Showing posts with label Mapped. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mapped. Show all posts

Saturday, February 7, 2026

Dog Star Adventure - 1979


There's a couple of names that crop up regularly within Softside magazine, a publication dedicated to the brand-new home computer industry in the United States. Initially focused on the Tandy TRS-80 (sold through Radioshack), it would later expand into producing issues for other devices like the Apple ][ and the IBM PC. In the very earliest issues, SoftSide feels like being part of a small club. We see a small group of enthusiastic programmers produce games and more, and we see the magazine help sell them through its software publishing arm, The Software Exchange.

One such name, Lance Micklus, is all over the listings. Much of his work was produced free for the reader—they just had to type the BASIC into their TRS-80 by hand, but his programs (particularly the games) were also prolific within the for-sale section.


One of Micklus' many listings for the TRS-80. The late 70s were truly a time unburdened by copyright concerns!

Dog Star Adventure first appears for sale within the April 1979 issue but just one month later appears with its full source code available for hand transcription. It's notable for appearing so soon after Scott Adams' Adventure and, given Micklus' varied other listings, shows some real skill at working with the limitations of the system. There are, however, several typos within the published code, so I am wary of investing any time attempting to get it transcribed and working. Instead, I'll be playing a Commodore PET version from a little later using a Commodore 64 emulator. The game was also re-released (I think in 1981) as DEATH PLANET The Dog Star Adventure, Other Venture #5 through Scott Adams' Adventure International.


"HAMBURGER" vs "HAMBERGER".


Starting and Mapping

Right. I've done several text adventures now, so I know that I shouldn't start the game by trying to win but instead by creating as complete and accurate a game map as possible. Dog Star Adventure does not have a huge world, but it manages to squeeze in two small maze-like areas: the research labs and the pipes. The latter stymies me a little until I realise there are two rooms with the same description! Other than that, there's not too much to note here. The game is similar in size to Adventureland but has a more thematically consistent world most likely helped by the fact that the setting was cribbed from elsewhere. There's treasures to collect and a few simple puzzles. I've had the two outliers spoilt. The "BIG MAC" (in the version I'm playing) use and the BLASTER hidden in the supply depot.

I actually quite like the supply depot puzzle. It doesn't seem completely unreasonable to have a location within a text adventure that has so many different things that they cannot be listed and so the player needs to identify them in advance. If there was some sort of partial inventory list found nearby, this would have felt fair. Unfortunately, a player going in blind would have needed a very lucky guess (or to have a cheeky look at the code) to pass this check.

I do find one unusual issue with the Commodore version I am playing. When I die, the game does not correctly clear my inventory. I only notice this when I go to pick up (and load) the blaster in the supply depot and am told I am carrying too much. I have to fully reset the emulator each time I lose. I do wonder if this would let me score higher than the maximum points by duplicating treasures, but I would rather move on to greener pastures.


Finishing Up

The random element to guards (stormtroopers) walking into rooms seriously hinders my attempts at collecting all the treasures in one legitimate run. I am pretty sure that the BLASTER is meant to be loaded when it is picked up rather than requiring the additional ammunition in the supply depot immediately. This would increase the number of guards I could handle from four to eight, giving me a bit more freedom to wander the ship. Given that there's two mandatory kills (one in the testing lab and the other in the strategic planning room), failing the game if three random encounters happen feels more than a little cruel. Luckily, the version I am playing (incorrectly?) retains my progress upon death; items remain in my inventory or where they have been dropped rather than returning to their original locations.

Only a single treasure remains and eventually I give up, resorting to looking up the answer online. The supply depot had a third item all along! I can use the cassette tape I find their to make a copy of the invasion plans.

And there we go:


This Commodore 64 version is clearly not happy, but at least I have the full 215 points.


