The Land of the Lost

Looking up a map of The Land is probably a spoiler, but I figured most fans of the series would already have this at their disposal.

The Land is proving to be a long game, perhaps needlessly long, without much becoming clearer on the main quest. It seems to be shaping up into a series of quests to find the seven "wards of lore" left by Lord Kevin. I tried to look up some of this stuff online, and it sounds like Kevin was Lord of Revelstone who created some kind of horrific magic ritual to destroy Lord Foul and sealed away his knowledge in seven "wards" so it wouldn't be destroyed by the ritual, too. I guess the ritual didn't work, and Kevin ended up dying instead.

I don't know exactly how the plot of the game is following the plot of the books. There's some indication that I'll eventually hook up with Thomas Covenant. I got some lore about him, and there's an icon representing him in the tileset.

What about me?! I'm the one doing all the work!

The first quest, taking me to the dungeons beneath the giant city of Coercri, gave me a peek at the game's approach to dungeons. They're huge (all maps seem to take up all available map space), multi-leveled, and randomly-generated. The game regenerates levels as you go up and down, so every time you want to ascend or descend, you have to go through a process of finding the stairs again. The random generation creates oddities such as doors that go nowhere or doors right next to openings.

Each time you visit or re-visit a level, the game tells you how many experience points are to be found there, which is kind of silly because the number isn't really fixed. If you go up and down again, you'll get a new map with a new experience point total. This does mean, however, that once you "clear" a level, you don't have to worry about enemies regenerating (that is, until you leave and return).

There are multiple creatures to be found in the dungeons, and as you slay them, they drop food, weapons, armor, potions, torches, staffs, scrolls, and gold. You also find these things laying around. The scrolls give you the same types of lore that you might get from people in towns, although there are occasional scrolls that give you an extra spell and Scrolls of Identification. Much like NetHack, potions are color-coded and items are given generic descriptions, but once you identify them once, the identification holds for every subsequent item that you find of that color or class. You need torches to get around and the occasional meal to keep healthy, but these are both so plentiful that you don't need to worry about bringing a stock with you.

Gideon fights a little creature while the detritus of previous battles--a staff, a sword, and a bit of food--lie around him.

Unlike the wilderness areas, combat is all on the main screen. I removed much of the fun and challenge of the game with my casino haul. Because I bought so much gear, I wasn't remotely interested in 90% of what enemies dropped (food and the occasional potions were the exception), and I've only found one enemy who was remotely dangerous to me (see below). Part of me wants to start over and experience the game "straight," but that's kind of like a guy who insists on continuing to work a menial job after winning the lottery.

NPCs show up randomly in dungeons, too, imparting the same sort of lore that they do in towns. In the second dungeon I explored, they included centaurs, but they said the same things that humans did.

Gideon trades "hellos" with an NPC. Note the nonsensical doors all over the place.

Because of the random regeneration every time you leave a dungeon level, there's no point trying to explore everything. In the first dungeon, I reasoned that the quest item would be on the last level, so I just kept moving downward every time I found a set of stairs. Eventually, I mapped the tenth level exhaustively and had found no stairs, so I knew that was the last one.

The tenth level of Coercri was also the only level to feature something other than generic corridors. At first, I thought it was some kind of water, but later I reasoned that it was a barrier. I didn't know what to do with it, but I fired up my lore and started trying all of the "words of power" that I had learned. One of them, MELEN, opened a passageway through the barrier and to the first ward.

After that, I slowly made my way up the 10 levels, having to find the staircases all over again, and returned to Revelstone. There, the lord who had given me the original quest (Lord Mohram) told me to find the second ward.

I think I'm sensing a pattern.

A bit of lore said that the second ward was under Mount Thunder, but I had no idea where that was. I spent a while wandering around The Land trying to find it, and I quickly discovered that time passes very quickly while wandering around the wilderness. My character aged from 20 to 22, I burned a ton of food, and I had to return to Revelstone to perform my "service," which is nothing more than entering the city, hitting "O," and watching as eight months burn away. I really don't understand the purpose of this feature.

Wilderness combats also started presenting me with multiple foes at once.

During my wanderings, I explored the forest city of Revelwood, where I ran into an NPC named Corimini, who asked if I wanted to join the "Loresraat." I said sure, why not, and found myself having changed classes (I had forgotten that Loresraat was a class). It re-started me at 0 experience points, but I kept all my skills and hit points from leveling up as a Warward. One advantage of the change was that I got access to spells; every level-up let me select a new one.

"Know" in the biblical sense?

This is great in theory, but so far I haven't needed to use any of them; my regular attacks and armor defend me fine. Even poison, which some creatures are capable of inflicting, lasts only a few turns.

The icons in the left-center show that my character has cast "Protection," he has quaffed a potion of fire resistance, and he has a torch lit.

In addition to spells, there are supposedly items (Gems of Brightness, Crystal Balls, Staffs of Curing) that work in response to various words of power. I've not been able to get any of them to work, though. If I wield the item and speak a word, nothing happens. If I "use" the item, nothing happens.

Still lacking the location of Mount Thunder, I caved and looked at a map of The Land online that would have been published in one of the Thomas Covenant books. I followed the features to the indicated location, but there was no obvious entrance to a mountain. I tried standing on random squares in the middle of the mountain and hitting the "down" key, and one of them took me into the dungeon. Horrible game design there.

The entrance to the mountain is a couple squares to my southeast. Is it just my colorblindness screwing me again, or am I right that there's nothing there?

As in the previous dungeon, I headed down as quickly as possible, but my explorations of the bottom level didn't turn up the ward--just an NPC named "Drool Rockworm" who I couldn't hit and was capable of killing me in about three hits. None of the other foes in the game have been even remotely dangerous, so this was a bit of a change.

For a little guy, he sure packs a punch.

