Part II: Seven Words and Seven Relics

The evil wizard Kawahara has been defeated and the good wizard Senju has been found in his hiding place on Nyuku. Senju sends the party on a quest for the Blue Crystal, promising them a weapon of great power in return. What other wonders will the party find along the way?

Okay, stepping out of narrative mode for a moment, let’s take stock. One of the effects of the open-world nature of Deathlord is that, at this point in the game, it’s not super clear where you’re supposed to go. However, if you wander on to the wrong continent, you’re likely to find yourself in trouble pretty quickly. There’s nothing stopping you from heading south in search of a Blue Crystal; the world map even shows a continent (Asagata) south of Nyuku. But if you do you’re more likely to end up on the Lost Isles, and you don’t really want to take on the Caves of the Four Elements without better fire protection than Z4:HITATE.

The best choice for the next continent to visit is actually Chigaku, because the dungeons are the right level for your party. If you’re playing blind, it’s actually more likely that you tried to find Chigaku after leaving Kodan (because it’s “north” of the temple where you find the clue about Senju fleeing Kodan), and that wouldn’t be so bad, but it made more narrative sense to send you straight to Senju first.

I guess what I’m saying here is: trust me, I’m sending you in the right directions to minimize backtracking. Because it’s not like Deathlord gives you useful clues in that regard. Hell, even the official cluebook uses a completely nonsensical ordering…

Chigaku

Two sectors S and five E of Nyuku – or two E and two N of Kodan – is the frozen hinterlands of Chigaku. If you’re coming through here on your way to find Senju, you’re going to learn a lot of things that don’t make sense. If you’re heading here after finding Senju, Chigaku represents a nice gentle step along your journey. I mean, as much as you can say that anything Deathlord throws at you is “nice” or “gentle”. Don’t get used to it.

Fort Wintergreen

Services: armor (Yoroi), shields (Great), misc. armor

Along the NW coast of Chigaku lies Fort Wintergreen, a nice little stopping point where you can learn a handful of useful hints and find some good armor (including an upgrade to Great Shields). Be warned, though; there are also a bunch of the dead-end hallways and fake-outs that Deathlord loves to throw at you. Enjoy exploring the fort, but don’t get too curious.

Senju passed through here on his way “north”. It would be way more accurate to say that he took a left turn at Alberqu— uh, Chigaku— and headed for Nyuku, which is way more west of here than it is north. Have fun sailing north from Chigaku and not finding anywhere to land!

There’s a dungeon nearby known as the Troll Hole. It’s in the swamps SE of here. While you’re there, you should look for pools and search the fourth level, although there’s no word on why. The pool in the ‘Rec Room’ is not useful, but there are lots of magic pools (of the good kind) in the Troll Hole.

Here’s a bit of a spoiler: There’s a Kichigai in the stockade that will tell you that Senju hid a word in the Troll Hole. The problem is you can’t get to him without a Blue Crystal, because he’s behind a Rakhammon’s Curtain. So maybe you dive the Troll Hole not knowing what you’re looking for, or maybe you completely forget to come back here after you figure out what Crystals are good for, or maybe you just read a good walkthrough that tells you what to do.

The Evil One, who rules “the four hells”, is immune to magic. Presuming that’s the Deathlord, this has the potential to be a pretty serious problem. (Turns out that’s only 99% true, about which more later.) The bit about four hells is germane, as well, which is also a very Deathlord thing to do: hide a significant point in a very subtle sentence.

Crystalmist

Services: training, melee weapons (Naginata), missile weapons (Great Bow), armor (Yoroi), misc. armor

The other town on Chigaku is in the NE and houses the continental trainer, which makes it a good base for diving the Troll Hole. By the way, the Hole was (supposedly) flooded years ago, but there have been reports of – wait for it – trolls in the area!

There are also two important clues to be found here, both about the powerful relics you’ll need to win the game.

The first is about the Blue Crystals. The designers played a particular clever trick here; if you go walking around the outside of the city walls -–yes, there’s one square of room to do so – you can find some Brigands who tell you that there are crystals to be found in the Lagoon, in a land S of Nyuko [sic]. There are several other opportunities to get clued into the location of the Crystals, though, if you miss this one (and the “due south of the second stone” clue from Nyuku).

The other is about the Lantern of Kasumi, a great samurai from the past, which will “light your way”; this turns out to be a very subtle clue on how to navigate the Deathlord’s domain, which is full of impenetrable darkness unless you can find the Lantern.

The “Home of Sotashi” houses a bunch of Ansatsusha that will attack you. There’s also some Kabuto in the NE that attack on sight. I guess this is what happens when you bust down doors. On the other hand, you can also learn (NW, $$) that Shumi the necromancer lives in a tower on the SW part of the continent. That sounds like a dungeon, though it turns out to be optional.

Troll Hole

Okay, it’s time to take on your first “word dungeon”. It’s only four levels, so not too bad, but it’s absolutely covered in swamp. You’ll want to make sure you have a full load of food before coming in here, because you’ll be resting a lot. Okay great, let’s check out the “Services” tabs and figure out where the nearest food vendor is… wait, no one on Chigaku sells food?! I have to sail to either Kodan or Nyuku to find a food vendor?! What the hell.

(sigh) Well, I suppose it’s an excuse to dust off Z4:TABEMONO, if you’ve got it.

At least the monsters aren’t that big a deal: mostly Hobake, Kaibu, Trolls, and Skeletons. Trolls hit three times a round but are otherwise within your capabilities. As hinted at previously, there are an absolute ton of magic pools here, so you can save-scum for some serious stat boosts if you’re either using a good map or willing to drink a lot of dungeon water.

Level 1: You’re immediately standing in some swamp, so get moving. Step E and don’t drink the water. Avoid the side rooms and work your way around clockwise to the first intersection. Go W, all the way S, and E. The stairs are in the SE, up a side passage not quite all the way at the end of the hall.

The second door N has a room with a magic pool. You have to walk across swamp to get to it, natch.

There are two treasure rooms on this floor; a reasonable map will show you where they are, in case you care, but at this point I bet you’re doing pretty good on gold and aren’t too worried about collecting more, especially if it means crossing a bunch of extra swamp.

Level 2: There’s a magic pool right by the entrance. Go W, N at the crossroads, and take the door W for a second magic pool (and a treasure room behind a false wall). If you follow the corridor around N there’s a third magic pool, but insidiously the way forward is through a false wall that takes you S, then around and through a portcullis. Skip past the temple (unless you have G6:UKU) and find the stairs down in the NW corner.

Level 3: Five more magic pools, although one is only accessible via G6:UKU. Go E, and where you see four pools in four corners, the NE one is magic. Go N from there and follow the snaking corridor to find a treasure room behind a secret door. Now go back to the four-way intersection with pools, go S and open a door, then go E and open a door. Two more treasure rooms S, and a magic pool at the E end of the hallway. Okay, those are the easy ones.

Go back to the four-pools crossroads again, then go E and immediately S through an open door. Follow that corridor S, E, and S to a three-way intersection. 4W of there is a secret door the to S with a magic pool surrounded by swamp. You can continue W, or circle back around to an E-W corridor to the S of here and find the secret door to save yourself a few swamp squares. Either way you’re just N of an offset four-way intersection.

If you have G6:UKU, step W and then N across the water. The first pool inside the door is magic. Then continue W.

If you don’t have G6:UKU, go S from the offset four-way and take the door W. Walk across a few swamp and you’ll emerge in the same place as the previous paragraph.

Either way, the fifth magic pool is in the SW room. Now go back to the corridor S of the offset four-way and follow the hallway W. The last door to the N, which you have to open while standing on swamp (ow), has the stairs.

If you don’t care about the magic pools and just want to cross the level as efficiently as possible, from the entrance stairs go S, W, S, E, take the second door S, door E, door E, E, third door N.

Level 4: Circle W and N. There’s a magic pool down the N corridor (second room W, first pool inside the door, no G6:UKU necessary). If you keep going N past that room, you can search for two secret doors in the swamp (grr) that hide a treasure room with a Harpy-infested coffin. Further yet is a portcullis with a useless room that has two parties of Kobito hiding behind some water. This is all completely pointless, though.

Back to the entrance room and W. There’s a magic pool in the center of the swamp. With G6:UKU, go N down a long swamp hallway and cross the water, then find the false wall W for three treasure rooms and the secret door N to continue into an E-W corridor.

Without G6:UKU, go W and N, E, N (ignore the water), then circle around W-N-E to the same corridor. (You can find the secret door S and then false wall E to get the treasure, too.)

In this hallway, you only care about the two locked doors NW. In the first room (W-most) you’ll find a signpost with The Word across a small pond. If you don’t have G6:UKU, there’s a false wall W that leads to a chain of secret doors N-E that gets you next to the sign so you can read it.

The second room has three magic pools NW but you’ll need G6:UKU to get to one of them. The third and fourth rooms are empty.

The word on the sign is FUSHIN. You can tell it’s a magic word because it’s printed in the center of the box. Even if you don’t know you’re looking for words, you were probably drawn to the signpost and are going to write down what’s printed there anyway, because you’re a good dungeon diver, right?

Congratulations on your first magic word! Reverse your steps and let’s get out of here.

Tower of Shumi

Well, this looks bad.

Shumi the necromancer welcomes you to his undead breeding ground (literally; see Level 3). There’s not much to do here but acquire a little bit of loot and kill a necromancer. It’s not a bad challenge check though; if you got through the Troll Hole, you ought to be able to clear this tower, and vice versa.

Level 1: An annoying level that gives you the flavor of the place. There’s an outer ring that circumscribes the level and you need to find a way in. You can head straight S from the entrance but you’ll have to cross fire and open a locked door while standing in it. If you circle E there’s a hallway that takes you inside, but there’s a pit trap. Continue around to the S side of the level and there’s a locked door and a portcullis to open.

For a useless clue, find your way to the W side of the tower. Cross the room full of fire and bash down a door N to enter a maze full of darkness, teleporters, and false walls. There are also a handful of fake doors in here; you can tell the difference because if you try to (P)ick the lock, it says “Nothing there!” instead of “No lockpick!”

The solution to the darkness maze is to avoid all the teleporters; it’s basically 1N 2W (false) 1W 2N 1W (false) 2N 2E 1N, then open the (real) door. The sign beyond says “SAIL S-E”, which roughly points you towards Osozaki in case you didn’t get the hint in Wakiza. Here’s the thing though: Osozaki is completely useless. But the next stop on the tour of the world map included with the game is S of here so I guess we’ll stop there next anyway?

To continue to Level 2, head to the E side of the outer ring. Just S of the two doors there’s a secret door that leads into a false wall maze. You’ll want a good map, but the solution is 3W 2S 4W (pass by a door to the S) 1N 2W 1N 3W 2S 2W (pass by a door S) 5N. Coming back is easier, just go E when you can and alternate N/S when you can’t.

Note that the stairs go down even though this is a tower, where it would make more sense for them to go “up”. Can’t have everything in an Apple II era game, I suppose.

Level 2: The sign reads “GO BACK”, and if you read it while standing on the staircase, you’ll do just that. There is a pit trap immediately S of the stairs, which is hard to find when every turn you spend searching sends you back down the stairs.

The good news is that if you want to skip over this level completely and head to Level 3, you can; the stairs are just S of you.

