Archive for the ‘cornucopia’ Tag
I was closer to the end than expected.
I have finished the game, and my previous posts are needed to make sense of this one.
Before the grand finale, I wanted to tag something else that seems likely to have been an inspiration; not from Advanced D&D, but “Basic” D&D as published in 1977, also known as Holmes Basic.
Remember, Cornucopia starts out in a cottage in a “fungus forest”.
You find yourself in a strange forest of giant fungus growths, they create an eerie feeling. No particular direction seems to suggest itself to you here. There is a particularly huge specimen here, with what appears a dark opening in it.
I originally contextualized this in relation to Goblin Towers, the author’s previous game, with the notion it was a “ruined” version of that map, but I didn’t know the level of D&D connection at the time.
In Search of the Unknown was an extremely popular module, as it was B1, the first created for the Basic Set and was even packaged with it for a time. The actual fungi location in the dungeon crawl is just a single room, number 22 on the map, the Garden.
The floor is covered with a carpet of tufted molds that extends to all the walls and even onto parts of the ceiling, obscuring the rock surface. The molds appear in a rainbow assortment of colors, and they are mixed in their appearance, with splotches, clumps, swirls, and patches presenting a nightmarish combination of clashing colors. This is indeed a fuzzy fairyland of the most forbidding sort, although beautiful in its own mysterious way …
B1 was intended as a “beginner adventure” (not just beginner players, but beginner Dungeon Masters). The author, Mike Carr, explained for the Goodman Games reprint:
…I wracked my brain to come up with as many interesting and mysterious features as I could think of for what could be considered within the place, particularly the garden of giant fungi and the room of pools. That had to be done considering that the adventurers were going to be low-level characters, so nothing could be too deadly or too challenging to overcome — and that meant that there were limited options on the design side.
Mike Carr picked the fungus room for the cover as he felt would be “striking as well as exotic”. The art was done by David Trampier and David Sutherland III; specifically, Trampier did a version with characters that were deemed too cartoony (the art later showed up in The Polyhedron Issue #5, they almost look like something from The Smurfs) and Sutherland (art director at the time) re-did the characters in a more realistic style that matched the look of the Holmes Basic cover.
Even though the Cornucopia forest is outside, the prominence of the B1 imagery at the time makes me believe the two are connected. An old blog post at Grognardia from an author recalling that period discusses the imagery being “seared” into their imagination. There was revised art in 1981, but it too was done with fungus.
I had left off last time on being attacked by an ice devil and an ice warrior, and unable to win the battle. This leads directly to finding the Cornucopia (with one hiccup along the way as I had missed an item) so represents a climax with a denouement following (the treasures still need to all be arranged back at the cottage, and there’s one more thing that needs to be done in order to deliver the Horn of Plenty back to the gods).
Passing through the Hall of Regeneration whilst holding a mummified hand, rather spectacularly, causes it to grow back into a monster. Avoiding that fate allows you to reach the magic circle with a crystal key, but upon picking it up, you get attacked from the west by a ice devil and from the east by an ice warrior.
>GET KEY
Taken. As you lift the key an unseen panel lights up in the north wall. It says ‘UNAUTHORIZED ENTRY DETECTED GUARDS HAVE BEEN ALERTED’. As quickly as the sign appeared it disappears. You notice that two things have appeared to the east and west of you.
>W
You are at the west side of the magic hall. There is an exit to the west. In the centre of the hall is a huge magic circle. The north and south ends of the hall can be reached by going northeast and southeast. There is an ice warrior here, he is very menacing.
The ice devil guardian has followed you.
You receive a gash in the arm from the Ice warrior.
>KILL ICE WARRIOR WITH RUNE SWORD
The flat of your sword hits the ice warrior on the side knocking him over, it quickly regains its feet.
The Ice devil strikes you across the back as you attempt to run away. You get a numbing blow from the Ice warrior, you don’t feel too good.
>KILL ICE WARRIOR WITH RUNE SWORD
You strike at the ice warrior but it easily side steps.
You manage to dodge the Ice devil’s thrust. You stagger back under a hail of blows from the Ice warrior.
The variety of messages is quite good, and there are even some rare ones (once I slipped on my own blood, causing me to dodge a deadly attack). This feels like — and ends up being — the climactic battle of the game.
The “ice warrior” isn’t specifically a D&D monster, but Cotton may have been thinking of Frost Giants from the first edition of AD&D. Source.
The two monsters will follow wherever you go, so I figured quite quickly the environment mattered. Back at the door opened with the hand, you can jump back into the main underground world, so I figured there had to be some opportunity back there. (You can also use the transport box, but upon arrival at the mirror room, in another classy/frustrating touch, one of the guardians smashes the mirror instead of attacks you.)
I tried the warmth of the dragon, or even getting the dragon fire to kill one of the enemies rather than myself. I tried to see if the toxic tree would help. I tried fighting in the dark. (I found out that the “grue” stayed down in the troll area, so you can safely walk around in the dark! You get followed by the devil and warrior but they don’t attack until the lights come on again.)
I was making things too hard on myself: the key was the Hall of Regeneration. I think it occurred to me early but I thought the picture meant the devil and warrior would receive regeneration, not me.
You are in a hall the walls of which are covered in murals. The theme of the murals seems to be that of severely wounded indeed fatally wounded people recovering in a miraculous manner. The murals also contain pictures of the corpses of many hideous beings, these seem to be an interlinked part of the story. There are doorways to the south, west and northeast.
The ice devil guardian has followed you. The ice warrior guardian has followed you.
>KILL ICE DEVIL WITH RUNE SWORD
You feel so full of vitality and energy here that with a single swipe you dispatch the ice devil. The ice devil falls rigidly to the ground and disappears in a violent blue flash.
The Ice warrior guardian takes a mighty swing at you, the blow seems to have had no effect at all.
>KILL ICE WARRIOR WITH RUNE SWORD
You feel so full of vitality and energy here that with a single swipe you dispatch the ice warrior. The ice warrior falls rigidly to the ground and disappears in a violent blue flash.
Can’t regenerate if you get vaporized in one shot. (taps forehead)
With the crystal key in hand, I was almost ready to claim to the cornucopia, but I still was missing one thing: the ruby rod. This ended up being an unglamorous use of EXAMINE ALL everywhere (again) although with a particular emphasis on the multiverse worlds.
High Priests Chamber
In the centre of the east wall is a small stone alcove. A large old writing desk stands in one corner, the left hand side of the desk contains a drawer.
>EXAMINE ALL
alcove : In the centre of the east wall is a small stone alcove. Having moved the small idol you notice that the alcove has a false floor.
writing desk : The writing desk is large and ornate made from carved oak, it must have taken two men to move it. The writing desk has seen much use from the ink blots and doodles on its surface, all of which are quite unintelligible. The left hand side of the desk contains a small drawer.
drawer : The drawer is closed.
false floor : Examining the false floor reveals that a ruby rod is hidden beneath it.
Whoops! That was being hidden by a small gold idol sitting on top of it before (I think EXAMINE ALL would’ve worked anyway). With the ruby rod, the opal rod (from the pixie forest), the diamond rod (from the magi area), it was now time to go back to the three holes, and use the combination ROD.
>I
You are carrying:- transport box; battery lamp; spell book; crystal key; opal rod; diamond rod; ruby rod.
>PUT RUBY ROD IN TOP HOLE
Ok.
>PUT OPAL ROD IN MIDDLE HOLE
Ok.
>PUT DIAMOND ROD IN BOTTOM HOLE
Ok. As the last rod goes in an opening quietly appears at the south end of the passage.
This leads to a “Centre” with a crystal case.
You are in a square room made entirely from crystal. The crystal seems to be pulsating with a life of its own. In the centre of the room is a large crystal case, apparently extruded from the floor itself.
>EXAMINE ALL
crystal case : In the centre of the room is a large crystal case, apparently extruded from the floor itself. The crystal case is closed and despite being crystalline, its contents, if any, cannot be seen.
With the crystal key via the guardians, the case can be unlocked revealing the horn of plenty!
>OPEN CRYSTAL CASE
You find the crystal case locked but discover that the crystal key unlocks it.
>EXAMINE HORN
Cornucopia, the fabled horn of plenty, is something of a disappointment – it appears much like any other ram’s horn except for being much larger. How it is used though is not at all apparent and I suspect attempting to use it would not help you to live to a ripe old age.
Now, taking the corncuopia isn’t an instant win, and taking it back to the treasure storage place (the cottage) doesn’t help either. I had PRAY tagged from back when I made my verb list, but with the item in hand:
Nothing happens.
This can be worked out by process of elimination, as there’s only one multiverse world that hasn’t been used yet: the swirling mist with nothing else.
>ENTER MIRROR
You are in a swirling grey mist, all directions are the same.
>PRAY
You are in a small but luxurious room, well it would be small if you were a giant. The room has no obvious exits, but then Gods don’t really need doorways.
>WAIT
Time passes……
>I
You are carrying:- transport box; battery lamp; brown sack; horn of plenty.
All of a sudden amidst a burst of golden light one of the Gods who originally sent you on this mission appears. He sees you have the Horn and takes it. The God speaks ‘You have performed your task adequately and so we pardon you for your crimes against our Temple this time.’ With that you find yourself transported home with all the treasures you managed to salvage, you did manage to salvage some! didn’t you? You have scored a total of 670 out of 740 in 1284 moves giving you a rating of Pardoned.