Closing Thoughts

Dog Star Adventure is a solid example of a very early BASIC adventure game. It is not, however, that interesting to play. While it's a product of its time, a time in which hobbyists were breaking through and managing to sell their personal products to the public, I'm not happy with the setting. This is exacerbated by the Commodore version making every previously loose reference to Star Wars completely explicit. It even launches with an ASCII-art picture of Darth Vader! I didn't find a playable copy with a cursory search, but I might have reacted more positively to this game by playing the Adventure International version as I imagine that would be a little more sanitised.

The puzzles aren't too bad. Locking yourself out of victory by using the COMMUNICATOR to open the bay doors and leaving the flight deck a vacuum at the wrong point is neat. The world layout is perfectly reasonable. It's roughly the same size as a Scott Adams adventure, there's little that feels unfair, and no locations that I think are completely illogical. The only difficult-to-map section is a maze of pipes and even that fits within the design of the setting in a believable way.

Is it Worth Playing?
Not in the modern day, but the source code found within SoftSide is interesting. Certainly avoid the Commodore 64 port.
👎

Loot for the Hoard:
Secret attack plans, recorded on a cassette tape.

My Map:
(Click to view in full size)


Thursday, March 20, 2025

Secret Mission - 1979


There's a name change here. Adventure #3 was originally called Mission Impossible, but copyright concerns led to a rebranding. Secret Mission was branded as a much harder adventure than the previous two; not something for a newbie. This time round, the player is attempting to stop the detonation of a bomb connected to a nuclear reactor.

1979 appears to have been a busy time for Scott (and Alexis) Adams. By the end of the year, there would be eight games in the Adventure series, one of them written by a fan!


Playthrough

Unlike the previous two titles, I find myself in the thick of things. I can play a tape to receive my briefing, but I'm described an envelope that seems to be missing. This game seems to be more dynamic too; there's someone else here with me moving around. I map out as much of the complex as I can for now and find a series of locked doors that require some sort of authorisation

The other entity wandering around, the saboteur, seems to kill himself after a random length of time and reveals a number of items. Most of them I assume are red herrings. The only other thing I have access to is a chair and strange device, which I quickly blow myself up with. I find myself longing for the verbose descriptions in Zork to help work out what I am looking at.

Once I understand how to take a picture (PRESS RED to activate the camera and then PRESS WHITE to gain a visitors pass), there's only a couple more sticky parts where I struggle to work out the next step. I'm blown up when I correctly guess that I need to break the window but have not brought the (dead) saboteur and his window maintenance pass to safely allow me through it. I also take longer than I would have liked to realise that I need to "KICK" the door to the control room. I appreciated that it was my own mess blocking the door though!

Finally, I mistakenly bring a pail of heavy water into the reactor core, ruining the bucket. It seems like there was a warning not to do this if I'd taken the film to the projector room, but that would have taken no less time than just playing from the beginning again.


Closing Thoughts

While described as a harder game, I didn't think Secret Adventure was that bad. Like Pirate Adventure, I had a single goal to work towards, and I didn't feel like there were any impossible to guess puzzles, apart from possibly realising I needed to break the window.

Is it Worth Playing?
Yes, as a small self-contained puzzle.
👍

Loot for the Hoard:
The Anti-radiation Suit.

My Map:
(Click to view in full size)


Tuesday, March 18, 2025

Pirate Adventure - 1979


Hot on the heels of Adventureland, Scott Adams leveraged the game engine he had made to create several more titles in quick succession. The first of these, Pirate Adventure, initially appeared as part of a full-page advert for "Adventure!" in the February 1979 issue of Softside. This listing offered both Adventureland and Pirate Adventure together for $24.95 with the following text:

It's not easy to put together the timeline, but I get the impression that Adventureland was made in mid-1978 as a sort of hobby project, there was a gap, and then Pirate Adventure was made a few months later around the end of the year. Both adventures were then formally sold starting at roughly the same time, but Adventureland had been in circulation for a bit longer. [For my timeline, I am estimating this as Q4 1978 and Q1 1979 respectively, but I am very conscious of my lack of accuracy.]