I ran away from him, started exploring upward, and found the ward on Level 9. I had been previously alerted by an NPC or scroll that "the power of the wards is unlocked by the previous wards," so I tried the word that I had received at the first ward--MELANKURION--and got passage through the barrier to the second. Here, I was relieved to receive a word of power (ABAKAAL) that automatically transports me upward in dungeons. Exploring downward is still a pain in the neck, but at least returning to the surface is a lot faster.

Thank god for the "lore" window because I wouldn't be able to read what that word is otherwise.

Returning to Lord Morham, I received a quest to find--you guessed it--the third ward. (Is the game over when I've found all seven, or is this just a prologue?) A bit of lore suggested that was in a place called Doriendor Corishev, somewhre in the south. Getting there was a bit of a nightmare. Navigating through mountains isn't easy in this game: when standing among mountains, you often can't go certain directions, but there's no graphical indication where the "barriers" are. You have to blindly feel your way through them.

Navigating a path through the mountains.

Once I reached the area where the dungeon should have been, I found that it was just like Mount Thunder: no visible entrance. I had to wander around testing a bunch of random squares of mountain and grass before I finally found it, about a half hour later. I later discovered that the small-scale map (in the lower right) has a little black square where dungeon entrances are, so as long as you have the general area, it's not as hard to find as I've been making it out to be. As I close, I'm working my way down through the levels.

I'd like to get far enough to where I get additional party members. The "party" screen suggests I can have up to five of them, but everyone I ask to join me says "no."

Gideon sits at the head of an empty party.

Again, I'd love to hear from anyone else who has played this game, and any context to this plot from anyone who has read the books. I feel compelled to stick with it for at least a little while longer. It was clearly a labor of love for developer Mike Riley, and there isn't much about the game online except an article at RogueBasin. I'd like to be among the first to show the winning screenshot or post a little gameplay to YouTube. (I might be missing stuff that's out there, but it's hard finding articles for a game with as generic a title as The Land. Nothing came up when I tried to Google the types of terms that would show up in a walkthrough.) I'm just sorry I don't understand more about the context of the game.

Game 101: The Land (1985-2009)

Presenting the worst font ever.

"One word more," Foul said, "a final caution. Do not forget whom to fear at the last. I have had to be content with killing and torment. But now my plans are laid, and I have begun. I shall not rest until I have eradicated hope from the Earth. Think on that, and be dismayed!"

--Lord Foul's Bane, Book 1 of The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever, Page 20.

My reaction.

I suppose I should give Stephen Donaldson's The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant another try. A lot of people I respect seem to like the books, they apparently deal with complex themes in a fantasy backdrop, and the idea of a protagonist with leprosy is fascinating. But wow, the writing in the first book was awful. That quote above came at the end of about three pages of awkward exposition that you have to read to believe. I half expect that at the end, when Covenant wins, Lord Foul says, "You beat me?! I am destroyed."

The Land is set in the world of the books, called by its inhabitants...wait for it..."The Land." The geography, city names, monster names, and character classes are all drawn from Donaldson, giving non-readers a slight disadvantage. The game gives you no clues as to the story and quest, although the manual says that the latter will become clear during gameplay. As I cover this game, I won't mind at all if those of you who have read the books chime in with a little context.

"Lord Osondrea" is a character in the books, but damned if I know what role she plays.

You begin by naming your character, distributing 20 points among the six standard D&D statistics (all of which start at 10), and choosing from among seven race/class choices that are unique to the game. There are starker strengths and weaknesses among the classes than in, say, NetHack, with certain classes unable to use certain magic or spells. "Ramen," for instance, fight unarmed and unarmored and can  never ride horses. "Warwards" can use any armor and weapons except for artifacts. "Loresraats" can use anything, magic or spells, but advance very slowly in experience.

My first character.

The game is often classified among roguelikes, but the tag is slightly debatable. It has a vague roguelike feel to it, especially in the selection of keyboard commands and the inventory. I don't know if early The Land influenced Omega or if Omega influenced later versions of The Land or if they have a common ancestor. (Certainly, the didn't independently come up with the idea of an "Up in Air" slot in the inventory) It also has a certain randomization to some maps, and you only uncover areas as you move through them. On the other hand, it has a nice graphic tileset and some bloopish sounds, and there's no permadeath. Like Omega, it has an overworld and multiple towns and dungeons. You can apparently get other party members to join you, though I haven't gotten that far yet. In general, the game feels more like Ultima I or Ultima II than a traditional "roguelike."

Roguelikes and other freeware games are often difficult to peg to a specific date because they undergo continuous development throughout their lifetimes. I "solved" that problem with NetHack by breaking it into six "editions" and planning to play each one in its appropriate year. But I'm not going to do that for every roguelike. In the case of The Land, version 1.0 was released in 1985 and version 5.0 was released in 1996. I'm playing it among 1989 games because MobyGames said it was released in 1989; I'm guessing they got this from the version 2.3 release date, which was the first release to the public at large. The release notes suggest that not much changed between 1989 and 1996 except for bug fixes and a conversion to VGA, so I don't feel like I'm playing it significantly out of order. 

Exploring "The Land."

Combats come upon you unannounced--enemies don't have icons that approach you while you explore. You're taken to a separate combat screen at that point (again like Omega, at least in its outdoor areas), where you can cast spells, attack with ranged or melee weapons, or flee.

Fighting a "cavewight type."

The game has a few other staples of roguelikes, including a hunger system and an encumbrance system. It's inventory system is a little confusing; removing items from packs puts them in the "up in air" slot, at which point you have to either put them back in the pack, use them, or assign them to an appropriate place on the body. I've found that if you hit the wrong key during this process, you can lose the item for good.

Shopping in town.

I don't know if all towns are like this, but the first town I explored, Revelstone, was huge and featureless, with multiple shops, NPCs selling equipment, and NPCs who would offer a bit of lore. Aside from buying things, the primary purpose of towns seems to be the accumulation of "lore" about the locations of various items and towns and the uses of various objects.