I turned out to be only short one puzzle (and corresponding treasures). It turned out not to be:
- The gold coins in the fountain — those don’t count as a treasure
- The gems at the acid tree — those also don’t count as a treasure
- The compost heap, which is just a compost heap
- Anything to do with the pixie (from the walkthrough after I finished, I found out that the pixie is supposed to steal things unless you appease it with the whistle, but the code is broken)
Fake-out treasure feels more aligned to D&D than normal adventure games. The D&D module In Search of the Unknown includes a “Wizard’s Annex” with illusionary treasure.
No trap, I assume because it’s a beginner module.
The true missing puzzle in Cornucopia was back at the mould near the sleeping demon and the mirror.
You are in a small closet which is very unwholesome with rotting clothes everywhere, basically it stinks. The centre of the closet floor seems covered in what appears to be a horrible brown mould.
I had done the right thing but had a misleading parser response, so never pursued it further. BURN MOULD WITH TORCH gives a colorful exploding death, and my attempt to THROW TORCH just resulted in “Dropped.” so I didn’t think further of it.
>THROW TORCH AT MOULD
The torch seems to have been enveloped in the mould.
You can then leave, and an explosion will happen behind you. This gets rid of the mould and reveals a way down.
Reception room
There is a small explosion nearby.
>S
You are in a small closet which is very unwholesome with rotting clothes everywhere, basically it stinks. There is a flight of steps leading down into the floor. There was a trap door covering the steps but the explosion seems to have completely destroyed it. There is a torch here which is all used up.
>D
You are at the bottom of a flight of steps which leads back up to the closet you came from. An archway to the south leads in to the King’s treasure chamber. Built into the middle of the floor here is a strong iron safe. On the safe’s door is a small dial with numbers around its edge. The safe contains:- pearl; amethyst rod; tiny key.
This is modified from the original game (I’m playing the “fixed” version from CASA made by Alex, who also wrote a walkthrough). To the south is a portcullis blocking the treasure chamber, which I already lifted via using the wheel in the toxic gas room. However, something is broken in the code so you can’t move south, so the fixed version moved the safe from the treasure chamber over one step so you can get at it here. Consequently, you don’t need to dial up the safe code, which turns out to match the four-digit number on the rolled die.
Fortunately, I can still show you the vault, as further reading on the CASA forums led me to two debug commands: TVQREX and XERQVT. Those let you advance the location counter by one or subtract by one, so XERQVT from the bottom leads to:
You are in the King’s treasure vault. Unfortunately it has long since been looted and vandalised and little or nothing remains to be found. The archway you entered the treasure chamber through is to the north. Built into the middle of the floor here is a strong iron safe. On the safe’s door is a small dial with numbers around its edge. The safe contains:- pearl; amethyst rod; tiny key.
With the pearl and amethyst rod safely placed, I had all the points, and earned my final ranking.
With that you find yourself transported home with all the treasures you managed to salvage, you did manage to salvage some! didn’t you? You have scored a total of 740 out of 740 in 1336 moves giving you a rating of Demigod.
Well. That was a bit of a mess.
I found it an interesting mess and I always felt engaged, although some of that might be due to the meta-mystery of the game (nobody had gotten a full score before this weekend). I do think the story behind the freed demon and the “long departed” owners of the castle made for a decent amount of environment and atmosphere, even given the much more random assortment of multiverses.
I will say — despite seemingly like it might diverge into total evil — the game was essentially fair. The troll puzzle was arguably the worst (I solved it, but by accident); I also wasn’t thrilled about the glitch with the torch-throwing puzzle, or the random assorted glitches otherwise. Once when trying to wrangle the bottle to get another drink of water (you get thirsty every time you pass through the illusion-gold card route) the game responded with
water water water water water water water water water water water water water water water water water water water water water water water water water water water water water water water water water water water water water water water water water water water water water water water water water water water water water water water water water water water water water water water water water water water water water water water water water water water water water water water water
etc. As LanHawk points out in the comments, this port may not be from Brian Cotton at all.
However, everything else fit together in a logical way, in a much better way than many other authors trying to aim for “difficulty”; it helped that Cotton kept track of enough conditions (even small things, like not taking a torch into an igloo) that the complexity level rose just naturally on its own; trying to parse through what was important and what could be discarded was a major part of the gameplay.
The original was a 32K disk game for Commodore PET; the 32K + disk explains why this managed to be much more ambitious than nearly any UK game that wasn’t made on a mainframe or via Level 9 (which had its own compression technology, that worked even better than Infocom’s). There wasn’t even a C64 version made of this one. It likely is very rare and it is possible the original 1982 disk is now completely lost to time. So I am thankful I did have some way of playing it, even with the glitching around the edges.
As far as historical interest goes, this was by far the most integrated-into-D&D adventure I’ve played. Dungeon Adventure had parts allegedly adapted off a real campaign, but Level 9 filed off the edges enough it isn’t clear where the points of inspiration were (except for being able to see when items are magic). Cornucopia put a water weird with a straight-from-the-manual method of destruction, as well as an actual Dungeon Masters Guide with accompanying in-joke. I found it interesting even given the elaborate combat message system, the only straight-combat was the entirely optional fight with the giant rat; the pull of adventure-gameplay is towards interesting solutions to problems and not regular combat, so the more elaborate encounters (troll, ice creatures) both required puzzle-solving instead.
Coming up: No idea. I wasn’t expecting be done with Cornucopia yet. Likely some small games; you can peek at my final stretch of 1982 list and speculate if you’d like.
(Continued from my previous posts on Cornucopia.)
There’s lots of new places to see in this post, but before plowing forward, I wanted to address something I’ve found puzzling: why does the writing seem both good and bad at the same time?
As has already been observed in the comments by arcanetrivia, there’s very loose control of commas. Other grammar conventions at times are followed only approximately.
You are in a room which is wider at the east end than at the west end, its length is greater than its width even at its widest point. Strangely there is a powerful draught blowing from this end of the room towards the smaller end, it is probably something to do with the rooms shape. The floor is covered in gaily coloured tiles; red, green blue and yellow ones. The walls are coloured to match and the whole makes your eyes fairly boggle.
I would love to scribble my red pen over this, but it doesn’t feel awful in the way we’ve seen with other games. It struck me finally that most of the awkward sections work fine if read out-loud. Imagine that this was originally an AD&D scenario (as it may have been!) where the Dungeon Master reads descriptions to the players. (Link here if the embed below doesn’t show on your screen.)
It seems to work, no? The phrase “its length is greater than its width even at its widest point” scans with the eye badly but given the natural pauses and emphasis of a voice, it doesn’t seem confusing. There’s a comma that doesn’t work as written (after “end” it should be a period) but if we think of it verbally, as a shorter pause than a period, it makes sense. Even if none of this text made its way into a real campaign, I suspect the author might have written things down with a spoken cadence in mind. Taking a later clip which we’ll see today:
The murals were painted by an artist who was a master of his craft. They depict the scenes of miraculous healing of beings of many kinds, some quite hideous, some enormous and others quite ordinary. No reason for the healing is shown, but it is obvious a great antipathy existed between some of these beings.
There’s nothing broken in the grammar this time, the parallelism-with-a-break parses well (“some” quite hideous, “some” enormous, “others” quite ordinary) and the final suggestion of “a great antipathy” existing between the beings (without being explicit) is genuinely vivid. Mind you, it still isn’t Emily Dickinson, or to make a fairer comparison, Brian Moriarty, but it works better than your average early-80s text adventure.
Back to the game! Last time I had mentioned a section with a gold door–
>ENTER MIRROR
You are in a small square room, the walls of which are completely blank.
There is a gold door in the south wall.
>OPEN GOLD DOOR
You open the door and a little man rushes out and says ‘Oh thank you very much, I have been stuck in there for ages’. I only came back for this, he says, waving a small box, it should have got me out of there but it seems it is not quite perfect yet. He then turns a dial, presses a button on the small box and just disappears. In his haste to depart a note slips from his pocket.
Now that I had the prototype teleport box, I could escape from this area (with the gold bar just to the south) but there turned out to be one catch: the “little man” swipes the transport box if you’re holding it.
You open the door and a little man rushes out and says ‘Oh thank you very much, I have been stuck in there for ages’. I only came back for this, he says, waving a small box, it should have got me out of there but it seems it is not quite perfect yet. He suddenly looks at something you are carrying and says ‘I lost that sometime ago, whereever did you find it?’ Without letting you answer he quickly snatches it. He then turns a dial, presses a button on the small box and just disappears. In his haste to depart a note slips from his pocket.
Fortunately, avoiding this is a matter of just taking the brown sack from the kitchen area and storing the transport box in there temporarily.
The sack has an interesting side effect.
The small box has five coloured buttons on its top side. They are coloured blue yellow, green, pink and black, there is no indication as to their use. The box has the distinct appearance of being extremely delicate, and probably the slightest bump would damage it.
Note the “slightest bump would damage it” part. Trying to drop the box results in a “sickening crunch” and it stops working. However, having the box in the sack is sufficient to protect it (assuming you need to clear your inventory).
Moving on:
The area is made of a chain of six doors: gold, silver, copper, crystal, oak, ruby. Pressing the blue button on the box advances forwards one; pressing the pink button goes back one. (After ruby, it wraps back to gold.) Green advances two and yellow advances three. The black button goes back to the mirror. This is incidentally the only area I’ve found where any button other than black works.
The “silver bar room” seems to be there for just holding a silver bar. The copper door allows a second entrance into the Magi area (bypassing the dragon puzzle!) The crystal door has some mist and a coin on the ground.
