Deathlord: Tsumani

Last post I got two more of the Words, bringing my total up to four. At this point I didn't have a clear idea where to go next, but I had a few hints. In Shumi's tower I got a hint that could lead somewhere. In Asagata I got another hint seemingly pointing me to a new area as well. Narawn had a hint guiding me to a Word but that's one of the last dungeons I want to tackle because it's so awful.  A Kaibu in Greenbanks gave me directions to some desert islands but that's a pointless place to go. Lastly some brigands in the Clearview jail gave directions to Tsumani.  Given that Tsumani seemed relatively close, and most of the other hints didn't actually tell you what your destination is, I opted to go there.

Tsumani is an optional continent. It is entirely possible to complete the game without visiting here--there aren't any Words or Items here, nor are there any direct hints about them. It's a tricky continent to navigate because of all the mountains and forests--visibility here is not good. I landed on the east coast, and after wandering blindly through some forests came upon the concealed mountaintop town of Morningfrost.

Since visibility in the forest surrounding Morningfrost is so poor, you could go all the way around without ever noticing it.

Though I didn't mention it before, Deathlord's manual divides settlements into cities, towns, and villages. The larger a settlement is, the more amenities you'll find and generally, the better hints you'll get as well. Morningfrost is just a village, and a small one at that.

As you can see from its map, Morningfrost barely has anything of note. There's a cheap grocer, a simple weaponsmith, and a shield vendor--though notably the shield vendor deals in Large Shields, a rarity. Other than that Morningfrost is just a slew of empty huts, most of them locked. So I started smashing down doors in the hope of finding any information of interest.

Some (actually most) just had peasants or generic townspeople that said nothing of interest...

One had a bunch of hostile Yabanjin who were cut down quickly...

And one even was completely empty!

I wasted my HP smashing down the door for this?

There was one, and only one, point of interest among the peasant homes, the house of Koshi the hunter in the south. Koshi's house was guarded by a hostile pet snow bear, which I dispatched with little trouble. Koshi himself gave me a hint.

Koshi is awfually nonchalant about the fact that I just butchered his pet.

Asking about "South Star," Koshi told me that it might be in Snowraven, and asking about Snowraven, Koshi mentioned that it lies to the southwest. That was about it for Morningfrost--there was one Mahotsukai that mentioned that there was a dungeon to the west but that's about it.

So, it was on to Snowraven to see what I could find--as Koshi indicated, it was on tip of the peninsula on the southwest corner of the continent.

As a town, Snowraven is a more substantial settlement than Morningfrost. It's got a weaponsmith, an armorer, a grocer, a trainer, and a temple. The shops don't have anything of note but amusingly, while the armorer seems to have his stock unguarded and ripe for the taking, it's actually guarded by pit traps.

Ouch.

Of course the only thing I'd be finding in those chests is generic store armor which my party didn't need, so it's a waste trying to loot them.

My initial task here was finding that spot that Koshi mentioned. The first hint here was smack in the middle of the town:

How is Snowraven the "star of the south" when Tsumani is so clearly a northern, arctic continent?

31 squares north and 2 squares west of that sign was right on the edge of town, but searching there uncovered two secret doors:

Not the first place you'd search for a secret...

The Mahotsukai in there, however, was totally worthless--all he did was tell me to find the Lantern, Staff, and Ring, without any indication of where those actually were.

The rest of the town is seemingly devoid of hints--except one Shugenja that gives you a hint about how to get to another part of town:

Since I can cast UKU and walk on water I don't really need to do this, but...

Sailing around the south of town takes you to a passage that leads to the shores of the lake where the island containing the temple is. There you can find a Merman who will give you a hint.

Very nice, I have directions to a new continent.

Of course "Cross Rock" wasn't immediately obvious as to what it was so I asked about that:

I guess looking at the map it's fairly obvious...

Since this was the first time I had heard of the Red Shogun I asked about that too:

Wait, what?

Oddness of an NPC giving you directions to the castle of a person he doesn't even believe exists aside, this is good information--in fact it's the only bit of information worth noting on the entire continent.

The Red Shogun's castle sounds like a good next destination, but there's also a dungeon on this continent to cover first. This dungeon is totally nameless--it's not mentioned in the hint book at all, and the residents of Tsumani refer to them as "some caves that are easy to get lost in." I call this the "Sinkhole" or "Chutes and ladders" dungeon for reasons we'll soon see.

Before I went into this dungeon, I decided my levels might be a little on the low side for some of the upcoming areas so went back to the Fire Giant lair to gain experience--my party now had no trouble surviving in there. At this point levels started coming very slowly--the EXP per level needed raised to 1200 at level 21, and that took nearly a full hour of fighting in the lair to gain. I did get some good equipment from monsters, though--a Do-Maru +2, the best piece of armor that Shuten can equip, and a Powerstaff, the best melee weapon for a Mahotsukai. I still only went to level 22 so I was a few short of being able to cast the final level of spells, but went back to Tsumani to take on the Sinkhole dungeon anyway.