Pirate Adventure was the work of both Adams and his then-wife Alexis. It's difficult to paint a picture of the exact division of labour due to the intervening years and conflicting statements, but I think it can be said with confidence that Alexis had a not inconsiderable part to play. It's refreshing to play something at this stage that wasn't either an evolution of Adventure or simply a representation of Dungeons and Dragons.


Starting Out

Pirate Adventure starts with a surprisingly mundane setting. I'm in a flat (in London specifically), but I appear to be some sort of cosplaying pirate aficionado. I've got rum, I've got crackers, and it doesn't take me long to find a book as well. The book starts me on my journey properly and I am pleased to see that it functions in exactly the same way that the magic carpet did in Adventureland. Activating it (by typing "SAY YOHO") teleports the player to the ledge outside the flat, unless that's where they are already at which point they are taken to the game proper. The use of the ledge outside the window reminds me of Peter Pan.

I find myself on a beach with a couple of bits of boat nearby. There's not a lot of options for where to go—these Scott Adams are small and efficient rather than sprawling and verbose—so I quickly map the area. It seems like the bulk of the game is managing to collect the several objects required to build a boat. There's a tiny maze which I am more than pleased to map as it doesn't require any overlapping lines, along with an awkward squeeze puzzle that reminds me of the mine in Zork.

While I manage to find the plans for the boat with relative ease, I don't even consider the chance that there's a second item hidden within the same treasure chest. This leaves me with a completed boat but no map. This is one of the only two times I need to find some help online.


The Endgame

With the ship complete, the pirate located and the map held, I can set sail for *Treasure* Island. One treasure requires some slightly clunky command guessing with the map and shovel in hand, while the other is in plain view but protected by deadly snakes. There's a humourous message displayed when I make the mistake of dropping the mongoose here. It turns out that the player character doesn't actually know what a mongoose is. Luckily, I had also brought the parrot along on the ship as it had not had a use in the game up to this point.

Locating more rum and piling back onto the ship takes me back to the first island where I can pick up the book (and safety sneakers) to return home. That's the full 100 points; only two treasures required.


Closing Thoughts

I prefered this to Adventureland. It feels a little more focused, something I attribute to the relatively narrow inspiration. I think it probably also helped that it was a collaborative process. The ship was a nice clear goal to work towards and the underground section all felt completely fair. There was more interactivity too: both the pirate and the parrot moved around the map, if a little erratically.

Is it Worth Playing?
Perhaps, as an entry-level title for an enthusiastic beginner.
🆗

Loot for the Hoard:
The Dubleons[sic], found in a monastery.

My Map:
(Click to view in full size)


Monday, March 10, 2025

Temple of Apshai Trilogy - 1984


If one were to draw out a Venn diagram with one circle including the earliest game programmers and the other circle including players of Dungeons and Dragons, one would find that they were pretty much entirely overlap. With its requirements for personal bookkeeping, many dice rolls, and its piles of reference tables, D&D practically begs for digital assistance. Combine this with the need for a Dungeon Master making it impossible to play alone and you have a pretty good explanation for why so many early coders built what became known as "CRPGs", first for fun and later for profit. In the earliest days, these manifested as programs for mainframe computers — like dnd in 1975—a similar story to how Zork was built. Over the next five years, companies spouted out of the woodwork. Many were founded by these earliest coders, and all were hoping to sell to this wave of potential customers.

Dunjonquest: Temple of Apshai was one of the earliest commercial endeavors for the genre, releasing for the TRS-80 home computer in 1979. It was heavily inspired by Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, which had been published just a few years before. Automated Systems (which later rebranded as Epyx) released numerous follow-up games within the same game engine and the whole library was ported to various home computers.


Getting Started

First, the elephant in the room. Epyx remastered the three Apshai games into a single package for the Commodore 64. This is what I am playing, because the original release is staggeringly slow to play and having easy access to lots of dungeons is hard to argue against.

The game was sold with an expansive manual which lays out how character creation works. A player can let the game generate them a character, which is random, or they can import one from outside. The manual even explicitly instructs the player that they can transfer their already-existing D&D character into the game. It is worth noting, however, that all adventurers are fighters. There are no magic spells in Apshai. Neither are there thief skills, although the player can locate secret doors and traps.

