Deathlord: The final dungeon and last battle

Last post I finished up the Temple of Loric, one of the longest and toughest dungeons in the game. I've shown off every place in the game except one--the final continent and dungeon.

Hell Island is directly north of Giluin. If nobody in your party carries the Sharktooth, this island won't even appear--it'll just be empty ocean. But as I found the tooth in Malkanth, the island was there to explore.

"The Way to Hell"

Hell Island is a volcanic island divided into two parts--a darkness maze, followed by a lava maze. Lava is the same as flames, so you can cast HITATE to walk on it unhurt. However, with the quantity of lava that you'll have to traverse, you'll really need the Ruby Ring.

One thing I didn't mention about the Ruby Ring and the Emerald Rod--while they cast HITATE and SANTATE respectively, they are much more powerful than those spells. HITATE and SANTATE only last 10 turns--when cast from the Ring and Rod, they last 30 turns or so.

Skull Keep--lair of the Deathlord

Past the Lava and Darkness mazes is Skull Keep. I ran into quite a few groups of demons on the way. As we'll see, demons are the most common enemy to encounter in the final dungeon.

Skull Keep is an Indoor area, which means despite all the fighting you'll do here, you can't rest. The way forward is not particularly complex, but being in complete darkness makes navigation harder than usual. The biggest danger is moving forward too quickly, accidentally running into a magic wall, and having your HP halved. There are "secret" alcoves along the way but there's nothing in them but Smoke Demons that will ambush you.

Vapor demons' paralysis is more dangerous than anything else.

At the end of the long bending hallway circling the Keep was what appeared to be a dead end, but of course there were secret doors that let me proceed further. Beyond the secret doors was a room with Acid and Vapor Demons packed in like sardines. By letting them come to me rather than running into the fray, I always got first strike on them, and my party was more than a match for them.

Once I cleared out the chamber, I searched the area for secret doors, since there were no obvious exits. I found one to the north, and beyond...another chamber jam-packed with demons. And beyond that another secret door to the chamber of the boss of Skull Keep, Cerberus.

Stat-wise Cerberus is a sturdy boss. His HP, AC, and damage per attack are second only to the Deathlord. (Not counting non-hostile "boss" monsters like the Red Shogun or the Emperor) He's interesting in that he's the only boss in the game with a breath weapon--and he can do some serious damage with it. He can also insta-kill with attacks, like most bosses. However, he doesn't have any spells at all, nor does he do anything extra-nasty like drain levels or petrify. As you damage him, his breath weapon gets less effective too. It took me a grand total of 3 rounds to take down Cerberus, mostly because Shuten was a blender with his Berzerk Sword.

The room Cerberus hangs out in is annoying; to get across you need to go through magic walls with your blue crystal, draining your HP. Or, if you have a Genkai, you can just UKU across the water in the center of the room--the better option in my opinion.

As was mentioned back in Malkanth, Hell is divided into four spheres, and the first is the Shadow sphere. The Shadow sphere is dark. Really dark. Dungeons are dark in general, but this one is special, because neither torches nor magic will light the area. You just have to stumble around in the darkness, which is a recipe for getting nowhere quick.

Without the right item, this is all you'll see in the first few levels of Hell

This is where the Lantern comes in. Up until now a worthless item, the Lantern is the one way to light up the Shadow sphere. It can be used an unlimited number of times too, but that's only useful if you visit Hell multiple times.

There's still a lot of darkness in the Shadow sphere, but with the Lantern you can at least see other things

Finding your way out of the first level of Shadow is not trivial. You can wander the whole floor without finding any method of getting out--because the way out is through teleporters right near the entrance. The problem with the teleporters is that it's hard to tell that you have been teleported, given the darkness, and if even if you find your way to level 2, it's easy to end up teleporting back up to level 1 without realizing it.

The teleports themselves were not that hard to find--it did become pretty obvious that I was in an "endless corridor" of sorts while walking around near the north edge of the level. Though it took me a bit, I just need to "leave" the corridor by going south at the right moment. After moving south and seeing water I knew I had successfully teleported. Judicious use of the ICHIHAN spell probably would have helped too.

Speaking of dungeon navigation magic, neither UGOKU nor UNPAN works in this dungeon. No shortcuts here--you have to go through the whole dungeon the conventional way. KAERU works if you cast it before entering--something you absolutely, positively want to do so that you recall out once you kill the Deathlord. This is not a dungeon you want to have to climb back out of.

