Well, these dungeons ain't gonna loot themselves.
Again, the back entrance to Hythloth -- and now that I think about it, the only entrance, since you can't get to the other one without a balloon, and leaving that was is the only way to get the balloon in the first place -- takes you straight down to level 8, the bottommost level of any dungeon. And every dungeon is connected by altar rooms on level 8, so...
All of the dungeons based on virtues derived from Truth connect here -- so Spirituality (Hythloth), Honor (Shame), Honesty (Deceit), and Justice (Wrong).
So it's a good shortcut to save yourself a lot of map-exploring and dungeon-crawling.
Of course, the bottommost levels also have the strongest monsters. A Xorn, a Treant, and three Ettins aren't even the worst of it.
And secret switches in damage zones are not rare.
But Wrong is a good place to start, since the stone room is on level 8 too. This is not always the case!
the course of thy travels?Well, yeah.
I'm assuming your script wasn't quite programmed right, buddy, prompting you to say the "Expel from dungeon" lines before your "You get a thing" line.
The wall vanishes.
Everybody must get stones!
We trek back to the Altar of Truth.
And shortcut into Deceit.
There are some tougher battles here, including one that has three Gazers and a Balrog that I didn't screencap for some damn reason. I make it to the stone room nonetheless.
Now here's the trick. No matter what the NPC in these rooms says, no matter how obvious the "right" answer is, their questions are always basically "Do you want this stone?". The answer is
always yes. If you ever say no, they kick you out of the dungeon.
I guess in this case I'm being honest enough with myself to admit that no one is ever perfectly honest.
We can't take another round of fighting to get back to Hythloth, so we Exit from Deceit and end up at the normal entrance. Thankfully a ship is along shortly so we can sail back to Britain, heal up, and go back into Hythloth.
Just one more for Truth...
Shame is laid out oddly. The stone is on level 2, but if you enter from the world map entrance, you have to go all the way down a ladder shaft like in Hythloth to get to level 7, fight a mandatory battle, climb back up a different shaft, and know there's a secret door to access the rest of the dungeon on level 4 before you accidentally climb back out and leave from level 1. Or you can start from Hythloth and fight your way up to level 2, passing this secret trove on level 6 on the way. There are 22 chests here giving the usual 1-99 gold, so you average about a thousand gold for making this detour.
And as you climb, the scripted fights get easier.
along the path of honor, for so long as thou shalt draw breath?Obvious yes.
This time I take the stairs out, reenter the dungeon from the entrance, drop to level 7, fight, up to 4, into the dungeon proper, and descend from there to reaccess the Altar room. Why?
Because the treasure room resets when you leave the dungeon.
Anyway, this is the first scripted fight you get into coming from Hythloth, and the last fight you have to do before you leave. Dragons and Hydras are some of the toughest monsters in the game. When I came in, they all ganged up on Mariah, and she had to go through all of this mess with her HP cut by half from getting so beat up in the very first fight.
Anyway, I make it back to the Altar of Truth, mage intact.
There are four holes to put stones into. Do you want to put this stone here?Yeah, we worked out what to do here already. The stones for the virtues derived from Truth are blue, purple, green, and white. You know, the ones I just got from the adjoining dungeons. Mostly.
Aw yeah. Now, uh... what do I do with this thing? Everyone's told me I need it, and how to get it, but not what it's for!
Since there's no other way out of this valley, and no way to get from Hythloth to Castle Britain, the balloon is always here waiting for you whenever you exit to keep you from getting stuck.
We happen to drift by Empath Abbey first, which is okay since there's a Healer there and we're awfully beat up. (Inns cost 20 gold and restore +100 HP to everyone in your party. Healers are 70 gold and completely restore one character. Lord British, of course, will completely heal you for free.)
While we're here, we'll follow up on a lead.
Or would, if she actually told us the last ingredient for the Life spell. Wait a minute... her last name is Mandracha! Dracha sounds like "drache", the German word for Dragon. Dragons collect hoards of gold. Gold... old... cold! It's always cold underground. Roots grow in the ground... Manroot! It's so obvious!
Having swung by Skara Brae to restore some reagents (and by overpaying the blind reagent seller, pumping my Honesty a little), it's back to Britain.
You know the drill.
Hythloth being the dungeon of Spirituality, and Spirituality being derived from Truth, Love, and Courage, Hythloth connects to all three altar rooms.
So we head from the Altar of Love into Covetous, and shortly...
blood from a dying companion?...yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyes?
Now. Sacrifice is derived from Love and Courage, so the bottom level of Covetous connects to both of those Altar Rooms. And since I'm only missing one more stone -- having collected White and Black elsewhere, picking up Yellow earlier, and having grabbed the Green, Blue, and Purple ones from the Alter of Truth -- I head down and out the exit leading to...
And from there...
To the bottom of Destard, the dungeon of Valor.
No sweat.
............................y... yes?
Welp. You know the drill. Red, purple, orange, and white stones go here.
Yellow, green, orange, and white.
Oh, yeah.
Using a Gem or casting the View spell will give you a map of your current dungeon level. This is Hythloth level 8. All of it. See, the edges of the map wrap around, so it's possible on some levels to walk straight in one direction and come back to the ladder you just entered the level from. The Chalices, in this case, are Altar Rooms, but stone rooms use the same icon. Hollow boxes are scripted encounters. Arrows are ladders -- this being the bottom, none point down from here. Secret doors are (blessedly) marked on this map, so that's one reason to buy a lot of Gems to bring with you on any crawl.