With a name like "Lord Foul," could he be anything else?

Revelstone also had a college with various "courses" you can take to increase skills, which is a nice use of the economy, although the economy is broken (see below).

Increasing skills in college.

The Land has a reasonably interesting skill system, with 16 separate skills for different types of weapons (edged weapons, pole weapons), travel and wilderness skills (scouting, hunting, riding, boats), and magic and lore. You start with 0 in all of these categories, but you can increase them by paying for training. As you level up, your skills increase randomly (an aspect of the game I don't like).

There are some other neat innovations in the game. Like any roguelike, it has good in-game documentation of icons and commands:

 

The main screen makes good use of its real estate. There's an odd "oath" system by which every class has to render a certain amount of "service" per year to his or her profession, done by returning to the home town. Characters age and, I guess, can die. The game keeps track of each piece of lore that you learn and displays them with SHIFT-L.

I'm not sure how the items in white (at the bottom) differ from the ones at the top.

Balancing these innovations are some "features" common to 1980s freeware games with only one developer. The manual is extremely scant (perhaps by design). You can't fully explore cities because you can't actually enter shops (they activate when you "open" the door), and because they activate automatically, you can't explore rooms across the way from them.

One of these doors has a shop. What's behind the other one, I don't know, because every time I try to (o)pen it, I end up back in the shop.

Hitting an unexpected key frequently produces an error and kicks you to the DOS prompt. This would have been rage-inducing in NetHack, but I suppose it's not so bad in a game that allows you to save anywhere. The font used in dialogue is absolutely unreadable, mitigated a bit by the game keeping track of what's said.

A lore staff is used with WHAT?!

Soon after entering Revelstone, I found an astonishing game-breaking mechanic: the gambling system at taverns and inns. There are two games: "dragon dice" and "die square." "Dragon dice" is a bad investment. You roll three dice, and some of the possible combinations pay out at different ratios. I calculated the rate of return at about 0.81 to 1.

It's not as bad as it looks, as the game organizes the rolls in order, so 6-6-3 pays out whether you roll that, 6-3-6, or 3-6-6.

 "Die square," on the other hand, would bankrupt any casino that tried it. You have a nine-square grid, and each square can roll one of two symbols. If the pattern of any one type of symbol makes an "X" or "+", it pays out 25 to 1; if it makes a square (only the one in the middle a different symbol), it pays out 50 to 1, and if all 9 squares end up the same symbol, it pays 100 to 1.

The economy-breaking gambling game.

We don't really have to work out all the probabilities to see why this system breaks the game. Pretend that the game only pays out on an X. The odds of getting an X for one symbol, which involves 5 squares, is 0.5^5, or 0.03. But it pays out if you get either symbol in an X, so multiply that by 2, and we get 0.06. That means you'll win on an X 6% of the time. If the game paid 100/6 or 16.67-to-1, you'd break even over the course of time. But it doesn't pay 16.67-to-1; it pays 25-to-1. The rate of return on this symbol alone is over 1.5 monetary units for every 1 spent.

The probability of a + is the same. Add to this the more remote probabilities of a square or full grid, and you're getting a ridiculous payout. The proof is in my pocket. Within five minutes, I went from 590 gold pieces to over 300,000.

This win gave me 250,000 monetary units from my 10,000 wager.

Questron II was bad, but not this bad. I think there might have been spending caps with that one. In this case, I was able to take my new found wealth and purchase some badass equipment and training.
 

My post-winnings inventory.

The obvious solution, if you want to play the game straight and struggle for your money, is "don't gamble." But I'm a big believer in the notion that it isn't cheating if the game gives you the ability to do it without resorting to obvious bug-exploiting. If the game seems a little too easy after this, I'll know why.

A lord in Revelstone seemed to give me the first quest: "go get the first ward of Kevin's Lore" in Coercri. Other characters told me that Coercri is on the east coast of Seareach, Seareach is northeast of Sarangrave Flats, Sarangrave Flats run along the east of Landsdrop, and Landsdrop separates the upper and lower lands. I suspect if I wander around a bit, I'll find one of these other features and thus get a bead on where to go.

I think that says "Ward," anyway.

I feel a little crippled without having read the books (the only wiki online is woefully incomplete), but I'll see what I discover in my initial six hours.

NetHack 3.0: Final Rating

Hey, that's how I roll.

NetHack (3.0 series)

The NetHack development team 

The series includes 11 public releases between July 1989 and February 1991

Date Started: 24 June 2012
Date Ended: 12 June 2013

Total Hours: 262
Difficulty: Hard-Very Hard (4.5/5)
Final Rating: (to come later)
Ranking at Time of Posting: (to come later)

In the 1990s, I had a six-year enlistment in the U.S. Army Reserves. When I first joined at the age of 17, I was weak and pudgy. I had never done any serious exercising or bodybuilding in my life. Shortly after signing the enlistment paperwork, I read in the literature that on the first day of basic training--three months to come--I would need to perform 20 pushups; otherwise, they'd send me to a remedial physical training course for some extra weeks. I didn't like the sound of that.

I dropped to the floor and did pushups until my arms were exhausted and I physically couldn't lift them anymore. Specifically, I did four pushups. After that, I got up and began scanning my paperwork for any loophole that would get me out of my enlistment.

It's not that I didn't realize there was such a thing as training; it's just that the distance between 4 and 20 seemed so vast--my body so exhausted after those four--that I couldn't conceive of a time in which, no matter how much training I did, my body would be capable of 20 pushups, let alone the 52 I would have to do to pass the physical fitness test at the end of the 13 weeks.

But, having no way out of it, I worked at it, and in the next three months, I built myself up to the point that I could easily do 20 on the first day, and after that to the point that I was able to do not 52 but 80 in the final test. After that, pushups didn't seem so hard. I haven't done any in over a year, but  I just dropped and managed to coerce my old, out-of-shape body into 28 of them.