Even though I  did manage to find my way out of Level 1, it looked like I was stuck in a small enclosed area that appeared to be a dead-end. Of course, there were illusory walls that let me into the rest of the level proper.

There's not much you can say about level 2--it's a big, empty level. Monsters in the Shadow sphere are mostly ghost-type enemies; Shades, Shadows, and Lost Souls. Lost Souls in particular are notable--they're among the weakest enemies in the game, but they can summon allies and appear in numbers. It's possible to get into an "Evil Tomatoes" situation with them such that they call allies faster than you can kill them, but it's less likely to happen than with the Tomatoes.

Level 3 was another big empty level full of darkness, though it was a little easier to find my way around than previous levels as there were more walls to act as landmarks. There was a small spike in enemy difficulty here too. Shades and Lost Souls appeared as usual, but so did some nastier things like Dark Demons and Molochai.

Molochai are the among the nastiest demons in the game--and 8 of them at once isn't trivial.

Dark Demons and Molochai are among the most dangerous enemies in the game--not just because of their HP and damage, but because they have two attacks per round and drain levels. I prefer running from or bribing them when possible. With good enough AC on your party they won't hit often, though.

This level also had the first of the 7 Gates of Hell. Gates of Hell look like ordinary portcullises, except you can't smash them down. The only way to get by them is to (Y)ell the correct word in front of them.

Got it on the first try!

There doesn't appear to be a pattern in terms of which word goes with which gate--it's not as if they proceed in any sort of geographical or ascending-difficulty-of-dungeon order. You just have to try them all. This one was YOKUSEI, which meant FUSHIN, NIKUMU, CHIJOKU, DARAKU, OSORERU, and SEIYOKU were left.

The stairs down to level 4...lead to another Hell Gate.

NIKUMU this time. These gates aren't well-paced through the dungeon.

So two down, five to go. Beyond the Hell Gate was a bunch of magic pools, and a room full of completely immobile Shades and Molochai. They were just decoration--they're really just walls, though the official hint book seems to indicate that they could wake up and attack you if you make a false step. (as far as I can tell, they can't) They did, however, surround Malokorai the Dark Lord, the "boss" of the Shadow sphere.

The Dark Lord is not a pushover

There are four bosses in Hell, one for each sphere. All of them except for the Deathlord himself are completely optional to fight. Frankly you're probably better off ignoring them. While ostensibly the easiest of the Lords, the Dark Lord is probably the one you're best off avoiding as he's got level-draining attacks and strikes twice a round. He can also instant-kill, cast a Death Spell and cast a fairly damaging blast spell. His HP and damage are pretty high too, though not as much as Cerberus. I killed him for the heck of it, but I ended up restarting and reloading twice because he kept draining my party's levels.

Level 5 ends the Shadow sphere and starts the Fire sphere. The Lantern stops working here, and it's back to casting MOAKARI and using torches.

There's a lot of fire here.

You need the Ruby Ring to get anywhere in the Fire Sphere. Fortunately the Ruby Ring lasts longer than HITATE so you don't have to reuse it every 10 steps, but you still are best off using it pretty frequently to keep your fire shield up. Level 5 and 6 are stitched together using teleports to form one long river of flames.

Monsters on these levels were substantially less dangerous than on the Shadow sphere. There were Lost Souls as usual, but the other enemies were mostly Blaze Demons and Firebats. Blaze Demons can instant-kill your characters, but it's very, very rare for that to happen. They can also poison you, which is much more common. Firebats have breath weapons which is more of a problem, but their HP are low so it doesn't do that much damage.

The real problem on these floors was that I couldn't really rest because of all the flames. If I needed to rest, I'd just have to keep moving forward until I found an "island" of something to rest on--and that didn't exist here.

At the end of the level, there were four separate staircases down, each of which leads to a different area on the next level.

By far the best staircase to go down on level 6 is the one furthest to the southeast, as that lets out closest to the exit. Of course I took the first one I saw, which is also the worst. In all cases, getting further into level 7 requires on lot of searching for illusory walls, which is harder to remember to do when you're running through a river of fire. Attrition from forgetting to reuse the Ruby Ring is a real problem here. And the spawn rate is high.

I did OK only because I found a little niche of illusory walls to rest in. In general I wouldn't recommend doing that unless you have to, given how high the spawn rate is here, but it is possible.

