VikingLegion
Explorer
The game calls them gryphons in the "attack" screen, but the in-battle text refers to them as griffons.
D&D General Demetrios1453 Plays the Gold Box Games
- Thread starter Demetrios1453
- Start date
Demetrios1453
Legend
Curse of the Azure Bonds (Part 39): The Cave of the Beholder (Part 4), The Cave of the Beholder completed!
We buff up before going into the room for the upcoming fight.
Soon we have all our buffs up and are ready to go.
We enter the room.
Not a real surprise there.
Everyone ages due to the haste spell. No one besides Baroness Bella cares.
The beholder is of course our big issue. Everyone else, even the medusa, can easily be taken out once we start throwing fireballs. But since the game can't adequately represent the anti-magic cone from the beholder's main eye, it's just given 99% magic resistance overall, so our spells will be useless against it. It will need to be taken down by brute force, and as quickly as possible.
Our friend the medusa is hiding out in the back. Hopefully she'll be ashes before she can get off her gaze attack.
Baroness Bella, with doubled attacks, quickly mows down the minotaur in front of her, and starts moves towards the beholder.
Then... she turns around and moves away, allowing the beholder to get a free melee attack as she does.
(The beholder doesn't look like it's attacking, more like it's stoned lol)
Why would she do this? Well, in these games, if a creature makes what would now be known as an opportunity attack, it forgoes any special attacks in the round. So, in order to shut down the eye attacks, Baroness Bella will take a bit of damage. It's an advantageous exchange, by far.
And she really doesn't take that much damage doing so.
Meanwhile, my magic users start their turns. Time to wipe out those minotaurs and the medusa, so we can concentrate on the beholder!
First Brin starts casting...
Then Bragir...
Brin damages them...
And Bragir's fireball starts taking the wounded ones down...
Including the medusa. No one is getting petrified today... well, unless the beholder causes something unfortunate to happen...
My melee, with all their extra attacks from haste, gang up on the beholder, and it drops surprisingly quickly. It doesn't even get off its normal attack, so Baroness Bella didn't even have to provoke the opportunity attack earlier!
So it's just mop-up time on the remaining, mostly badly hurt, minotaurs...
And soon enough, Brother Baltor takes the last one down.
Some very nice XP...
Some gems and jewelry...
And a lot of items that are inferior to what we have, and, for the most part, too heavy to pack away. We take a few light magical items here and there
And that's our third and final quest item. If we want to, once we are out of here, we could continue right to the end game area (but - spoiler - we won't).
We have to get out of the cave system first, though; and before we even move, we have the misfortune of having a patrol drop by.
Ugh, a good amount of magic-using types here.
The good news is that many of our buffs, including - thankfully - haste, are still active.
Worryingly, a couple of the magic users start to cast spells. Thankfully, my magic users start their spellcasting before anything too dangerous occurs.
Both get off their spells...
That's always a good thing to see! That likely was a hold person, which could have been disastrous!
(Also, one of the wizard did get a spell off, which was a fire shield of the warm variety. While very helpful against melee attacks, it also makes you vulnerable to fire spells, causing double damage. The poor guy took 78 points of damage and basically exploded. It's a pity I didn't get a screenshot of it).
At this point, most of the foes have been thoroughly roasted or been sliced up by my hasted melee.
The last magic using foe goes down...
And it's just clean-up work after that.
The XP and treasure are nothing exciting, similar to the other patrols we've encountered. A few small, light magical items are all we take.
So, we've defeated the beholder and its minions, grabbed the quest item that we needed, and had one of our bonds removed. Now we just need to get out of here!
We leave the beholder's room and head south along the hallway outside. A short distance away, we suddenly have company!
Happily, we still have a few remaining buffs (and, as you can see, Bant's taken considerable damage, although not enough to put him in danger yet)
We'll need to take out those priests in the back, since the minotaurs won't be too much of a problem.
Bragir uses his last fireball.
And they are all quickly in poor shape.
We concentrate on the priests, who go quickly, and then take the remainder of the minotaurs down.
Again, nothing terribly exciting with XP or treasure.
We continue along the corridor, and before too long, another group of monsters attack!
Wonderful. They have a dark elf lord with them. Well, we'll just have to grind him down after taking out the manticores. And of course the priest is not a welcome sight either, although there is only one of them, thankfully.
Brin uses her last fireball...
41 points! That's a nice one Brin!
Out of fireballs, Brandir goes a different route...