In fact, this level is pretty brutal; fire to be crossed, energy fields you can’t get through protecting treasure rooms you don’t need, pit traps in evil places, and a snaking dead-end path of doors to bash down with a sign at the end proclaiming it’s the “door storage area”. Thanks, Deathlord!

It is possible to teleport into the two treasure rooms by working your way most of the way through the door maze and then casting M4:UGOKU to randomly blink. It’s not really worth it, though, and I’d recommend save-scumming for good castings if you’re going to try it.

Level 3: You start in a circular hall of darkness. In the center of the ring is a room with a single magic pool. There are four outer exits from the ring:

The NW door is an apparent dead-end. From this room you can M4:UGOKU to a neighboring room NW which leads to a hallway to the ‘nursery’, which is a spawning ground for undead. Run from Wraiths and Phantoms (level drain); Apparitions (PAR, level drain) are basically extra-beefy Phantoms, so you really don’t want any. Otherwise, knock yourself out, I guess. There are better places to grind.

The NE door looks like a dead end, but there’s a secret door hidden in the fire. It leads to a treasure room (secret door to the N) and some stairs down which drops you in the midst of some magic fields (ow).

The SE door has a treasure room (coffins) and can be used to M4:UGOKU into a neighboring space E with more. If you try to exit that space by heading N and following the hallway W you’ll find a cunning mapping trap: a pair of linked teleporters that skip you over the space in the center of the level where you entered this floor, and connect the SE area with the SW area. Sure to mess up your maps. Also useless because you can’t avoid the chute.

The SW door leads to a door to a room with a secret door N, a treasure room beyond with another secret door, and a room with a magic pool. As you wind around the corridor you hit a chute which takes you down to a really awful area of Level 4 with some Phantoms, so don’t do that.

Level 4: If you came down the stairs, go 2W 1N 1W to minimize the energy field damage. Find your way to the “T” intersection at the N edge of the map and meet me in a couple of paragraphs.

If you fell down the chute, you have to fight off six groups of Phantoms. Good luck. The sign on the far side of the fire pit says

You did’nt [sic] think I would make it that easy, did you?

No, indeed, I did not. However, there is a secret door in the SW that leads to the rest of the level. Proceed E down the hall, turn N, bash the door, dodge the acid pit, and continue N to the end of the hall.

Note that the rest of the floor is useless. There are some coffin rooms in the SE with more energy fields and a couple of hidden vampires. We’ll talk about the NW in a second. The SW has those Phantoms and the NW is where we’re going for real.

From the “T” intersection, go 2E and search S for a secret door. This hallway has a bunch of damaging pit traps, so go slow and search a lot. At the end you see a door with a sign saying

Go back, this is your last warning

Now, if you were to follow this hallway around, you’d find another sign for the “Personal chambers of Shumi” with an obvious door. Turns out the door is a trap which teleports you into – and here I would like to emphasize that I am not making this up – a room full of fire (in the NW part of the level) with a sign saying “Thought you had me didn’t you? Burn fools!” Your only way out is M4:UGOKU (good luck!) or M7:UNPAN (which you almost certainly don’t have yet). There are no actual exits. Did I mention that Deathlord hates you?

So instead what we’re going to do is find the string of secret doors that takes you into Shumi’s lair. From the entrance to this hallway, go 4N 3W (ish) and search W, then search S until you get into his quarters. Shumi is a Necromancer, which you’ve fought before. That fireball is pretty nasty tho.

There is no prize for defeating Shumi. Unlike most RPGs, the level designers of Deathlord saw no reason to immediately follow up a boss fight with a large quantity of treasure, or really any reward at all. So once you beat him, all that is left to do is return to safety. Unfortunately, to get out of here, you have no choice but to go through the energy field and take the stairs. The good news is that there are secret doors 2E of the ones that led into Shumi’s room that will save you one extra square of field.

Osozaki

If you take the hint from Shumi’s Tower and sail “S-E” of Chigaku (three sectors south and two east, to be precise), you’ll find Osozaki. You can also get there by sailing straight east from Wakiza (i.e. the SW sector of Kodan).

Here’s the question though: why would you? Well, because you’re an RPG player, and you follow up diligently on clues when you’re given them. So if you went to Wakiza (an optional town) or Shumi’s Tower (an optional dungeon) then you might wind up on Osozaki (an optional continent) and take on Telegrond, which is not just optional, but also one of the hardest and most confusing dungeons in the game. For literally no reason. Good times.

Deepingdale

Services: food, melee weapons (Masakari), armor (Do-Maru)

The only town on Osozaki is found on a small island in the center, accessible via river from the W. You can enter by boat (recommended, as you’ll need one to get around) or on foot.

Both shops here carry less than you can get on Kodan. If you came here first (perhaps following the hint from Wakiza rather than immediately searching out Senju) it is vastly disappointing to set off on an epic journey and discover that the shopping hasn’t actually improved.

There’s no healer, but at least there’s food. Yeah, I’m looking at you, Chigaku.

The weapon shop has a sign that says

Ask us about our money back guarantee

If you talk to the nearby Senshi, he tells you

If one of these weapons breaks in combat we’ll send a full refund to your next of kin

There’s a Yakuza guild in the center-E of town. But there’s no treasure there.

On the North bank, which is to say the island in the NE of town, which can’t be accessed without a boat, you’ll find a house of “rich” Kobito. They do in fact have some gold to steal. Osozaki is also home to some ruins, formerly known as the town of Wakai, to the SW; and a dungeon, to the NE, which is 16 levels deep and run by a group of evil wizards.

Wakai

The ruin formerly known as Wakai is in the mountains to the SW. Bandits and brigands mostly live here; many of them have nothing to say to you, and those that do want money.

There’s an old condemned house on the N side of town, and we already know about the 16-level dungeon near Deepingdale. The shogun’s residence has a few gp for your trouble, and the old armor+weapons combo shops have a hidden deposit room between them, behind a secret door.

You may find that evil things live in Pyramids, but not around here. And some dude called the Red Shogun has a dungeon behind his palace; you’re encouraged to “sail around back”. Not many people know who he is, though. I’d say this is an important clue (the Doors Dungeon, which is behind the Red Shogun’s palace, is a word dungeon) but you’ll get the same clue again once you find the palace itself, so it’s not that important that you get it here.

Apart from a couple of Vampires behind a ‘No Trespassing’ sign, which you probably don’t want to muck with, there’s nothing much of value to learn, see, or do here.

Telegrond

As I’ve said before, the 16-level dungeons are optional. Don’t do them; I didn’t, which is why there’s no walkthrough for them. If you’re really interested, check out the Acknowledgements section for a link to Genpei’s blog; they’ve got more patience than I do (and are more willing to go exploring nasty dungeons with M7:UNPAN to map them out).

Akmihr

Continuing our clockwise progression through “continents we can find from the game map”, we now proceed to the southern hemisphere, where the climate is arid and the terrain gets more desert-and-scrublike to reflect it.

The desert island of Akmihr is six sectors directly south of Chigaku, or two west and three south of Osozaki if you decided to stop there. Akmihr contains a number of useful towns, another Word, and an important Relic, although we won’t be able to pick it up just yet.

The various towns and dungeons also contain some of the most direct and vital clues to discovering what exactly it is you’re supposed to do in this game. You’ll find a listing of (most of) the Relics, a handful of pointers (or at least town names) for where to go find them, and a description of the various Words, what they’re for, and what they’re derived from. Not to mention another more explicit clue about needing to find the dungeons of Hell in order to defeat the Deathlord.

For as long as Deathlord has dragged you along with only the barest minimum idea what the hell you’re doing, this island is a veritable firehose of useful information. Of course, you’ll need to discover a hard-to-find town and dive an otherwise optional dungeon in order to find it all…

The motto of this place might as well be “come for the hints, stay for the grinding”.

Oasis

Services: training, food, healing (Depetrify), melee weapons (Naginata), missile weapons (Heavy Bow), armor (Yoroi)

A nice little place to stop by on your first visit to Akmihr, and probably the first place you’ll find as it’s in the NE part of the continent. The training academy and healer will come in handy once you start diving into the mines, and unlike Chigaku there’s actually food for sale to sustain you through those long(?) dungeon dives.

If you find a Kobito who wants money, he will clue you into the secret of his people: there is a set of mines to the SW of here, in which a word is hidden. Apart from the mines, there’s also a second dungeon in the form of a pyramid, W of here. However, “a horrible fate awaits those who rob pyramids”, and as you may have heard before, “evil things live in pyramids”. So that trip promises to be fun for the whole family. We’ll do it last, as per usual.

You may be interested in the palace of the Sultan, who rules this land, to the S, and the Mages Guild, which is in Desert Flower, though no one knows where that is. (It’s right near the Palace, but it’s tucked in among some cacti and hard to find.)

In the SW side of town, Grool the Wicked gets annoyed if you force your way into his temple and kill his skeletons, but he won’t do anything about it.

Sultan’s Palace

Services: food, melee weapons (Glaive), armor (Do-Maru)

Set sail down the E coast of Akmihr from Oasis and you’ll soon find the Palace, accessible via boat or by land. An impressive building with a very important secret, and (in my opinion) one of the most well-designed cities in the game. Not much in the way of commerce though.

It’s also a little short on NPCs wandering around, but you can go find people to talk to in the Sultan’s guest quarters (S then W). Two important clues you pick up there: a Mahotsukai tells you to ‘search the garden’, just E of the courtyard, and a Kobito tells you that there’s a word in the mines, which are W of the palace (although you probably knew that already). You also get a repeat of the Mages Guild clue, but no further help finding Desert Flower.

Unlike many towns in Deathlord, the prisoners don’t have much to tell you, although you can also pick up the garden clue there. If you do break into the prison, be aware that the Guards are little tougher down south.

Finally, when you break into the garden and look around (there’s a secret door in the SE), you find a lone Mahotsukai. He tells you that “the Rod” is in the tower. The ‘tower’ always refers to one corner of town, but which one? The palace has four of them. Further, the Emerald Rod provides immunity to acid (via unlimited charges of Z4:SANTATE). Sounds awfully useful!

So I guess that means we’re going to look through the towers. The NW one is accessible from the docks; lots of fire, otherwise useless.

The SW tower has a sign that says ‘enter the pyramid through the gate of the rising sun’. If you haven’t heard about the pyramid that’s W of here yet, ask someone on the street. “Rising Sun” is a clue that you want to enter from the E side of the building; the other entrances are fakes.

To the NE you’ll find the Sultan’s quarters. He seems a nice enough fellow. You can rob him blind, though you have to pass two magic fields which take 50% of your HP as you pass. Also I enjoyed the part where the guards waiting in the hallway attacked me, while the guards in the Sultan’s chambers (and the Sultan himself) sat and watched.

At first glance, there doesn’t seem to be a SE tower… but if you look at where the door to the SW tower is, and then search in the mirror image on the E side, sure enough there’s a secret door there. With a big honkin’ sign saying DO NOT ENTER. And a ring of magic fields. With some Sand Dragons in the middle guarding a crate.

Welp.

Since we don’t have a Blue Crystal yet, I guess we’re going to have to come back later.

Desert Flower

Services: training, food, melee weapons (Sai), armor (Do-Maru)

In order to track down the elusive Mages’ Guild, you have to find Desert Flower. It’s rather close to the Sultan’s Palace, but hard to spot – it’s tucked into among the cacti just across the inlet N of the palace, invisible from the water but quickly found if you start exploring on foot.