Level 8 is the lair of Frashaak, the Flame Lord. The tile below the stairs up is a decent place to rest, and there's another Hell Gate close to the beginning of the level.

The gate north of the SEIYOKU gate here is nearly impossible to bash down, but it's not a gate you need a word to get by.

Inside the Flame Lord's palace were some "fake" Flame Demons like those I saw in the Dark Lord's palace. There were also quite a lot of very real Smoke Demons, in large numbers. They were a real problem as they paralyze your party members. Fortunately I made it through without Shigeko getting paralyzed--had that happened it would have been reload time.

Frashaak the Flame Lord also awaited on his throne--I could have bypassed him as well, but opted to kill him.

The Flame Lord can't drain you like the Dark Lord, but he hits harder and also has some nasty spells. Fully buffing my party with ONKEI and ISOGU, I killed him in a mere two rounds. Even still, he took a pretty significant chunk out of Shuten's HP. I decided to rest up to heal and restore my MP, but there weren't a whole lot of great places to do that here. Blaze Demons and Firebats were spawning like crazy in the central chamber. I found what appeared to be another Hell Gate, but that area was too open too. I ended up finding the Flame Lord's chamber beyond an illusory wall, and that seemed like the best place to rest.

Enemies don't seem to spawn as much in here so it's slightly safer to rest.

After resting up, I fought off (actually bribed) the hoard of demons that had spawned while I was sleeping, and made my way to that Hell Gate that I had discovered earlier.

It's easier to guess correctly when you've used up half the Words.

There was a lot of acid--a good indicator that the Acid Sphere was coming up next. Gio's Emerald Rod came in handy--there's no way you'd be able to cast enough SANTATE spells to survive otherwise.

Levels 9-11 were much like levels 5 and 6--three levels joined by teleports to create one long river of acid. The designers didn't do as good a job here though--you can't realistically map it out as one contiguous channel as there are places on one level that would overlap previous ones. It actually makes mapping this area harder than you might imagine. Of course these levels are so straightforward that there's not much of a need for mapping.

The opening area actually probably would have been a better place to rest than upstairs.

The acid river was a little more lenient than the fire river in that there are a decent number of "islands" in it that I could rest in. They still weren't great places to rest as they expose you to attack, but they were there. Speaking of getting attacked, Lost Souls seemed to be by far the most numerous enemy in these tunnels--I ran into a few Vapor Demons, and one Slime Demon (not super tough, but attacks four times per round) but, ironically enough, not a single Acid demon down here.

There are quite a few "safe" places to rest in the acid river.

At the very end of the acid river, I came upon what initially appeared to be a dead-end.

Gee, I wonder if there any secret doors here?

One of the brick walls was an illusory wall, which led to a chamber full of fetid water and a staircase down. This spot was a great place to rest; it's nearly impossible for enemies to find you there.

Level 12 continued the pattern of having each sphere end with a fortress guarded by a demon lord. This was the fortress of Jhelag the Acid Lord.

The main thing here is to avoid the "gotchas" of the magic walls; it might seem as if you need to go through them to proceed into the level, but you really don't. So long as you carefully search the nearby areas you can find your way further into the level without going through them.

There were other traps here too, namely two pits. They're both pretty damaging as pits go though, and I got caught in them. There was also yet another Hell Gate which didn't appear to go anywhere.

5 down, two to go.

Of course there's just an illusory wall beyond--clearly they're not going to have a dead-end Hell Gate.

Beyond the Hell gate was the main fortress of the Acid Lord. I had to use the Blue Crystal to get in or out, since the entrances were blocked by blue magic walls. There are also a bunch of fake Acid and Vapor demons--more minions that don't lift a finger to save their master.

YUREI let me get first shot in on the Acid Lord,

The Acid Lord is the conventionally toughest of the three Demon Lords before the Deathlord, though I'd still rather fight him than the Dark Lord. He can instant-kill and paralyze characters, and can strike four times in a round. His death spell is the nastiest though, as he used it more frequently than the other enemies. In fact I got supremely unlucky in this fight and he offed Shigeko with his spell. Rather than reload or slog all the way back to the surface so I could resurrect her, I had Gio cast DRUINOCHI to revive her. That gave Shigeko a -1 Constitution hit, and possibly fewer HP per level, but it wasn't as if I was likely to be gaining levels after this dungeon anyway.

