In Wizardry II we’re braving death and danger to find the Staff of Gnilda. In Ultima III we’re traversing the land far and wide to look for marks and cards in anticipation of the final showdown. Even in Maze Master, your mission is to make your way to the last level and slay the Balrog. What is your main objective in the Caverns of Zoarre? To find the Kinoben Cat! What in the hell is a Kinoben Cat you may ask and why are we looking for it? Errr….I don’t know. It certainly isn’t what I expected. Here is what you CAN expect with Caverns of Zoarre:
Quite a bit of mapping with paper and pencil! The dungeon levels are extensive and roughly 37 x 37 in size. Every single inch of the map is fair game because of a Melt Wall spell. You have to explore even the inaccessible areas. There are very few unused spaces among the entire five levels. Levels 3 and 4 were particularly difficult to map and thus time consuming. This is not a complaint. I love mapping these dungeons by hand.
There were trap doors that you might fall through to the level below you or teleporters which will place you in a different area of the same level.
On Level Four there many different rooms that contained altars. Most of the time, when I could, I donated all of my gold. In almost all cases nothing happened but one time I was awarded with an experience level. There were a couple of really cool gargantuan rooms that housed ancient dragons that you had to fight. They were guarding huge treasure piles of 14,000 gold coins. I slew them with a Death Spell.
On Level Five of the dungeon there were a few wishing wells. I would routinely, when able, throw all of my gold into the well. Nothing ever came of this.
You can also expect some solid gameplay. Each movement you make is a 10′ move which makes mapping a treat unlike the older Dunjonquest games where scale was always an issue. The spell system in the game was a lot of fun. There were a lot of spells and you had a lot of variety to choose from.
Near the end of the game I was 24th level, with 169 maximum hit points, and 1,250 magic points. I was already mentally making arrangements to purchase a small estate somewhere nice and to hire staff and retainers.
Now remember that in my previous posts I divulged that I was unable to find any kind of documentation. While you can press the ? key to help with the gameplay commands, I still never read any kind of background, nor did I know if there was an overall goal to the game. I was greatly enjoying myself and so I was content to continue mapping to see just how deep this dungeon ran.
It was on the fifth dungeon level that I never found any further stairs going down. On the western edge of the dungeon, I used my Melt Wall spell to access an inaccessible area and I found something called the Kinoben Cat. It was THE only inventory item I could actually pick up and it was added to my character sheet to show that I was carrying it. This seemed rather significant to me, so I attempted to cast Glyph of Recall to take myself back to the castle. The spell fizzled and the CAT was then described as glowing. Well…great. I had to trudge back through five levels, which wasn’t bad actually because I’d taken the time to map them all out. I knew where each of the stairways were. Once I made it safely out of the dungeon I was awarded with the following message:
..and then I was dropped to DOS.
I enjoyed the game and thought it was well done. It was better than some of the older commercial games I’ve played despite the fact that it was a shareware offering.
Next up on the docket is the Citadel of Chaos as I’m still working through some technical issues with Tyrann.
Until next time…