I guess if you’re going to have a Sorcerer’s Guild, you might as well advertise it on your town sign? I guess that means we’ve found Desert Flower.

A Kobito tells you to look a bit SW of town. If you brave the cacti and head into the mountains, you find a signpost that says

Not all seas are as they appear

which is an incredibly obscure clue – I’m just gonna spoil this for you now – that hints at the function of the Sharktooth, which reveals the location of Hell Island. Without the tooth, you can sail right through that sector without hitting land. Fortunately(?) there’s a much less obscure version of this same clue if you dive the nearby Pyramid.

Don’t waste your time in the residences to the SW; the Guild is where the good hints are. You will learn that you need to find five relics: the Lantern, the Rod, the Ring, the Spear, and the Tooth. Senju has the Spear, which fits in with some other clues we’ve heard and makes getting a Crystal a top priority. The Crystal is also a relic, and we can find one in the Lagoon – still no word on where that is though. The Tooth is in Malkanth, a legendary town populated by demons.

Finally: some extremely clear hints about the goals of the game and where to go! Took you long enough…

Kobito Mines

Some of Deathlord’s dungeons are really well put together. Some show off a theme, and are fun to get to know. Some present really challenging navigation puzzles. Some are more important than others, what with hiding a word (like this one) or an artifact. The Kobito Mines, though? The main thing going on here is combat. A lot of combat. This is a fantastic place to grind levels, because Kobito are fairly straightforward to fight, they have no special attacks, and they return 14xp each. I cleared two (character) levels without even trying. And there’s a training academy not far from here.

And of course, at the bottom, there’s a word to be found. Depending on how you look at it, the Mines are either a nasty navigation puzzle or a complete anti-climax. The word is on Level 4, which is the bottom level. Getting down is easy, and you’re more likely than not to do it accidentally because there are hidden chutes everywhere and avoiding them is hard. That also means working your way back up is painful. But to make things easier(?), there’s a joined staircase that takes you directly from Level 1 all the way down to Level 4 and back up again. If you can find it. That’s the anti-climax part.

You can find some magic pools here, though, if you’re looking for some stat upgrades. So that’s nice.

Now that I’ve ruined everything, grab a good map to help you avoid the chutes and let’s get started.

Level 1, The Mines of “Morea”? Really?! I get that Kobito are supposed to be Dwarves, but all you did was change one vowel? At what point does “homage” turn into “copyright violation”?

The bad news is that this level has a handful of chutes that will send you down to level 3. The good news is that there’s not a lot else interesting going on here, so if you’re in a hurry, and don’t want to fight off the hordes of Kobito, it’s not such a bad way to go down. The closest one is directly S from the entrance (you can skirt around the fire pits).

To find the actual stairs, go W from the entrance room. You can duck into the first room to the S (find a secret door) for a few measly treasure pots. Head S and take the third passage E, then walk until you hit a T intersection, then go S to the locked door. Again, you can go through this door for a few more measly pots. Go W, but not all the way to the end of the hall (where there’s a chute); between the two doors to the S, look N for a false wall that takes you to the stairs.

Level 2, “Gold Mine and Ore Storage”: Rather a misnomer. This floor is a fairly-open set of caves, with one treasure room in the N behind a hallway of false walls. There’s also three magic pools (one pair, the second of which requires G6:UKU). There’s a bunch of chutes that drop you down to Level 3. And still a lot more Kobito.

Level 3, “Lower Mine Shafts”: Another set of open caves. Two magic pools in the E side of the map, one N (at the end of a snaking corridor) one S (likewise). And one random chute near the pond in the SE that drops you onto level 4. Literally nothing else going on here.

Level 4, “Central Complex”: The Kobito spawn thick and furious down here, so I hope you’re healed up. There’s nowhere to hide and rest, either.

If you came down the stairs, exit S. The halls to the N of the stairs are pointless; circle to the W to avoid a pit. There are a bunch of false walls along this corridor, but most don’t take you anywhere interesting. When you come to the E/W corridor, head S; in the SE corner of the chamber of fire there’s a secret door that takes you to a treasure room. This is the real gold mine: some quick math says you should clear around 20,000 gp, which will help pay for all the training you’re going to need.

If you fell down the chute from level 3, you wind up near the center of the chamber of fire.

Head N into the hallway of water. Find the W end and go N. In the NE corner, where the stone walls and brick walls meet, there’s a false wall that takes you down a long path which curves S. At the end of the path is a sign with the next word: NIKUMU

As you work your way back up the staircase, you may find Kobito that have spawned but are stuck in the staircase foyers. But that’s just par for the course in here. Head back to the surface and do some training, and stick around as long as you want to grind levels.

Pyramid of Akhamun-Ra

Although this is an optional dungeon, it’s worth doing for plot reasons. Guardians and Mummies can cause disease (ILL), but there’s a healer in Oasis and your Shizen probably has Z3:BYOKINASU already.

Interestingly, the first time you attack anyone, it saves to disk, as if you had just attacked someone in a town. (This also happened in Yokohama.) I can’t see what difference this possibly makes, though, since it’s not like Akhamun-Ra will talk to you.

Enter from the E (“through the gate of the rising sun”) and find the secret door into the crypt. Watch out for pits, which are sparsely distributed throughout the narrow hallways.

Immediately to the N after the first pit there’s a secret door. In a nasty bit of trap design, there’s a magic field in front of a locked door. And you thought standing on swamp in front of a door was bad. Once you bash it down, behind it you find… nothing. The room beyond has a bunch of spidery hallways with one false wall at the end, each of which goes absolutely nowhere. The whole thing is a death trap designed to frustrate you and make you spend a bunch of time healing. As much as I’ve complained about Deathlord being full of shit like this, though, it feels kind of right in a pyramid.

Go back out to the first hallway and continue W. From the main four-way intersection in the center of the tomb, you can:

Go S and follow the hallway around. You’ll come to a small room with an acid pool. There’s a false wall W of the pool. Follow that around to a tomb with four coffins – careful, some of them are full of Mummies. The gate to the S is a red herring (the burial room beyond is empty).
Go N and follow the hallway around. The first branch W is useless. You will have some trouble getting past the Tomb Robbers that are in the hallway. You do have the option of attacking them. For laughs, ask them about pyramids. They also seem to know a few things about words and the dungeon (aka the Kobito Mine), but nothing you don’t already know.

In the next branch to the N, you’ll find a room that the Robbers have already looted (“We got here first!”). But one of the Robbers is stationary, and he has a hint: search ‘east’ in the chamber of fire, which is in the SW. Let’s go check that out now; the rest of this hallway is empty.

Go W. There’s a handful of side passages here. The first turn-off is S. Continue S to the chamber of fire – aha! There are two secret doors, E and S. Behind the E door is a room full of Mahotsukai with some of the most useful clues in the game, in terms of explaining the plot and what you have to do:

“Seven words to pass the gates. Each word can be found deep in a dungeon.”

If you ask about words: “Seven words for the seven ancient evils.”
If you ask about gates: “Do you mean the gates of hell?”

As a bonus you get to hear about another artifact and what it’s for:

Hell exists only if you have the Tooth. Find it in Malkanth

The S secret door hides a treasure room (and some Guardians).

Go N from the chamber of fire and turn W. Again, a bunch of Tomb Robbers block your path, and there’s another cleaned-out crypt beyond, and again there’s a stationary Tomb Robber hiding in the corner with a hint. This one tells you that there’s a secret door somewhere in the central room, which is the only way to find the actual burial chamber.

If you go back out to the main hallway and turn W again, there are a handful more side rooms. You’ll meet some more Tomb Robbers and probably some more Guardians, but there’s nothing else to do in this wing.

Head back to the central room and find that secret door; it’s in the NE, and you have to find the false wall beyond it. Advance down the dark corridor, bust down the door to the outer chamber, fight off some Guardians, and work your way around to the stairs (mind the pits).

Level 2: Guardians spawn pretty quickly up here, so be quick. There are two parties guarding the burial chamber itself. The loot boxes around Akhamun-Ra’s coffin aren’t worth the time required to loot them. The man himself is pretty brutal – casts a highly-effective UNMEI (slay one opponent), also has KOROSU and some group-zap spells. Kick his ass, then get out of here.

Narawn

The land of Narawn is not particularly easy to find, although the easiest way to get there is to sail 10 sectors directly south (or six north, if you’re looking at a world map) of Nyuku. That puts it 5W 2S of Akmihr and 5S 2W of Kodan.

You get clued in twice to the fact that there’s a land S of Nyuku. The first calls back to a sign you say in Tokugawa that didn’t make any sense at all (“due south of the second stone”). But then you find “the second stone” out in the wilderness of Nyuku. The second hint is in Crystalmist, where inquiring after a ‘lagoon’ will get you the hint that you should look for one S of Nyuku. Either way, if you head to Nyuku and then sail directly S, you will eventually hit Narawn.

Lost Lagoon

Services: training, food, tools, melee weapons (Masakari), armor (Haramakido)

Some Brigands in Crystalmist told you to look for crystals in a lagoon. So did a Mahotsukai in Desert Flower. Well, here you go. You’ve got a bunch of little islets surrounded by water. You can walk around the back side of some of them, but some you can’t… and that ought to be a clue.

Fortunately, this is one of those towns that has a helpful signpost in the center… If you can figure out how to get there. Enter from the W and you’ll find a nice path that takes you straight to it (or to the graveyard in the NW, which is also well-labeled).

Sure enough if you find the right building (it’s just SE of the W entrance), there’s a false wall in the S that leads to a Mahotsukai sitting in a field of clover. “Look at all the crystals!” he says. (F)search the field to find one. In fact, while you’re here, get two.

It’s hard-ish to get between different sides of the map, so you’ll probably exit the town and re-enter from different sides depending on what you’re looking for. The crystals are best found W, along with most merchants. The tools shop is found E, along with the home of a bunch of angry Kichigai.

There’s an old volcano in the center of this continent that contains an evil place called Malkanth. It hides “a mighty artifact”, which sounds a lot like the Sharktooth we heard so much about on Akmihr, so I guess we should go there. While you’re in Malkanth, “keep to the shadows”.

There’s a town S of here called Kashiwa, but you’ll need a ship to get around.

It’s tempting to run straight back to Senju now that you have a Blue Crystal, but maybe let’s explore the rest of this continent and pick up that other relic first, eh?

Kashiwa

Services: training, food, healing (Depetrify), missile weapons (Great Bow), specialty weapons, armor (Yoroi), misc. armor

If you sail around the rest of Narawn you’ll figure out two things: there’s nothing else here, and there’s an inlet on the W side of the island that takes you into the center. Down that inlet you’ll find the town of Kashiwa, and the Malkanth volcano (guarded by Fort Demonguard, but we’ll get there in a minute.)

Enter by boat (from either the N or W). The NW corner of town is partitioned off from the rest and is only reachable with a boat. In that corner you’ll find the two armor shops (and nothing else). There’s plenty of other shopping to be found throughout the rest of town.

Everything else is accessible by land. For direction-finding, you can learn that the village of Lost Lagoon is N of here – nice to see two towns that give out directions to each other, for once. Fort Demonguard is just to the E; its occupants hold back the demons from the fiery pit of Malkanth.

