stuck if you die or disperse the party in an inopportune location.

Once across the lake, it's down to the next level, which is a medium-sized darkness maze. Darkness in Deathlord isn't quite as frustrating as it is in a lot of CRPGs of the time, though it can still be annoying. A torch/light spell will be able to light up darkness squares, but won't be able to penetrate beyond them. The net effect is that you'll always be able to see at the very least, the eight squares that immediately surround the party, but not necessarily any further.

This is as far as you can see in the dark maze.

However, this maze is fairly simple and not too terribly difficult to navigate, especially if you map it. The one part that's tricky is that there's another one of those "invisible teleports" late in the maze that will teleport you to an earlier section. It's not too tricky to figure out but is potentially disorienting, and the darkness doesn't make things any easier.

Navigating the maze I went down a level and was beset by wraiths. Wraiths are bad news--they can drain levels when they hit you. Level drain is one of the worst possible things to happen to you in Deathlord--there aren't any spells or healers that can reverse it, so the only way to make lost levels back is to regain the experience all over again. The game doesn't autosave when you get drained so frankly the best recourse in my opinion is to turn off the computer and reload if it happens. Yes it's technically cheating, but level drains are far too painful to deal with otherwise in my opinon.

I've noticed that enemies with colored sprites have a tendency to be tougher than usual.

Fortunately the Wraiths were really bad at hitting my party and the few times they did, no draining occurs so I didn't have to resort to any reloads. It wasn't long until I came across Kawahara's inner sanctum:

I wonder if this is a riff on the fact that you need to walk through a fire tile to read this sign in the first place...

Kawahara himself is in his chambers but doesn't move toward you or attack until you get adjacent with him. Unfortunately he will attack as soon as you get in range so he always gets the first strike. He's got some nasty spells, so if he leads with one you can get wiped out or seriously damaged before you can do anything. This is the main reason I brought my party up to level 9 before taking him on.

Kawahara's first move--were I a few levels lower Frank would be dead right now.

Even if your levels are high enough to withstand one of Kawahara's attacks, you've still got about a 50/50 chance of losing someone in the fight. Kawahara has a lot of attacks at his disposal--two party-wide damaging spells, one more powerful than the other (the above screenshot is his strong one), a group paralysis spell, a party-wide kill spell, and a few magical single-target attacks that can hit the back row. He doesn't have that many HP so if you've got good fighters you can probably kill him in a couple of rounds, but the problem is surviving that long. The biggest danger is his instant-death spell; unless your levels are very high you're probably going to lose a few party members when he casts it.

If you're not sure whether or not you can kill Kawahara, you can actually go on a "practice run" against the Necromancer in Tokugawa. Stat-wise the Necromancer is basically identical to Kawahara, so if you can kill him, you can probably kill Kawahara. And if you fail, at least you don't have to trek all the way to the bottom of a dungeon again.

Kawahara spent most of his time trying to paralyzing my party (good thing Shigeko had the MOTUNASU spell) and never cast his kill spell so I managed to scrape by without losing anyone. Gio and Shigeko had to be on full healing duty and everyone else had to attack, and even thenit was close. And I got a nice random treasure as a reward:

Golden Gloves are one of the best miscellaneous armors in the game. They give a -3 AC bonus and add 2 points of damage to every attack. They're Heavy-class equipment so only Yoshinaka can use them.

One of the treasure chests behind Kawahara has a "Document" in it. This is a special item that you need to give to the Emperor to complete this quest. The box with the document also is a teleport square, the only way to get out of here. But it's worth noting that Kawahara also has his own treasure trove. It's got some nice stuff in it but getting there is painful...

Don't go in here until later. I saved and restored before taking this shot.

Those green-and-red tiles are "Arkhan's Walls." Arkhan's walls cut the party's HP in half every time you walk through them. Any character with just 1HP that walks through them dies. Also there was an Ogre Mage and Green Slimes in here, both nasty enemies. That portcullis to the south has some "good" pools behind it, but I'm almost positive it can't be smashed down.

Really, even if you managed to kill Kawahara, coming in here through the front door is a bad idea. If you want to loot his hoard, the best way to get to it is to come back once you've got the teleport level spell and teleport into the chamber directly. And as far as I know that's the only way you're going to get to the pools.

Rather than mess with Kawahara's treasure chamber, I left and presented the document to the Emperor using the "OI" (Offer Item) command in conversation:

..."Oceanspray?"

So, uh, the Emperor tells you to go to a nonexistent town for a ship and tells you to hunt down the Deathlord. I'm guessing Oceanspray is what Tokugawa was going to be called prior to EA's executive meddling and was overlooked in the final script. Heading to Tokugawa, I can indeed board a ship for free, now rather than having to shell out the 10,000 gold it normally costs to buy one.

With a ship the world of Deathlord opens up a lot. The game gives you very little guidance as to where to go next, other than the cryptic advice in the manual that you need to find "six items and seven words." None of these are on the first continent so you have to go elsewhere. There isn't much guidance as to where to go next, other than some guy in town telling you that the Deathlord "Moved South" and other guys telling you to "Find Senju."

Next post I'll start traveling to other continents, where all the really nasty parts of Deathlord are. The road thus far hasn't been particularly easy, but it's nothing compared to the rest of the game.