He shoots along the wall, and takes down a couple of manticores. Even though the priest makes his save, it doesn't help him in the end...
Brin follows up with an ice storm to take out the few remaining manticores...
So it's just us against the dark elf lord.
We just slowly grind him down...
Until the battle is over.
Weirdly, there's no treasure at all, even from the drow or priest!
This was the last of the set encounters, and it seems that we've reached the maximum number of random encounters as well. The rest of the journey to the exit is, thankfully, uneventful. Baroness Bella and Bant have taken a bit of a beating, and most of our useful combat spells have been exhausted.
We reach the exit.
And find a familiar face!
Thanks for the vote of confidence.
Oh, that's right, we've been dragging Dimswart around with us this whole time. Hopefully Elminster won't be too harsh on him.
These Nacacia/Gharri vignettes are just getting weird now.
Like several other locations, we won't be able to re-enter Zhentil Keep. It's weird how this game, and this game only, has this feature.
In any case, this section of the game is completed! We could just go straight to the Standing Stone and then Myth Drannor to complete the game, but we have a bit of exploring to do, mainly in order to gain more XP and equipment for the final battle. So, we'll be heading off to Dagger Falls in the northwestern portion of the map next time!
Map of the Cave of the Beholder:
We buff up before going into the room for the upcoming fight.
Soon we have all our buffs up and are ready to go.
We enter the room.
Not a real surprise there.
Everyone ages due to the haste spell. No one besides Baroness Bella cares.
The beholder is of course our big issue. Everyone else, even the medusa, can easily be taken out once we start throwing fireballs. But since the game can't adequately represent the anti-magic cone from the beholder's main eye, it's just given 99% magic resistance overall, so our spells will be useless against it. It will need to be taken down by brute force, and as quickly as possible.
Our friend the medusa is hiding out in the back. Hopefully she'll be ashes before she can get off her gaze attack.
Baroness Bella, with doubled attacks, quickly mows down the minotaur in front of her, and starts moves towards the beholder.
Then... she turns around and moves away, allowing the beholder to get a free melee attack as she does.
(The beholder doesn't look like it's attacking, more like it's stoned lol)
Why would she do this? Well, in these games, if a creature makes what would now be known as an opportunity attack, it forgoes any special attacks in the round. So, in order to shut down the eye attacks, Baroness Bella will take a bit of damage. It's an advantageous exchange, by far.
And she really doesn't take that much damage doing so.
Meanwhile, my magic users start their turns. Time to wipe out those minotaurs and the medusa, so we can concentrate on the beholder!
First Brin starts casting...
Then Bragir...
Brin damages them...
And Bragir's fireball starts taking the wounded ones down...
Including the medusa. No one is getting petrified today... well, unless the beholder causes something unfortunate to happen...
My melee, with all their extra attacks from haste, gang up on the beholder, and it drops surprisingly quickly. It doesn't even get off its normal attack, so Baroness Bella didn't even have to provoke the opportunity attack earlier!
So it's just mop-up time on the remaining, mostly badly hurt, minotaurs...
And soon enough, Brother Baltor takes the last one down.
Some very nice XP...
Some gems and jewelry...
And a lot of items that are inferior to what we have, and, for the most part, too heavy to pack away. We take a few light magical items here and there
And that's our third and final quest item. If we want to, once we are out of here, we could continue right to the end game area (but - spoiler - we won't).
We have to get out of the cave system first, though; and before we even move, we have the misfortune of having a patrol drop by.
Ugh, a good amount of magic-using types here.
The good news is that many of our buffs, including - thankfully - haste, are still active.
Worryingly, a couple of the magic users start to cast spells. Thankfully, my magic users start their spellcasting before anything too dangerous occurs.
Both get off their spells...
That's always a good thing to see! That likely was a hold person, which could have been disastrous!
(Also, one of the wizard did get a spell off, which was a fire shield of the warm variety. While very helpful against melee attacks, it also makes you vulnerable to fire spells, causing double damage. The poor guy took 78 points of damage and basically exploded. It's a pity I didn't get a screenshot of it).
At this point, most of the foes have been thoroughly roasted or been sliced up by my hasted melee.
The last magic using foe goes down...
And it's just clean-up work after that.
The XP and treasure are nothing exciting, similar to the other patrols we've encountered. A few small, light magical items are all we take.
So, we've defeated the beholder and its minions, grabbed the quest item that we needed, and had one of our bonds removed. Now we just need to get out of here!