A Ronin tells you to search the academy. In a secret closet W off the trainer’s hall, there’s a Yakuza that tells you ($$) that there’s a word under a pyramid, “north of the coast and due west”. This points you at the Isle of the Dead, not that you have a name for it yet.

A Shizen (in the NW) tells you to check the loops in the canal. There are no secret doors there, but there is a false wall; however, you can’t sail a boat through a false wall, so you have to try disem(B)arking through the walls to find the false one. Once you do, a Mahotsukai tells you to search “the shrine of chaos”, which doesn’t mean much yet.

The Daimyo of Kashiwa (SE corner) is not friendly, but also not really worth killing.

Fort Demonguard

Services: healing (Depetrify), melee weapons (Naginata), armor (Yoroi)

Fort Demonguard is in the W side of the volcano in the center of Narawn, providing a gateway to “the town of evil”, Malkanth. It’s “heavily guarded”, although that doesn’t really mean much in practice unless you’re in the habit of raiding villages, pissing off the town guards, and disk-swapping to restore. I definitely wouldn’t do that here.

There’s not a lot to be found here; a healer in the NW, and good weapons and armor merchants in the E. In the Guest Chambers to the SW you can find a Yabanjin who says that he comes from Snowraven, which he claims is far E of here. (He’s wrong, in that charming tradition of NPCs that don’t know what they’re talking about; Tsumani is directly SW of here, and there’s enough between here and there that I’m not sure how you could sail E of Narawn and end up on Tsumani unless you already knew what you were doing.)

When you break into the prison (SE) you’ll be able to tell the prisoners that will attack you from the ones that won’t, because the former won’t move away from the gate while the latter ones will. One set of Smoke Demons will tell you that the Pyramid of the Old Ones is W and a bit N of here; this matches the pyramid clue from Kashiwa. The place has a name and we’ve been pointed there twice; sounds important.

Finally, there a handful of Unicorns that will tell you to sail E to get to “the temple”, which is a (unnamed) pointer towards Giluin and the Temple of Oceanus. And, of course, like Nyuku to Narawn, it’s actually faster to get there sailing the other way around the world.

Okay, three pointers to useful places, two of which are correct and one is quite wrong. What’s left? Oh yeah, we came here looking for Malkanth, which apparently lies through the gate at the E end of the Fort. I have to say, though, these windows out the E side of the building don’t look good. There’s an awful lot of fire out there. But I suppose it is an active volcano. Maybe we want some fire protection before we go much further?

To exit towards Malkanth, you’ll need to bust down a portcullis and a door and make your way through a magic field. So it’s a good thing you picked up a Blue Crystal already, right? You can also use M4:UGOKU from near the windows to try to bypass most of the doors. In any case, you don’t actually need fire protection just yet.

Malkanth

Services: food, melee weapons (Naginata)

I know it looks weird for a dungeon to have services, but stick with me here.

As you exit Fort Demonguard, you’re dropped back on the world map inside the volcano. No enemies spawn here, so it’s a great place to rest up. You’ll want to cast Z4:HITATE before you actually enter Malkanth, though. If you really want to explore the whole place, you’ll probably want to get the Emerald Rod first, but if you’re willing to skip to the good bits, head to the SE corner and you can pick up the Sharktooth right now.

Malkanth, or “hell on earth” as the guards like to call it, is broken up into four areas, which “mirror the four spheres of Hell”. The NW corner is “shadow”, the SW is “acid”, the NE is “fire”, and the SE is the “seat of it’s ruler” [sic]. Treat Malkanth like a town; demons will generally tolerate your presence unless you attack someone, and you really don’t want this whole place bearing down on you, even if the Demonguard would appreciate the effort.

NW corner (Shadow): Not a lot going on here; some easy-to-dodge patches of fire. The SW building has a tomb with a bunch of open coffins; “take your pick”, says the helpful demon. There’s a secret entrance in the S wall of the SE building, but the only thing inside is a Lich in his coffin and you don’t really want any of that. The northern building has a weaponsmith. Remember that hint to “stick to the shadows”? Totally does not apply here.

SW corner (Acid): It’s helpful to have the Emerald Rod here so you don’t have to wait around for your Shizen to cast a lot of Z4:SANTATE. To the SW, across the acid field, you’ll find McEvil’s Fast Food, Home of the Slimeburger. They also sell human food for 3gp each, in case you rest so much you run out. The “Rest Room” is a graveyard (hah). If you walk around back you can find the Kitchen with some pots; only one of them has food you can steal, though.

NE corner (Fire): Even more fire here than there is acid over there. The main building is a temple to the Lord of Death himself, but he’s not here (phew). There are two treasure rooms through false walls, one in either wing, but you’ll need fire protection to get there, and the treasure isn’t worth it.

SE corner (Seat of government): Don’t be discouraged by the diamond-shaped room. It has secret doors in all three directions, which you probably figured out if you’ve been mapping. To the W and N is the “Games Room” where some demons are torturing a Senshi (“Run for your life”). W and S is the treasury, with some moderate amounts of cash. S from the center is Council Chambers, holding absolutely nothing. E and N is “cold storage”, with a bunch of dead (presumably frozen) adventurers. But E and S is the “Shrine of Chaos”, which sounds awfully promising.

Now, two hints you got before will need to be combined in order to walk out of here with the Sharktooth. First, you were told in Kashiwa to “search the Shrine of Chaos”; you will need to (F)search the floor to find it. Second, you were told in Lost Lagoon to “stick to the shadows”. Sure enough, you should ignore the two coffins in the center of the room, and start searching the dark squares instead. You’ll find the tooth somewhere in the W part of the room. It’s a slot 5 item, so people carrying a Blue Crystal should not try to pick it up.

That’s it for Malkanth. Cast Z4:HITATE, head back to the Fort, and good luck opening that locked door while standing on an energy field. (I prefer M4:UGOKU, myself.)

Asagata

Asagata lies between Narawn and Nyuku, so it makes a natural stopping-off point on our way back to Senju. The only essential hint you get here is a pointer towards the Lost Isles, which you need to find the Cave of the Four Elements. Of course there’s zero indication of why you would want to go there until you actually go there. There’s also a secondary hint pointing you kind of (but not really) towards Sirion and Greenbanks, but otherwise this continent is completely optional. But it is on the world map that comes with the game box, so we might as well cover it.

Towne Royal / Makimura

Services: training, food, healing (Depetrify), tools, melee weapons (Naginata), specialty weapons, shipyard

A tough little town(e) to get around(e), since it’s only accessible by boat. You’ll be able to stay on board all day, though, because the pathways are easier to navigate on water than on land / sidewalks.

The shopping is quite good here; Towne Royal has almost everything. Highlights include the Samurai Supply Shop(pe) in the NW corner; if for some reason your Samurai don’t have a Katana yet (or a better weapon, although that’s unlikely), buy one now. You can also pick up the other “specialty” weapons, although it still seems weird to me that a Samurai Supply Shop sells weapons for Ninja.

The nearby “shrine of the unnamed god” is a healer that can depetrify, but you literally have to walk over hot coals to get to them. Hmph. Not much use without the Ruby Ring.

The Daimyo (SE) doesn’t like it when you break into his home. But if you kill him you can steal his boat!

The essential clue you need is that there’s an island almost direct N from here. This points you towards the Lost Isles.

Other bits of local color include a pointer towards the nearby dungeon, a lair of fire giants in the Ash Mountains where they mine gold. You’re probably not hurting for gold, but it might be worth checking out. Meanwhile, a Kobito will tell you ($$) that “the mines” are rich in gold. But if you ask about a mine, they tell you that the Kobito have one in the hills of Akmihr. (A nice pointer, if you don’t already know about it.)

While you’re in Croyo, you should definitely look for the key. (Hint: you should not look for the key.)

There’s a Mages Guild in Oasis, which is also a town in Akmihr. This is not quite true; there is a Mages Guild in Akmihr, but it’s in Desert Flower, not Oasis. I can’t complain too much, though, because the people in Oasis will tell you it’s in Desert Flower, and at least you’re on the right continent at that point? God, this game has really lowered my standards for NPCs giving out “accurate” information.

Croyo

Services: food, tools, melee weapons (Glaive), armor (Do-Maru)

Things to do:

Check out the graveyard and get the clue from the skeleton.
Stock up on food and supplies. shrug
That’s it.

Seriously. You can visit the Daimyo in the N and rob him blind; he doesn’t seem to mind. If you check out his hedge maze you can find the Toshi Home E and the Kobito Home W. Neither is helpful.

The clues aren’t even any good. A bunch of Kobito came to Croyo; then a bunch of them disappeared. The nearby dungeon is a lair of giants on the N coast. Even the “important” clue, which you get from a skeleton hanging out in the graveyard, doesn’t help; he tells you to search his grave in Greenbanks, which is a set of ruins S of here. But not directly S; Sirion is actually pretty hard to find from here, but more on that later.

Oh, and that key you were supposed to find in Kobito Home? It’s a key-shaped room filled with fire that contains a hint that you can also get in Towne Royale, without having to walk through fire to get it. This is yet another example of how much Deathlord hates you.

Also, I wouldn’t piss off the guard here if I were you. Check out the barracks just N of the SE graveyard. On the other hand… given how useless this town is, you could give it a shot if you wanted to get into a fight with a ton of guards. It’s not like you ever need to come back here.

Fire Giants’ Lair

There’s no point to tackling this dungeon other than loot. You can make a lot of money down here; Fire Giants hit hard, but they carry some good stuff, and occasionally give up to 1000 gp after battle. I picked up a Thunderblade and a Powerstaff off them without leaving Level 1. It’s not a bad place to grind for levels, either, but plan on casting S6:ALNASU a lot, and keep an eye on your spell points. Not too many special attacks down here, but you can get PARalyzed.

Level 1: A bunch of water (don’t drink it) and swamp. There’s not much to note here, except that the false wall that hides the stairs is in the S-most corridor and is behind a bunch of swamp, just to be annoying.

Level 2: And now we get to see the cutesy theme of this dungeon. There’s an enormous fire pit in the N part of this level, and in the middle is a sign saying:

* SWIMMING ONLY *
NO COOKING FOOD
OR HUMANS ALLOWED

…right, because where else would Fire Giants swim? (sigh) Okay, I get it.

Fortunately the stairs down are right next to the stairs up.

Level 3: The treasure room to the E is guarded by two groups of Wind Dragons (ow). It’s not a bad place to rest, though; wandering monsters don’t spawn in this room very often.

I’m not even going to reproduce the SAUNA REGULATIONS here. It’s pretty typical for RPGs of this era to have a somewhat dumb sense of humor, and Deathlord is no different.

The stairs up are N of where you came in, in the giant’s dining hall. If you venture E and then N, you can find a secret door with a narrow hallway full of crates.

Level 4: Roorgtrak, the giant warlord chieftain, maintains a lovely garden as a change of pace. Sequestering yourself in the far NW corner isn’t a bad place to rest. You can raid his quarters for a number of crates, pots, and coffins, but you have to brave fire to do it. The stairs down are E of where you came in.

Level 5: If you don’t go hunting for false walls W, you’ll miss all the loot, and there is a bunch in the Ore Storage room. The Mining Equipment has all been picked over, though. Stairs down are S then W, but they’re guarded by stationary Fire Giants.

Level 6: An open mining floor; the stairs down are, again, guarded by stationary Fire Giants.

