from TrueSite
@ the Shadowvale CSR
by Author
Scenario-specific Hints
1. Plants are containers in this scenario.
2. Not all doors are openable. For instance, all the northern doors to the shops in the Tower of Magi.
3. Contrary to what you may have heard, dying in a dream does not mean you die in real life. Usually.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Backstory
Requelle has been experimenting with the permeability of her dreams, and with a working theory she has of the possibilities to bring together the land of dreams and the land of the waking universe. She has become more and more obsessed the deeper she works her sorcery and experimentation. Her
experiences, which aren't dealt with in the scenario, have made her ever more committed to the success of her goal.
But the side effects are proving too difficult to conquer. What's more, she has almost completely lost control of her will-created dream world, and of the effects it is having on her colleagues and the whole Tower in general.
She has been so drained of strength that she has asked assistance from outsiders. You. The scenario explains the rest.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Beginning
Not much to say here. It just goes to show you how much you need your friends sometimes. One against six is a very unfair fight. (1)
The Tower of Magi, part I
Once you awaken from your nightmare, you'll find all your lost belongings quite safe in your quarters. You might have a bit of a headache, so you'll find some medicine in the dressers.
You'll find a note stuck in the door to see Requelle. Her office in the western area of the building. You can talk with most of the inhabitants on the way to her office if you want. Or you can talk to them at your leisure, it doesn't really matter. They should give you some idea of what has been going on with them and their surroundings. But none of them can explain why, except Arathron (partially). You need to see Requelle.
She'll explain the whole thing to you, and tell you she what she has in mind for you to do. She'll send you to Ophiel for some extra things you need to know. His dwelling is in the southeast part of the Tower.(2)
Ophiel will want to test your merit before he gives you all of his information. He, like Arathron, is not all peachy about the mess Requelle has gotten them all in, and is sceptical about her judgement of you as
capable mercenaries.
He'll ask you to run upstairs to the clock tower, and return to him with the correct time of day.
Clock Tower
Upstairs, you'll enter a maze of seemingly pointless passages. Listen for the clicks, and check your game log messages.(3)
When you return to Ophiel with the correct time, he'll be more trusting of you and give you free passage to a hidden, petrified grove to the north.
Caves around Tower of Magi (Southeast Exile)
In the grove, you'll encounter a whole huge party of creatures, some of which the students of the Tower reported to the Triad. You'll have to fight this fight. You need to look at the carving Ophiel talked about. It's important for later.
There are two other encounters, neither of which are required to win the game. One involves a bunch of xenophobic sliths, and the is other a silly little reference to an old Bogart film, Dead End. Good movie. And of course, there's a quick-out in the northwest part of the section leading to the rest of Exile--for the feeble.
The Tower of Magi, part II
After your done with what Requelle asked Ophiel to tell you about, you need to go back to her office to procede with the mission to the land of dreams. But as you enter her office again, she gets kidnapped by an unknown force right before your eyes. Afterwards, you'll find a hidden passage behind her desk which leads to her lab and quarters.
When you go in there, you'll see her whole dream lab setup, along with two small pools of water. And searching her quarters, you'll find a ledger on her desk, with a reference to a safe. Arathron and Ophiel are needed again.(4)
The dialog on the bed space will ask you if you want to sleep there. Two things are needed before you can successfully do this.(5)
There's also a huge mirror in the room directly south of her lab. This part helps you figure out what you have to do next.(5.5)
In the safe, you'll find the nectar that Requelle mentions in her notes. Don't bother using it in the caves around the Tower. You don't need to fly anywhere around there anyway, except to get to the little island on the lake, but in that case you should just use a flight spell. Don't have a flight spell? Then I'm sorry to say that your party is probably not powerful enough to finish the scenario anyway.
The Mists
In the first part of your dream, you'll materialize in a rather misty place. All you have to do in this part is fight your way through to the northeast end, and enter the portal you find there. The rest is just combat and treasure, with exception to a room in the middle of the dungeon with a door you cannot open.(6)
The fight in Evolution is a pick one door, and only one door, encounter. There's something different behind each one.