That should have been a lifelong lesson, and yet it still surprises me how often in life we mentally deem things as "unachievable" until we actually achieve them. Upon achieving them, it's like our brains instantly re-wire, showing us maps and paths and patterns where we couldn't see them before. It's like those "magic eye" pictures where until you cross your eyes the right way, you can't believe there's a 3D image in there, but once you find it the first time, you almost can't stop doing it.

While I was doing pushups, every time I hit a new record--10, say--my mind interpreted it as "the most I'm able to do right now, and perhaps the most I'll ever be able to do." But when I hit that goal of 20, 10 just became "the halfway point." Essentially the same thing happened in NetHack. My brain rendered every new achievement as, "Okay, I've reached the highest level I've ever achieved. Now when am I going to die?" But now that I've won, and I can "see" the game in its totality, it doesn't seem that hard.

Last year, blithely getting to character level 10 and dungeon level 13 would have seemed unthinkable. Today, I accomplished it while screwing around just to take screen shots for this posting.

It seems absurd to say this only a few weeks after comparing myself to a monkey who would never ascend given infinite time, but now that I've won, now that I know how the entire dungeon maps out, now that I realize what's possible and how to do it, I think I could ascend (in this version, at least) at least once every 20 characters. (Maybe if I kept at it, I'd get so good that I'd have to play with "conducts" like never eating meat or never killing another creature directly. These strike me as insane the same way that ever ascending at all struck me as insane a month ago.)

Many commenters had been explaining these realities about the game for the entire year, but there's a difference between "knowing" something and "getting" it. Reading over my old NetHack postings makes me cringe a bit. I wish I could send comments back in time to myself. I've been thinking about what I'd say to ensure that 2012 Chet really gets the game, and this is what I've come up with:

1. A character with greater than 17 strength or dexterity, more than 70 hit points, less than -10 armor class, telepathy, poison resistance, a blindfold, a decent stock of throwing weapons, and a unicorn horn is essentially invincible for the first 25 levels. Immediately work towards these at the outset. Of these, poison resistance is probably the most important, so you don't have to worry about what you eat, and thus don't have to worry about starving.

The intelligence delivered by telepathy and a blindfold was vital to my ascension. Here, I see a squad of "Mordor orcs" coming through the doorway.

2. Once you get these things, or at least most of them, The first half of the dungeon is your playground. Go up and down liberally, kill whatever you can, and start to tick off items (both equipment and intrinsics) on your "ascension list." Once you're down to only a few items, you can head to the Castle and use the Wand of Wishing to get the rest.

3. Carefully note locations of altars (especially co-aligned altars), fountains, sinks, and shops. You will return to them throughout the game to test the blessed/uncursed/cursed status of items, figure out what different items likely are, and create holy water. (Incidentally, to me most potions are worth more diluted and turned into holy water than fulfilling their original functions.)

Sacrificing a Potion of Object Detection to make a Potion of Water.

4. The most important intrinsic/extrinsic combination to acquire is teleportation/teleportation control. It will get you out of a ton of jams and make navigation much easier (and this was before I knew about CTRL-T!).

5. Don't obsess about not being able to identify things. With the exception of weapon bonuses, almost everything in the game can be identified through some combination of careful testing and noting the results. As far as weapons go, your level and strength matter much more than the type of weapon you have. (I ascended without even knowing what I was carrying.) Don't start thinking about suicide every time an acid blob corrodes your sword.

6. Items don't generally disappear. Make caches for yourself, using boxes when you can. Backup weapons, missile weapons, food, armor, pick-axes, and unicorn horns will all become extremely valuable once the Wizard of Yendor starts cursing your stuff.

7. Once you exhaust the possibilities of the shops, stop hauling around gold. It just takes up weight you need for other stuff. Cache it if you really want it, but it's hardly necessary to win the game.

The nature of randomness in NetHack can't be overstated. I think everybody understands that the levels are random, so they never look the same from game to game, and the distribution of equipment is random, but simply stating that doesn't convey how this randomness fundamentally changes the game from character to character. I've had games where I found blindfolds on Level 1 and games where I never found one and had to wish for it; games in which I've quaffed six "Potions of Gain Level" before reaching the castle, and games (including the last one) in which they never appeared; games with shops on every level between 3 and 7, and games with no shops at all; games in which I never found a co-aligned altar; games in which I've found enough wands to crack the world in half, and games where wands were a rarity. Whether you encounter the Wizard on Level 50 or Level 41 (as I did) makes a huge difference as to the difficulty returning to the surface.

Chester gets lucky with a blindfold on Level 2.

Despite its randomness, we have to observe, with something approaching marvel, that NetHack is an extremely "tight" game. There are tons of items in the game, and thousands of different ways in which they can interact with each other, but the developers seem to have anticipated every potential interaction. Consider the way that you can bash or pry chests with weapons, dilute potions and "blank" scrolls in fountains, make pets out of enemies by throwing food at them, and throw potions at enemies (with a chance that they'll splash back at you!). The developers not only bothered to program different effects for scrolls based on their blessed, uncursed, or cursed statuses, but also have a different effect for reading each scroll while "confused." The self-polymorphing system allows you to turn into just about any monster and gain their special attack and defense skills while doing so. You can turn enemies to stone while wielding the corpse of a cockatrice as a weapon, something only possible while wearing gloves.

This logic unfortunately also applies to death. When I first started this blog and announced it on Reddit, I knew nothing about NetHack. Some of the commenters started talking about it, and one of them remarked:

I made it to the plane of fire before drowning in lava because I took off my ring of levitation to eat a corpse...To be fair, that was an extremely stupid mistake on my part. I had plenty of food in my pack, but I wanted to eat a fire giant to gain some more intrinsic strength that I didn't even really need.

Can you imagine what this sounds like to someone who hasn't played the game? I remarked that it sounded "terrifying." Imagine trying to keep up with all of the possibilities hinted by those couple of sentences. And all in a game where everything is represented by ASCII characters.