We leave the beholder's room and head south along the hallway outside. A short distance away, we suddenly have company!
Happily, we still have a few remaining buffs (and, as you can see, Bant's taken considerable damage, although not enough to put him in danger yet)
We'll need to take out those priests in the back, since the minotaurs won't be too much of a problem.
Bragir uses his last fireball.
And they are all quickly in poor shape.
We concentrate on the priests, who go quickly, and then take the remainder of the minotaurs down.
Again, nothing terribly exciting with XP or treasure.
We continue along the corridor, and before too long, another group of monsters attack!
Wonderful. They have a dark elf lord with them. Well, we'll just have to grind him down after taking out the manticores. And of course the priest is not a welcome sight either, although there is only one of them, thankfully.
Brin uses her last fireball...
41 points! That's a nice one Brin!
Out of fireballs, Brandir goes a different route...
He shoots along the wall, and takes down a couple of manticores. Even though the priest makes his save, it doesn't help him in the end...
Brin follows up with an ice storm to take out the few remaining manticores...
So it's just us against the dark elf lord.
We just slowly grind him down...
Until the battle is over.
Weirdly, there's no treasure at all, even from the drow or priest!
This was the last of the set encounters, and it seems that we've reached the maximum number of random encounters as well. The rest of the journey to the exit is, thankfully, uneventful. Baroness Bella and Bant have taken a bit of a beating, and most of our useful combat spells have been exhausted.
We reach the exit.
And find a familiar face!
Thanks for the vote of confidence.
Oh, that's right, we've been dragging Dimswart around with us this whole time. Hopefully Elminster won't be too harsh on him.
These Nacacia/Gharri vignettes are just getting weird now.
Like several other locations, we won't be able to re-enter Zhentil Keep. It's weird how this game, and this game only, has this feature.
In any case, this section of the game is completed! We could just go straight to the Standing Stone and then Myth Drannor to complete the game, but we have a bit of exploring to do, mainly in order to gain more XP and equipment for the final battle. So, we'll be heading off to Dagger Falls in the northwestern portion of the map next time!
Map of the Cave of the Beholder:
Last edited:
VikingLegion
Explorer
Neat trick with Bella tricking an "Attack of Opportunity" out the Beholder. Even though it didn't pay off, it's still fun to learn little tidbits of mechanics trivia like this. Thanks!
Demetrios1453
Legend
No. But that's coming up soon!
Last edited:
Demetrios1453
Legend
Curse of the Azure Bonds (Part 40): Dagger Falls and Oxam's Tower
Well, we have four of the five bonds removed, and have all three quest items in our possession. So now would seem to be the time to head towards the final boss location and end the game, right?
Well, no. Simply because right now all the characters are a level or two below the level limits for the game, and it's very helpful to go into the final fights as powerful as possible. CotAB is weird in this way, as it's almost impossible to not hit the level limits in PoR and SotSB (with it happening like 2/3 of the way in the latter, even with an NPC sucking up XP for most of the game); PoD's level limit of 40 is so high and almost unattainable that it really doesn't matter there. Luckily for us, the game creators noticed this and added in a lot of extra material all over if you search around for it. And by far the most lucrative, and infamous, is around the town of Dagger Falls.
We decide to journey on, heading west, towards the town of Teshwave.
As we have our choice of transportation, we decide to go by boat along the river.
Pirate Attack!
Luckily there aren't too many of them. But annoyingly, they have a nice copse of trees in front of them, making getting to them, and aiming ranged attacks and spells at them, rather difficult.
I take a turn to move my characters forward, and then Bragir lets loose with a fireball (which will unfortunately be less effective since we're outdoors).
Mediocre damage, but still it will help wear them down.
My party makes its way around the trees in order to get to the foe.
And eventually the battle is won, with minimal damage to the party.
The XP is fairly minimal, and the group has nothing of interest on them.
(There was a brief message which stated that the pirate captain was impressed with our prowess in battle and that we could sail on his boat at any time, but it flashed by too fast without a "Hit Enter to continue" prompt).
That done, we complete the voyage to Teshwave.
From here, we'll travel further up the river to the west, to Dagger Falls.
We reach Dagger Falls without incident.
We aren't going to enter the city quite yet, but will instead choose "Search Area"
And this is why we were keeping small but valuable magic items. The magic shop in Zhentil Keep now being inaccessible to us, we'll be going here in the future to sell off items and pick up magic arrows.
Time to start selling!
Well, he's no fool, sadly.
And this is why we kept the bracers.
