Deathlord: Asagata

Last post I explored the desert continent of Akmihr. This post I'll be exploring the other desert continent of Asagata.

As continents go, Asagata is of lesser importance. There aren't any Words or Relics on the continent, there's only one minor, albeit large, dungeon, and there's a grand total of one important hint in the towns. But it's an interesting continent nonetheless, and the dungeon will be a great opportunity to build my characters' levels so I opted to visit. (Besides, my intention is to show off the whole game with this blog)

The first town is Towne Royal up in the northwest area. Towne Royal is a floating town, and requires a ship both to enter and get around.

As you can see, Towne Royal is somewhat of a maze; getting to any one place isn't always straightforward. It does have decent amenities--two weapons shop, one with Samurai/Ninja weapons, a grocery, a tool shop (a relative rarity), a trainer and, inexplicably, a shipwright. There's also an obnoxiously designed temple in here:

Sure, you can get healed, but you have to walk through fire to do it.

The other feature of note here is the Daimyo's residence in the southeast. Like Kawa, if you break in here the Daimyo is hostile and will attack, but at this stage of the game posed little threat to my party; he was dead before the back row even got a chance to act. If you just want to loot the Daimyo's treasure you don't have to fight him--you can go around to the back of his house and break in through there instead. You can steal his boat too.

Few hints are available here from the townsfolk, and many of them referenced places I had already found, like the Kobito mines and the Sorcerers' guild.  I did get two new hints though--one, directions to a new continent, an island directly north of town. The other told me to "Search the Key in Croyo." Croyo is the other town on Asagata, and I hadn't been to yet, so I went there now.

Croyo is surrounded by mountains; the only way in is through the south. The town proper is rather small; built into the mountains surrounding it is a huge maze. Before going into the maze, though, I searched the immediate environs and found a non-hostile skeleton hanging out in the graveyard:

This is the "one useful hint" in Asagata I mentioned.

I hadn't heard of Greenbanks up until this point so I inquired about it, and the skeleton told me that it was "the ruins of a once-great city to the south." Which is a little bit of an odd thing to say as Greenbanks is on one of the northern arctic continents but I guess you can sail around the world to get there.

That's the only hint of note in the "town" part of the town, so I went to the Daimyo's residence in the north next. Unlike Towne Royal, the Daimyo here is not hostile. The rear of his residence leads into the enormous maze that takes up almost half of the town. The maze branches into an east and west wing. The east wing leads to the elfToshi home, and if you think you'd get anything useful after making it through the labyrinth here you'd be sorely mistaken.

The most notable information in Toshi Home.

The west wing of the labyrinth seems like a complete dead-end, but dutifully mapping you'll notice a conspicuously empty area about the size of Toshi Home. Searching the southern walls near it will reveal an illusory wall leading to dwarfKobito Home. Kobito Home is a little more substantial than than Toshi Home. There's a treasure chamber you can break into and loot, but one of the Kobito groups in there will attack you.

Given what he says when you talk to him, I suspect this Kobito is supposed to attack you too, but he doesn't.

There's also a large key-shaped chamber that's filled with fire; this must be the "key" they spoke about in Towne Royal. Dutifully casting HITATE (which only lasts 10 turns so you'll need it a few times) I investigated and found a hint.

Thanks for that hint I already found in Towne Royal without having to walk through fire to get.

Well, that hint was completely useless, but at least I got that bit of information about Greenbanks and a little bit of loot. This was about all I could get from Croyo so I left. There's only one destination left on Asagata--the mines of the Fire Giants in the northeast area of the continent. The Fire Giant mines are completely optional, and the only thing you really get out of it is gold. At this point everyone in the party was at max gold except for Shuten (who had about 2500) so there wasn't a whole lot of reason to go in there. But it's good experience, and if I gained a few levels in the process, I'd need the extra money, as training was starting to get expensive at this point!

