We now head to Snergle's Caverns, part two of this quest to bring down the usurper.
Located in the far wilderness, the caverns are crawling with more dwarves, plus the natural inhabitants of such a place...no, I'm not talking about dwarven women! Where did you get such ideas?
Specifically, bats. Not the leechbat kind, but the normal kind. Well, as normal as anything in this game gets, anyway. Same old chance to cause diseases, same old HP that will now be killed by us in one or two hits.
This dungeon has a unique feature that has to be discussed before we proceed. These are dwarves. Dwarves like to mine. Despite the fact that the last dungeon was called the Iron Mines, we found no evidence of any mining going on.
Here, in these caverns, it is different. Several untapped gold veins and gem deposits wait for us throughout. We can mine them, and get some extra gold coins, or gems. But be warned, cave-ins are a real threat.
Anyway, with that established, on to the dungeon itself! Which isn't much of one. It's almost completely linear, just a series of three large open caverns linked by narrow tunnels. No complex directions needed here.
The rooms contain crystals, which rarely give up additional gems. We have no luck, and get no gems.
Hey, no worries. The gold and gem veins are full of goodies, so we can get stuff from them, right? But we have no luck with the gem deposits, resulting in enough cave-ins to collapse the Bat-cave twice over.
The second large cavern has a switch in the floor, which opens a secret side passage with some odds and ends loot...and fossils! These fossils are enchanted. Touching one grants one character a permanent bonus to Magic Resistance, and the other does the same for Poison Resistance. Toblerone gets the Magic one, and Cate gets the Poison one.
Barrels abound, but there a few filled with black liquid. This is poisonous, so we don't drink it. The rest get used to enhance various stats. We note that a lot of them are Blue (Personality boost). Makes you wonder...
Finally, we come to the door to the final large chamber. Activating turn-based mode, we open the door...oh...that is a lot of dwarves. Time to retreat. We turn around and...oh...it's an ambush.
Boss Battle: Snergle
Time for a magic escape! Cate throws out the Town Portal spell, which sends us to the last major town we visited. Which happens to be Free Haven. Well, that stinks.
But this time, luck is with us, as the boats are running! We take the boat from Free Haven to Mist, and another from Mist back to Castle Ironfist.
Back to the dungeon! This time, we can hit these dwarves from the other side, and pull them back a few at a time. Once the ones in the hallway are cleared...wait, the hallway runs parallel to the chamber where a bunch of angry dwarves are. You know what that means...
After blowing all our spell points on Ring of Fire spam, we began to pull the dwarves out of the chamber, much the same way we did the hallway. A lot are still weak from the Ring spells, so we pummel them very easily. The rest...we just pummel easily.
After finishing off most of these dwarves, Snergle himself comes out to fight! But I've had enough of going toe-to-toe with this guy's flunkies. We back off and shoot him full of arrows. After claiming Snergle's trademark axe, we enter the chamber...another throne room...and kill the last of the dwarves.
A chest of nice loot contains a letter to Snergle, indicating they can't find King Rocklin anywhere. Heh. The throne itself has a switch, opening one final sealed door. It leads...to two more fossils. One gives a character a permanent +5 to Might. Go Toblerone!
The other teleports us back to the exit. You know what that means...
Snergle's Caverns complete!