I rolled a random character until I was happy with the results, spent my starting money, and finished with the following statistics and equipment:

I had spent every single silver piece on this equipment (thanks to the ability to haggle letting me punch slightly above my purse's weight), so it was clear that I needed to get started with the dungeon delving.

Gameplay is a little different to other early CRPGs. Rather than choosing between moving a single tile or taking a different action such as attacking, the player chooses their facing and then a number of steps to take. The manual implies that the player can wear themself out if they run around all the time, especially with heavy loads, but in my own play I never dropped below 100% fatigue. The game is also only pseudo-turnbased. An enemy gets a single action per player action but gets a free turn if the player takes too long to do something.


Early Gameplay

©EPYX Inc., 1985

Jumping straight into the first level of the original dungeon, I quickly found that not leaving myself any silver for healing salves was risky. It took me a few trips to just the first few rooms to gain a level and find some elixirs before I felt confident going further.

My first impressions are positive. I enjoy the sounds (particularly the short pieces of music) and the gameplay loop—while slow by modern standards—is compelling, especially as I am mapping as I go. Combat and traps feel threatening enough that I don't want to sprint through the hallways; it's hard to know how much I'll be hurt by something until it is too late. I do not die, but sometimes I limp back to the entrance with my tail between my legs. I attribute this to the game using an armor class system: I either get hit or I don't.

By the time I have explored, mapped and looted the whole of the first floor, I have enough experience points to count as a 3rd-level Fighter (running on the assumption that the game uses AD&D progression), I've upgraded my equipment to have the best the shop has to offer, and I have a small pile of healing items banked. I've also found a +1 sword but it isn't clear what the base, unenchanted item would be. I struggle with this when I return to the game and have to type my character statistics back in.

Several More Levels

As I play more and more, it's hard to shake the feeling that fully mapping the first floor and purchasing all of the items from the innkeeper's shop is the biggest victory. In most D&D settings, a warrior getting full plate and a magic sword is kind of a Big Deal. They are likely a local hero at this point. The second floor is similar to the first and I particularly enjoy the descriptions of the prison space.

As the manual suggests that levels 3 and 4 are harder, I move from the original temple to the game's first expansion, the Upper Reaches. This may have been a mistake. The tone is lighter and there's little challenge to be found for my increasingly experienced character. I fly through the first level and, by the time I have finished the second map of the second game, I am very nearly level 6, and I have increased my Intelligence to 18.

Winding Down

I think that at this point I had realised that I was likely to run out of motivation before I ran out of dungeon. It was not that I was not enjoying the game, it was that I had a creeping feeling growing in me that I'd seen all it had to offer.

I completed the third floor of both the first and second games (here and here respectively), and then poked my head into the final level of the first game where I was killed by the very first enemy on screen. I elected to try the final level of the Upper Reaches and finished up with my character at level 7 with only two ability scores not at 18. This was where I decided to call it quits for now.

Thoughts

I found Temple of Apshai Trilogy to be highly compelling and surprisingly tense during my first few hours. The slow, thoughtful process of entering a new room, reading the description within the manual, dealing with any enemies and then searching for secrets created a gameplay loop that remained fun up until I felt like my character was no longer improving. Unfortunately, a lack of an outlet for the large amount of money a player accrues combined with very little personal progression turns the later floors into a mapping exercise. I found that the more I played, the quicker I went and the more diminished the exploration felt. I don't think this is specifically an Apshai problem, though. When I hit a proper flow while gaming, it's easy for me to lose the detail and get locked into just the basic mechanical aspects.

With regards to the mechanical aspects, the opaque nature of the game system both helps and hinders. When actively playing Dungeons & Dragons, I can see when I roll poorly; no matter what, there's an unavoidable element of metagaming. I know more than my character does. With this game, I can only see results, so the opposite feels true. I can't tell how close I was to a successful hit, nor can I see my armour class or any bonuses from magic items. It feels like my character knows more than me.

