Deathlord: Giluin

Previously in the Pyramid of the Old Ones I got an unusual hint from a Yakuza in the middle of a maze:

This is, as far as I can tell, the only hint in the game that will give you directions to the continent of Giluin. Giluin was the only continent in the game I had yet to visit, not counting the Deathlord's island.

Giluin is another odd continent in that I don't know how anyone figured out its name--there's no mention of the word "Giluin" in any of the game's text, nor is it included on the map that comes with the game. But that's what this continent is conventionally known as so that's what I'm going with.

While a large continent, Giluin completely optional to visit, although there is one hint here that is useful. There are two towns, a temple, and a dungeon here. Arriving at the continent from the north, the first town I came across was Kobar.

Kobar's barely a town--it's closer to a Deathlord village. It has a trainer, a tool shop and a weaponsmith but that's it. There aren't many townspeople either--a fair number of Ryoshi so I'm guessing this is supposed to be more of a "Forest" town.

Early on I came across a Yakuza that gave me a tip about a temple to the southwest.

Further inquiry indicated that the temple in question was the Temple of Oceanus, which was guarded by a cleric named Tohei that hangs out in a garden. There was also a Ryoshi that talked about a place called Chin's, here in Kobar.

Chin's training house was in the north part of town but was locked tight. Picking the lock and going inside there was a Senshi blocking another door,

Is this guy Chin maybe?

Rather than kill the Senshi and turn the whole town against me, I tried to teleport in with UGOKU, and finally managed to do so after more attempts than I'd like to admit.

That wasn't worth it...

The only thing inside, though, was two groups of Senshi and two groups of Kichigai, all hostile. Neither posed any threat whatsoever so I quickly killed them and teleported out.

That about summed up Kobar so I moved on to the Temple of Oceanus that was mentioned there. The temple was to the southwest, right on the coast.

The Temple of Oceanus is surrounded by water on three sides, and you really want to come in here by ship. Inside the temple there's a ship on the docks, but it doesn't count as being yours so you can't use it. That is, unless you kill all the sailors on board and turn the town against you, which is something you probably don't want to do.

I entered the temple from the west end and disembarked at a grocer to the south--his stores were right in the open so I could have looted them dry, though I didn't need food at the moment. From there, I  went across the channel to the northwest quadrant of the temple. That areas had a healer and a small army of priests who talked about their ocean god, Oceanus. I also met a Senshi near the confessionals that gave me a hint.

Since there's nothing at the entry to the temple, this must mean a secret entrance of some sort

There's also what appears to be a treasure chamber that's blocked by pit traps.

The pots are all empty so you don't even get anything for your trouble

Leaving the northwest area of the temple, I decided to check out the northeast area next. At the entrance there's two locked doors and a portcullis. One door lead to a crematorium full of flames, and the portcullis led to an empty graveyard with a mausoleum. The other door led to the temple gardens, but I didn't find any sign of Tohei there. I did, however, find a not-too-subtle hint in the shrubbery there.

"24" and a big arrow written in the bushes...

Searching 24 squares south of the water tile in the arrow, I found a secret door, behind which was a Mahotsukai.

Somewhat pointless hint, especially when you consider the directions to this continent are in that pyramid...

The Mahotsukai's hint didn't do me any good, so I set about exploring the rest of the temple. I found another garden of sorts which had a hidden entrance to a shrine to Oceanus, guarded by two mermen who didn't do anything but tell me to be quiet.

Guess this is why...

Then there was the southeast quadrant of the town, which was just one big water maze that seemed completely devoid of anything--until I checked my maps and realized that there's a semi-random spot you can disembark into the wall to find an illusory wall. Beyond that there's...a hint telling you that there's a pyramid on the isle of the dead. Again, nothing useful that I didn't already know.

So, with the immediately obvious areas of the temple explored, I checked out the entrances like the earlier Senshi told me to. I found an illusory wall and another ship, and that lead to a shrine to the Deathlord. A bit out of place here! The temple was full of ronin and ninjas and other unsavory types. One of them gave me a hint about a clue in the garden that's flat out wrong:

There is no garden in the northwest of the temple...

However, there was one very useful bit of information in the Deathlord's shrine, given by an Acid demon in a fire pit.

This is the one valuable piece of information on Giluin

There was also a fair number of treasure chests here, though I honestly can't recommend that anyone visiting this area try to collect them--the amount of gold in them is modest and you have to move through a lot of magic walls to get them all. And there are banshees and ghosts in some of the coffins. UGOKU is an option to bypass some of that but it's still not worth it.

Leaving the Deathlord's shrine, I checked the north side of town, where you can also disembark into an illusory wall. That leads to a dead-end, but there is yet another illusory wall that leads to an isolated garden. There's a Shisai--presumably the aforementioned Tohei--in a corner there.