The first floor of the Sinkhole dungeon is less complicated than the rest. It's one large cavern with one notable feature--five sinkholes distributed about the dungeon. Sinkholes are the same as chutes in practice. While exploring this floor, I got caught in the sinkhole in the small room to the south, and in trying to find my way back up, quickly fell through several more sinkholes and ended up on level 4, the bottom of the dungeon.

Getting in here isn't hard. Getting out is the challenge.

The levels outside of the first are especially tricky because they're not as open. The whole dungeon is an up-and-down maze, where to get to some areas you'll need to ascend and descend a whole series of staircases and sinkholes first.

As you can see from the above map, the fourth floor is full of treasure. However, as I had been dumped in the southeast corner, there's no way I could have gotten to it either without use of teleportation spells. I didn't find the illusory walls at this point so went up to the third floor:

Almost immediately after climbing up to level 3 I fell through another sinkhole and was back on level 4. Getting out of the Sinkhole dungeon (or to the treasure) requires painstaking mapping--marking each sinkhole on the map as you climb out, so that you don't accidentally step on them and fall further. Navigating the southeastern quadrant of level 3, I found the staircase and made it up to level 2:

Now I was in the center-south, but going north I fell into another sinkhole--but this one took me to an area that didn't look much like a cave.

Maybe I'm getting somewhere?

After taking care of the ogres and trolls (most of the monsters here are giant-class) I found a treasure chamber, but one of the chests had a poison gas trap that hit the entire party. Trying to restore Shigeko's MP to the point she could cast DONASU on everyone was difficult as the encounter rate was quite high. Eventually I managed to scrounge up the MP, and after going up and down a series of staircases, found myself on the shore of a lake on Level 2.

At this point I was stuck. There were a bunch of sinkholes on the west bank of the lake but they all dropped you at spots that led back to the lake. So I took the shortcut and cast UKU to walk across the water.

The occasional Whorl aside, waterwalking is usually pretty safe. 

Unfortunately UKU only lasts for 10 turns so Frank quickly ran out of MP in the middle of the water. You can't pitch camp on water, so you just have to pass your turns to raise MP. As soon as I cast it though I made an interesting find, a hidden cove with some ships:

There's an illusory passage to this cove, I just didn't find it.

However the ships didn't take me anywhere worthwhile, and I found that I was neither close to any treasure nor could I find the exit. This is one dungeon that, while its structural design isn't awful, is one of my least favorites due to how aggravating it is. It's at around this time I started aggressively looking for illusory walls more, and I managed to find a passage that lead to the main treasure complex on level 4.

Finally I got somewhere!

Those Whorls by the door are actually just decoration. They can't attack you, and you can't attack them either. Going by them I searched the immediate area and found nothing of interest--two small empty rooms and a pit. There was also a door to nowhere:

Guess where I think I should start looking for secrets?

Clearly that had to lead to something so I searched and found an illusion wall into a dark teleport maze. As teleport mazes went it wasn't that complicated, but it was pretty clear that any exits from it had to be secret. I did in fact find a secret door, but it lead to a nearly completely-empty treasure room.

This was unexpected.

This was more than a little odd, because the maps that I made of this dungeon before doing this walkthrough clearly show the chests in this room as not being pre-looted. Despite the maps being based off of C64 tiles, I did make them primarily from the Apple version rather than the C64 version, so this may just be a case of differing versions, or that I'm using bad disk images for this.

Leaving the "empty" treasure room, I went back to the remainder of the complex and started searching for secret doors--off the main hall and the small room with fire in it I did find some real treasure chambers and looted them. Levels were getting expensive at this point, costing 15000+ to level the party up once, so the more the better.

With the treasure chambers looted, I now had to get out of the dungeon. After wandering aimlessly, and even checking my maps a few times, I ran out of patience and invoked the KAERU spell that Shigeko cast before I went into this dungeon, teleporting out immediately.

I'm not proud of it, but I gave up.

After getting out, I went back through my maps and found that there was indeed a way out, but it was up and down so many staircases and through so many illusory walls that I was only able to piece it together by scrubbing through the maps using Grid Cartographer (the mapping program I used to make the maps I'm posting here) to see where each staircase led. I probably could have made it out with a little more effort, but it wouldn't have been easy. Overall the Sinkhole dungeon was a pretty pointless dungeon--just some treasure and a lot of aggravation to get there. Like the rest of Tsumani, it's just fluff.

So that's Tsumani. Next post I'll try visiting that "mythical" Red Shogun the merman was telling me about.