You are in a small square room, the walls of which are completely blank.
There is a crystal door in the north wall.
>OPEN DOOR
The crystal door opens.
>N
The mist in this chamber is so thick it is difficult to see where you are.
>EXAMINE ALL
mist : The mist is very thick but you notice something glinting on the floor.
large coin : The large coin is big, about two inches in diameter, with the wording ‘One Centumbro, 376 FA’ written around its edge. On one side is the face of a peculiarly ugly man, with a self important air, and on the other some kind of tree in full blossom.
The oak door leads to a “Woodland” which is a brand new area which I’ll discuss in a moment. The ruby door goes to a hall where there are three holes which suggest three rods.
You are in a short north-south passage, which is bathed in a bright light from an unseen source. The south end is blanked off. In the west wall are three holes aligned almost vertically. The top hole is just over head height. The middle hole is round about shoulder height. The bottom hole is at about knee height.
I skimmed over it last time, so let me quote the note the man from the gold door dropped.
The folded note seems somewhat cryptic, something about inserting the rod’s in ROD order from the top down. It makes no mention of what rods, but presumably this is some sort of code for them, or where they should be placed.
Including things later in this post, I have an opal rod and a diamond rod. I assume somewhere there is a ruby rod, and ruby goes on top, followed by opal, followed by diamond (ROD). That leaves out the sapphire and emerald rods from earlier in the game, but both of those count as treasures so may end up serving solely as treasures.
Regarding those Woodlands:
You arrive where a pixie is waiting, and follows you around.
You are in an enchanted wood. There are well trodden paths to the northeast and south. There is a small Pixie dancing about your legs.
The text hints the pixie is waiting for you to give something, and it takes the whistle (which I never found useful anywhere, so good riddance I suppose).
>GIVE WHISTLE TO PIXIE
The pixie grabs tiny whistle and gaily scampers off playing merrily on the whistle.
The problem is: I’m not sure why this is useful. The pixie doesn’t cause issues with entering a treehouse, nabbing the opal rod within, and taking another path which leads back to the mirror. I assume this is one of those long-pass puzzles where something you do affects another part of the map entirely.
Speaking of long-pass puzzles, a little aside on something from last time: I had tied a weight to open up a dais floor, but couldn’t jump in the resulting pit. That turned out to lift the random granite block jammed in an arch back at the Magi area.
You are in a small dark room, above you can be seen the trap door you came through and a flight of rickety stairs leading up to it. There is an arch in the east wall leading in to a deeper darkness.
>E
You are at the bottom of a pit. You are standing on a portion of the dais. There are passages to the north and south.
>S
You are in a small grubby chamber which must lie below the huge cavern. The west wall had some writing upon it, unfortunately someone seems to have completely erased it. There is a diamond rod on the floor.
There’s diamond! So I just need to find a ruby (or rhodochrosite, or rubellite) rod in order to bust into the area back at the chain-of-doors.
The last major area I made progress since last time was at the ice area. I had found an ice key, but nowhere to put it. Rather sheepishly, I found it only two rooms away; I forget an EXAMINE ALL. D’oh!
Ice cliff
There is a small keyhole in the cliff face, funny place for a keyhole.
>PUT KEY IN KEYHOLE
Ok.
>TURN KEY
The key turns clockwise and as it completes half a revolution there is a click and a strange door opens in the cliff face. At the same time the key melts away to nothing, you must have been holding it too tight. From inside a voice says ‘Enter Oh Searcher of the Key’.
This leads to an “ice palace”:
The north side includes an “ice door” with a place to put a six-fingered hand.
You are in a Hall seemingly hewn from solid ice, a fantastic feat. At the north end a small passage way disappears into the wall. At the south end two flights of stairs lead up to the southeast and southwest corners. Beside the stairs leading up to the southwest there seems to be a sign buried in the ice. Between the two stairways there is a rounded ice door.
If you remember my item stash (and it is completely understandable if you don’t) I had a mummified hand from back in the magi area, and the game customizes the description if you’re holding the hand.
The imprint looks as though it was made by the mummified hand that you are carrying. It would probably fit exactly.
>PUT HAND IN IMPRINT
As you do this a harsh blue light shines momentarily all round the doors edge, the door then slides quietly open.
The door leads back to the Throne area; that is, this is a way to escape the ice zone without using the teleport box.
The mummified hand has a very different effect if you step southwest instead, to a Hall of Regeneration.
>SW
You are in a hall the walls of which are covered in murals. The theme of the murals seems to be that of severely wounded indeed fatally wounded people recovering in a miraculous manner. The murals also contain pictures of the corpses of many hideous beings, these seem to be an interlinked part of the story. There are doorways to the south, west and northeast.
>EXAMINE MURALS
The mummified hand you are holding gives a shiver. You become so mesmerised by this unexpected movement, that you stand still watching it. The hand grows a new body, it is huge. Standing before you a twenty foot four armed hirsute monster, it finds you a tasty snack. You realise, as you are being devoured, that this is one of the beings depicted in the murals. From your sitting position you can see through a glass screen into a room that looks strangely familiar. On either side of you are further skeletons, they have a somewhat glum look on their skulls just as you do. You are dead and have become yet another trophy for the long departed owners of this place.
I don’t know if this is useful yet or just something to be avoided. The hand does count as a treasure so I suspect it must be kept that way.
Heading a bit further south there are two “stasis rooms” where things slow down followed by a “magic circle”. Inside the circle is a “crystal key”.
You are standing in the centre of a large and imposing hall, exits can be seen on all four sides. The ceiling has a small dome in it which was not visible from the sides of the hall. The floor has an intricate mosaic design which makes up a magic circle. There is a small crystal key lying on the floor here.
>GET CRYSTAL KEY
Taken. As you lift the key an unseen panel lights up in the north wall. It says ‘UNAUTHORIZED ENTRY DETECTED GUARDS HAVE BEEN ALERTED’. As quickly as the sign appeared it disappears. You notice that two things have appeared to the east and west of you.
The “things” are an ice devil and an ice warrior.
Ice devil (gelugon) from the 1970s Monster Manual. Scan from my own copy.
They follow you around and you can use the rune sword to attempt to do battle. As far as I can tell it is guaranteed to be a losing battle if you fight both of them at once; maybe there’s a way to split them? Or melt something helpful? Or trap them at the bridge to nowhere? I don’t know yet.
>KILL WARRIOR WITH RUNE SWORD
A good blow but it is much too slow.
You manage to dodge the Ice devil’s thrust. The Ice warrior completely misses.
>KILL WARRIOR WITH RUNE SWORD
The flat of your sword hits the ice warrior on the side knocking him over, it quickly regains its feet.
The Ice devil strikes you across the back as you attempt to run away. Oh boy that last attack of the Ice warrior’s was really something, what coordination. Oh! by the way it killed you.
One last piece to mention: I said in the comments I hadn’t found a use for LOOK UNDER even though I knew it worked, and Roger Durrant hinted that it gets used early. Poking around I realized the wardrobe that contained the Fabergé egg could be looked under.
Under the large wardrobe you find a plastic bag.
Messing around more, I found WEAR BAG worked in an interesting way.
Have you never been told about suffocating while wearing one of these, if you don’t take it off you will suffocate.
This does not give protection against the spores in the closet (I tried) but it does let you enter the multiverse world with poison gas in the air. You have to be quick, though, due to bag suffocation.
>ENTER MIRROR
You are in a lovely piece of countryside, although the colours are all tinged with green and things seem distorted just like looking into a pool of water. Due to the distortion of your sense of perception you cannot make out any particular direction as being distinguishable from any other.
>OPEN SPELL BOOK
Opening the spell book reveals :- detect magic spell; dispel magic spell; detect illusion spell; detect evil spell.
>CAST DISPEL MAGIC
The illusion reluctantly fades and you find….. You are in a room which is distorted by the strange effect the cyanide in the air is having, the colours are all tinged with green as well. The room has no exits or, apparently, entrances and no use, seemingly. On one wall is a large steering wheel.
This doesn’t clear up the gas. It does let you turn the wheel (and the dispel magic spell doesn’t get burned). However, the wheel must be another long-pass effect, because I have no idea what turning it does (and even, given the possibility of multiple dispel magic castings, if it should be turned more than once).
To give a full list, I need to deal with (or ignore as a red herring):
- The goo at the tree in the garden
- The compost heap at the garden
- The fish at the garden
- The ice devil and warrior
- The hand regeneration, assuming it doesn’t just get ignored
- Figuring out what giving a whistle to a pixie does
- Figuring out what turning the wheel does
- Finding something useful at the just-mist destination of the mirror
- Finding a ruby rod
- Handling the deadly spores in the closet
Based on nothing more than vibes I think we’ve got three posts to go before the end, which means this game isn’t quite reaching Time Zone length but it does tangle on equal ground with such monsters as Hezarin and Avon.
(Continued from my previous posts on Cornucopia.)
The infamous “addendum rules” book from 1985, and yes, this is going to come up today. Via Chamblin Bookmine, which amusingly dates it as 2017 (the number in the corner is not a date).
Since last time I made quite a bit of progress; so much progress that this is a “I better make a post before it becomes too hard to describe everything” moment as opposed to a “I’m stuck” moment.
The first small thing that happened is that I managed to defeat the troll the “proper” way. It was by absolute luck. Let me pretend first I thought things out.
There is a game from 1998 (Enlightenment by Taro Ogawa) which is one of my favorite early IFComp games (it gets some criticism for being too hard, but I’m the sort of person that voluntarily plays Cornucopia). You’re at the end of the game, there’s a troll to get by, and you, the paranoid adventurer, have lots of light.