The first level of the Giant Caves is easy to get stuck in. Being a cave level it doesn't always conform to the square dimensions of the map, and the potential exit location isn't as immediately obvious. You have to smack against walls hoping to find the illusory one, and it doesn't help that the one you need requires running through swamp. But I eventually found it and descended to the next level:

The second level is fairly small as dungeon levels go. There's not much to see and the stairs down are right in front of you. The only defining feature of the level is its huge lake of fire, which is a red herring trying to get you to explore it. There's an item later in the game you can use to trivialize this lake, but for the time being only Gio's HITATE spells can nullify its effects. The only thing you can discover in the lake, though, is a sign, which is summarily useless:

Thematically this kind of makes sense for this dungeon, but is irritating nonetheless.

The enemies in the dungeon so far were not pushovers but not particularly tough either. Fire Giants were the toughest. They attack twice per round and hit like a truck, often doing upwards of 20+ damage per strike when they hit. On this level they're relatively rare; Manticores and Barlicans were more common. Manticores have multiple attacks, can poison, and can show up in largish numbers so deserve some caution. On to level 3:

Here things started getting tougher. There's a treasure chamber right by the entry stairs, but it was guarded by two groups of Mist Dragons. Mist Dragons--and dragons in general, really--are no joke in Deathlord. They all have breath weapons which does the dragon's current HP in damage to the whole party, halved for characters who save. Full-strength Mist dragons can have 30+ HPs so this can do huge chunks of damage to your party, especially if you're facing multiple dragons.

At about this time I started thinking I might have bitten off more than I could chew coming to this dungeon this early. The encounter rate started getting high and Fire Giants became far more common, in addition to manticores, ogres, and niatamas. Shuten got killed in a very lucky first round attack by a group of fire giants at one point, and I had to quickly leave to resurrect him.

Returning, rather than linger I headed below pausing to stop and read the sign:

There is nothing of value in the sauna, much like the fire lake in the level above.

At this point I wasn't even halfway through the dungeon yet and was already in a rough spot; just getting to this spot, Shuten and Gio had half of their HP shaved off. Yoshinaka, with his AC of -7, was doing much better. I'm actually starting to think I might have made things harder than necessary for myself with this choice of party--Shuten and his high HP and deadly Berzerk Sword is really nice, but he gets hit a lot. And Gio fares even worse. I just haven't found any decent Medium armor for them yet.

The design of the fourth level is, if nothing else, interesting. There's a large garden and treasure chamber of sorts that belongs to the lord of the dungeon (maybe?)

Roorgtrak is apparently not on the premises

At first this level seemed like a nice respite from the previous one; there weren't too many encounters, it's a cool design, and there's an area with a lot of treasure--though it required a lot of HITATE spells to navigate successfully. I even was able to rest in the treasure chamber to get my MP levels back up, as I had been using lots of spells.

And then all hell broke loose. Maybe the encounter rate goes up over time or maybe the game scripts it once you break into Roogtrak's chamber, but monsters started coming out of the woodwork. Powerful monsters--not just Fire Giants, but Ogre Mages, Cyclopses, Triclopses, Will-o-Wisps and more. Before I had gotten halfway to the stairs up Shuten and Gio had HP in the single digits and Shigeko's MP was too low to heal them.

I managed to get out of the dungeon in one piece using an easily-overlooked game mechanic--negotiation. Negotiating with monsters can one have five results, from best to worst:

1. The monsters tell you to get lost
2. The monsters demand money, you pay, and they attack you anyway
3. The monsters demand money, you refuse, and combat continues
4. The monsters demand money, you pay, and they leave
5. The monsters don't demand money but leave anyway

No matter the result, negotiations end your party's turn immediately. The higher the Charisma of the character initiating negotiations, the better the chance for a good result, and the less money the monsters are likely to demand. Frank has a 17 Charisma which worked surprisingly well on the monsters here; several groups left entirely, and I only had to spend about 2000 gold in payouts to get out safely.