These combinations--and hundreds more--make each game of NetHack essentially unique, with the exception of a few fixed levels and of course the endgame. They make hearing about each character's experience, even deaths, relatively interesting.

Given all of this, I can see how people become addicted to NetHack. Every time you step into the dungeon and start exploring the first level, you wonder, "What am I going to find? What unique challenges will the game throw at me this time?"

But ask me if I really "enjoyed" the 262 hours I spent over the past year ascending, and I don't know how to answer. Part of me says that it's a crime, really, that a game this clever, this innovative, this engaging turns off so many players with the specter of permadeath. I realize permadeath is a staple of roguelikes, and most roguelike players wouldn't trade it, and that it introduces a tactical depth to the game that wouldn't exist otherwise, and that it makes the final ascension all the more exhilarating...but let's be frank: someone shouldn't have to invest more than 250 hours in a game to win it. That's just crazy. Imagine what else I could have accomplished in that time. I certainly could have finished any of the numerous books I have half-started. I might have been able to make a good dent in my dissertation. At worst, I could have watched every film on IMDB's "Top 100" list, and still had 62 hours to spare.

All right. This has been a very long intro. Let's see how the game rates on the GIMLET. I should mention that I already rated the "early NetHack" series in January 2011, having experienced much less of the game, but I'm not going to look at that while compiling the scores here.

1. Game World. I've never experienced a roguelike in which the story, lore, and history was well-defined. It's not generally the priority of the genre. In NetHack, you're not really told anything about the game world, and although there are some vague hints in things like the names of gods, they never come together in any kind of "story." (At least, not in this version.) Score: 1.

2. Character Creation and Development. The creation process isn't much--name and class--but the development process is pretty satisfying. Rewards for leveling up, which happens very swiftly in the early game, are welcome and tangible, at least through about Level 10 (after that, the experience requirements get so large that you essentially need to find Potions of Gain Level or to eat wraith corpses). Perhaps more important are the aspects of development that come from eating corpses to gain intrinsics (fire resistance, poison resistance, teleportitis) and those that improve statistics. Unfortunately, there aren't many ways (in this version) to improve anything other than strength, which is admittedly a pretty important one. The whole point of the game is to make yourself more powerful, and it offers you plenty of opportunities to do so.

Chester gains the "resist cold" intrinsic.

The game could stand to do a little more with class-specific role-playing. The character choice determines starting attributes and equipment, and I suppose this choice still matters late in the game to the extent that it's hard to get a high intelligence score unless you start with it. There are a few alignment-based conducts that affect luck (e.g., lawful characters shouldn't use poison arrows). But overall, it doesn't feel like class "matters" much in this version. I understand that changes later with class-specific quests. Score: 6.

3. NPC Interaction. There really aren't that many in the game. The "chat" command is woefully under-utilized. There's the occasional shopkeeper, the Oracle, and some priests that can matter, but your interactions with them aren't very deep. I suppose it deserves a few points for the bonuses you get from the priest and the things you learn about the game from the Oracle. Score: 2.

Chester "chats" with a friendly orc.

4. Encounters and Foes. The game throws a dazzling array of obstacles in your path to ascension, including curses, various debilitating conditions, and dozens of monster types organized into a handful of classes. These monsters have enough strengths, weaknesses, and special attacks to make the came reasonably tactical, and it even has nice one-paragraph descriptions of certain special monsters. I love the variety of the encounters: floating eyes freeze you, leprechauns make off with your gold, nymphs seduce you and steal your equipment, were-creatures can give you lycanthropy, fire elementals can cause your scrolls and potions to catch fire or boil. Every new letter occasions a rush to your notes or the NetHack wiki to figure out how to best deal with it. There are deeper encounters with vault guards, Keystone Kops, the Wizard of Yendor, and other situations that are rare but fun. There just aren't many role-playing options in all of this. Score: 6.

I had my gold ring stolen Monday, Wednesday, and twice on Friday...

5. Magic and Combat. The magic system is underpowered in this version, even for spellcasting classes. You rarely find spellbooks, and you need multiple readings to get very proficient with the spells. Even then, they fade after you cast them a few times. Combat, on the other hand, is enormously tactical despite only a single "attack" option. Knowing when to attack, when to use a spell or item, and when to flee is both an art and science, and it takes dozens of hours of study to figure it all out. There's even some limited use of the "terrain" in combat, such as finding choke points where only one enemy can attack at a time, luring enemies into traps, shoving boulders into their paths, and locking doors to keep them from getting to you. Pets add an entirely new dimension that I never explored. Score: 7.

6. Equipment. Easily the best and most well-written part of the game. There are so many things to find, use, wield, and wear that it's hard to keep track of them all, and the game features a highly original system by which you either have to identify the items (via spell or scroll) or intuit what they are through practice or experimentation. I love games that give you lots of armor options, and this one has armor, helmets, shields, boots, gloves, and cloaks to keep me happy. The testing process can sometimes be laborious; some of my least-fond memories involving killing an entire barracks full of soldiers, lieutenants, and captains, then hauling loads of their gear to the nearest altar to ensure it's not cursed before systematically testing it for its effects on my armor class.

Chester won't be wearing that cap.

The whole blessed/uncursed/cursed process adds even greater depth to the equipment system. Scrolls of Genocide wipe out monsters; blessed Scrolls of Genocide wipe out entire monster classes; cursed Scrolls of Genocide create the specified monster. The latter isn't always a bad thing. Also notable is how armor and weapons can increase in level or degrade through various scrolls and monster attacks.

Equally important, as I noted above, is the way in which the different items you can find work together. You can dilute potions into potions of water, then turn them into holy water by placing them on an altar, then use them to bless or un-curse your items. A Ring of Teleport Control with a Cursed Scroll of Teleportation can take you anywhere in the dungeon. Magic markers can create scrolls if used with blank paper. I'm sure I didn't find even half of the possibilities. Only a lack of in-game item descriptions keeps NetHack from a perfect score here, but otherwise it's the best equipment system of any CRPG so far. Score: 9.