The darts, however, weren't really worth it.
With all that cleared out of our inventory, we now have quite a bit of money to spend!
Don't worry, that platinum will be going down quite quickly.
Honestly, we came here mainly for the arrows, but the bottom two scrolls actually have several spells that my magic-users don't have and can scribe into their spellbooks. So we'll buy those two so we can do so when we go back into town to rest. Beyond that, it's time to top my ranged off with magical arrows, as they used about half their previous stockpile in Zhentil Keep.
Afterwards, the amount of platinum has dropped considerably, but everyone is much happier with inventories filled with items they can actually use!
As we leave the magic shop, the proprietor has one further bit of information.
A beholder corps definitely sounds ominous! Back to town to rest before we continue onward to the tower.
We go to Dagger Falls and stay at the local inn. Time to heal up (although we didn't take much damage), memorize spells, and, most importantly, scribe those new spells!
Bragir can scribe four of the six spells on the two scrolls we bought. After he finishes with them, he hands them over to Brin, who can, happily, scribe the other two.
(Brin has several other scrolls that really don't have much in the way of helpful spells - we'll probably just sell those when we visit the magic shop just to clear them out of the inventory. To be honest, other than those with fireball and maybe dispel magic, there's not really much reason to hold onto scrolls)
With all the scribing done, we head out of town and "Search Area" again, choosing not to go to the magic shop.
This area has two sections, Oxam's Tower and the Mulmaster Beholder Corps dungeon below. We'll be clearing out the tower portion first.
We'll go through the door straight ahead and then through the door on the left.
We search, but the results are disappointing.
Meh, that's unexciting. Stymied here, we reverse course and head through the door to the right in the foyer.
We search again, and find a bit of change.
I mean, it's better than dust, but not by much.
We go through the door to the left.
We decide to not go up the stairs at the moment - there's one encounter we want to clear out first before coming back here and heading up.
So we head to the left and into the next room.
Only seven of them, so it won't be a tough fight at all.
Bragir prepares to damage as many as possible, as my melee run down to meet them.
While not outright killing them, those that failed their saves (most of them) can now be picked off by arrows and killed easily. My melee rapidly deal with the remainder.
They give decent XP, but no upgrades for treasure (and all their magic items are bulky, so we just leave them).
Through the door on the far side of the room lies the dungeon leading to the Mulmaster Beholder Corps. We won't be heading that way quite yet, so we return to the stairs and head up.
We reach the second floor.
We go and explore the second doorway on the left. We quickly find a bit of treasure.
There's a small amount of coin again, and 10 arrows that turn out to be +2.
Without much more on this floor, we head through the door on the right of the hall and head up to level 3.
We reach level 3, only to find that the tower's owner (presumably the eponymous Oxam) has noticed our trespassing, and means to do something about it!
(I cut it off too quickly, the end is "...with my pets.")
Unfortunately for him, Oxam's pets aren't terribly threatening.
Seven otyughs won't even cause us to break a sweat, and go down as quickly as you'd think, causing minimal damage. And who would keep otyughs as pets anyway?
They give fairly low XP, and no treasure at all.
Having dealt with that "threat", we head up to the next floor.
Before we can do much, more of Oxam's pets attack!
Just two maticores?
This goes even more quickly than the otyugh fight.
A fat 263 XP and no treasure at all for that.
As we head up, the tower has been narrowing. The next level is just a single square with the steps in it, leading us to, finally, the topmost level of the tower.
This is definitely more interesting than the previous fights, given that we have a cleric sitting in the back. As we're jammed up into what on the map would be a single square, there's basically no room to maneuver, and, more importantly, it's far too cramped to throw any fireballs without hitting members of the party. But still, we need to damage that high priest. Thankfully, we have the perfect tool for that...
Bragir and Brin will just pepper him with magic missiles with Buffy hitting with normal arrows. Meanwhile, my melee will just hack their way through the fighters and otyughs.
As a result, he's just sitting back there, unable to cast spells, or able to move forward to get into melee. After the third magic missile, he goes down.
After that, it's just clean-up work on the fighters and otyughs, and the battle is over.
This time, we get much nicer XP and treasure!
While most of the treasure was the usual stuff that we no longer pick up, there were four random items at the end of the list. Baroness Bella picks them up and examines them.
Unfortunately, magical scale mail isn't particularly helpful, and a magical jo stick is basically useless. We'll just keep them to sell in the store shortly as we head out to rest before tackling the caves below. However, healing potions are always nice, and we'll hand the scroll over to the magic users to see if it's of any use.