Level 7: A small space. Your reward for making it this far: 11 magic pools, arranged around the outside of a room hidden behind several false walls in the SE. This is also an excellent place to rest if you hide behind the central pool. Stairs down are W.

Level 8: Congratulations, you found the bottom floor. There’s a small pool in the NE that serves as the “deepest spot”, but there’s otherwise no reason to come down here. The fights are thick and heavy, so I hope you cast S6:KAERU for a quick recall.

Collecting some Relics

At this point, we can use the Blue Crystals to pick up some relics that we weren’t able to get before, but we’re going to have to do some backtracking to do it.

The Sunspear: Head back to Nyuku, sail to Twin Rivers, and knock on Senju’s door. (OI)ffer him one of your Blue Crystals and he’ll give you the Sunspear:

Use this spear if you would rid the world of his evil forever.

This is one of the best melee weapons in the game (+3 to hit, 1-24 damage, grants +3 AC), almost anyone can use it (except Shisai/Shizen), and it also happens to be the only thing that can hit the Deathlord. In theory, you can only do this once per game. I’m not a fan of using the disk-swapping trick to reset Senju’s game state and collect multiple Sunspears, but if you’re gonna do it, this would be the weapon to do it with.

The Emerald Rod: Head back to Akmihr, sail to the Sultan’s Palace, and use the Blue Crystal to pass the forcefield in the SE tower and confront the Sand Dragons (ow). Take the Emerald Rod from the chest.

This is also a very good melee weapon, especially if you have a priest in your third slot (+4 to hit, 1-10 damage, double damage vs demons, grants +6 AC). You may prefer the Rod of Death (+2 to hit, two attacks for 1-10, grants +1 AC) because it deals more damage, but +6AC is hard to argue with and you only get the Rod of Death from a random drop, so you may never see one. Plus, the Emerald Rod casts Z4:SANTATE with unlimited charges, so you can use it to pass acid fields now.

In particular, having the Emerald Rod makes navigating part of Malkanth much easier, so if you didn’t pick up the Sharktooth a couple of sections ago, you should do that now.

The combination of these two relics plus a Samurai wielding a Katana is quite fearsome and represents the best offensive firepower I could get from my front line. Depending on your party balance you might be able to do better, but not by much.

Giluin

Okay, we’re kind of just sailing around the globe right now. But we (may perhaps) find ourselves on Akmihr, having just picked up the Emerald Rod, wondering where to go next. Spend some quality time with your notebook where you’ve been writing down all the unresolved clues that you have… and then throw it out, because I’ve decided we’re going to chase after a random comment from some unicorns.

If you don’t like that, feel free to skip ahead to Sirion and come back to Giluin later. Or skip it altogether, but don’t blame me if you can’t find the Deathlord later on… just kidding, I’ll tell ya.

Back in Fort Demonguard, we got a hint to go visit a temple E of Narawn. Seven sectors west is faster than nine east, but who’s counting? And if you’re on Asagata already, it’s just two sectors south to get in line with Narawn, and then a short four east of there. Giluin is a two-sector tall continent (one of the few multi-sector islands in the game) so it should be relatively easy to hit.

The Temple of Oceanus is on the W coast, so you may find it first. But I write the town walkthroughs before the “dungeon” walkthroughs, so sail N and follow the coastline around until you find Kobar in the NE. On the other hand, the towns aren’t all that useful, so you could skip straight to the Temple, if you feel like it.

Kobar

Services: training, tools, melee weapons (Masakari)

You’ll have to get off your boat and go exploring on foot in order to find Kobar, tucked into a copse of trees in the NE of Giluin.

Kobar is a tiny village with few services and few hints. The most useful of the lot is from a Shukenja in the SE, who mentions that Tohei the cleric guards the Shrine of Oceanus. He’s hanging out in a garden at the temple SW of here. Meanwhile, a Ryoshi sitting alone in his home to the SW will encourage you to search the Temple, and a Yakuza says that there’s good loot to be found there. If you can’t trust a Yakuza to point you towards good loot (hint: you can’t), who can you trust? No one, not even me, because on my playthrough I was basically swimming in gold from the time I left Kodan.

You can also find out that there’s an extremely tough dungeon N of here. It’s sometimes referred to as the “linear dungeon” because most of the upper levels are straight hallways. It’s also totally optional, maddeningly designed, full of treasure, and by the way the bottom floor may well be the deadliest place in the entire game. So naturally we’ll be skipping it completely.

Many people will tell you that a guy named Chin runs the training academy, and apparently, he’s the best. Unfortunately, Chin’s place is just a Senshi saying “You cannot pass” and a room full of hostiles behind him. The actual trainer (where you can, ya know, purchase new levels) is just NW of the central fountain, but his name is Mad Ying.

One of the gravestones marks the Tomb of the Unknown Peasant. Aww, that’s touching. Almost as touching as the Kosaku who can’t find his father’s grave. Actually, that’s just mean. Uh, never mind.

Shupan

Services: food, tools, missile weapons (Great Bow), armor (Yoroi), healing (Depetrify)

Shupan is also hidden from view by boat, surrounded by mountains in the SE. The shops are all conveniently in the center of town.

The Temple of Akuma, god of night, is in the SE. It’s an odd building; start with the fact that the front door is false walls, and that it’s populated with Dark Toshi that won’t talk to you. At the end of the day, though, it is a temple, and you can (B)uy healing services from them.

The Daimyo is hostile, and has some small bits of cash. Break into the ‘No Admittance’ rooms hidden behind the armor shop and you’ll run into a bunch of Mahotsukai to fight off. And there are two parties of Toshi in one of the rooms in the SW.

A Kishi will tell you that strange people go in the house W. But there is no house W… or at least not one with an obvious door. However, there is a one-square ring around the outside of the city walls, and if you sneak around there you can find an entrance to that house with a Dark Toshi who tells you to search the temple. (Not the Temple of Akuma, apparently, but the Temple of Oceanus.)

A Kosaku says that he’s seen strange lights in the old house in the northwest [sic] end of town. It’s actually in the northeast, and I already get ‘east’ and ‘west’ confused a lot when I’m typing so I assumed this was my mistake until I cross-checked it against some other gamers’ work. Anyway, the house itself is marked with a sign saying it’s been condemned by the Daimyo.

Elsewhere, a Shisai tells you that there’s a monk who lives on the N shore, behind the house. Be forewarned, though, there are Banshees inside, and as always you have to let them attack first; you can bypass the weird house by going around to the N and using G6:UKU, though. There’s a Shukenja in a house on the island in the NW corner (who looks a lot like the guy on Bone Island) that tells you that Cerberus guards the gates of Hell. Regurgitated line from mythology, or clue to the endgame? You decide.

There’s apparently a dungeon N of Kobar, which is N up the coast from here, but as I’ve already said we’re going to skip it.

Linear Dungeon

You didn’t think there was going to be an actual entry here, did you? I just said we were going to skip it. And unlike Deathlord, when I say something, you can trust it. Generally. I mean, I make mistakes for sure, but I don’t mislead you on purpose.

Temple of Oceanus

Services: food, healing (Depetrify)

Oceanus, the Lord of the Deeps, has a four-part temple for you to explore, including many secrets and some useful clues. Also, there’s a healer and a food shop.

NW corner: Start by entering from the N, and tying up on the dock W. Some Shisai will give you the blessings of Oceanus. To the NE there’s a room with some pots, and some pits waiting for you to fall into them. The sign says “Greed is a sin – repent!” which is only slightly more than just a sick joke; it’s also a reminder that the seven words you are collecting go with the seven deadly sins, of which greed is, uh, oddly not one. Well, forget I said anything, I guess.

The confessionals are empty, but the rooms just S of there have some folks in them. A Senshi tells you to “disembark at the entry”, which is a hint you may recognize from Kashiwa; there are false walls along the town’s canals, which you can only pass through by disem(B)arking. We’ll get there in a bit.

The SW part of this quadrant has a full-service healer. Now head back to your boat and cross the canal just to the E.

NE corner: Step N and follow the hallway around. Ignore the doors S, but find the one at the end of the hall that leads to the temple gardens. It seems the gardener is on duty at the moment, and he’s done some lovely work with the topiary. Is that… the number “24” and an arrow pointing S? It seems so. I wonder what happens if we count 24S from that little pond?

Head S from where you docked – or take the “shortcut” through the useless room to the SW of the garden instead – and find the foyer for the crematorium with a view out onto the graveyard. The crematorium is pointless, but its door is in line with the arrow. Keep heading directly S from there, and you’ll go out into the hallway. 24S of the pond is the S wall, which contains a secret door. Beyond the door is a Mahotsukai – they always have the best hints, don’t they? – who tells you that “one of the words is in a pyramid”. Well, we already cleaned out Akhamun-Ra’s pyramid, so there must be another one somewhere…

But we’re not done with this quadrant. Let’s check out the disembarking clue from the NW. Turns out that there’s a false wall 1S from the northern entrance on the E side. That takes you down a long hallway E, and then another S. It’s a dead-end, but just after you turn the corner you can disembark again W and find a little patch of forest. There, hiding in the SW corner, is a Shisai that demands more than 100gp to tell you to “search the maze” in the SE quadrant. I guess that’s not too surprising; why would anyone put a maze unless there was something to be found there? Oh, right, Deathlord would totally do that.

By the way, this isn’t the only place where you should disembark near the entrance.

SE corner: May as well go track down that maze, eh? Get back on board your own boat and head S. It’s actually pretty hard to get lost here; a number of the canals loop back on themselves. The game wants you to check out all of the darkness squares, but there’s only one you care about: it’s in the SW, where there’s a signpost encouraging you to “go east”. If you were to draw out a map of the rest of the maze, you would notice the SE corner is untouched. That’s because – be shocked! – there’s a false wall you need to find in order to get to the end. You can get there by going to the NE corner of the maze, then as far S as you can, then search W.

Eventually you find a small room with a signpost: “Find the ancient pyramid on the Isle of the Dead”. We got a hint on Narawn about a pyramid on an island with a word, so I guess now we know the name of the island as well.

SW corner: Head back to the center of town and then W. The first dock has a small forest. Now, in Kobar you heard about a cleric named Tohei who guards the Shrine of Oceanus and hangs out in a garden. This is that garden. The Shisai here doesn’t seem to know who Tohei is, though. Regardless, in the SW corner of this room there’s a false wall that brings you to a room with a small lake, two Mermen (who tell you to be quiet), and a signpost. This is the actual Shrine of Oceanus.

… what? Did you expect the game to send you a bunch of hints that brought you somewhere useful? Have I taught you nothing about this game?

Proceeding on down the canal towards the W entrance, the next room has a bunch of empty pots in it, and the room after that a food merchant.

Next to the entrance (on the S side) is another false wall through which you can disembark. This one is pretty interesting though – it leads to a shrine to the “Lord of Death”. That seems… a little bit too soon, doesn’t it? Well, what’s the worst that could happen, in a game that features permadeath and tries very hard to prevent you from making backup save disks? Nothing, amirite?

You may be tempted to think that you have to cross the water with G6:UKU, but no, there are secret doors to either side that hold some treasure. But wait, there’s more! Head to the E side of the room and find another secret door with a much larger treasure room. The first room has energy fields, including one that you have to stand on in order to smash down the next door (ow). The second room has a few pots, the third has some small crates behind another energy field (hope you brought your Blue Crystal), and the fourth has coffins. If you’re in need of some cash, here you go.