7. Economy. Not so good. Gold can be useful in the early stages at shops--if the game bothers to generate any--and in donations to a co-aligned priest--if he appears. It's useful when you encounter the Oracle (again, if you find one in your game). Otherwise, all it affects is your final score. The game has piles and piles of gold everywhere, and I wish there was more to do with it. Score: 4.

Teleporting out of a shop without paying floods the dungeon with "Keystone Kops" while the shopkeeper obsessively follows you around, demanding his two dollars.

8. Quests. The game has a single main quest which isn't even very consistent, since you never hear of the "Adventurer's Guild" again after embarking. I think there's only one outcome to the main quest, and this version doesn't feature any side-quests. No real role-playing and not the strongest part of the game. The Amulet is basically a MacGuffin, and the plot is all about personal gain. Score: 2.

9. Graphics, Sound, and Inputs. I've said this before, but I don't see anything particularly appealing or noble about the "raw purity" of a soundless ASCII game, and everything I liked about the game, I would have liked better with a proper tile set and sounds. In fact, I'd vastly prefer actual sounds to the messages describing what you hear--messages that flash too fast while you're moving around. I know some developers have created proper graphics applications to sit on top of the game, and I may try one in the next version.

The interface is good enough. I don't like having capital and lower-case versions of the same letter do different things, but there's really no way around it in this game, and for the most part, the commands were intuitive and easy to remember. I had constant annoyances with having to hit SPACE to continue messages, and I know I could have solved this by frigging around with the configuration options, and I just never bothered. Score: 2.

10. Gameplay. NetHack seems linear at the outset, until you realize you're not really constrained to rushing inexorably forward. The dungeon levels aren't large enough to create a truly "open" gameworld, but it's relatively open within its confined space. It goes without saying that the randomization of the dungeon, distribution of equipment, and distribution of special encounters (including the location of the Wizard of Yendor) makes the game extremely "replayable" except in the sense that it's so hard to win that you never fully play it during each excursion.

With respect to legions of fans who feel otherwise, permadeath just sucks. I wouldn't mind limited save points--even extremely limited save points, like once every 4 hours or something. I wouldn't mind deaths that cost you dearly and take a long time to recover from. But you have to be extremely masochistic to burn through 262 hours and a few dozen characters in your effort to win the game without "save-scumming," and I'm not sure it's worth it. This will always be a complaint of mine with roguelikes, and I'll likely never rate them particularly high in this category for this reason. Score: 5.

I note that the final rating of 44 is 2 points higher than I gave the previous version. My understanding is that future versions will develop more in the quest, character development, and encounter categories.

Despite ascending, I still don't feel like I "mastered" the game. There are a host of things I didn't experience or didn't think about until after I won. Here are some:

• I never made use of a pet. They were always too annoying to me. I realize the watchword in this game is "patience," and juggling a pet is the ultimate test of patience, but I'm not that patient.

• I finally read up on how to use scrolls of blank paper and magic markers to create scrolls, and I was looking forward to it, but I never found a single magic marker among my last eight or nine characters.

• Never did much with luck. I realize that sacrificing corpses on altars and throwing gems at co-aligned unicorns increase your luck, but as I never found a luck stone (I'm not even sure they exist in this version) to preserve it, it seemed like a waste of time.

• Never did much with artifact weapons. I think maybe a couple of my characters found a special axe once or twice, but I'm not even sure special weapons like "Excalibur" exist in this version.

• I realized very belatedly that it would make a lot more sense to delay getting the Amulet of Yendor until I'd explored all of the maze levels and found the paths between the stairs--in fact, I should have used my pick-axe to hack shorter paths between the stairs before getting the amulet.

• Spells strike me as incredibly useless in this game, and I never did much with them. You exhaust them after a few castings, you rarely find spellbooks, and you have to read the same spellbook multiple times to get the spell to a high enough "level" to be useful. But it's possible I missed something and should have concentrated more on spells.

• I stayed away from self-polymorphing, even though I understand there are some cool effects you can achieve with it, including the ability to eat rings as a rust monster and turn them into intrinsics.

• I used ELBERETH on occasion to save my life, but there are other ways you can use it to confine and route monsters, and I never really explored that.

I look forward to exploring these options more, and seeing the game progress, in the 3.1 series. My understanding is that it's the first edition to feature dungeon "branches," a series of elemental planes, and special levels of Hell (renamed Gehennom). Mind flayers and some other monsters appear for the first time. There are more options to improve (and degrade) attributes. Getting the Amulet is tougher, requiring multiple sub-quests; most notably, the Wizard of Yendor no longer has the amulet himself.

I'll reach this version in 1993, which might not occur for another three or four years in my current rate of play. I don't know how I'll feel by then, but right now, it's almost impossible to imagine investing another 262 hours in the game. (Though in accordance with my boast above, I suspect I won't need to.) We'll see then whether I insist on playing honestly or play on "explore" mode long enough to experience the changes and then move on.

I accomplished my NetHack goal of ascending within a year, but there's no way I'm going to make my second goal of finishing all 1989 games within a year. Perhaps without my side-trips to NetHack, though, things will go a little more quickly. Let's move on to The Land and see what happens.

That is, I'll move on to The Land after Chester the Barbarian dies. I created him just so I'd have someone to create screenshots with for this posting, but he's doing pretty well.