Also on the way out, a combat with some Triclopses turned up a Golden Crown, the best miscellaneous piece of Medium armor in the game. I gave it to Shuten because he seems to be taking the brunt of enemies' attacks. In fact it's enough that I decided to swap him out and have Yoshinaka lead the party.

Healing the party up back at Towne Royal, I headed to level 5 of the mines, and the second half of the dungeon.

This floor houses the biggest treasure chamber in the dungeon--the "ore storage" section in the north. The room is easy enough to overlook, but since this level is just a direct corridor otherwise, it's pretty obvious that there are secret doors involved here. Not to mention that enemies spawn inside the secret rooms and have a tendency to ambush you through the walls. The second secret "mining equipment" room has nothing in it, but the The pots and chests in the ore storage had enough gold in them that I completely maxed out the party's gold. 

Putting Yoshinaka in front of the party was definitely paying off--he was now taking the brunt of the enemies' attacks, and despite his lower HP than Shuten, his better AC meant that he was getting hit a lot less often.

An enemy turn like this was rare when Shuten was leading the party. Also note relative HP levels here among the front line.

That's pretty much all for this level; I wasn't about to linger, given the way enemies were spawning on the previous level. There is, however, one point of interest before you leave:

They don't move, but they're still hostile.

There are two Fire Giant groups guarding the stairs down, who will attack you when you approach. There's a minor trick here that can prevent both groups from getting the first strike when you engage them--approach the left-most group from the south. The right group will attack you first diagonally, and when the combat is over, it'll be your turn, freeing you to attack the giant group to the north and get the first strike. Killing the two giant groups, I went down to level 6:

There's...really not a whole lot you can say about level 6. It's a big, empty cavern with a lot of enemies. The stairs downward are guarded by immobile Fire Giants like level 5 was, and can be dealt with in the same manner. There's also a red-herring pool that you might think is magic or poison, but it's just regular water. On to the next!

Level 7 is slightly more interesting, but not that much; that hidden chamber beyond illusory walls has 11 magic pools that can boost your stats. Despite that, I got virtually nothing in terms of stats; a few minor worthless boosts here and there like size increases. However, one pool did in fact change Shuten back into a man.

Not that this really matters, but it's nice to have him back the way I initially created him.

Rather than make the same mistake I did on previous levels, I quickly searched all the walls of the level for illusions and secret doors then headed downwards, before the enemy spawn level could get out of control.

The 8th and final floor of the Fire Giant mines is...completely empty. Like Level 6, there's nothing of note at all, just heavy monster spawns. It's kind of an odd and lackluster end to an otherwise pretty good dungeon; the upper levels were kind of interesting and well-crafted, and the lower levels were just phoned-in empty caves.  I was expecting a final treasure chamber or boss or something and just...nothing.  So it was back to the top, and despite the way up being faster, I got in a lot of really hard fights and ran out of MP. This was the state of my party before I finally got out:

Damage dealer and primary healer dead, almost everyone else poisoned, one character with single-digit HP levels.

In retrospect, I tried to tackle this dungeon before I was really ready. There's nothing really unfair about the Fire Giant caves, they just have a lot of monsters that hit really hard. No enemy here was beyond my party's ability--it's just that they couldn't handle the attrition. I think now that you'd probably want to be around level 19, when you get your level 6 spells, before trying to fully explore the Fire Giant caves.

Overall the Fire Giant lair is an unusual dungeon--Deathlord dungeons usually are either well designed with little tedium or unfairness, or are poorly designed and chock full of it. The Fire Giant lair isn't either of these. It's well balanced (for a party tougher than mine) without a lot of tedium or BS, but it's not really well-designed either. It's not terrible--there are a few floors that are genuinely cool, like the garden level--but half of it just seems rushed and low-effort.

So that about does it for Asagata. I've now visited all the of continents provided in the partial map of the world that came with the game. There are plenty of other continents, but it's up to the player to find them. Next post I'll be traveling to the continent of Narawn to visit the Lost Lagoon and Malkanth.