You are carrying:
your backpack (providing light and being worn and closed)
your sword (providing light)
your cross (providing light and being worn)
your amulet (providing light and being worn)
your lamp (providing light)
You need to ditch all of it, then get the troll’s own light source (his eyes) snuffed out. At the end the troll will get eaten by a grue.
From the Beyond Zork documentation, via the Infocom Documentation Project.
Cotton is Zork-inspired, so it makes sense he’d have grues, although the logic here doesn’t quite work the same as Ogawa’s game. The troll here lurks in the dark. The grue-like creatures seem to be tracking the player, and going by smell. So, when the player arrives at the troll and it is dark, the “abominable” smell of the troll becomes the new target. (Grues can take down pretty much anything as long as it is dark, so that part at least is consistent with Zork.)
You are in part of a trolls lair, all manner of stuff is strewn around, including parts of its previous meals. To the west is a low tunnel and to the south what looks to be a tiny cavern. A huge and hairy troll stands here blocking your way.
>TURN OFF LAMP
The battery lamp is now off.
Darkness falls, you hear a few tentative steps in the dark and then a very loud crunching and chomping, it then goes very quiet.
I wish I could say I thought all that through, but instead: I was noodling around and I accidentally wandered into the troll lair while it was dark.
I’ll take the wins where I can find them. Past the troll is a crown which counts as a treasure and I think that’s the only result.
There’s a second small thing I found early (which turned out to be big later). I found yet another spot where the levitate self spell works: at the fountain with the “goldfish”.
>CAST LEVITATE SELF
You float upwards towards the top of the fountain. You are floating near the top of a large fountain of water. The noise from the jet of water is quite loud and the spray is soaking you.
After a few turns you float back down. I thought this was something meant to be saved for later. Also, doing this uses up the levitate self spell (unlike the tower-climbing use and the fly-over-tiles use we’ve seen in previous posts).
As an aside, regarding the “burning spells in the spellbook while casting” — I mentioned this doesn’t match AD&D behavior, and it doesn’t, by standard rules. However, according to Zenopus Archives, there was an article by Gary Gygax in the June 1982 edition of Dragon which described casting spells directly from a spell book, with the spells disappearing accordingly. This later landed in the Unearthed Arcana book, which I had actively blocked from my memory.
From the cover of the aforementioned magazine, via eBay.
The upshot is Cotton could have seen this article and used it as a reference, rather than just going with his own homebrew! Still, the levitate behavior is irregular, and the preserve-in-certain-circumstance exception seems intended to help with the puzzle structure.
Put a pin in all this, I’ll get back to it later.
My big breakthrough happened at the room where the torch originally appears:
You are in a short north-south corridor. The south end leads to a spiral staircase leading down. There is a doorway to the east and on the west wall there is an iron bracket. The bracket contains a flaming torch.
>GET TORCH
Taken.
>TURN BRACKET
An opening slowly appears in the wall next to the iron bracket.
>W
You are in what was the reception room for the King’s Quarters. There is a small closet in the south wall.
This gets close to opening up, quite literally, a whole multiverse. We just need to kill a demon first.
The closet to the south contains an obstacle I haven’t managed to wrangle yet. Another time.
You are in a small closet which is very unwholesome with rotting clothes everywhere, basically it stinks. The centre of the closet floor seems covered in what appears to be a horrible brown mould.
>EXAMINE MOULD
As you try to do that the mould ejects a large number of spores, which completely cover you.
(death message etc.)
The demon-killing part turns out to be trivial. Going west one more step leads to the King’s Bedroom, and a moment that’s more for lore-plot than it is to actively stump the player.
You are in the King’s bedroom, it was once richly furnished but only decay remains. The exception to the decay is a huge four poster bed. There are exits to the east, south and west. Sleeping on the bed is by all appearances a very beautiful woman.
>EXAMINE WOMAN
What you thought was a sleeping woman isn’t, from a closer examination you see that she has a pair of wings, horns and all the physical accoutrements one would expect a Demon to have, nasty!
>KILL DEMON WITH RUNE SWORD
You strike at the Demon while she is sleeping and unable to protect herself. The power of the rune sword banishes her back to the Hell from whence she was summoned.
(Mind you, if you haven’t figured out the tile thing yet here, you won’t have the means to kill the demon, so this still counts as a puzzle.) It seems that the reason the demon-summoning circle wasn’t usable in any sense is that it already did its work, with the demon still actively summoned!
Moving the bed requires the demon is dead first, and this leads to a secret area.
>MOVE BED
Moving the huge bed reveals a secret chamber in the north wall.
>N
You are in a small dusty chamber, which has lain unused for many years, a southern exit leads back to the King’s bedroom. A large full length mirror, on the north wall, dominates this small chamber. An old leather bound diary has been dropped here.
>GET DIARY
Taken.
>READ DIARY
The old diary’s cover, which is bound in a very high quality leather, indicates that this once belonged to a King named Fftumbol, or perhaps it means the line of Fftumbol – it is not very clear.
>OPEN DIARY
The old diary opens.
>READ DIARY
The old diary’s contents are all rather boring containing the trivia of the day to day running of court life. The last entry is much more interesting and has been done in a great hurry. The court Wizard, Fflluccer, has apparently summoned, for an unspecified reason, a demon. Fflluccer, the fool, has lost control of it and she is rapidly depopulating the castle. Not even the power of the sword has been of any use, what is left of the court are fleeing in all directions.
I’m guessing Fffllucer thought he could get a succubus girlfriend, and things went awry? This is AD&D, not Pathfinder!
The mirror is the important part:
You are in a small dusty chamber, which has lain unused for many years, a southern exit leads back to the King’s bedroom. A large full length mirror, on the north wall, dominates this small chamber.
>EXAMINE MIRROR
The large mirror is completely blank, no reflection at all.
>CAST DETECT MAGIC ON MIRROR
The large mirror is very highly magical, it is as if the large mirror was in many places at the same time.
Trying to enter the mirror as-is causes a death reminiscent of Ferret: “The large mirror not being focussed on anything yet, spreads your molecules all over the multiverse.” I ran through my verb list and found RUB MIRROR sets a destination, rotating between six possibilities: “The large mirror shimmers and a weird reflection appears.”
- A “distorted” countryside “tinged with green” — walking in kills via arsenic
- A “swirling grey mist” — this is just a single room that loops
- An “icy waste” where you die without protection from cold (*)
- A “huge cavern” with a “low dais” which is safe to enter (*)
- A “chasm” at a ledge (*)
- A “small square room with a metal door” which traps the player without a method out (*)
For this post we’ll visit the four marked with an asterisk, starting with the “huge cavern”.
>ENTER MIRROR
You are at the narrow south end of a huge cavern which must be at least a hundred feet high, and at least two hundred in width at its widest point. The floor is littered with rubbish, mostly rotting food. There are passages leading to the south and west, the southern one is much wider than the western one which appears to lead into a small chamber.
>N
You are standing on a dais which is at at the north end of the huge cavern. The dais is raised about one foot above the rest of the ground. There appears to be some sort of design carved on the dais. The dais doesn’t seem to be part of the ground, there is a very thin gap all the way around its edge where it meets the floor. There is a large weight here, with a carrying ring fixed to its top.
There’s a rope to the west attached to something out of sight (sixty feet), and if you take the weight over and tie it there will be a “grating noise”. This is the dais opening up into a pit, so you can walk over, try to go down, and die by falling into the pit. Oops. Levitate doesn’t work there, unfortunately; I still need to work out what to do.
Going south from the Huge Cavern incidentally hops back to the secret room, but that’s not true of every place; some require return via a different method.
At the chasm area, the way back seems to step out in a void, but you can answer YES to the game’s YES/NO question and arrive back to safety anyway.
>ENTER MIRROR
You are on a small crumbling ledge on the east side of a deep chasm. The sound of dripping water reaches your ears echoing up from the chasm’s depths. Along the ledge to the south is a cave like entrance into the cliff wall.
>W
Are you sure you want to step out into the chasm?
>YES
You step off the ledge into the chasm and suddenly you find that….. You are in a small dusty chamber, which has lain unused for many years, a southern exit leads back to the King’s bedroom. A large full length mirror, on the north wall, dominates this small chamber.
Actually moving forward takes the player to a “cruel looking idol” with two sockets, one with a red gem and one empty. In some games this would be a cue to steal the red gem, but here we take the green gem that I had sensed was evil (but not magic!) and drop it in. The idol helpfully steps aside.
You are at the eastern end of a large cavern, which is dominated by a cruel looking idol. The idol, which is right before you, is some eight feet tall and incredibly obese. The air is thick and overpowering with the smell of incense. Its mouth is full of very sharp teeth and he has six arms all of which end in very nasty looking talons, all in all a very nasty bit of work.
>PUT GREEN GEM IN SOCKET
As you place the green gem in the socket the idol seems to grin at you, and for an instance you become dizzy and disoriented as a waft of stale air passes your face.
Inside there is a room dedicated to the High Priest, where you can snag a gold idol (a mini-version of the big one), a gold ring, and a cloak of feathers which is helpfully warm.
With the cloak on, it is possible to survive a trip to the cold.
I haven’t had much luck here yet.
>ENTER MIRROR
You are in an icy wilderness, there are ice spicules blowing all about you. To the east there is an icy plateau.
>S
You are on the north side of a crevasse – there is a thin ice bridge spanning the gap. The crevasse looks very deep and dark. It sounds as though there is water at the bottom.