Is it Worth Playing?
Yes, but only the first level unless particularly interested in the style of gameplay.
👍

Loot for the Hoard:
144,891 silver pieces, and a magical lily with healing properties.


Wednesday, March 5, 2025

Temple of Apshai Trilogy - Benedic's Monastery Map

General Layout

The final dungeon to explore within the upper reaches is a monastery named after the friendliest NPC that can rescue the player when they are defeated. There are no unusual mechanics like one-way doors, but there is a large spiral staircase leading into the depths that I've represented on the map above as several small floors.

The bulk of this level is relatively peaceful—the monastery itself—with creatures that offer little challenge to the player by this point. Many of them are not even aggressive! We start in the main hall and can walk through the monks' accommodation to the west. Many of these small rooms contain traps and if the player is not careful, they may spawn Geb's Spirit—possibly the strongest creature in the game. Since these traps tend to summon additional enemies, the player can take advantage of the game only handling a single creature at a time. Treading on such a trap while another creature is onscreen causes nothing to happen.

The eastern region and the downstairs is a much less pleasant place. Undead roam the halls and seem able to reduce the player's attributes permanently. The level culminates in a fight with a vampire, something that is hinted within the description in the manual.


Notable Treasures

The main hall (Room 4 to be precise) contains another attribute-increasing item, the Empty Hand. This permanently raises the players Intuition by a point.

There's a few sources of elixirs within this level, but the easiest is in Room 19, just east of the entrance.

Possibly the best treasure yet, the Stale Bread can be found in Room 30. Retrieving this gives you a permanent point of Constitution.

Finally, the biggest source of silver on this floor may be found in the hidden Room 47. The money is probably useless at this point and it is guarded by a vampire. There's also a magic sword at the very bottom of the level in Room 60, but it isn't close to the entrance so repeatedly retrieving it is arduous.


Full Reference


Monday, March 3, 2025

Temple of Apshai Trilogy - Level 3

General Layout

Level three of the original dungeon is a mine filled with sources of gold and riddled with collapsing ceilings that do a surprising amount of damage. There is little else here, but it is a natural step up in difficulty from previous levels. It's particularly noticable here that the antmen are tougher than previous floors.


Notable Treasures

Every treasure in level 3 is cold hard currency. There are dozens of rooms filled with gold nuggets and gems, but by this point in the game, you will have no use for this much silver.

The heaviest haul from this level is found in Room 35. Two hundred gold nuggets in a pile! The ten thousand silver this is worth is really only good for keeping score, however.

Room 60 contains the other notable treasure pile: nearly twelve thousand silver's worth of gemstones. It is guarded by wraiths which may permanently drain the player's strength.


Full Reference


Sunday, March 2, 2025

Adventureland - 1978


I've taken a little break from playing (and mapping) the Temple of Apshai Trilogy to instead jump into a couple of much quicker games. First on the list is Adventureland, number one in the Adventure International series of games and arguably the earliest commercial text adventure. (Colossal Cave) Adventure and Zork were limited at the time to mainframe computers and would not have saleable versions until following years.

Adventureland is not viewed with much positivity through a modern lens, but at the time would have been very impressive, especially to those for whom the TRS-80 was their first experience using a computer for anything other than work. It's clear from its contemporary pricing that Adventureland was a premium product: SoftSide magazine (erroneously calling it "Adventure") charged $24.95 for a copy when it first appeared in their listings in their January 1979 issue. Very few other products within the issue cost more than $10 and no others crossed the twenty dollar threshold. In today's money (admittedly a flawed comparison), Adventureland would have cost around $110! [Edit: In the following month's issue, $24.95 would get you both Adventureland and Pirate Adventure together, so I'm inclined to think this might have been a mistake. Adventureland on its own was offered for $14.95.]

This naming confusion seems to have popped up from time to time. Dragon Magazine made a similar mistake in 1980.


Getting Started

Initially, I started playing Adventureland via the remake found on iFiction here. It became apparent, however, that this version does not match the original. I moved over to playing on an Apple ][ emulator instead for a more authentic experience.