But, far more importantly, we gained enough XP for three characters to level up!
Part of my frustration with the low XP amounts in this section was due to the fact that they were so close to leveling. Well, at least now they are good to go!
Buffy levels as fighter.
But even better, both Brandir and Brin level in both fighter and magic user! More spells, baby!
With the new levels, the party is looking pretty good!
With that, we head back down out of the tower and to Dagger Falls, to rest up and memorize spells. And we are definitely going to need them, as next we head down into the caverns below the tower and confront the infamous Mulmaster Beholder Corps!
(Map of Oxam's Tower)
Well, we have four of the five bonds removed, and have all three quest items in our possession. So now would seem to be the time to head towards the final boss location and end the game, right?
Well, no. Simply because right now all the characters are a level or two below the level limits for the game, and it's very helpful to go into the final fights as powerful as possible. CotAB is weird in this way, as it's almost impossible to not hit the level limits in PoR and SotSB (with it happening like 2/3 of the way in the latter, even with an NPC sucking up XP for most of the game); PoD's level limit of 40 is so high and almost unattainable that it really doesn't matter there. Luckily for us, the game creators noticed this and added in a lot of extra material all over if you search around for it. And by far the most lucrative, and infamous, is around the town of Dagger Falls.
We decide to journey on, heading west, towards the town of Teshwave.
As we have our choice of transportation, we decide to go by boat along the river.
Pirate Attack!
Luckily there aren't too many of them. But annoyingly, they have a nice copse of trees in front of them, making getting to them, and aiming ranged attacks and spells at them, rather difficult.
I take a turn to move my characters forward, and then Bragir lets loose with a fireball (which will unfortunately be less effective since we're outdoors).
Mediocre damage, but still it will help wear them down.
My party makes its way around the trees in order to get to the foe.
And eventually the battle is won, with minimal damage to the party.
The XP is fairly minimal, and the group has nothing of interest on them.
(There was a brief message which stated that the pirate captain was impressed with our prowess in battle and that we could sail on his boat at any time, but it flashed by too fast without a "Hit Enter to continue" prompt).
That done, we complete the voyage to Teshwave.
From here, we'll travel further up the river to the west, to Dagger Falls.
We reach Dagger Falls without incident.
We aren't going to enter the city quite yet, but will instead choose "Search Area"
And this is why we were keeping small but valuable magic items. The magic shop in Zhentil Keep now being inaccessible to us, we'll be going here in the future to sell off items and pick up magic arrows.
Time to start selling!
Well, he's no fool, sadly.
And this is why we kept the bracers.
The darts, however, weren't really worth it.
With all that cleared out of our inventory, we now have quite a bit of money to spend!
Don't worry, that platinum will be going down quite quickly.
Honestly, we came here mainly for the arrows, but the bottom two scrolls actually have several spells that my magic-users don't have and can scribe into their spellbooks. So we'll buy those two so we can do so when we go back into town to rest. Beyond that, it's time to top my ranged off with magical arrows, as they used about half their previous stockpile in Zhentil Keep.
Afterwards, the amount of platinum has dropped considerably, but everyone is much happier with inventories filled with items they can actually use!
As we leave the magic shop, the proprietor has one further bit of information.
A beholder corps definitely sounds ominous! Back to town to rest before we continue onward to the tower.
We go to Dagger Falls and stay at the local inn. Time to heal up (although we didn't take much damage), memorize spells, and, most importantly, scribe those new spells!
Bragir can scribe four of the six spells on the two scrolls we bought. After he finishes with them, he hands them over to Brin, who can, happily, scribe the other two.
(Brin has several other scrolls that really don't have much in the way of helpful spells - we'll probably just sell those when we visit the magic shop just to clear them out of the inventory. To be honest, other than those with fireball and maybe dispel magic, there's not really much reason to hold onto scrolls)
With all the scribing done, we head out of town and "Search Area" again, choosing not to go to the magic shop.
This area has two sections, Oxam's Tower and the Mulmaster Beholder Corps dungeon below. We'll be clearing out the tower portion first.
We'll go through the door straight ahead and then through the door on the left.
We search, but the results are disappointing.
Meh, that's unexciting. Stymied here, we reverse course and head through the door to the right in the foyer.
We search again, and find a bit of change.
I mean, it's better than dust, but not by much.
We go through the door to the left.
We decide to not go up the stairs at the moment - there's one encounter we want to clear out first before coming back here and heading up.