The bridge leads to a dead end, and there isn’t an illusion there: it just stops. There’s an igloo to the east (that reacts badly if you’re holding a torch) which contains an ice key (described as “made in Iceland”, ha ha) but I have not found a place for it to go. I am fairly certain I am missing something.
What was even worse (the first time around) is that there is no way out. No jumping into a chasm to magically go into a mirror instead.
I was thinking about the “manual” from a few entries ago…
This is not so much a manual more a diatribe on the brilliance of the inventor of a device which enables one to transport oneself virtually anywhere. This device is apparently box-shaped with a selection of dials and buttons on its upper surface. Reading between the lines it seems there was at least one prototype which was limited in its transport abilities using only a series of buttons for control.
…and that it’d be nice if I could find said device, because it seemed likely to help in these places that seemed like random traps. Additionally, one of the other worlds hinted that the prototype device would likely help.
>ENTER MIRROR
You are in a small square room, the walls of which are completely blank.
There is a gold door in the south wall.
>OPEN GOLD DOOR
You open the door and a little man rushes out and says ‘Oh thank you very much, I have been stuck in there for ages’. I only came back for this, he says, waving a small box, it should have got me out of there but it seems it is not quite perfect yet. He then turns a dial, presses a button on the small box and just disappears. In his haste to depart a note slips from his pocket.
(The player is otherwise trapped in the scene above. The note hints about inserting rods in ROD order from the top down, whatever that means.)
Still with no idea where to look, I went back to the main map and started doing EXAMINE ALL everywhere. I had discovered that the button F5 actually types the phrase, and it gives descriptions of every item in a room. Many games are very hesitant about this kind of help (I’ve even seen GET ALL disabled to avoid this) but here the help has a built-in hotkey!
Perhaps you know where this is going.
>CAST LEVITATE SELF
You float upwards towards the top of the fountain. You are floating near the top of a large fountain of water. The noise from the jet of water is quite loud and the spray is soaking you.
>EXAMINE ALL
transport box : The small box has five coloured buttons on its top side. They are coloured blue yellow, green, pink and black, there is no indication as to their use. The box has the distinct appearance of being extremely delicate, and probably the slightest bump would damage it.
black button : I see nothing special about black button.
blue button : I see nothing special about blue button.
green button : I see nothing special about green button.
yellow button : I see nothing special about yellow button.
pink button : I see nothing special about pink button.
aaaaaa it was right there.
This incidentally burns the “levitate self” spell, which might normally be a problem. To get at what I mean, here’s a meta-map:
You start at the cottage where treasures are stored. To get into the underground, you either levitate up to a tower (which doesn’t burn the levitate) or pass through an area with a card, an illusion, and a slot that eats up the card. So if you want to keep returning treasures to the cottage, the levitate route is needed; not only does a treasure get removed from the game, but the route can only be used once, after which there seems to be no way to the main underground section.
With this thought in mind, I went back to the icy area to test buttons, trying to return back to the mirror.
>ENTER MIRROR
You are in an icy wilderness, there are ice spicules blowing all about you. To the east there is an icy plateau.
>PUSH BLACK BUTTON
You are in a small dusty chamber, which has lain unused for many years, a southern exit leads back to the King’s bedroom. A large full length mirror, on the north wall, dominates this small chamber.
The black button works, great! But what happens if I push the black button again?
>PUSH BLACK BUTTON
You are in a lit chamber about twenty feet square. The dust is very thick on the floor. The chamber is partitioned-off half way across with a transparent crystal wall. Behind the wall you can see several chairs, all but one of them has a skeleton sitting in it. A sign above the skeletons reads ‘TROPHY ROOM’. On the north side there is a closed door and beside it, at about waist height, there is a small slot. There is an inscription on the door which reads as follows:- AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.
Pushing the black button yet again, from the skeleton room, returns back to the secret chamber. This means the act of inserting the gold card into the slot can be skipped, and the route via the skeleton room can be now used to re-enter the main part of the map.
The transport box simply doesn’t work in many places, although it definitely allows hopping in the gold door section I was previous trapped in; however, this is my longest entry yet for Cornucopia, so it is a good place to stop for a breather until next time.
(My previous posts about Cornucopia are needed to understand this one.)
1979 printing, via eBay. “Roll the dice to see if I’m getting drunk!”
So the Dungeons & Dragons references got even stronger since last time.
My main piece of progress was figuring out the stone dragon. Kind of.
>ENTER OPENING
You are in a small spherical shaped room inside the dragon’s head. In front of you are two round windows which look out into the cavern you have just come from. Just under the windows is a small desk with a chair beside it. The desk has three buttons which are coloured red, brown and amber, the desk also has two levers coloured black and blue. It is quite warm in here, the heat seems to be coming from below.
>PUSH RED BUTTON
There is a click and then a low wheezing noise.
>OUT
The control room exit seems to have vanished.
I realized that the red button closed the hatch to the outside, while the amber button opened it. I ended up closing the hatch, then messing with the brown button, black lever, and blue lever entirely at random. I unfortunately do mean random as I was just mucking about but somehow I hit the right combination that when I went to test going south again where the mechanism previously activated, I found myself safe.
You are at the south end of a large cavern. To the south the cavern narrows down to a small passage. Crouching and facing the narrow passage is a large rock formation which looks exactly like a dragon.
>S
You are in a long north-south corridor which has been carved out of the solid granite.
I somehow got doubly lucky (again, I think) insofar as there is a door that looks like it ought to be a stopping point that mentions the lever positions. This particular save game has the giant rat already dead, so I just have to hope that’s right. (Probably not, eh? I’ll deal with it when it comes.)
>S
You are at the south end of the granite corridor. The exit to the south is glowing slightly. Written upon the wall here is the following – Have you got the levers right!
>S
You are in an oblong shaped room which has exits to north, south and west. The floor has a wooden trap door let into it. The room is otherwise quite bare.
The leads to a small part of the map I’ll call the Magi Area.
Going down the trap door leads to a “small dark room” with an “arch” that is blocked by a “granite block”. The game notes the block is “obviously not part of it and has been put there with the intention of stopping a through passage.” Neither the block nor the arch register as magic (or evil) and nothing I’ve thrown has had any effect.
The magi’s quarters have nothing, but there’s also a laboratory with a mummified hand…
You are in what was once the Magi’s laboratory, a strange chill comes over you in this place probably as a result of the lingering remnants of fiendish magic spells. There are exits to the west and north. There is a severed hand lying on the floor here. It looks to have been mummified.
…and a library, with a “guide book” and a “large die with one hundred faces”.
>W
You are in what was the Magi’s library – the walls were covered in bookshelves, which presumably contained many books on arcane magic. What little there was left of the shelves after the vandals left has long since rotted away, the floor is covered in the resulting dust. There are exits to the north and east. There is a small guide book discarded here. A large die with one hundred faces lies here.
The book is described as the “Dungeon Masters Guide Book”. It opens to page 739, and reading it just says it is “quite useless” as it shows “the best way to roll dice of different dimensions.” (If the water weird wasn’t enough, it’s definitely clear here what game the author was thinking of.)
The large die rolls to be 6279, and always the same number. (The description notes it doesn’t have normal side-numbering, but doesn’t say it is the same number on all sides, so I suspect the die is heavily weighted.)
>ROLL DIE
You spin the large die and it comes to rest showing the number six thousand two hundred and seventy nine.
None of the above objects (mummified hand, die, guide book) are marked as magic or evil. The hand gets marked as a treasure, so it is possible it doesn’t have any use other than getting points.
My adventures in magic-dom continued past this thanks to solar penguin in the comments, who speculated about just levitating past the magic tiles rather than stepping on all of one color.
>CAST LEVITATE SELF
As the spell takes effect you rise up in the air, suddenly an extra strong gust from the draught catches you and sweeps you towards the other end of the room, passing over the floor without touching it. The draught sweeps you out of the other end of the room and you find yourself….. You are in a strange room, it has five walls and therefore five corners, in the eastern corner is an exit which is almost totally concealed. The walls are covered in symbols and diagrams of a most arcane sort. The room is otherwise quite devoid of furnishings or markings.
>EXAMINE SYMBOLS
Strangely as you study these symbols you find you start to understand them, it seems whoever used this place used the walls to take notes on in his/her? attempt to summon a demon from one of the planes of hell. The success or otherwise of the attempts is not made clear.
This does not burn the levitate spell, so it still is usable to go back up the tower (you can’t carry everything at once, so dragging stuff to the cottage for points requires multiple loads).
Unfortunately, I have been unable to summon the demon. The symbols are not marked as magic, or evil (!). There is no illusion in the room. (I have been checking, still, despite the dispel getting used up back at the countryside. For one thing, it is possible you aren’t supposed to pass through that room at all, and another, DISPEL ILLUSION and DETECT ILLUSION are separate spells, and it may be there’s an illusion later that you can detect but don’t need to kill entirely in order to bypass.)
Speaking of spells, the one that’s been burning a hole in my pocket, er, spellbook, is DISPEL MAGIC. I can use it on the rune sword, for instance, and it gets totally destroyed; you can also cast it on the spell book itself to cause it to consume itself in a fireball. (It’d be amazing if this was the intended use for the spell! I’d have to be near the end of the game, though.) The complex is otherwise filled with quite a few non-magical things (according to the spell) so I haven’t found any other effects.
I’m still not ready for hints, but anyone who hasn’t looked at a walkthrough is welcome to chime in with ideas in the comments.