Back in the Deathlord’s shrine, the N doors open up onto a pit of fire. If you go walking with Z4:HITATE, you find an Acid Demon who gives you the only direct hint about the location of the endgame that you’ll get: Hell Island is due N of Giluin.

Sirion

I alluded to this earlier, but way back in Tokugawa you got a hint from a Yakuza who told you to sail south. Sure enough, if you sail eight sectors south (or seven north) of Kodan, you’ll run into Sirion, a two-sector wide island. Congratulations if you manage to write down that clue, not follow up on it immediately, and then remember to come back to it after all this time.

If you need a gentle but not very useful reminder, the skeleton hanging out in the graveyard in Croyo told you to find his grave site in Greenbanks, which is “south” of Croyo. Of course if you sail straight south from Asagata you’ll loop around and end up on the Lost Isles.

So, we don’t really know why we’re headed to this land, but we’re several words short and there’s at least a couple of relics we haven’t found yet. And it turns out that Sirion is pretty much the second most important continent in the game: two words, a relic, and pointers to one more of each.

You’ll most likely spend quite a while just mapping the continent out (if you’re like me, anyway). It’s kind of a tossup whether you find Greenbanks (W) or Clearview (SE) first, but I tend to list towns first and ruins and dungeons later, so we’re going to start in Clearview.

Clearview

Services: training, food, melee weapons (Glaive)

A town with lots of green space and plenty of useful hints. There’s a dungeon in a canyon NW of here that has a word (jackpot!). There are also some caves in a dungeon W of here, where you should “step north”.

A Shizen hanging out in the gardens NW of the center of town will tell you ($$) that there’s an island nearby to the NE. This points you one of two places: to the small island that’s part of this archipelago, which has a mountain with a spiral path to the “peak” where you’ll find absolutely nothing, or to the deserted islands a few sectors NE of here, where you will also find absolutely nothing.

Everything of note is in the corners. The food (sake) vendor is in the SE, the weapons shop to the SW, and the training hall in the NW. The forge adjacent to the weapons shop is empty, but the food vendor has a secret storeroom W of his shop with a secret door where you can steal food from him.

Check out the prison in the NE. Lift some gates and work your way E and then S into the prison “yard”. There you’ll find some Brigands who tell you of the island of Tsumani, “south [one sector] off the coast and west”, a land full of yeti and “fierce snowbeasts”. So bundle up before you go.

Staircase Dungeon

Time for one of the more annoying word dungeons in the game. If you don’t know what you’re doing, navigating this one is a real puzzle and it’s likely to take you a while. The first part involves going up and down a ton of staircases, and the second part involves teleports that are designed to screw with you as much as possible. Sounds like fun, right? S6:KAERU can save you some pain if you have it available, but there are some very rich pots of gold down there to be found if you’re feeling low on cash.

The Staircase Dungeon is nestled in the mountains in the NE corner of Sirion, though it’s not on its own island. There is a significantly-sized island in the NE of the continent, but the dungeon isn’t there, despite there being a pointless curly-q of trees that wind through the mountains and take you absolutely nowhere. No, the dungeon is actually slightly W of there.

Anyway, as you enter, you are thrust into a room with an infinite number of staircases. Of course, since you’re standing on a staircase, casting S1:AKARI or S3:MOAKARI takes a turn, which for some reason does not immediately eject you from the dungeon. Hitting space to wait another turn will, however.

There are four levels of this dungeon, and they all have a central 11x11 room that is tiled in nothing but up and down staircases. Every square of level 1 (except the entrance) sends you down to level 2. Every square of level 4 sends you up to level 3. Levels 2 and 3 are a mix, though most of level 3’s stairs take you down. Even if/when you find your way out to the edges of that room, you will find solid walls all the way around. Of course, several of those walls are false.

Before we talk about how to get in, let’s talk about how to get out. The center square of all four levels is an up staircase, which means if you can find your way there (6 squares from the edge wall), you can hit space until you exit.

Annoyed yet? Well, here’s the solution to get you the word. Enter the dungeon, cast a light spell, then go N. Keep going N, and when you get to the wall, keep pressing N until you get through the false wall. That’s the hard part. Yes, seriously. Can you imagine trying to figure that out without a walkthrough?

Now cast Z1:ICHIHAN to make sure you’re on level 3 (you are). Do not step on the center tile of this room, there’s a chute down to level 4. Step around and exit through another false wall to the N. Now go all the way W (there aren’t any more chutes) until you can’t, then go N. This puts you in a hallway, at the end of which is a locked door, and behind that the word: CHIJOKU. Oh, and a whole bunch of Vapor Demons. Hint, Demon-slaying weapons (the Emerald Rod and Holy Sword) are a good choice here.

Now you can’t just exit back the way you came in – that would be too easy, and there’s a teleporter in the hallway (between 20 and 25 steps W of the door) that prevents you from doing so. So you’re going to have to find another way around. There’s a chute in the SW corner of the word room. Take it down to level 4. This drops you into a false wall; move S, then W. That first pot is pretty rich, but the only exit (through a false wall W) is a teleporter that takes you to level 2.

This is the “second” part I referred to above; there are lots of teleporters worked into false walls between the small rooms, which makes it really hard to map because you can’t tell when you’re being teleported to a different level.

Here’s how to do the Exit This Dungeon dance: from level 4, get the first pot. Step W onto the teleporter and off W; get another pot. (You’re on level 2; there is no false wall W of here.) Step E onto the teleporter and off W, then step E onto the teleporter again and off E. Get a third pot. (You’re on level 2 again; if you step E through another false wall, you’ll see the staircase.) Now step W onto the teleporter and off W, and get a fourth pot. You’re back on level 4 and there’s a false wall W.

There’s another pot here. There should be false-wall exits to the S and W. Continue W (four more rooms, four more pots), then come back and head S. There’s no pot in this room, but there are nine to the E of here.

There are some more nine-pot treasure rooms, but I bet you don’t need them. And you definitely don’t need to waste your time in the teleport mazes that will get you there.

Head S again into the staircase maze. 6S 4W should get you back to the center, and two Wait commands should return you to the surface.

Greenbanks

The ruined town of Greenbanks lies in the center of a large island on the W part of the continent. If you enter by water from the W, you’ll find the graveyard right away. The Lantern of Kasumi can be found in the grave closest to the W wall (although not the one that’s on its own little island in the SW). (F)search the gravestone to discover the Lantern. As best as I can tell, this is the only useful thing that you can do in a graveyard in the entire game. You can’t even claim that, as you ‘learned’ in Tokushima, “tombstones can hide clues”. It’s not a clue, it’s one of the damn artifacts you need to win the game.

If I sound bitter, it’s because I am.

Like most ruins, there aren’t any services to be purchased, but there are folks you can talk to. There’s a town E of here – although the only way to get this clue is to (I)nquire about towns, which seems like cheating. There’s a dungeon just NW of here with something hidden on the sixth level, and if you find the right Hobake, they give you a hint about needing to walk on acid.

Continuing the trend of cash-for-useless-hints, a Kaibu tells you ($$) to go N and then E, which points you towards the nearby deserted islands.

As is also common for ruins, there’s a handful of treasure kicking around here. The Necromancer’s home in the very SW has a room full of skeletons guarding a medium sized treasure room. Near the E entrance is a locked door with a couple of boxes. In the center of town, miraculously no one has yet decided to loot the Tax Office. And if you feel like it, you can fight off some Ice Giants in the NE corner (in a hallway very reminiscent of the Troll Hole, complete with swamp) and clean out their house.

In the SE, you can find a ring of trees in a one-square wide band around a house. Hidden back in there is a Viper that you can talk to. shrug

Chessboard Dungeon

To me, Sirion feels like the game designers tried to pack too much of the mid-game into a single continent. Two map sectors is weird enough, but two dungeons with two words and a ruin with one of the relics? That’s an awful lot to cram into one island, but here we are.

The Chessboard Dungeon is in fact just NW of Greenbanks. You can either get there on foot via a mountain pass, or by boat if you approach from the W.

Level 1: Proceed S into the diamond-shaped room in the center. There are dark squares that you can still walk on. To the S is a hallway of fire; ignore it. The escape is through false walls to either side.

If you go W, you’ll turn S. At the bottom of the map – hopefully, you’ve figured out the size of dungeons by now – there’s a mapping trap that we’ve seen before in Shumi’s Tower: a teleporter that takes you slightly across to the other side of that hallway of fire I mentioned before. If you’re trying to map this, you now think you’ve overlapped where you started. It works in the other way too! Nothing else useful about it, just a cute bit of dungeon design to foil mappers. By the way, there are a handful of side rooms in this hallway, but none of them have anything in them except maybe a few monsters.

If you go E and turn N, you’ll find the same teleport trick and side rooms. Only the last room at the end of the hallway has the stairs down… and a sign saying “Are you sure you want to go down there?” But of course we do, we’re intrepid adventurers!

Level 2: The hint here is those weird teleporters on the first floor. This floor is laid out in a spiral, but there are false walls that you’ll need to find in order to avoid getting teleported back to the beginning. Maybe you’ll get lucky, like I did, and a monster will jump through one of the walls you need to use to advance. Or maybe you’ll just have to bash into every wall until you find all the false ones.

By the way, once you find your way to the inner ring, you then have to search for secret doors instead of false walls, just for a change.

Level 3:

You have entered Dankbark Forest. No axes allowed!

There’s one really important thing to do on this floor, but if you’re willing to take my word for it, you can just skip over this floor, because the stairs down to Level 4 are right there. If you’d rather fight a bunch of Evil Trees, Unicorns, and Centaurs, and experience this level for yourself, buckle up.

Exit the stairwell to the S and find the pond. If you have G6:UKU and are willing to cast it to skip most of this level, cross the river to the E and find a signpost. Read it, then come back.

No G6:UKU? Turn W at the pond and take the path to the N, but where it turns E, go W through the trees instead and find a secret hallway of false walls. Follow it W (there’s a teleporter that takes you from the W edge to the E edge of the map) until you can’t, then N. Follow the shore around W S E until you find a signpost:

You really should have a word with the king.

Then reverse your steps and take the stairs down. And remember that hint.

Level 4: A brutally clever dungeon design trick. When you enter this level, you’ll naturally head S to start exploring it. However, the level is completely empty, with nary a secret door or false wall to be found… except for one: immediately N of the staircase. But of course, once you’re on this floor, you can’t get there, because when you step on the stairs you’re taken back up to Level 3.

Fiendish, right? All the word dungeons so far have only had four levels, so you’re going to spend hours walking around this level, mapping it to perfection, looking for secrets and false walls and not finding a damn thing, because you think there’s something to be found on “the sixth level”. At some point, maybe you realize that you found the “caves” inside a dungeon, and that you were clued to “step north”, but there’s one place you haven’t tried it yet: the entry stairs.

Level 5: The cross-shaped room you start in contains 12(!) magic pools, and you don’t even need G6:UKU to get to any of them.

This level also features the only treasure hoard in this dungeon, but it’s a doozy. Head W from the cross, and search N for a secret door in the narrow hallway. Mind the pits. And don’t waste it if you don’t need it.

The way forward relies on a clue you got in Greenbanks: you’ll need to walk on acid. The acid pool in the E room serves as a teleporter which takes you to a room with the stairs down (as well as an open door, which acts as a teleporter to get out).