It's worth noting that the game takes pains to tell me what it actually is. For most players there was no previous experience to draw from. I also enjoy the note about piracy. Bill Gates eat your heart out.


Playing Adventureland

Adventureland is far simpler than Zork I. It uses a two-word parser (actually telling the player off for starting to type a third word) and there are far fewer rooms, just 33 to Zork's 110. However, Adventureland fits into just 18kb of memory without any real trickery, so deserves some charity. The aim here is to gather thirteen treasures (indicated with asterisks), but the game doesn't tell you this until you reveal the underground by felling the tree in the swamp.

Rather than documenting a full playthrough, here are some thoughts I had while playing:

  • I was pleased I could climb two different trees, but was surprised that in the original version, "UP" does not work. Instead I had to "CLIMB TREE".
  • Adventureland is generous with signposts. Each of them gives a hint, usually about an object I am carrying or will end up carrying.
  • Death is gentle in this game. Once you work out how to leave Limbo, you are pretty difficult to kill.
  • I enjoy how darkness seems to work. You die if you travel in an illegal direction in the dark, but, if you have mapped effectively, you can travel around while blind and can even pick up items you cannot see!
  • Needing to rub the lamp twice to get all the available treasures is a little cruel.
  • After Zork, the maze was (thankfully) trivial.
  • There's a couple of spots I really struggled with guessing the correct verb. "SWIM"-ing out of the quicksand, "YELL"-ing at the bear and knowing to "DAM LAVA" in the chasm are probably the worst.
  • Finding the *CROWN* required a guide.
  • The few moments of pure luck weren't too bad. Being bitten by the chiggers forces the player to pick up the mud, which leads to needing to complete the bees/honey section. Putting the bees in the bottle was the worst example of this—there's a decent chance they will suffocate (and disappear) before getting them where the player needs to.
  • The Apple ][ can't backspace, so typos are ruinous.

In the end, victory:


Behind the Scenes

I think it's worth quickly seeing how a room is described in Adventureland. In a 1980 edition of SoftSide, a version of the BASIC source code was printed for readers to transcribe themselves. There were two files to make; first, a data file containing the content of the game and second, the adventure engine that will run it.

We can just about make out part of a room description: "BOTTOM OF A CHASM. ABOVE ME IS A PAIR OF LEDGES..." followd by six numbers. I originally thought these might be the six directions the player can normally move in (north, east, south, west, up and down), but it doesn't seem to line up. It does show how compact the code is though!

This early version of Adventureland is a little rough around the edges. There's instances of "a" when there should be "an", dropped punctuation and even a few spelling errors:


Closing Thoughts

Is it Worth Playing?
Maybe. It's impressive to see something so efficient, but the content hasn't aged well.
🆗

Loot for the Hoard:
The Golden Fish, found in the lake.

My Map:
(Click to view in full size)


Wednesday, February 19, 2025

Temple of Apshai Trilogy - Olias' Basement

General Layout

In addition to having some overlapping spaces, there's a large number of one-way doors within this level. The general geometry isn't too bad, however, as the player will generally either loop back round to the entrance or will use the alternative exit found in the northeast corner.

Olias the dwarf is one of the NPCs who may rescue the player upon their death and, since he takes all of your treasure for the privilege, we can assume that the wealth in his basement is either our own or has come from similarly unlucky adventurers. The room descriptions paint a much grander picture than simply a "basement". Olias seems to have his own castle!


Notable Treasures

Speaking of the wealth in his basement, Olias has a lot of treasure.

Normally, the large amount of treasure (more than five thousand silver's worth) found in Room 19 would be the haul for a whole dungeon floor. There's actually a second, similar reward in Room 27 to further pad out our now impossible-to-spend hoard.

Easily the best reward so far across the trilogy, Room 34 holds more that twice the aforementioned treasure along with a belt that permanently increases our Strength by one.