It only took a few rounds to kill the Acid Lord, and after that I rested up as best I could to get Shigeko's HP and MP up to decent levels, (I hate it that your MP gets dropped to 0 on death) though I got ambushed by Vapor and Acid demons a lot. I also came across yet another Hell gate on the way out of the level.

By process of elimination, only CHIJOKU is left.

The way between the gate and the next level down was a gauntlet of Vapor, Acid, and Slime demons, and my party was pretty worn down before I made it to the next level. Fortunately the start of the next level was a decent place to rest, but my food was in the 40s at this point--I almost certainly wouldn't be able to make it out the same way I came in.

Levels 13 and 14 are another example of "two levels bolted together via teleports" except they kind of dropped the ball on this one. The teleports that join the two levels don't make any sense. I strongly suspect that the designers intended for the teleports and destinations on level 14 to be one tile to the north, which would have made the passage seamless.

The fourth and final sphere of Hell was the sphere of Death. I mean, I guess--since the Deathlord rules it, and there's no official description of it elsewhere other than it being the realm of "the ruler" it's as good a name as any. The level started out with a fake staircase down--it doesn't go anywhere and had a "No admittance" sign near it so I think it was just flavor.

"Dark Demons" are just empty black tiles

The enemies in the Death Sphere are no joke. Dark Demons, Molochai, Smoke Demons, Slime Demons, and Shades are just some of the things you'll face. After finishing the fight pictured above I was swarmed; rather than attempt to face all the enemies (and likely get level drained) I had Frank cast YUREI so that I could escape. Then it was just a matter of finding the long dark corridor to the next area.

Level 15 is the main treasure chamber of Hell. There were a ton of magic pools here and enough gold to max out my characters' stores. And the equipment that was in the treasure chests here was second to none. The enemies here are numerous and strong though, so you might not want to overstay your welcome. I had Shigeko drink from the pools in an attempt to restore the point of Constitution she lost getting resurrected--and she did, but also lost a point of Charisma in the process. Then I made a beeline for the gate at the north end of the level.

After slamming Shuten against the gate more times than I'd like to admit, I realized this was in fact the last Hell Gate--I assumed it wasn't as the stairs down were immediately behind it. But no, you have to yell the final Word, and you'll be teleported right on top of the stairs, and down to the next level. It makes it a little annoying if you try to get back up this way, as you get exactly one turn to yell the word before getting dropped back down to level 16.

Level 16 is the final level in this dungeon, and really the game. It was one giant darkness-and-magic-wall maze, with the Deathlord and his throne in the center, protected by the other type of magic walls.

Extreme care was needed on this level, lest I accidentally wander into one of the magic walls and have the party's HP halved. There was also no safe place to rest anywhere on this level, as enemy groups will happily walk through magic walls as if they weren't there. That didn't stop me from trying though--I attempted to rest up as soon as I made it to the entrance of the Deathlord's chamber. And I got ambushed a lot in the process.

The Deathlord's sprite is...a little odd.

This is the toughest fight in the game so I prepared as best I could. The first thing I did was swap weapons so that Shuten wielded the Sunspear--with the highest Strength in the party I thought he would be the best to wield it. Everyone else would just be support.

Next I had Frank cast YUREI so that I could get first strike in on the Deathlord. Then I cast TATE on the first three members of the party. I don't know what good that would do but it's one of the few support spells you can cast outside of battle.

With preparation out of the way, I attacked the Deathlord.

If you attack using a weapon that's not the Sunspear, you do 0 damage.

Round 1-Shuten and Yoshinaka attacked, Gio cast HIKAKOMU (better than nothing) on Shuten, Shigeko cast ONKEI, Tomoe cast ISOGU (to give Shuten an extra attack) and Frank cast MANIJIN.

Normally I'd reset, but this is the last battle.

And the Deathlord immediately drained one of Shuten's levels. Could be worse I guess.

Second round Shuten got in two hard hits, and I cast more support spells--except for Tomoe.

Tomoe cast the lowly TODO, the "level 1" Magic Missile spell--and the only thing that can harm the Deathlord other than the Sunspear. I suspect this is an oversight on the developers' part, but every bit helps.

Third round, the Deathlord attacked and missed, fortunately. Shuten did obscene damage with the Sunspear, hitting twice for 50ish HP each as the rest of the party cast buffs. Instead of TODO Tomoe cast CHIKARA to buff the party's (well, Shuten's) damage output.