So we head to the left and into the next room.
Only seven of them, so it won't be a tough fight at all.
Bragir prepares to damage as many as possible, as my melee run down to meet them.
While not outright killing them, those that failed their saves (most of them) can now be picked off by arrows and killed easily. My melee rapidly deal with the remainder.
They give decent XP, but no upgrades for treasure (and all their magic items are bulky, so we just leave them).
Through the door on the far side of the room lies the dungeon leading to the Mulmaster Beholder Corps. We won't be heading that way quite yet, so we return to the stairs and head up.
We reach the second floor.
We go and explore the second doorway on the left. We quickly find a bit of treasure.
There's a small amount of coin again, and 10 arrows that turn out to be +2.
Without much more on this floor, we head through the door on the right of the hall and head up to level 3.
We reach level 3, only to find that the tower's owner (presumably the eponymous Oxam) has noticed our trespassing, and means to do something about it!
(I cut it off too quickly, the end is "...with my pets.")
Unfortunately for him, Oxam's pets aren't terribly threatening.
Seven otyughs won't even cause us to break a sweat, and go down as quickly as you'd think, causing minimal damage. And who would keep otyughs as pets anyway?
They give fairly low XP, and no treasure at all.
Having dealt with that "threat", we head up to the next floor.
Before we can do much, more of Oxam's pets attack!
Just two maticores?
This goes even more quickly than the otyugh fight.
A fat 263 XP and no treasure at all for that.
As we head up, the tower has been narrowing. The next level is just a single square with the steps in it, leading us to, finally, the topmost level of the tower.
This is definitely more interesting than the previous fights, given that we have a cleric sitting in the back. As we're jammed up into what on the map would be a single square, there's basically no room to maneuver, and, more importantly, it's far too cramped to throw any fireballs without hitting members of the party. But still, we need to damage that high priest. Thankfully, we have the perfect tool for that...
Bragir and Brin will just pepper him with magic missiles with Buffy hitting with normal arrows. Meanwhile, my melee will just hack their way through the fighters and otyughs.
As a result, he's just sitting back there, unable to cast spells, or able to move forward to get into melee. After the third magic missile, he goes down.
After that, it's just clean-up work on the fighters and otyughs, and the battle is over.
This time, we get much nicer XP and treasure!
While most of the treasure was the usual stuff that we no longer pick up, there were four random items at the end of the list. Baroness Bella picks them up and examines them.
Unfortunately, magical scale mail isn't particularly helpful, and a magical jo stick is basically useless. We'll just keep them to sell in the store shortly as we head out to rest before tackling the caves below. However, healing potions are always nice, and we'll hand the scroll over to the magic users to see if it's of any use.
But, far more importantly, we gained enough XP for three characters to level up!
Part of my frustration with the low XP amounts in this section was due to the fact that they were so close to leveling. Well, at least now they are good to go!
Buffy levels as fighter.
But even better, both Brandir and Brin level in both fighter and magic user! More spells, baby!
With the new levels, the party is looking pretty good!
With that, we head back down out of the tower and to Dagger Falls, to rest up and memorize spells. And we are definitely going to need them, as next we head down into the caverns below the tower and confront the infamous Mulmaster Beholder Corps!
(Map of Oxam's Tower)
Last edited:
Demetrios1453
Legend
So, after a bit of playing around in the GBC editor, I've resolved the bug with enlarge, which has been depriving me of a very important buff - right now as cast by a level 10 magic user, it would increase the Strength of the target to 22 (which is the maximum for the spell) for 10 minutes/level. Magic user level 7 would have granted 19 Strength, with one additional Strength for each magic user level after that, so as you can see my melee characters have been a bit hamstrung throughout the entire game, especially in major battles. It's a known bug from importing from PoR characters to CotAB (the way they read 18/xx Strength is different between the two, causing the spell to bug out and just not affect imported characters in CotAB with extraordinary Strength), but the solution, after a bit research, was easy - use the GBC editor to lower Strength to 17 on the affected characters, and then back up to 18/00 again. Tested enlarge out again on the characters it wasn't working for before (everyone but Buffy, since as a halfling she didn't have extraordinary Strength), and it worked perfectly! As Bragir has lots of Level 1 spell slots available due to his ring of wizardry, it's easy to memorize the spell multiple times so as to buff before major fights!
Last edited:
Demetrios1453
Legend
Curse of the Azure Bonds (Part 41): The Mulmaster Beholder Corps (Part 1)
Having leveled up, we head back to town to recover and to memorize new spells.