Full Reference


Temple of Apshai Trilogy - Merlis' Cottage Map

General Layout

This level is quite a lot more confusing. It's likely the first time that the player experiences a layout that doesn't follow conventional geometry and there are times where exiting a room and then trying to return will instead send you to a third location. I've represented this on the map with notes by the appropriate doorways. The only exception is room 19 which doesn't have a western wall at all; a trick of the layout that's particularly hard to visualise.

Other than this, the level is small. There's the cottage itself, which sort of has two versions that the player travels between, and a forest to the southwest (filled with bees and culminating in finding the hive).

It is worth noting that the enemies in this level give far more experience than both the Innkeeper's Garden and the first two floors of the original Temple of Apshai. I found it trivial to fight my way to what I'd assume was character level 6 (following AD&D rules) by running through the cottage a few times.


Notable Treasures

There's a source of elixirs (honey from the hive) found in the very southeastern corner of the map.

Room 6 holds the best treasure in pure coinage: a chest containing gold worth 1000 silver pieces.

However, by far and away the most exciting loot here is found in the well-hidden Room 19. It's a magic wand with no material value, but collecting it permanently gives the player a single point of Intelligence.

It is trivial for the player to loop through the cottage repeatedly picking up the wand and the chest of coins. During my playthrough, I did this until I had increased my Intelligence to a total of 18.


Full Reference


Monday, February 17, 2025

Temple of Apshai Trilogy - The Innkeeper's Backyard Map

General Layout

The first level found in the Upper Reaches expansion is a far more relaxed affair. Rather than delving into an underground maze, the player is tasked with tidying up the innkeeper's land. The player has a lot more opportunity here to talk to creatures rather than resorting to violence. In fact, getting carried away can lead one to slay the innkeeper's wife!

The majority of this level is outside, though there is a sizeable barn to the north and a shed to the southeast. There is a large open space made up of twenty-four "rooms" representing a field of berry bushes. All of these spaces hold the fruits as treasures, but some are covered in vicious thorns.

Interestingly, there are some aggressively growing tomatoes in a garden adjoining the main field. Some of these attack you, and some of them even have knives! Feels a lot like a certain 1979 movie...


Notable Treasures

There is very little to be found on this level. I think this makes the most natural starting point into the trilogy, but it's a little disappointing if the level is explored later on.

Room 41 (a cave in which a bandit hides) holds the only meaningful treasure, presumably the spoils of the bandit's... banditry.


Full Reference


Temple of Apshai Trilogy - Level 2 Map

General Layout

The second floor of the Temple of Apshai is again largely made of natural spaces that have been expanded and smoothed out. The initial rooms are plain, but the southwest corner of the map shows evidence of industry, including a jeweller's workshop and a forge. The floor is dominated by the bleak gaol and extensive torture chambers on the western side. We also have locations reminiscent of the first floor: underground natural water features give the impression that I am exploring a space that's a continuation of where I was previously.


Notable Treasures

The quality of treasures here has not improved meaningfully since the first floor. This matches up with the rough description in the instruction manual that the first two floors are suitable for adventurers of levels one to three. A player may gather a decent proportion of the valuable treasures by only exploring the western third of the floor.

Immediately upon entering the dungeon, the player can enter Room 9 to find some valuables. The manual hints that the skull ring found as part of the loot may have an additional effect, but it is too vague to see anything going on. If I were to guess, I'd take a stab that the ring protects the player from the stat-draining effect that attacks from some undead can have.

Room 13 contains another magic cloak. While I couldn't verify that this actually improves a player's defenses, it's worth grabbing as early as possible just in case it does.

Room 31 contains a magic sword. Again, it seems random whether this is a bonus or a curse, but at least this room is easily accessible from the entrance to repeatedly collect it.

An elixir can be found in Room 16, but it is probably easier to repeatedly enter level 1 in order to pick up the lilies.

There is also a magic talisman which the manual describes as able to "endow the holder with wondrous powers of mental perception." The effect is too subtle to see, but I assume it increases my chances of (s)earching for a trap or (e)xamining for a secret door. It is found in Room 24.


Full Reference