Fourth round, the Deathlord attacked again, and this time drained a level from Gio. Shuten again dealt a ton of damage--and then Tomoe finished off the Deathlord with a humble TODO spell.

That was...easier than I expected.

Drained levels aside, the fight with the Deathlord went a lot more smoothly than I would have expected. When he's not draining your levels, the Deathlord can also insta-kill, and does absurd damage per strike--like 60-100HP worth. He also has a very powerful kill-all spell which he didn't use. I wasn't happy about the drained levels, but honestly of all the times I played Deathlord, this was the most painless to the point of being anticlimactic. I guess I'm familiar enough with the game now that it's not as hard as it initially seemed.

Anyhow, with the Deathlord dead, I took the Black Orb from his corpse and immediately recalled out using the KAERU spell I cast before entering. Now I just had to make it back to the Emperor. Certainly that was easier than going all the way to the bottom of Hell. I did level up and heal the party first though.

Handing the Black Orb to the Emperor is what you need to do to complete the game.

I'm assuming if I had killed the emperor at some point the game would be unwinnable, since handing the Black Orb over is what you need to do to get the ending. After doing so, you're immediately sent to a static screen of a castle and a scrolling epilogue.

Rather than just screenshot everything, here's the epilogue in its entirety:

AND SO IT CAME TO

PASS THAT THE

EVIL TYRANNY OF

THE DEATHLORD WAS

BROKEN BY THE

HEROIC EFFORTS OF

6 ADVENTURERS

SHUTEN

YOSHINAKA

GIO

SHIGEKO

TOMOE

&

FRANK

BECAUSE OF THEIR

DEEDS, THE CAUSE

OF MUCH OF THE

EVIL IN THE LANDS

WAS BANISHED, AND

THE PEOPLE KNEW

PEACE AT LAST.

IN THE DAYS THAT

FOLLOWED, A GREAT

SHRINE WAS RAISED

BY THE PEOPLE AND

IT WAS CALLED THE

HALL OF HEROES.

INSIDE THE SHRINE

STOOD THE STATUES

OF MANY HEORES OF

LEGEND, BUT AMONG

THEIR RANKS STOOD

A STATUE THAT WAS

DEDICATED TO:

SHUTEN

YOSHINAKA

GIO

SHIGEKO

TOMOE

&

FRANK

IN THIS WAY DID

THE LEGEND OF THE

MIGHTY QUEST LIVE

ON FOR ALL TIME!

Those banners are completely illegible in the C64 version except for the center one. The Apple version is much obvious (and better looking IMO). The left says "fortune" flanked by...something on top and a cutoff character on the bottom. The middle one says "Godzilla" and the right one says "Sawaguchi Yasuko," who starred in the contemporary Godzilla 1984.

So...yeah, that's about the most generic and unsatisfying ending you can imagine. I like how the developers put random silly garbage on the banners -- I wonder if it was a dig at EA for forcing the last-minute theme change. Also nothing happens after that "The End" screen--you just have to reset. Your party is the same as it was beforehand, minus the Black Orb. I don't know whether or not you can go back to the bottom of Hell and kill the Deathlord again, but I don't particularly feel like trying.

Lastly, here's the final status pages of my party at the end of the game:

That's pretty much it for Deathlord! There might be some more minor facets I've missed, but overall I think I've covered it about as comprehensively as I can. After this run, I'm starting to think twice about its difficulty level--there were a few restarts and save-scums, but mostly only due to level drains. I can see how the QA testers ended up indirectly making the game harder--when you know what you're doing and understand the mechanics, it's really not that bad.

Overall, I think Deathlord was an enjoyable, but very, very, flawed game. It's very rough around the edges and will only have an appeal to a very small subset of old-school RPG fans. I don't think most people would have the tolerance to sit through Deathlord the way it was supposed to be played, but in these days of emulators and save states it's much easier than it was back in the day. Deathlord has some pretty honking enormous design flaws--not just the difficulty, but the world emptiness and half-finished areas--but under it all, for the right player, there's some definite enjoyment to be found. It's too bad the game doesn't live up to its potential--with more time and experience on the devs' part, and less meddling from EA's part, this might have been a true classic.

For those following this blog, thanks for reading this far! I'm going to be taking a few weeks break before starting something else. I haven't decided what that'll be yet, but it'll probably be something even more obscure--possibly an old-school Japanese PC-98 game.