(Continued from my previous posts, which you definitely need for context before reading this one.)
The spellcasting in Cornucopia, as Matt W. has pointed out, is “Vancian”, following roughly the same model as Dungeons & Dragons.
From the 1969 Lancer printing, via eBay.
Vancian is so named because of the Dying Earth series of novels by Jack Vance, where wizards memorize spells and then forget them as they are cast. Cornucopia uses casting directly from a spellbook with the same sort of disappearance effect (except for the case of levitating at the tower, as I showed off in my last post; that seems to be to allow the player to take that route multiple times without penalty).
Testing various inventory items with save-and-load. Notice the green gem, the one found hiding in a throne, being “evil” but not “magic” — how does that work?
Having such a system isn’t a guarantee D&D was involved (after all, maybe the author went right to the source!) but there’s a critter that I’m fairly sure is D&D-only.
Water Weird as drawn for the 1977 AD&D Monster Manual by David Sutherland.
Back at the kitchen (adjacent to the giant rat, which we’ll also reckon with in a moment) I was testing out GET ALL everywhere and found death.
You are in what appears to be the old kitchen. There is a flight of stone stairs leading up and doorways in the east and west walls. In the northwest corner a spring enters the kitchen and pours into a large granite basin. The water level in the basin is kept constant by a drain hidden from view.
>GET ALL
granite basin : As you approach the basin with the spring water in it a strange form rears up and grabs you, obviously some form of water weird. The strange form pulls you into the basin and you are drowned. From your sitting position you can see through a glass screen into a room that looks strangely familiar. On either side of you are further skeletons, they have a somewhat glum look on their skulls just as you do. You are dead and have become yet another trophy for the long departed owners of this place.
Fortunately, there’s a weirdly specific spell from the spellbook that immediately came to mind.
>OPEN BOOK
Opening the spell book reveals :- detect magic spell; dispel magic spell; purify water spell; dispel illusion spell; detect illusion spell; levitate self spell; detect evil spell.
>CAST PURIFY WATER
The spring water is now quite pure and the water weird has been killed.
With this done, I was able to get the empty green bottle filled with water (mind you, it isn’t FILL BOTTLE or FILL BOTTLE WITH WATER, but the oddly phrased PUT WATER IN BOTTLE). This technically provides a solution for getting thirsty while going east from the dried brook, but I have yet to work out anything to do with the grate (the only thing you can find there).
The culvert ends here in a blank wall and the water disappears down a grating set in the floor. The culvert extends away to the west along a narrow ledge. The grating is of a fine mesh, such as to catch most things that would be brought along by the current of water, if there was any.
>OPEN GRATING
The grating can’t be opened or closed.
Adjacent to the water weird is a giant rat. The giant rat succumbs to simply stabbing quite a few times (with a combat scene just like Goblin Towers, or Zork) but something about this feels wrong.
>KILL RAT WITH RUSTY SWORD
A quick stroke gets the giant rat in the side and blood starts to trickle down one of its legs.
You dodge but the giant rat still manages to nip you.
>KILL RAT WITH RUSTY SWORD
A quick stroke gets the giant rat in the side and blood starts to trickle down one of its legs.
You dodge but the giant rat still manages to nip you.
>KILL RAT WITH RUSTY SWORD
With a deft side step you stab your sword into its heart. The giant rat slumps down dead.
This leaves behind merely a giant rat corpse, which you can pick up (it is heavy and have to drop everything other than the lamp), but I haven’t found any use for it.
My last piece of “progress” wasn’t really progress in a sense: I was able to get by the troll.
The troll, remember, ate any swords I tried to use to attack it.
You are in part of a trolls lair, all manner of stuff is strewn around, including parts of its previous meals. To the west is a low tunnel and to the south what looks to be a tiny cavern. A huge and hairy troll stands here blocking your way.
I was testing out various options when I tried SMASH TROLL.
The troll breaks into a million pieces and is destroyed.
>S
You are in a small cavern which looks like it was the sleeping chamber for the troll. The only exit leads to the north. Lying discarded here in one corner is the King’s crown.
SMASH works on everything in the game, destroying the object. Important treasures? Smashable. Statue standing on a pedestal with hidden gold necklace? Smashable. Giant full sized dragon made from rock? Definitely smashable. Although you still die if you try to go south due to dragon flame. It appears that the troll stopping the player is dependent on the “troll object” being present while the dragon flame is hard-coded for going south from the dragon.
>SMASH GRATING
The grating breaks into a million pieces and is destroyed.
While you can smash the grating that “can’t be open or closed”, it doesn’t allow leading to any new areas, so that seems to be wrong. Smashing the tree still results in the player dying if they try to climb the tree.
You are at the centre of the Royal Gardens, there is a tree here in full bloom, the blooms are pink. The perfume from the blooms is very heady. The base of the tree is circled by some kind of goo, within this goo there appear to be many jewels.
>SMASH TREE
The tree breaks into a million pieces and is destroyed.
>U
You get up into the low branches, it seems the tree is somewhat sentient and resents this. The tree shakes you from its branches and you fall into the goo at its base, which is extremely corrosive. From your sitting position you can see through a glass screen into a room that looks strangely familiar. On either side of you are further skeletons, they have a somewhat glum look on their skulls just as you do. You are dead and have become yet another trophy for the long departed owners of this place.
This presents an unusual dilemma: what if SMASH is the legitimate and only method of solving some puzzle in the game, in an intended way? (Surely the troll isn’t.) Would I be able to tell? Will doing things the “right way” nonetheless feel like cheating? If nothing else, I now know it’s just a treasure past the troll and not some long branching path.
I’d like to close out by listing out all the obstacles I’m stuck on and theorize about solutions. The evil tree seems like a good place to start.
A 1st edition D&D treant, art by David A. Trampier.
And yes, the tree is detected via spell as evil:
>CAST DETECT EVIL ON TREE
Surprisingly for something so marvellous the tree seems to have an evil awareness.
You can die by a.) climbing and being dunked in the goo, which dissolves you b.) trying to get one of the gems in the goo, which dissolves you, c.) falling unconscious from the tree’s perfume, and falling into the goo, which dissolves you.
If you try to set it on fire with the torch the tree “shies away” from the torch and “no matter what you do you just cannot set fire to it”. The goo itself is not flammable. I do suspect fire is involved in a solution still somehow, just in needs to get conveyed to the tree in a more forceful way (and before you ask, THROW TORCH AT TREE just gets the response “Dropped”).
Next up is the stone dragon at the cave. Going inside, I mentioned three buttons and two levers.
>ENTER OPENING
You are in a small spherical shaped room inside the dragon’s head. In front of you are two round windows which look out into the cavern you have just come from. Just under the windows is a small desk with a chair beside it. The desk has three buttons which are coloured red, brown and amber, the desk also has two levers coloured black and blue. It is quite warm in here, the heat seems to be coming from below.
>PUSH RED BUTTON
There is a click and then a low wheezing noise.
>PUSH AMBER BUTTON
There is a click and then a whooshing noise.
The brown button causes a click no matter what sequence I try to do things in, and the levers just pull (or push) and then move back to the center with no apparent reaction. I’ve tried quite a few variations followed by testing going south past the fire (in the hope something happened silently) but no luck with that either. I suspect I’m just missing the right permutation of moves, though; I don’t have much to work with other than brute force testing.
Other than those two spots I’m stuck on small things, or what might not even be puzzles:
- The statue facing west only yielded the necklace; I don’t know if there’s some other secret involving the statue moving.
- There’s a small alcove seen when entering the fungus elevator; that might simply be the elevator entrance that can reached from the throne area, though, and not really a puzzle.
- The area with the gold card can only be left (at the moment) via using up the card at a door. The gold card does seem to be a treasure so I must be missing something. Also, what does the “that will do nicely” message mean?
The card is solid gold with an ebony edging and writing on one side in a bold gothic script which reads ‘Admit one only’. On the other side in almost microscopic letters it says ‘that will do nicely’, the meaning of which seems quite obscure.
- There’s a “compost heap” at the garden I haven’t been able to do anything with.
- I still have a fountain at the garden to deal with. There’s pirahna protecting some gold coins, and there’s a “water jet” at the fountain in the garden still awaiting an item. I suspect I will know the item when I see it (and it will help with the fish problem may influence the empty brook).
There is a lovely carved stone fountain here, it is quite a rude design. The jet of water is so large it could easily support a small object if placed exactly right. The pool at the base of the fountain has many gold coins that have been tossed into it. There are what appear to be goldfish swimming about in it.
>PUT BOOK ON JET
It would just fall off the jet of water, so there’s no point.
I get the uncanny feeling this is one of those kind of games where there’s “wrong” ways to solve things and you can easily put the game in an impossible state with a wrong solution. Maybe I can get the giant rat to follow me over to the tree and distract it? Or make friends with the troll?
(Continued from my previous post.)
I’ve done, as promised, some serious mapping, and can share the layout and the initial obstacles. But first, a look at the verb list:
This is quite a wide coverage for this era and feels more aligned with Infocom than a Commodore PET game (as this originally started as). While Goblin Towers had very little change between the two versions, I highly suspect Cornucopia had serious additions to at least the text; not only are there a fair number of lengthy room descriptions, it more “fun” messages than usual while messing around with verbs the game understands, mirroring Zork’s multiple “jump” responses for instance:
>JUMP
Well done.
>JUMP
That is really childish!
>JUMP
I suppose you want a medal for that.