Thanks for nothing, Tohei.

Tohei took my money only to tell me to search the maze in the temple, which, as you'll recall, only tells me about the pyramid.

That about covered everything in the Temple of Oceanus so I left. Though I like the design and theme, the location of Hell Island aside there wasn't much of value there. Presumably the rest of the hints still would be worth knowing if you just happened to stumble upon Giluin. Still it's a strange design decision to talk so much about the Pyramid of the Old ones here.

The last town on Giluin is Shupan, which is toward the south end of the continent.

Shupan is a little more interesting than Kobar was. It's got the usual assortment of shops, but it has a few points of interest. The first is the Daimyo house in the northwest. Like most Daimyo, the one here is hostile. He has some treasure in his back rooms, but not much. The second is that enormous "Temple of Akuma, God of the Night" The temple is completely empty though save for two groups of non-hostile Dark Toshi.

The Kishi above demanded money to tell me about a house on the west end of town--which didn't even appear to have an entrance. It turned out the entrance to the house was on the other side of the town wall.

There's only one tile of walkable space outside the town walls so this can be easily missed.

There was a Dark Toshi in there who told me to search the temple. However after searching every single tile of the temple of Akuma and turning up empty-handed, I think he might be referring to the temple of Oceanus. Talking to him (or anyone else in the town) about the temple points you to Oceanus at any rate.

A few people in town talked about the house in the northeast of town that was condemned by the Shogun. Though when you inquire, about the old house they'll tell you the house is in the northwest of town, which it definitely isn't, so I'm guessing this is another dev oversight. The house itself was locked, and after picking the lock and going inside I got a rude surprise in the form of a Banshee.

You have to let the banshees strike first, or else the guards will come for you.

The banshees screamed during the first round which immediately killed half my party. Fortunately Shigeko had enough MP to revive them all before the battle was over with. Beyond the banshees was a ship, which I was able to take to the island in the northeast and find a monk that others in town talked about.

Good to know, I guess

The last point of interest in Shupan I found before leaving was a locked house concealed at the end of an alleyway between two shops. Forcing my way in, I found nothing but two hostile groups of Mahotsukai.

That was about it for Shupan, so I rested up to restore my MP (annoyingly, death drains all your MP so my mages who got killed by the banshees were dry) and then went to the one dungeon on this continent in the north.

Concealed in a valley, this is one of the most inane dungeons ever...

The dungeon on Giluin is optional and is strictly a "treasure dungeon." It's most known as the "Linear Dungeon" for reasons we'll soon see, and it's one of the laziest, most tedious and poorly designed dungeons in the game. It's 13 levels of inanity, with a giant "screw you" cherry on top at the end. You'll want a KAERU before coming in here for sure.

The map of the first level is a pretty good indication of why this place is called the Linear dungeon. It's just one long, one-way corridor with no branches whatsoever, interspersed with treasure chests that hold a pittance in terms of gold. Monsters here include Medusas, Mimics and Trappers so there are tough-ish monsters right out of the gate. There's a sign at the end of this level too.

I have no idea why the developers thought this would be a good idea.

There's no indication yet of what the WSCDD is, but shortly past this sign are the stairs down to the next level.

Level 2 is actually mercifully quick when going down because of the teleports; you can skip by the near-entirety of the floor. It's getting back that's so brutal. The teleports are set up in such a way that you have to turn around at exactly the right time or you'll be caught in a loop.

Monsters here are like the level above, only slightly stronger. I hit a terrible spate of bad luck and got both Tomoe and Frank petrified by Medusas here--apparently they can petrify the back ranks. Removing their petrification was no big deal but they lost all their MP in the process, which is never a good thing to have happen.

Level 3 is another boring one-way affair. Plenty of medusas and mimics, and the treasure chests are slightly better than previous levels but that's it.

Level 4 is more of the same, though I ran into some Wind Dragons so the strength of the monsters were definitely ramping up. However the staircase was unusual--it led directly to a tiny one-tile room on level 7.

Levels 5 and 6 were down staircases surrounded by walls on all sides, so there was no way back up.

I had little choice at this point but to descend to level 8.

If you didn't think it was possible to be worse than the illusory wall maze in the Pyramid of the Old Ones--guess what, it is! Or at least this is pretty close. You're dumped directly on top of teleport A in the teleport chain above and then shuffled through four separate illusory wall mazes. The one saving grace here (if you can call it that) is that the "mazes" aren't really mazes and are as one-way as the rest of the dungeon. The maze you really want is the one to the northwest--that leads further into the dungeon--but I ended up finding my way out of the southwest maze, and back up to level 7.

I ended up in the treasure chamber area in the southwest. The loot wasn't bad, though it seemed like half of the chests were mimics. (In most of these maps, the chests that are open are mimics) I bumbled around here for quite a while trying to find an exit, and did find a secret door explaining the WSCDD mentioned earlier.