Level 6: This level is the whole reason this is called the Chessboard dungeon. Z4:HITATE is rather necessary here. Watch out for the chess pieces: Rooks can STOne you and Knights drain levels (sigh). But they give good loot – I picked up an Unholy Blade and Yoroi +1.

The clue here is the signpost from the forest on level 3: talk to the King. Where does the white king sit on a chess board? In standard chess notation, he’s at e1, also known as the fifth square from the left in the bottom row. The stairs down drop you at b8. If you head to the king’s square (it doesn’t have any fire) and search the walls, you’ll find a secret door into a room with the word on a signpost: YOKUSEI

You can get out either from b8 (where you came in) or g8, where an open door teleports you back up to level 5. Either works. The open door on level 5 takes you back into an acid pool (use the Emerald Rod first). You can skip quickly up to level 2, where you then have to wind your way out through the spiral again, and then level 1. Or maybe you were smart and cast S6:KAERU before entering the dungeon, and can have your Shisai (Y)ell your way out. (Have you figured out you should be casting S6:KAERU every time you enter a dungeon yet?)

Tsumani

Until you landed on Sirion, you’d never heard of Tsumani, though you may have heard of a town named Morningfrost. It’s far enough out on the fringes of the world that you probably haven’t come across it by accident either. And though there aren’t any words or relics here, it’s the only place to get a direct hint about the location of the Red Shogun’s land, which has one of both…

Anyway, Tsumani is one sector south and five west of Sirion. Fiendishly, it is a continent ringed by mountains, so you’ll have to do most of your exploration on foot. Snowraven, on the SW coast, is pretty easy to find, but nothing else is. The tiny islands in the corners don’t have anything interesting. However, you should make note of the odd cross-shaped formation of rock found on the N coast; that’ll be important later.

Weirdly, snow-swamp doesn’t hurt when you walk over it.

Morningfrost

Services: food, melee weapons (Masakari), shields (Great)

Morningfrost is a nothing little town, hidden away in a ring of mountains in the SE part of the main island. It’s pretty unlikely that you came here first, but the hints line up better this way. Such is the burden of writing a walkthrough – figuring out how to order your path such that players are likely to naturally discover things in the same order you write them. Deathlord, by presaging the age of publishing full walkthroughs on the Internet by at least a good decade, has in fact made this as difficult as possible.

Also, there’s not a lot going on in Morningfrost, which is why I’m wasting so many characters whining at you about how hard it is to write this document that you’re reading. On with the show.

You can pick up some food here, but the weapons shop is useless. Shield vendors are relatively rare so I guess that’s nice? In fact, there are only two useful hint trails. You can bribe a Mahotsukai to tell you about the dungeon, some caves to the W of here.

In the NW of town you might find some Brigands, who have heard that Koshi the Huntsman has a pet bear. They live in the S (his house has a sign); the bear is pretty big, though. Koshi tells you (for a bribe) to search 31N 2W of the South Star, which is in Snowraven, which is on the SW edge of the main island, so if you didn’t find the secret already, you should head back to Snowraven and do that.

Mind the Yabanjin in the NE; they’re not friendly.

Snowraven

Services: training, food, healing (Depetrify), melee weapons (Naginata), armor (Do-Maru)

The signpost in the centre [sic] of town says “Snowraven: the star of the south”. If you went to Morningfrost first, you may have heard of the South Star, which is close enough. Follow Koshi’s hint and go 30N 2W, then search W and you’ll find two secret doors leading to a Mahotsukai who tells you to find the Lantern of Kasumi, Staff (Emerald Rod), and Ruby Ring. If you’re following along with me, the Ring is the only one we don’t have yet.

You’ll find a bunch of stereotypical Yabanjin that say things like “ug” and “me kill”. And there’s a Kishi who tells you ($$) to search the hills NE of town, which points us at the nearby (optional) dungeon.

A Shukenja hiding out behind the food shoppe tells you to sail around the S end of town. If you came in by boat (or are willing to cast G6:UKU) you can find a sneaky spot that takes you into the water around the Temple of Icine (goddess of winter and the frozen wastes), where there’s a Merman. He tells you that the castle of the Red Shogun lies N of Cross Rock, but if you ask anyone, the Shogun is only a myth. Cross Rock, of course, is a small 4x3 stretch of land found off the N coast of the continent that looks a bit like an arrow pointing N.

Chutes-and-Ladders Dungeon

This is definitely one for which you’ll want to cast S6:KAERU before entering. Getting out is a royal pain. Also, many of the monsters here are Giant-class (Trolls, Niatama, Triclops) so if you have a Giantslayer this is a good time to equip it. And in case I didn’t say it enough before, this dungeon is optional so feel free to skip it.

There are lots of different ways that you can get through this dungeon. You’ll do a bunch of up-and-down (not coincidentally, the other common name that walkthrough writers use for this dungeon is “the Up-and-Down Dungeon”), either via sinkholes or staircases or probably both. Here’s my favorite path:

Level 1: Work your way W S E. If you find two doors in a hallway you’re in the right place. Open the right-hand one. Hobake spawn frequently in this room and the one beyond it; you should clear them out now so you don’t have quite so nasty a surprise waiting on the way back up. However, you also need to know that there’s a chute in the center of this room, and false walls in the NE corner. Clear out the Hobake, then fall down the chute. (Ignore the stairs down for now.)

Level 2: Take a couple steps E. When you can see the stairs back up, you’ll fall down another chute instead.

Level 3: Take another couple of steps N towards a down staircase, and fall down another chute.

Level 4: Just S of your position and around the corner there are some false walls that lead to an up staircase.

Level 3: Head S and W. You’re seemingly in an enclosed room, but there’s another set of false walls in the SW that lead to a down staircase.

Level 4: Head W. When the passage narrows and turns SW, find a false wall hallway to the N instead. That drops you in a brick room, which means pit traps are a thing again. Ignore the Whorls (they’re fake) and proceed N through the door.

Head N and W down the hallway. The door to the S has a fight with some Wraiths (… or maybe that was randomly generated). There’s a secret door at the W end that hides a treasure room. To the N is a room with some fire. Look N for two false walls, then E for another secret door and another treasure room. There’s another treasure room at the W end of this hallway.

If you really need more, you can search the E end of the first E/W hallway. Watch out for the pit trap. Unfortunately the door to the N leads into a teleporter maze, but it’s not too bad. The secret door with the last treasure room is just S of the entryway to the maze. If you go N, E, and carefully S, you can find the secret door without hitting any teleporters. Just don’t open the coffins.

To get out, just yell your recall word. What, you didn’t cast S6:KAERU before coming down here? The hell do I write these walkthroughs for, anyway?

(sigh) Okay, fine.

Level 4: Head back to the staircase that brought you down here. Take it up.

Level 3: Walk E and N to find the down staircase. Take it down.

Level 4: Circle W N E and take the up staircase.

Level 3: Go straight S (avoiding the sinkhole), then W. Circle clockwise to find another up staircase.

Level 2: A bit N of you there’s a sinkhole.

Level 3: You’re in a brick-lined area. Feel free to raid one more treasure room at the end of the hallway W, but come back here and take the stairs up when you’re done.

Level 2: Circle clockwise. Be careful to avoid the sinkhole as you proceed S, although it just drops you back down to where you were on Level 3. Before you turn N, head S instead and find a false wall to the S, then step E. Just when you can see the stairs, step S to avoid the sinkhole, then take the stairs up.

Leevl 1: This is the secret room full of Hobake. The false walls are to your W; don’t forget to skip the sinkhole in the center of the 3x3 room on your way out.

Black Isles

Frustratingly, Deathlord goes back and forth on whether it offers you “direct” sailing clues that literally mean “start at this point and sail straight in that direction and you will find the next thing”. Sometimes it says “go south” when it really means “meh, it’s sort of westish and a bit south I guess?”

This is one of the former kind. When the merman tells you to sail north from Cross Rock, he means “don’t stop until you hit land”. Never mind the fact that the Black Isles are actually much closer if you go south (five sectors), if you get spooked and start waving back and forth looking for a new island, you’re pretty likely to find the Isle of the Dead WNW of Narawn and miss the Black Isles altogether.

At least if you do that you won’t find the Red Shogun, so hopefully you’ll keep looking…

The Black Isles themselves are fairly sparse; there’s four of them, although they’re spread across the map E-W so if you’re sailing north or south you’re likely to find at least one of them.

The SE island has a small signpost on it that says

What lies behind the Red Shoguns [sic] Castle?

which repeats a clue you may have collected in the ruin of Wakai, if you spent any quality time on Osozaki. (I hope you didn’t do that.)

Said castle is on the larger central island.

Red Shogun’s Castle

Services: healing (Depetrify), tools, melee weapons (Naginata), missile weapons (Heavy Bow), armor (Yoroi)

Malakorr the necromancer lives outside the castle, in the SE forest. He’s a pleasant fellow, and for a small bribe he’ll tell you that the Red Shogun, who rules here, is hiding the Ruby Ring, which grants immunity to fire (by casting Z4:HITATE with unlimited charges). For my money, it’s a toss-up between the Ruby Ring and the Emerald Rod for “most useful item”. They’re so supremely useful that I can’t really blame the game for putting the Ring at the end of the most strung-out and hard-to-follow trail of clues, but boy howdy would it be nice to have this item earlier in the game.

Around the world, there have been numerous hints about the dungeon behind the castle, but few that point to the existence of a word within. Around here, you can ask about a dungeon, or a Shizen hiding in the forest near Malakorr’s place will tell you about it for a bribe.

We’ll get to the dungeon in a bit, but let’s explore the palace first and then get the Ring. Head into the palace itself along a long diagonal path and find the Shogun. For grins, get the Shogun himself to tell you about the dungeon, the ring, and himself.

Head E. The “Water Hole” is empty, although there is water. Opposite that you’ll find a model ship floating in a pool. You can’t board it or attack it(?). Goro has a Supplies shop; I suggest stocking up on lockpicks. A Kichigai tells you to “go see Malakorr”, which might cause you to explore the SE quadrant of the map if you haven’t already. I don’t recommend fighting the Mist Dragon, but you can get healed in his temple. The temple also has a treasure room; there’s a secret door in the N side of the W firepit.

To the N is the Shogun’s quarters. There are some Golem guards. Golems hit really hard – 40+HP at times! – and come in packs as large as 15. (I have heard rumors that Golems can slay outright, but I have never been hit by one.) If you find the secret passage in the NE and follow it around, you’ll find some stairs down to another treasure room, also full of Golem guards. Ouch. Fighting the Golems for XP is probably more interesting than the loot you’ll find down there. The good news is, with the temple right outside, you can afford to waste 200 gp per front-line fighter on temple healing because you can just come right back down here and make that money back.

Now head back to the Shogun’s audience room and explore the S wing. You’ll pass the Castle Armory, and then down a short hall to the E, the weapons shops.

To your W is a door that leads into the prison; be careful, there are Smoke Demon guards on the loose there. In one of the upper cells, there’s a Mahotsukai who tells you that someone escaped from one of the lower cells. Hm, maybe we should check that out? Sure enough, searching the SW cell reveals a secret door with a passage that leads outside.