The Chasm of Devastation
Should be pretty obvious by the intro dialog what this is(7). But your party is still unaware that they are dreaming.
This is where you need the enhanced r-20, or flight. The nectar will let you fly five spaces, and only a measley sixty times. : ) This, like most of the rest of the scenario, is a one-way trip. As you proceed through the chasm, the spires will twice fall apart right before you land on the next one.
There are a total of four vending machines in the chasm(8), two special combat encounters, and another tree with a carving.(9)
You need to fly all the way to the eastern-most ledge of the chasm, where there will be another portal.
Realm of Eternal Nightmare
One of the tree carvings in the previous section should help you get through the Cavern of Flame with no difficulty.
The sign in the northwest part of the cavern is for help you might need.(10)
There are friendly people behind a checkerboard lava room in the middle part where you can buy weapons, spells, or training.
Go to the gug temple in the southeast side of the cavern. Help the ghoul, open the portcullis.(11)
You obviously need to get the conveyor in the corner of the pillar room to change direction in order to proceed.(12)
The southeast door in Walking Through Walls is optional. Just a weird fight, along with a room of "teases" that you can't reach. Along the no rthern wall of this section are three doors, two of which unopenable.(13) Go through the open one.
Now, you're still heading north. There are three more door opposite the three northern doors along Walking Through Walls. The middle one has the sign 'Enemies', the east one says 'Guards Guards', and the west one has no sign. One of these doors is a dead end trap, one leads to treasure, and the
third is the one that leads to last part of the dungeon.
The 'Guards Guards' room is another illusion. There are only six real doomguards in that room.(14) Get to the northern end and dispell the barrier. This leads to a room with a chest and six more doomguards. After you get the treasure(15), you have to backtrack.
The 'Enemies' room has the living statue's with no eyes, and the basilsks in the other cages that made them that way. You have to fight all of them. (I had originally made each group hostile toward each other as well as to you, but when the basilisks turned the living statues to stone I had to change
it. Even in a dream that made no sense.)
The shantak/almost-humans bedroom has a secret passage in the northeast corner. Take it.
This will put you in the Halls of Horror. The first door has quickfire behind it. The second door will let the quickfire out the other way as well.(16) The next door, with a sign that says 'Goods', is a mung demon room with four plants.(17) This room leads nowhere. Go west through the rest of the Halls of Horror, down the snakey path to the end. Go through the secret passage.
Now your in the Locks. Go through them using the combination.(18)
Sleep in the bed in the Gate of Deeper Slumber.(19)
Then, fight the last big battle with the dream-Phaleg, dream-Arathron, dream-Ophiel, and the Spirits of the land of dream. After the Spirit of Light dies, you can go through the west wall. Rescue Requelle (sorry, no kissing). Go back through the battle chamber--after you've collected your rewards, of course--through the northeast door, and catch the portal to leave the Realm.
Denouement
You'll wake up from your dream, still in Requelle's lab. If you have everything you should have(20), the Tower of Magi has throw a party in your honor. Once you step into the courtyard(21), the scenario will end.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hints footnotes
(1) You're dreaming.(a)
(2) Ophiel only lets people see him in his library with the approval of another Triad member. Makes him feel more important.(b)
(3) The time of day changes every 187 moves. Notice what's in the chests.(c) (Unfortunately, every time you go into the clock tower, the time resets. Couldn't work around this.)
(4) Arathron and Ophiel know the location and password of the safe.(d)
(5) You need what's in the safe, and you need to be remarkably (but not extremely) sedated to fall asleep there.(e)
(5.5) Get past the battle and you'll be viewing a scene in another dimension. From Requelle's earlier dialogue, you should already know what you're looking at, and how.(ì)
(6) The door won't open, but the room does have helpful things in it.(f)
(7) An image of a beautiful woman you have in your mind is attached to this land somehow.(g)
(8) A boot machine, a helmet machine, a shield machine, and a glove machine(h).