>JUMP
Wheeeeeeeee
SMELL and LISTEN are also notable (and do, in fact, get used, sometimes for pure environment); PRAY is good to keep in mind given the theological theme, and PLUCK is the most unusual of all the verbs (although it seems to just be a synonym for “TAKE”).
Now, a grand tour of the map, where I’ll start with a meta-map. (This is arranged by connectivity between regions, where each region is a set of rooms.)
The player starts at the cottage which I showed the map of last time; let’s take the route entering the giant fungus first. You step in an “elevator” and there’s a small alcove briefly visible (I have not been able to interact with it yet) before landing at:
You are on the edge of a small brook, which has long since dried up. A path follows along the course of the brook to the east and west. Across on the other side of the brook you can see lush rolling countryside.
The west is a “solid gold” card with “Admit one only” on one side and “that will do nicely” on the other; I assume it is a treasure, but we’re about to consume it in a moment.
To the east there’s a culvert that leads up until a grate:
The culvert ends here in a blank wall and the water disappears down a grating set in the floor. The culvert extends away to the west along a narrow ledge. The grating is of a fine mesh, such as to catch most things that would be brought along by the current of water, if there was any.
Heading down the culvert has an unfortunate side effect: the player starts getting thirsty. The “green bottle” the player starts with seems to be empty, but even with a fountain later the command FILL BOTTLE doesn’t seem to be understood, so I’m not sure what’s going on. I suspect visiting here first is out-of-order of how it is supposed to be.
Heading north from the landing point of the dried brook is a “countryside” where “you are walking through some green countryside, but don’t seem to be getting anywhere.” Dropping an item (like the SWORD) causes it to “disappear from view” but from mucking about I decided every direction except back south to the dried brook simply loops the player. I became highly suspicious:
>CAST DISPEL ILLUSION
As the illusion fades you find that… You are in a large well lit cavern. The roof soars away so as to seem almost as high as the sky. You are near the west wall of the cavern and can see an exit carved into the very rock. To the south you can make out the small brook you crossed earlier. A sword which is quite rusty but in a useable condition.
(The sword is the item that was dropped earlier, which had previously disappeared.)
This has the side effect that I likely don’t need to keep hunting for possible illusions elsewhere, although it may be that this entire route is wrong and the illusion should be ignored in favor of getting through the grate somehow.
Removing the illusion allows going west, whereupon the player is trapped and can’t even go back east.
You are in a lit chamber about twenty feet square. The dust is very thick on the floor. The chamber is partitioned-off half way across with a transparent crystal wall. Behind the wall you can see several chairs, all but one of them has a skeleton sitting in it. A sign above the skeletons reads ‘TROPHY ROOM’. On the north side there is a closed door and beside it, at about waist height, there is a small slot. There is an inscription on the door which reads as follows:- AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.
However, the gold card can be put in the slot:
>PUT CARD IN SLOT
From deep within the walls you hear a whirring sound and a voice says ‘That will do nicely’ and at the same time a door slides open, the gold card is drawn into the slot and disappears.
>N
You are in a hall orientated north to south. It is about sixty feet long by some twenty feet wide. On either side of the hall is a row of doric columns, carved from solid marble. These support a high arched ceiling. The south end of the hall leads nowhere but the other looks to open out into a large chamber. The walls are decorated with countless heraldic shields, depicting the magnificent lineage of the former owners of this place.
This jumps to an area on the meta-map I called Throne/Kitchen…
…but let’s wait on visiting there and go an entirely different route, levitating up the tower. I’ve already shown off the troll at the very bottom. I still haven’t gotten anywhere with that route, so let’s step out of the tower into a series of passages.
There’s not anything to see here — it’s just a 4 by 3 grid — and if this was Infocom I’d be highly suspicious of some geographical-placement puzzle afoot, chasing or evading some creature. As things currently stand the only extra item of interest is a statue.
You are at a junction of an east-west passage with a north-south one. At the centre of the junction a large stone statue stands on a pedestal, the statue is facing the west.
>GET ALL
pedestal : You can’t take a pedestal.
statue : You can’t take a statue.
As I mentioned in my last post, the GET ALL trick is extremely handy for parsing what’s useful here; I might normally have just tried to examine the statue but not the pedestal, missing a treasure in the process.
>EXAMINE PEDESTAL
You notice that there is a slight gap between the heel of one of the statues legs and the pedestal, in this gap a small gold necklace has been concealed.
The gold necklace, according to the spell, is not magic, so likely not used in a puzzle otherwise.
The west-facing statue is highly suggestive that we might be turning the statue around (like Hollywood Hijinx or Whembly Castle), but attempting to do so just gets a joke from the parser:
>EXAMINE STATUE
The statue stands on a low pedestal in the middle of the junction, the statue faces west and has a somewhat expectant look upon its face. One of its arms also points in this direction, as if directing someone.
>TURN STATUE
Hmm, zo zis is very interesting, do you get zese urges very often hmm!
So keep an eye on that I guess? Actually going to the west leads to a room with many colored tiles…
You are in a room which is wider at the east end than at the west end, its length is greater than its width even at its widest point. Strangely there is a powerful draught blowing from this end of the room towards the smaller end, it is probably something to do with the rooms shape. The floor is covered in gaily coloured tiles; red, green blue and yellow ones. The walls are coloured to match and the whole makes your eyes fairly boggle.
…where just trying to walk across is failure.
You cross the floor not caring which you tread on, and stepping on a tile of each colour at least once. You suddenly realise that you are back at the position you started from, although the transition back to the wide end of the room came unnoticed by you.
You can instead WALK ON RED TILES (or YELLOW, BLUE, or GREEN) in order to get to a room. There’s one for each color. The red tiles lead to an armory with a rune sword, the yellow tiles lead to a gallery with a painting, the blue tiles lead to an empty room, and the green tiles lead to a “gadget room”.
You are in a small rectangular room, it is quite unremarkable having no special features at all, even the exit to the east is plain. In the centre of the room is a large stone casket the top of which has been forced open and fallen to the floor where it has shattered. The stone casket contains:- user manual; emerald rod.
The manual is enigmatic:
This is not so much a manual more a diatribe on the brilliance of the inventor of a device which enables one to transport oneself virtually anywhere. This device is apparently box-shaped with a selection of dials and buttons on its upper surface. Reading between the lines it seems there was at least one prototype which was limited in its transport abilities using only a series of buttons for control.
So that’s fun to look forward to! (I also don’t know what the emerald rod does yet either.)
Hopping back to the passages, going east leads to the Throne / Kitchen area, the same area reachable via using the gold card.
The throne has another secret item (a green gem). To the east there’s another elevator, this time one that goes up and lands the player in the fungus forest. Going up there’s an odd pair of lavoratories where there’s a snake that sticks its head out; the player can attack it with a sword and make it disappear, leaving them free to grab a sapphire rod.
Heading down leads to a kitchen instead.
You are in what appears to be the old kitchen. There is a flight of stone stairs leading up and doorways in the east and west walls. In the northwest corner a spring enters the kitchen and pours into a large granite basin. The water level in the basin is kept constant by a drain hidden from view.
>E
You are in what was the kitchen’s grain store, all that is left is a pile of rotted cereals. The exit is to the north. There is a giant rat here gorging itself on the grain.
I have not managed to do anything with the rat yet; there’s a plain sack just lying about heading the other direction.
From the throne room you can also head straight north (passing by a torch on the way which can be picked up) and find a garden.
Resolving the slightly maze-like aspect, there’s a compost heap to the west (haven’t found a use yet) and a whistle to the east. To the far north there’s a fountain with deadly fish.
You are in a part of the formal Royal Rose gardens. Nearby you can hear the tinkle of water from a fountain.
>N
There is a lovely carved stone fountain here, it is quite a rude design. The jet of water is so large it could easily support a small object if placed exactly right. The pool at the base of the fountain has many gold coins that have been tossed into it. There are what appear to be goldfish swimming about in it.
>EXAMINE GOLDFISH
On a closer examination the goldfish are in fact piranha.
(I have not found anything that properly goes onto the jet of water yet.)
Finally in the middle there’s a tree that has some deadly goo. Or if you hang around it is deadly. Or climb the tree it is deadly.
You are at the centre of the Royal Gardens, there is a tree here in full bloom, the blooms are pink. The perfume from the blooms is very heady. The base of the tree is circled by some kind of goo, within this goo there appear to be many jewels.
Heading back to the throne area, there’s a different exit down that leads to some “cells”.
Some have various things scratched in them (see the map) and there’s also some magazines where you can play Spot the Typo.
You are in a room with three exits. There is an extremely unwholesome smell here. The walls seem to have many deep and long scratches in them. There is a large pile of discarded magazines here.
>GET ALL
pile of magazines : Taken.
>READ MAGAZINES
The pile of magazines contains the following – Torturers Weekly, 101 Ways to Torture an Elf, Inflicting Pain Monthly, Bone Choppers Annual, Computnig Toady and Torture for Fun and Profit.
I’m sure something elaborate might happen here (maybe after we “ring for service”?) but it’s a pretty empty area so far. Heading down even further goes to a cavern with a stone dragon.
You are at the north end of a large and apparently very old cavern. A narrow tunnel leads away to the north. High overhead a forest of stalactites, some of them huge. To the south you can see a large and unusually shaped rock formation.
>S
You are at the south end of a large cavern. To the south the cavern narrows down to a small passage. Crouching and facing the narrow passage is a large rock formation which looks exactly like a dragon.