Dragon Wars: Final Rating

Dragon Wars

Interplay (developer and publisher)
Brian Fargo, Paul O'Connor, Rebecca Ann Heineman

Released 1989 for Apple II and Commodore 64; 1990 for Amiga, Apple IIgs, DOS, PC-98; 1991 for NES, Sharp X68000

Date Started: 3 June 2013
Date Ended: 10 June 2013

Total Hours: 26
Difficulty: Moderate-Hard (3.5/5)
Final Rating: (to come later)
Ranking at Time of Posting: (to come later)

Part of the fun of finishing "journal" games is reading the entries you never found, trying to determine which of them are fake. In Wasteland, there was an entire plot about aliens embedded among the fake entries. Dragon Wars's fakes are mostly humorous ("Try as you might, you just can't get your nose to remain on your face. That Namtar sure has an odd sense of humor"), but there are a few meant to lead you down the wrong path. There was one that suggested an alternate solution to the flooding problem in the City of the Yellow Mud Toad that would have you searching around for a "magic plant." Another suggests that Lanac'toor can be revived. There are a few related to a nonexistent plot with a vampire lord. But for the most part, most of my unread entries looked like they could have been plausible, and I assume I just didn't get them during the course of gameplay.

This is apparently where I was supposed to use that "Soul Bowl."

The list of unread-but-real entries illustrates how this game differs from many others of the era, with multiple side-adventures, multiple options in several places, and multiple paths to the end of the game. I really appreciated this freedom, especially after the frustrating linearity of The Bard's Tale titles. The game also departed from The Bard's Tale by refusing to overpower the party (in fact, they probably erred a bit too much in the other direction!). But they didn't solve all the problems with their approach, and the sheer weight of the combats made for an unpleasant experience in places--though I allow that if I hadn't feverishly played the game for 16 hours straight, I might not have minded the combats as much.

There aren't many games in which killing the "big bad" becomes "repetitive."

People have been telling me for years how great Dragon Wars is, and I think the review below will disappoint them a little. I had fun with it, but I'm not sure I see it coming up in my Top 10. Let's see.

1. Game World. To me, the game world is unquestionably the best part of the game. Sure, we've seen "kill the evil wizard" in a lot of games before, but rarely has it been done with this much detail and attention to the plot. Namtar's history, the geography and history of the islands, the cities' uses of dragons, the gods, and other bits of lore are slowly and satisfyingly revealed through NPCs and journal entries. The party's own place in the game world is clear from the outset, and I love the beginning of the game, with the characters starting naked in a lawless city. Decisions you make effect permanent change on the world: witness my deciding the siege in favor of Byzanople, or the destruction of Phoebus. There will be later games with even more detail and intrigue, but this game, along with the Ultima series (which lacks a dynamic world) set the bar for other CRPGs in this era. Score: 8.

Areas of the game are well-described and fit well with the game's lore.

2. Character Creation and Development. Very original and intriguing. Through the initial creation and customization, you define each character at a level that simply selecting a "class" (the standard in most RPGs) doesn't reach. The allocation of points during this process is absolutely vital because you get so few of them later on. In contrast to character creation, though, leveling in this game is very unsatisfying. Your reward for leveling up is only 2 skill points--enough to get you a single-digit increase in dexterity, spirit, or health, a two-digit increase in strength or intelligence, or a single-skill-level increase in most skills. No additional hit points or spell points come with leveling (unless you invest the points in spirit or health).

While I admire the developers' aim to avoid the overinflated characters found in their previous games, it's a bad RPG that makes you say "meh" when you level up. There are lots of places where I had to reload multiple times to win combats--places which in most games would send me off to a corner for some grinding. This is one of the few games that technically supports grinding but gives you the sense that it wouldn't really help: spending hours to rise one level and gain 2 skill points is not my idea of a good strategy.

My lead character towards the end of the game. I poured all my skill points into strength and dexterity for him.

I'm of a similar dual mind about the skill point system. While I love the inclusion of skills in CRPGs, I don't love CRPGs that introduce a bunch of useless skills, causing you to squander precious skill points. A player ought to be able to approach the game blind and still find success no matter how he chooses to specialize. It wasn't quite as bad here as in Wasteland, but I still didn't appreciate a host of "lore" skills that had limited use and a "pocketpicking" skill that, as far as I could tell, had absolutely no use. There were, however, a few places where you could choose how to solve a puzzle based on your skills, and this makes for a slightly more interesting game. Score: 5.

3. NPC Interaction. We start getting into "disappointing" territory here. First, you have the ability to recruit three additional NPCs into your party after the start of the game. But you can get them so quickly, and once you have them the game treats them indistinguishably from PCs, that the mechanism is rather pointless.

Barkeeps give occasional welcome hints.

There are other NPCs scattered about the game to give you quests, items, journal entries, encounters, and so forth. While they're almost all interesting, well-written, and non-goofy, there's really no depth of interaction with them. Score: 4.

A Dragon Wars NPC offers a depressing description of life.

4. Encounters and Foes. I've lately begun to realize that it was a mistake to mash encounters and foes into a single category. In doing so, I was thinking of modern games, in which interesting enemies often produce interesting options for dealing with them, but in this era they fit together uncomfortably.

On the "encounters" side, the game is pretty good. In every map, you find locations that require some creative use of a skill, attribute, or item. The best part is that most of these encounters are completely optional, producing only some extra treasure, bonus, or item. There are significant role-playing opportunities with some of the encounters, such as whether to sell yourself into slavery to escape Purgatory, or whether to use "bureaucracy" in the slave camp or just kill everyone, or whether to doom Phoebus by interfering with the dragon's feeding or not. These rich options fit well with the game world and history.

On-screen messages are almost always a hint to use some skill. In this case, it was "climb."

On the "foes" side, not so much. There are a lot of enemy types in the game, drawn from the typical CRPG rogue's gallery, but few of them are authentically interesting. They tend to come in two varieties--those that use melee attacks, and those that attack at a range--meaning that you have two basic templates for dealing with them. The "boss" encounters, though, are universally interesting and well-written, even if the tactics don't change much.  Score: 5.

Every time I fight a bear in a CRPG, I wonder whether in real life, a skilled warrior could honestly hope to prevail against one (without a gun).