I don't know if "creative" is the word I'd pick for this dungeon.

Eventually I found the staircase up to level 6 in the northeast. Note there aren't any staircases down--you have to go back up all the way back to level 4 before you can try to take on the illusory wall maze again.

Level 6 is every bit as linear as previous levels, only interspersed with highly damaging pit traps. And a whole lot of Djinnis at the beginning for some reason. The traps are initially there to catch you up if you're leaning on the direction keys (which you probably are) but later on require illusory walls to get around. Most of those illusory walls are easy to find though, because you're probably still leaning on direction keys, pits or no pits. Also there's a good amount of treasure here, though I overlooked it this time.

Level 5 is also no different from the rest of one-way levels, only the large amount of diagonal passages make it much easier for enemy groups to find you. You're also ambushed by a large number the minute you arrive.

What's the deal with all the djinnis?

Because of the layout of this level it's hard to find a good place to rest if you need one. The safest spot is right by the staircase up, but a handful of corners by the central walled staircase down are also OK. I had to do a full heal of the party, resting about 12 hours, by the stairs so that I would have enough HP going forward.

Finally I made it back to level 4, and then back to level 8, taking a short pit stop on level 7 as Shigeko had yet again run out of MP de-petrifying characters. I actually ended up going the wrong way in the illusory wall maze a few more times but kept wandering until I found the staircase down.

I guess the lower levels will be different?

As the sign suggests, the remaining levels are not quite the same as the rest of the dungeon.

The spawn rate on level 9 is fairly high and there aren't many great places to rest. I wouldn't recommend trying to do that anyhow--plenty of Medusas (and even some worse things, like dragons) spawn here and you don't want to get ambushed. Not to mention the monster hoard you'd have to deal with on waking up would be substantial.

There are some pre-placed sandsquids (the tiles that look like grass) here--some in awkward positions, like that top one that's in the middle of a wall.

Finding your way down to level 10 is easy. Finding your way back up to level 8 is harder. There's a teleporter right by the stairs up, and to get past it you have find a series of different teleporters, one of which is in an illusory wall. However once you find the first it's a one-way path so it's not as bad as finding your way out of level 2.

Level 10 is more of the same--an open level with a high spawn rate. If not for some of the monsters that show up here, and that it's at the bottom of an annoying dungeon, this might actually have been a good place for high-level characters to grind for levels.

No matter how good your party is, you really don't want to grind in a place with Medusas and Beholders.

Obviously this level is pretty simple, so I quickly found my way down to level 11.

Yet another low-effort high-spawn level filled with powerful monsters. Next!

Level 12 is just like level 11, 10, and 9, only that the tile before the staircase down is reasonably safe to rest in--the spawn rate is high but nothing can spawn directly under you and will probably get caught. Of course you'll have to fight them on the way back if you don't teleport out. And if you do go further down to level 13 you definitely want to be at your best. I rested up until my party was at full strength before going down.

And this is it, your prize for making it to the bottom of one of the worst dungeons in Deathlord is...getting dumped into the single deadliest area in the game.

Har har. In other words, "this is impossible."

Yes, there's treasure down here, and yes, there's a lot of it, but no Deathlord player should attempt this level.  I fully admit to cheating to map this floor and I don't think there's any way to do it otherwise outside of lots of teleport magic. Let's take a look at some of the "features" of this level:

• More HP-halving magic walls than you can shake a stick at
• Forcing the player to move through one of these magic walls just to enter the level
• The "safe" step beyond that teleports you right into a pit on the other side of the level, surrounded by more magic walls
• Many "safe" looking routes (through acid instead of magic walls) have teleports to the far end of the level
• Teleport traps on top of pits that send you to magic walls (so you get hit by the pit and then by the magic wall after you get teleported, then by the wall once more at least when you climb out of the pit)
• Ice Giants, Banshees, Beholders, Purple Worms, and other hardest-in-the-game class monsters spawn, and no safe spots to rest
• All the best treasure requires walking through a bare minimum of 3-6 magic walls to get to, and it's guarded by Ice Giants

Bottom line is that this is not a place you should even think of looting. And other than to get these screenshots I didn't even try--I just left the dungeon. In true Deathlord fashion, the only reward for completing one of the most annoying dungeons in the game is the equivalent of a middle finger to the player. 

So that's Giluin. I had now explored every continent in the game but the final island that the Deathlord lives on--and I now had directions there.

But I'm not going to fight the Deathlord just yet. There's one last place I haven't explored, the Temple of Lorik on Nyuku. The Temple of Lorik is another super-hard challenge dungeon, but it's better designed than those we've seen so far. Next time I'll take a look at that before going to the final area of the game (and hopefully winning)