Before you ask, this is a very long game. It will probably take me a several months at this pace to complete, so settle in for the long haul. Good things come to those who wait...
Time for dungeon number two!
But first, some unfinished business. As we approach the temple, a gang of angry goblins attempt to ambush us on the bridge leading there. Dumb idea. The outside of the temple is guarded by more goblins...and a few evil mage apprentices. Said mage apprentices are squishy, and die fast.
This is the Abandoned Temple of Baa. The info I gathered using my psychic powers says the cultists were going to unleash a curse of vermin upon the town of New Sorpigal. The curse backfired, and the vermin took over this temple. Now, we plunge headlong into the fray.
And when I say "headlong into the fray", I mean we walk in the front door and get giant bats trying to bite our faces off. (At least they aren't leechbats...) They die fast.
Now we are free to take in the room, which actually looks kind of cool. Stained glass windows, darkened by grime, let a little light into a stone room. Oddly, the fireplace in here still has a flame lit in it...apparently bats discovered fire. (If you get the reference, you are a) a complete literary nerd, and b) deserving of a virtual cookie.)
A hallway leads forward before coming to a four-way crossing. After taking out a few more bats, we can go left or right, or straight ahead. Let's take out the sides before we go straight. Each side has a door, with presumably something nasty behind it. Of course, we have an ace in the hole...
Ring of Fire time! We open the way to the right and let loose our wrath on...giant cobras. Great. Being giant cobras, they naturally poison Cate. We kill them off, then cure the poison before I can look to tell you the negative effects of it. Go me.
This room is also nice, but more important, there's a chest in the corner. Inside is...the lost candelabra. Yes, it was that easy. Sheesh.
To the left path, which leads to another room and more cobras. This time, Toblerone gets poisoned. This time, I check to determine what the effects of poison are. They are pretty much the same as disease. Huaryu then casts cure poison on Toblerone...but I waited too long, and the spell won't work. You can only cure conditions like poison a certain duration after they are applied. Right now, with our lower skill levels, that duration is very short.
Good thing I have potions to do the work! So Toblerone is unpoisoned. Unlike the right room, the left room has a door leading onward. It leads to a corridor that forks into two small rooms. In these rooms...well, well, looks like that man from New Sorpigal was right. There are giant spiders. They die fast, and despite having equal ability to poison me as the cobras, they do not.
And now for a potion brewing break! Take one orange potion (I found in a chest, but can be made by mixing red and yellow potions together), mix it with a red potion, and we get a potion of Heroism! But wait, there's more! Mix yet another red potion with the heroism potion, and we get...'raises hands above head'...a Essence of Might!
The Essence of Might permanently increases a character's Might by 15, and reduces their Intellect by 5. There are several other essences like this in the game that work similarly, and we'll cover how to make each as we go. Each type of essence can only be used once per character (you can drink a second one, but it will have no effect). This time, we make Toblerone a mighty man, but he loses a little Intellect...not that it matters for him.
Now for the straight path, and it looks like they ran out of interesting looking rooms to use. The remainder of this place seems to be giant winding natural caverns...some temple.
Killing bats and spiders as we go, we come to a large cavern...where we are introduced to a spell trap. Spell traps, either set to go off at regular intervals or when you trigger something, cast various damaging spells. This trap works like the Air Magic spell known as Sparks (a spell we don't have yet). The trap shoots sparks everywhere in a rough circle around a chest, including one spark that always lands on top of the chest. The actual spells just shoots the sparks in front of you. In both cases, after a short period, the sparks explode and do Electric damage.
The key here is to time your approach to the chest so you don't get hit. We do so, and loot it.
We go to the next room, which is full of more spiders, cobras, and bats. We kill them off, but discover that, like their real world counterparts, bats carry plenty of diseases. Poor Toblerone...
An exploration of a side chamber off of this one reveals...the missing little girl, Angela Dawson! Seeing as we are weakened by our ordeals so far, and have two of our quests here effectively complete, it's time to leave...for now.