(9) It's near one of the combat encounters(i).
(10) There are chests hidden near there.(j)
(11) He's being sacrified on an evil altar. You help him, he helps you.(k)
(12) Using Troo Sight, you will find a lever behind a wall at the northwest corner of the room. You cannot get to it until the wall on the southern side of the lever becomes a hidden passage wall. Check all the pillars. The lever will change the direction of the conveyor.(l)
(13) The unopenable ones are ones that are locked.
(14) If you don't already know this, don't ever fight doomguards if you don't have to.(m)
(15) The treasure isn't in the chest. It's somewhere else in that room.(n)
(16) Remember, quickfire cannot go through secret passages.(o)
(17) The plants are searchable.(p)
(18) There are four Locks. Four digits. Count the number of E's in each 'PULL ME'(q)
(19) This clears the way through the portculli, so to speak.(r)
(20) Completing your mission requires that you rescue Requelle. Leave without her and you'll regret it.(s)
(21) She gives you time to do whatever you want. Or go wherever you want. You don't have to go to the courtyard right away.(t)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Solutions footnotes
(a) This battle is not winnable. Just go through the motions and eventually you'll wake up.
(b) Requelle will give you passage to his library. If you have been to the southeast part of the Tower before you have spoken with Requelle, there won't be a door by his plaque.
(c) Cast Magic Map every time you hear a click. Look at your map. This will show the magic clock embedded in the floor. It tells time in analog, starting with 9:00, and adds an hour and a half with each click, every 187 moves: 9:00, 10:30, 12:00, 1:30, 3:00, 4:30, 6:00, 7:30, 9:00 -- round and round and round. 187 moves is approximately 1/16 of a day, which is an hour and a half.
(d) Arathron and Ophiel know the location and password of the safe. Respectively. Neither knows both. Ask Arathron 'location'. Ask Ophiel 'password'. But only after you see the ledger, he won't tell before.
(ì) You're looking at Requelle's dream world through her own eyes. She's being carried through the sky by her unseen captors.
(e) Get the avian nectar from the safe, then sedate yourself with the remarkably ref reshing water.
(f) There's a secret passage in the cave wall in the wizards and bladesmen part of the mists. Then there's a secret passage in the north wall of the room.
(g) It's Requelle's dreamworld.
(h) The glove machine is behind a hidden passage in the southwest part of the chasm.
(i) It's through a hidden passage behind the fight with the almost-humans in the southeast part of the chasm.
(j) There's a hidden passage just to the northeast of the sign.
(k) Sanctify the altar. (Ritual of Santification spell). Use the remote to open the portcullis.
(l) The northeast pillar is a fake. Walk on it. This creates the hidden passage enabling access to the lever.
(m) Just go around them. There's room. Fighting them will put more in your way.
(n) Unlike the previous room, the doomguards around the chest aren't terrain tricks. Hit the 'g' key. You'll have some pretty good temporary shielding armor, like a shielding crystal but more powerful, but with only one charge each.
(o) Don't go through the door south of the quickfire. There's a secret passage west of the first door (southwest of the quickfire).
(p) Go north and walk through some more walls. Then go east, then south. The northeast plant has herbs in it. You can go around it on it's east side, then search the southeast plant, too. More herbs. Go back out the way you came.
(q) Try pulling the levers in the 2-4-1-1 sequence. If you're reading this you probably forgot about the carving in the petrified grove.
(r) The portcullis wall can be walked through after you wake. And the night gaunts can't follow you if you don't want to fight them.
(s) Just try to leave without her.
(t) You can take Arathron's treasure if you want. Everyone's at the ceremony, and they're being too loud to hear an alarm. Besides, they trust you now, right? Also, the portcullis in Arathron's herb cabinet is openable. Super-duper multi-purpose portcullis-opening remote control.