 
5. Magic and Combat. I've bellyached about combat throughout these postings--long, frustrating, repetitive, relentless, and often too hard at the boss level--but I have to admit that things have improved since The Bard's Tale and Wasteland. The need to conserve spell points brings a tactical edge to the game that I didn't find in its predecessors. Yes, I was frustrated by having to reload multiple times in many of the quest-based combats, but each time that I finally won, I did feel that it was the right tactics--and not just random luck--that led me to that end. And even though I didn't really like the "distance" element of combat, I admit that it separates this game from many other multi-character first-person series. The "stun" system was also very original.

The magic system itself is nothing special: you acquire spells by finding or buying them, and you can learn them if you have the right school of magic. Different spells have different spell point costs, and the only real tactics involve the conservation of magic in between trips to recharging pools. I admit this game did a little better than its predecessors by making most buffing spells available only in combat, so you have to make more careful decisions about offense vs. defense.

I'm going to give this category a relatively high score of 5, but I'll be subtracting some gameplay points for the sheer number of combats.

6. Equipment. In terms of variety and usefulness, very good. Because character development happens so slowly and in such an unrewarding manner, improving weapons, armor, and other gear is vital to success. The game has a nice selection of weapons, armor, shields, helms, potions, wands, and other assorted equipment. Some of the weapons and items have special functions beyond simply wearing them.

Ulrik's equipment towards the end game.

But the game joins Dungeon Master and a few other titles by frustratingly refusing to be transparent about the amount of damage that weapons do. I guess they expected that each new weapon acquisition would be an occasion for experimentation, but I find that approach obnoxious. I also think that different weapons and armor had non-obvious effects on offense and defense attributes. Skill levels, too, aren't figured into those statistics, and it might have been better if the game hadn't even offered them.

Beyond that, my only complaint is that all items seemed to be fixed rather than random. I like some randomness in the acquisition of gear. Score: 4.

7. Economy. The game has an economy, but I can't honestly say that I paid attention to it. Almost every useful item is found, not purchased, though there are a few exceptions. Shops exist but are mostly useless. Gold isn't very plentiful; you only find it in a few chests and through killing human enemies (and even then, paltry amounts). I basically had enough gold whenever I needed it and didn't think about it otherwise. Not one of the better parts of the game. Score: 3.

8. Quests. We're back to the good parts of the game. The main quest is compelling and fun, proceeding in multiple stages, with a host of side-quests for better equipment, or even just more of the story, along the way. I didn't finish every quest in the game, which is a good thing. It's just too bad there's only one ending to the main quest. Score: 6.

The Universal God is a very Old Testament god.

 
9. Graphics, Sound, and Inputs. All tolerable or better. The monster portraits varied in quality, but were animated and almost always interesting. I found the sound satisfying if not spectacular--especially when I whacked an enemy with a melee weapon. The interface was uncomplicated and featured a helpful automap.

The automap looked so good, I kept forgetting you can't actually move on this screen.

 
I have to say a word about the macros. I used them a little. In theory, it's a good idea: if the player wants to use a character's "bandage" skill a lot, rather than making him type U-6-S-A-B every time, just map those keystrokes to one of the function keys. The problem is that the macros don't save with the game, so you have to re-create them every time you reload. Even if you don't reload for a while, little changes in things like the character order or the number of skills available can "break" the macro. Still, few games of the era offer any options along these lines. Score: 6.

10. Gameplay. Dragon Wars gets point for being nonlinear and, because of its nonlinearity, mostly replayable. It was satisfyingly compact and didn't overstay its welcome. I do feel like it was a little too hard and exasperating at points. You shouldn't have to reload quite as many times as I did to win battles, and there are just far too many combats. Having only one save game is a little unfair (it's easy to get trapped), and the game offers essentially no recourse for death until late in the game--you can't even dump the character and create a new one. Score: 5.

The final score of 51 puts it just below the top tier of games in my list: the Gold Box series, the Might & Magic series, the Starflights, and the last few Ultimas. It has some great elements, and with a little extra effort, it could have been among those greats. But it was certainly good enough to keep me addicted and playing well into the wee hours of the morning;

Despite not being able to use the name, ads for the game tried to tie it thematically to The Bard's Tale.

Scorpia's review of the game in the December 1989 Computer Gaming World is a little more positive than mine. She agrees with me on the compelling plot and open game world and criticizes the mysterious equipment attributes and shallow NPC interaction, but she found the combat "balanced" in a way that I didn't. Of the final battle with Namtar, she says it was "probably the best end-game battle of any CRPG I've ever played." I thought it was one of the most needlessly frustrating, though I allow it was pretty cool if you count throwing Namtar into the pit. I don't get the sense that she minded the slow pace of character development or the overall volume of combats. The commenters on my blog might fall closer to Scorpia's opinion.

Matt Barton's interview with Rebecca Heineman suggests that the lack of a Bard's Tale name hurt the game, and sales were low. Perhaps this is what led Interplay to abandon this type of CRPG. With the end of Dragon Wars, we've really reached the end of a lineage. The game that was supposed to be The Bard's Tale IV feels enough like its predecessors to belong to the same family, but at this point, Brian Fargo becomes more a producer than a developer, and Rebecca Heineman moves on to programming action games (her only RPGs that I can find after Dragon Wars are conversions). One final game, Swords and Serpents, released solely for the NES, shows a certain Bard's Tale ancestry, but otherwise it's up to Might & Magic to carry the multi-character, first-person genre forward for a while.

We're definitely not done with Interplay, though. We have a pair of Lord of the Rings games from them in 1990 and 1992, a very intriguing-looking game called Stonekeep in 1995, and of course they'll explode back on the scene in the late 1990s with Fallout, Fallout II, Planescape: Torment, and Icewind Dale.

After a quick visit to the early 1980s again, we'll be moving onto The Land, which I understand is a roguelike based on Stephen Donald's "Thomas Covenant" series but I otherwise know nothing about.