We sell the extra scrolls and the useless items, as mentioned in the previous post.
Have fun with that jo stick, shopkeep...
And, back to the tower to explore the caverns and dungeons below.
We head through the previously-explored rooms on the first level, but right before we get to the door to the dungeons, we're surprised by monsters!
Oh. Two manticores. This goes as quickly as you would think.
And on into the caverns!
We head a bit forward, until suddenly...
Intrigued, we follow through the doorway to the left. There we turn again, and are confronted by a blank wall.
Or is it?
We investigate, and the wall is an illusion! We step through, and...
(Just to be pedantic, the proper plural is "medusae". Then again, when confronted by multiple medusae, you have much bigger things to worry about than grammar!)
Three medusae and five griffons. The griffons won't be a problem, but we need to bring the medusae down fast!
(In fact, this is the second run of this fight. A couple of unluckily low damage fireballs with lots of saves by the monsters meant that my party was suddenly becoming "Oops! All statues!" very quickly, so I had to reload and re-do the fight.)
Bragir rapidly loads up his stand-by...
And starts damaging this monstrous group.
(As mentioned above, Bragir's fireball in the aborted combat was much lower, and pretty much every creature other than one of the griffons made their saves.)
Brin follows suit...
...which quickly clears out every single remaining foe
(Bant just stares at the charred remains of the monsters that once stood in front of him)
We get some decent XP.
Some nice cash...
And a couple of random items.
The bastard sword is +1, so it's just being kept to be sold. Bragir looks at the scroll...
Both of the magic users have hold monsters, but an extra haste is at least potentially helpful.
With all that sorted, we head out of this side corridor, and march down the main hallway. We soon reach a room with many doors.
To the right, there's a couple of trapped rooms that we'll ignore. So instead, we'll head right to the door straight ahead of us.
("fighters", obviously, as I took the screenshot a moment too soon).
There's a decent number of them. Thankfully, there are no magic users among them.
Time to start clearing them out the old-fashioned way...
That rapidly removes most of them.
And soon they are all dead.
Some OK XP again.
Nothing exciting on them. Bant just picks up the magic quarrels for his crossbow.
We head back out to the large room, and head through the door to the southwest, into another corridor. As soon as we step through the door, however...
Four otyughs go down in basically a blink of an eye.
And they give only pretty minimal XP, with no treasure at all.
We continue down the corridor, and the explore through a passageway off to the right.
Well, that's unpleasant. Thankfully, whatever caused the red stains is no longer here. We head back out to the main corridor, and then go through the next doorway on the right.
Five this time, but that's still hardly a threat.
They do manage to get off a couple of tail spikes as my melee run across the room, but it's really very minor damage when one actually does manage to make a rare hit.
Once my melee is over there, they go down quickly.
They also have no treasure, so we leave the room and continue down the main corridor. We peek through a doorway on the left...
Oh dear, another medusa. At least with only one, we can focus our fire on her.
She has some griffon and ogre friends, but they won't be much of a threat.
Bragir shoots off his normal fireball...
Which takes down most of the ogres, and singes everyone else quite a bit.
Brother Baltor runs down towards the medusa and damages her still further, so Brin decides to use another spell on the foe to definitively take her down...
With the medusa down, the other creatures aren't much of a threat, especially since they are all badly injured.
And we quickly clear them out.
Decent XP again and money again...
And a random magic item!
About as useless as an item as we could get. Well, it will sell for a fairly decent amount.
We leave the medusa room and continue down the main corridor. After a bit, we see a door on the left, and go through...
Yikes! Except it's just a gas spore. If we leave it alone, nothing happens. (If we chose "Attack", we would have just taken meaningless damage).
We turn around and go through the doorway opposite this one. This leads to a long, long corridor. In fact, the game uses some trickery to make it much longer than it looks on the map.
(There's like 5 extra steps in there beyond what the map shows)
At the end of the corridor, just as we are about to go through the door, we're attacked again!
Three manticores go down quickly, unsurprisingly.
This group did have some treasure though, including some money and a magical shield (although not an upgrade, sadly)
We then go through the door. Beyond, a panicked man entreats us for help.
I don't think that was just a mere gas spore.
At this point, having completed the first section of the area, we decide to make camp and rest up.
We have now passed through the easy, preliminary areas of the dungeon. Beyond lies much tougher foes, including the legendary Mulmaster Beholder Corps itself!