You can climb in the dragon and find some buttons and levers and I’m sure the controls are just lovely, but I hit this point right at the end of my last session and I knew my post was already going to get rather long, so I decided it was a good point to stop. Still, let me show what happens if you try to just ignore the dragon:
As you approach the narrow passage a huge gout of flame shoots from the Dragon’s mouth incinerating you. From your sitting position you can see through a glass screen into a room that looks strangely familiar. On either side of you are further skeletons, they have a somewhat glum look on their skulls just as you do. You are dead and have become yet another trophy for the long departed owners of this place.
You incidentally still are playing from here except you are now in the skeleton room, but dead. I do wonder if this has an Acheton-like scenario where dying is required, but it may just be meant here as a bit of worldbuilding as we fall victim to the long departed owners.
Despite the conglomeration of events feeling randomly put together, I still feel like there’s some coherence; not quite the full lore of Zork, but at least enough of a consistent mood I started to feel like I was in a “real environment” rather than just a series of puzzles. I have yet to try seriously solving anything though, so who knows what wonders / terrors / bad comma splices will eventually unfold.
The first moment I was absolutely gleeful in Cornucopia was when I opened a spell-book in the starting area.
>OPEN BOOK
Opening the spell book reveals :- detect magic spell; dispel magic spell; purify water spell; dispel illusion spell; detect illusion spell; levitate self spell; detect evil spell.
This is what you start with! This game is going to take a while. I have the rest of January blocked out.
I recently played Brian Cotton’s game Goblin Towers, which was his second published after Catacombs by Supersoft, and it was quite simple, to the extent it may have been written first. (Read those two posts if you would like the historical background on the Cotton games.) Cornucopia returns to a more complex world, and in fact is allegedly Cotton’s most complicated game, trying to go for a full Zork experience (or I guess Enchanter, except Enchanter wasn’t out yet when this game was released!) Remember, it was clear from Goblin Towers that Cotton was thinking of Zork, not Crowther/Woods or Scott Adams as most other writers were.
There’s reference in Cornucopia to Goblin Towers right at the start, which makes me think it is in the same universe. Before showing off what I mean, I should mention that this game (like Catacombs) was lost until the Classic Quests version for DOS showed up; also just like Catacombs, this game was originally broken and unable to be finished. However, Cornucopia has a fix! If you want to play, use the Fixed Game link here which makes the game completable.
Having commited a heinous crime against the Gods (spitting on the steps of the temple, I think), you are summoned before them. This is an extremely rare occurrence, as most offenders are summarily executed with a lightning bolt! As you cower before the Gods, half blinded by their splendour, they reveal why they have spared you – temporarily. They have a small task for you to perform: ‘Find the Cornucopia and bring it here’ they boom.
While we have a designated collect-the-treasures spot, just like Cotton’s other two games, there’s a secondary objective now of getting a specific Cornucopia for the Gods. I like the “spitting on the steps of the temple, I think” — it’s as if our main character has committed so many crimes against the Gods the narrator isn’t sure which one is considered the heinous one. Either that, or the narrator is like a storyteller making things up on the fly that never entirely filled in that detail.
You are outside a small cottage, a doorway leads into it although there doesn’t seem to be a door. The cottage is surrounded by a forest made up of huge and grotesque growths of fungi, a damp dismal mist shrouds the ground making everything quite indistinct. The outlines of a path leading south can just be made out.
Just like Goblin Towers, we start outside a cottage, and from the cottage there is a forest and a tower. Assuming it is the same forest, it is now a different maze and overgrown with fungus (see how Adventure Quest has the “degenerate forest” following the normal one of the first game).
Going in the cottage:
You are inside a small cottage, little better than a hovel really, the only exit is to the north. There is a huge wooden table in the middle of the room, it appears to be extremely old and is obviously well used. Sitting on the wooden table is :- spell book; rusty sword; battery lamp; small note; green bottle.
A couple subtleties here with how items work: you can examine items, but they won’t always give more descriptions. However, the “lying on the ground” descriptions are a little more complete than the one given in the list here.
A battered battery lamp is here with what appears to be an everlasting battery in it.
The sword has both an ground description (“quite rusty but in a usable condition”) and an EXAMINE description.
This sword is in very poor condition and has obviously been used by a hacker, by the state of the blade, it is rusty and pitted. A sword which is a disgrace to its owner.
The other important detail is that not only does GET ALL work, but it seems to give away every referrable item in the room. That makes it easy to tell what should be zeroed in on in each description (some games try to prevent this, but given the allegedly difficulty here I’ll take any advantage I can get).
>GET ALL
wooden table : The wooden table is beyond your strength to lift.
spell book : Taken.
rusty sword : Taken.
battery lamp : Taken.
small note : Taken.
green bottle : Taken.
The table can incidentally both be looked under and broken, so there’s a fair amount of physical simulation going on. For the last items: The green bottle, cryptically, contains nothing. The small note reads “leave treasure here”. The spellbook has a description of the outside, and must be opened to be read:
>READ BOOK
The spell book is large with thick padded covers. The covers have runic designs around the edges and particularly ornate bits in the corners, the whole is decorated with small gemstones and gold leaf. It must be worth a fortune.
It contains, as I already showed off, spells; here’s the details on each one:
detect magic spell (CAST DETECT MAGIC ON OBJECT, tell you if an item is magic)
dispel magic spell (CAST DISPEL MAGIC ON OBJECT, remove magical abilities of object)
purify water spell (CAST PURIFY WATER, will cleanse nearest body of water)
dispel illusion spell (CAST DISPEL ILLUSION, will remove any illusion close by)
detect illusion spell (CAST DETECT ILLUSION, will inform the player of any illusions close by)
levitate self spell (CAST LEVITATE SELF, rise vertically)
detect evil spell (CAST DETECT EVIL ON OBJECT, determine if an object is “based in evil”)
Now, the big catch here is that the spells disappear when used, at least sometimes. I’m not clear the conditions, for example, using CAST LEVITATE SELF when in the starting hut:
You rise into the air and hover around for a while before slowly dropping back down again, quite good fun in fact.
The spell is now missing from the spellbook. However, there’s a part I’ll show off shortly where levitate self helps solve a puzzle, and the spell remains! Maybe there’s a “if it is useful, you hang on to it” rule? It makes the DETECT ILLUSION spell a bit dicier to use (since the whole point is a binary yes or no, and if you already know yes why not go straight to dispel?) However, I’m early enough in the game I might be misunderstanding what’s going on; it may also be possible to find a way to replenish spells or even add new spells.
In the forest there are two ways to exit (unless some random maze room has an illusion that needs dispelling or whatnot — I haven’t gone through and tested it everywhere yet since saving and loading will be needed). The first is a large fungus just to the south of the cottage:
You find yourself in a strange forest of giant fungus growths, they create an eerie feeling. No particular direction seems to suggest itself to you here. There is a particularly huge specimen here, with what appears a dark opening in it.
>ENTER FUNGUS
As you enter the fungus you get a weird sinking feeling You are in a circular room, above and below you it is dark. You have a weird feeling of falling.
The inside is described as an “Elevator down” in the short room description, and there’s a “sensation of falling” until arriving at a countryside.
>WAIT
Time passes……
You are on the edge of a small brook, which has long since dried up. A path follows along the course of the brook to the east and west. Across on the other side of the brook you can see lush rolling countryside.
>W
You are at what was once the source of the brook but is now just a tangle of broken boulders. The only way out from here is to the east. There is a small slim oblong piece of card here.
>EXAMINE CARD
The card is solid gold with an ebony edging and writing on one side in a bold gothic script which reads ‘Admit one only’. On the other side in almost microscopic letters it says ‘that will do nicely’, the meaning of which seems quite obscure.
There’s a wide open space I have yet to fully explore, so I’ll get back to y’all soon on that. The same is true for the other route out, which involves finding the tower in the forest. You can’t climb due to a lack of “handholds”, but the levitate spell works.
>CAST LEVITATE SELF
You rise up and up and up, the top of the tower seemingly getting no closer. The power of the spell seems to be wavering but still you are rising and just as the spell runs out of steam you find yourself… You are in a small room at the top of a tall tower. In the centre of the room, which is circular, there is a staircase leading down into darkness. The room is lit with the light that comes through a single window. Through this window you have a somewhat dismal view over a large area which is covered with huge fungus growths. This view is only broken by the sight of a somewhat delapidated cottage. Against the wall opposite the window is a large wardrobe, this was apparently at one time used as some sort of a bedroom.
The wardrobe has a Fabergé egg (our first treasure).
Again, the map spreads out quite extensively, and just a clipping to show what I’m dealing with:
I’ll get into the details next time, although let me draw attention to the troll at the bottom of the stair (if you just keep going down the stair after levitating into the tower you’ll find him).
You are at the bottom of spiral staircase which has opened out onto a small landing. It is very dark here and with the state it is in, it has been used as a toilet by some large animal, it smells abominable. To the east is a low tunnel.
>E
You are in part of a trolls lair, all manner of stuff is strewn around, including parts of its previous meals. To the west is a low tunnel and to the south what looks to be a tiny cavern. A huge and hairy troll stands here blocking your way.
>KILL TROLL WITH SWORD
The troll being a rather dull creature just grabs the rusty sword from you and without further ado eats it.
This reminds me quite a bit of the Zork I troll that eats things that you toss at him (although you can wield a weapon without it, too, being eaten). My guess is I need to find some kind of poison or sleep drug and it will do its work.
For now, quite a bit of mapping to do. This feels like the most “dense” game I’ve played for All the Adventures since Dungeon Quest.
Renga in Blue 