Having leveled up, we head back to town to recover and to memorize new spells.
We sell the extra scrolls and the useless items, as mentioned in the previous post.
Have fun with that jo stick, shopkeep...
And, back to the tower to explore the caverns and dungeons below.
We head through the previously-explored rooms on the first level, but right before we get to the door to the dungeons, we're surprised by monsters!
Oh. Two manticores. This goes as quickly as you would think.
And on into the caverns!
We head a bit forward, until suddenly...
Intrigued, we follow through the doorway to the left. There we turn again, and are confronted by a blank wall.
Or is it?
We investigate, and the wall is an illusion! We step through, and...
(Just to be pedantic, the proper plural is "medusae". Then again, when confronted by multiple medusae, you have much bigger things to worry about than grammar!)
Three medusae and five griffons. The griffons won't be a problem, but we need to bring the medusae down fast!
(In fact, this is the second run of this fight. A couple of unluckily low damage fireballs with lots of saves by the monsters meant that my party was suddenly becoming "Oops! All statues!" very quickly, so I had to reload and re-do the fight.)
Bragir rapidly loads up his stand-by...
And starts damaging this monstrous group.
(As mentioned above, Bragir's fireball in the aborted combat was much lower, and pretty much every creature other than one of the griffons made their saves.)
Brin follows suit...
...which quickly clears out every single remaining foe
(Bant just stares at the charred remains of the monsters that once stood in front of him)
We get some decent XP.
Some nice cash...
And a couple of random items.
The bastard sword is +1, so it's just being kept to be sold. Bragir looks at the scroll...
Both of the magic users have hold monsters, but an extra haste is at least potentially helpful.
With all that sorted, we head out of this side corridor, and march down the main hallway. We soon reach a room with many doors.
To the right, there's a couple of trapped rooms that we'll ignore. So instead, we'll head right to the door straight ahead of us.
("fighters", obviously, as I took the screenshot a moment too soon).
There's a decent number of them. Thankfully, there are no magic users among them.
Time to start clearing them out the old-fashioned way...
That rapidly removes most of them.
And soon they are all dead.
Some OK XP again.
Nothing exciting on them. Bant just picks up the magic quarrels for his crossbow.
We head back out to the large room, and head through the door to the southwest, into another corridor. As soon as we step through the door, however...
Four otyughs go down in basically a blink of an eye.
And they give only pretty minimal XP, with no treasure at all.
We continue down the corridor, and the explore through a passageway off to the right.
Well, that's unpleasant. Thankfully, whatever caused the red stains is no longer here. We head back out to the main corridor, and then go through the next doorway on the right.
Five this time, but that's still hardly a threat.
They do manage to get off a couple of tail spikes as my melee run across the room, but it's really very minor damage when one actually does manage to make a rare hit.
Once my melee is over there, they go down quickly.
They also have no treasure, so we leave the room and continue down the main corridor. We peek through a doorway on the left...
Oh dear, another medusa. At least with only one, we can focus our fire on her.
She has some griffon and ogre friends, but they won't be much of a threat.
Bragir shoots off his normal fireball...
Which takes down most of the ogres, and singes everyone else quite a bit.
Brother Baltor runs down towards the medusa and damages her still further, so Brin decides to use another spell on the foe to definitively take her down...
With the medusa down, the other creatures aren't much of a threat, especially since they are all badly injured.
And we quickly clear them out.
Decent XP again and money again...
And a random magic item!
About as useless as an item as we could get. Well, it will sell for a fairly decent amount.
We leave the medusa room and continue down the main corridor. After a bit, we see a door on the left, and go through...
Yikes! Except it's just a gas spore. If we leave it alone, nothing happens. (If we chose "Attack", we would have just taken meaningless damage).
We turn around and go through the doorway opposite this one. This leads to a long, long corridor. In fact, the game uses some trickery to make it much longer than it looks on the map.
(There's like 5 extra steps in there beyond what the map shows)
At the end of the corridor, just as we are about to go through the door, we're attacked again!
Three manticores go down quickly, unsurprisingly.
This group did have some treasure though, including some money and a magical shield (although not an upgrade, sadly)
We then go through the door. Beyond, a panicked man entreats us for help.
I don't think that was just a mere gas spore.
At this point, having completed the first section of the area, we decide to make camp and rest up.
We have now passed through the easy, preliminary areas of the dungeon. Beyond lies much tougher foes, including the legendary Mulmaster Beholder Corps itself!