I know that seemed completely pointless, but bear with me. Back out in the main corridor, there’s a gate to the S. Smash it open and you’ll find some Golem guards standing in front of an energy field. You absolutely need to get past them, so you only have two options at this point:

Cast a ton of M4:UGOKU and hope you get lucky
Attack and kill the Golems, turning the citizens of the castle against you.

Beyond the Golem (and the Rakhammon’s Curtain) is a Mahotsukai who tells you to “search the walls”. What a random time for Deathlord to throw you a completely obvious hint! Like, have you some not yet learned to search every wall all the time everywhere by this point in the game? Anyway, find the secret door E and the treasure chest beyond it with the Ruby Ring. It grants -2AC, so give it to your Shizen in the front ranks.

Now you have to get out of here. If you M4:UGOKU’d in, you’ll probably try to get out the same way. Good luck. If you killed the guard, the easiest way to sneak out of the Castle is to go back into the prison and out the secret passage in the SW, which is why we bothered with that little side trip a couple of paragraphs ago.

I got super lucky and was able to M4:UGOKU in and out on the first try, despite being prepared to save-scum a lot to make it work. I even got teleported from the Ring chamber out to the entryway so exiting was trivial.

Now to check out that dungeon everyone keeps talking about.

Doors Dungeon

As was foretold… several times, at this point… the entrance to the Doors Dungeon is “behind”, or rather 1N, of the Red Shogun’s Castle. To get there you need to “sail around back”, step onto the little patch of forest, and then (E)nter the mountains. There is no marking indicating the existence of the dungeon, you just have to decipher the hints and do the right thing in the right place.

Deathlord, as I have said on numerous occasions throughout this walkthrough, hates you. To be fair, I can’t think of another one-square patch of forest surrounded by mountains like that, so it does look pretty suspicious. And it is hinted at many times. But wait! You haven’t even seen what lies inside this dungeon yet.

The reason everyone calls this “the Doors Dungeon” is not because you’re going to light anyone’s fire, but you will be breaking on through to the other side an awful lot. You see, the first and second floors are made up of nothing but doors. You’re going to have to pick and/or bash dozens of them open in order to get down a level, which is why I told you to stock up on lockpicks. You’ll break them all, don’t worry.

In order to get through this dungeon, you need to know the trick that I first discussed in the Tower of Shumi, which you may not have bothered to do. So here it is again: some doorways are false doors. They look just like normal doors but can’t be opened. The way you can tell the difference is that if you try to (P)ick the lock, it says “Nothing there!” So, armed with that bit of knowledge, here we go…

Level 1: You may not really know why you’re here, although you know that there’s “something hidden” on a lower level, and that’s often a good sign. Sure enough, here’s a signpost right in front of the stairs telling you that there’s a word on Level 7. You’d think that was a straightforward hint, but you’d be wrong… evil cackle

You’ll be haunted by Evil Spirits, which are invisible creatures. Can they walk through closed doors? Who knows! They’re invisible.

The exit is in the SE, and it teleports you to level 2. You generally want to go S first, then E in order to get there most efficiently.

You really want a map, but this algorithm will just about get you there:

Can I go South? Go South.
If not, can I go East? Go East, then go back to step 1.
If not, was my last step East? Go North, then go back to step 2.
If not, was my last step West? Backtrack East, then go North and go to 2.
If not, go West, then go back to step 1.

The trick is that when you do arrive at the teleporter in the SE and make your way down to Level 2, it quietly teleports you to a place where there are some open doors that cleverly look exactly like the trail you left behind you on Level 1. Because Deathlord hates you.

Level 2: There’s no good algorithm for this maze, but generally head NNE until you can’t, then ESE until you find a 3x3 area of already-opened doors. They’re filled with Evil Spirits, by the way, so try (A)ttacking into the open space until it doesn’t work anymore. The middle door teleports you down to Level 5.

“What happened to Levels 3 and 4,” I hear you cry? Well kids, here’s a funny thing about Deathlord dungeons. Each block of four adjacent levels (1-4, 5-8, etc.) is laid out as a single map in memory. If the levels are built a particular way, it’s possible to walk from one floor to an “adjacent” floor. Levels 1 and 2 don’t quite do this (they actually use a teleporter), and the “missing” levels 3 and 4 are filled with false doors. You can use M7:UNPAN to check my math, since it teleports you up and down levels but doesn’t change your relative position. Anyway, levels 5 through 8 were designed as a group. Although they could have used the adjacency thing, they actually also use teleporters – except for one particularly vicious trick that the designers play on you, which we’ll talk about in a minute. Of course, the sign at the entrance says the word is on Level 7, so you have to get down that far. But only casting Z1:ICHIHAN will tell you what floor you’re actually on, and you’ll never find levels 3 or 4 without casting very high-level spells.

Anyway, the next four levels are arranged as if they are a very long NW/SE corridor. Teleport traps are arranged such that if you walk NW, you will loop back on yourself, and if you walk SE, you will be teleported to adjacent levels (5 > 8 > 7 > 6, just to be annoying) and seemingly continue down the corridor. Eventually, at the SE end of the corridor, a teleport takes you back to the entrance.

Level 5: This part of the hallway is empty. Get in the habit now of prodding for false walls as you walk, though, because when you get to…

Level 8: … you’ll find one to the E and one to the S. There are two false walls and then a secret door. To the E you’ll find three 3x3 rooms full of magic pools. That’s 12 ability points, if you’re patient. The one to the S is guarded by some Dark Toshi, but has three very rich treasure rooms. The pots here contain 500-1000 gp each.

But here comes the vicious trick I mentioned. In the S treasure room, there’s a false wall W. Follow that passage and you’ll find a portcullis that shows you a room on level 7 – because level 7 is to the “left” of level 8 in Deathlord’s memory layout – that contains the word. But the portcullis is a FAKE. To be even more obnoxious, M4:UGOKU won’t get you to the other side of that gate no matter how many times you cast it, because you’d be trying to cross from “level 8” to “level 7”, and UGOKU is programmed not to let you do that.

Back out in the diagonal hall and a little further on, there’s another false wall to the E with more treasure rooms. These are full of crates, which means a chance (albeit slim) at good loot. I reloaded a few times to try the random number generator and found a bunch of good armor (Toshi and Sable Cloaks, +1 and +2 armor) and a few weapons (Berzerk Sword).

Keep walking SE, prodding the E wall as you go, until you hit another teleporter…

Level 7: The first secret door W has coffins. One coffin in each room contains Undead Ronin, who are some of the harder monsters in the game; instant death is no fun, and their skill level is higher than most. You’ll also run into Dark Toshi (easy), Djinn, Couatl, Mimics (they look like crates), and Gorgons; getting STOned is no fun in this game, until your Shisai hits level 24(!) and can cast S7:YAWARISHI.

The second secret door W is the winner. Three more treasure rooms full of crates. The S room has two secret doors in the SE corner that led to the room with the sign that we saw earlier. This time you actually get to read the word: DARAKU

One more teleporter in the SE corner takes you to Level 6, which is completely bare (so you can stop slamming into walls). Level 6 allows you to walk all the way to the end of the corridor, at which point it teleports you back to the dungeon entrance.

Lost Isles

In Towne Royal (and several other places on Asagata) you got a hint that there’s an island just north of Towne Royal. This is another “direct” sailing clue; if you position your boat N of Towne Royal and sail three sectors straight north from there, you will in fact hit the portion of the Lost Isles containing the Cave of the Four Elements. That’s doubly important because it’s totally possible to sail right through the sector containing the Lost Isles without ever seeing land, if you get unlucky.

Of course, we don’t know why we’re going here, what this place is called, or really what we’re looking for. We just came here because some people told us there was an island, we still need two more words, and we’re nearly out of other ideas. I can’t say that “process of elimination” is my favorite way to win CRPGs, but here we are.

Cave of the Four Elements

Before entering, you should know that this is a one-way dungeon: the exit from Level 1 to Level 2 is a chute and the only way up is to get all the way down to the bottom of Level 4. On the other hand, it’s such an easy dungeon once you have the Ruby Ring that you don’t really need S6:KAERU unless you feel like you want an insurance policy (or are just in the habit of doing so). You could totally hit this dungeon much earlier if you just want to blow a lot of castings of Z4:HITATE.

Level 1 (Earth): At the entrance you find a sign identifying this place as the Caves of the Four Elements. Level 1 is earth: a standard cave maze. You’ll find a bunch of Rock Spirits about. For a player without a walkthrough, the trick to this one is to map the whole floor, then realize that there’s a missing bit in the middle, and find the false wall that takes you inside. There’s a chute in the northern most square of the cross-shaped secret room.

Level 2 (Air): Most easily identified when you start finding Wind Spirits and Djinni. Because this level represents air, the cute design trick is that every wall is false. In fact, to advance, you have to start exploring the false walls in each corner. The stairs are in the extreme NE, but you’ll need to avoid teleporters to reach them; walk all the way to the N wall, then take one step S, walk E to the wall, then step N onto the stairs.

Level 3 (Fire): Also a false wall maze, but a much trickier one, with pockets of false walls surrounded by real walls and fire. With the Ruby Ring (and a good map) you shouldn’t have any problems navigating across the fire corridors to find the safe pockets of false space. To be honest, if you run the maze perfectly you only need to step on 18 fire squares, which isn’t too bad even if you don’t have the Ruby Ring and don’t want to spend lots of spell points on Z4:HITATE. Fire Spirits hit slightly harder than their upstairs brethren.

From the entrance, head S, then W to a 2x2 island, then S. S again to another island, then W; S again and W; N to an island and W; N to the windows and E; E to an island and N; W to an island and W; N into the corner and W. Now, hug the N wall and walk E until you hit a teleporter which takes you to the stairs.

Level 4 (Water): Four ships? That’s not ominous or anything… The game only does that if it thinks you might get stuck and need to come back. Given there are no up staircases in this dungeon, I suppose that makes sense.

Anyway, no false walls here, just a long water spiral full of sea monsters. This is a level of attrition. Sea Spirits don’t have any special attacks, but they hit twice a round and take a beating. Eventually you’ll find your way into the center ring. The S tip of the central island has a secret door. Follow that N until you enter the Word room.

But Deathlord has one more brutal trick for you. It looks like you have to step into the room to get to the word, but if you do that you will hit a teleporter that takes you all the way back to the entrance. Remember what I said about four ships? This is why. Instead of stepping into the room, the walls to either side of you are false, and you’ll need to step around them in order to get to the N side of the room to read the word: OSORERU. Then you can step on the teleporter to exit.

Isle of the Dead

We’re nearly there. It’s time for the penultimate dungeon, and the last word we need to collect.

You got a handful of clues on Narawn telling you to sail “a little bit north” and west in order to find an island with a pyramid that contains a word. Some Smoke Demons referred to it as the Pyramid of the Old Ones; on Giluin they called it the Isle of the Dead. Frankly, that’s about as complete a hint package as you get: where it is, what it’s called, what the dungeon is called, and why you want to go there. I guess Deathlord has to throw you a bone every now and then. I mean you only had to visit two separate continents to find all that out; that’s not bad.

Anyway, one sector north and three west of Narawn you’ll find the Isle; there’s nothing here besides the Pyramid, which is in the SW corner.

Pyramid of the Old Ones

I know I say this a lot, but you really, really want to cast S6:KAERU before entering this dungeon. It is technically possible to exit without it but boy howdy is it annoying!

The Pyramid is definitely a difficult dungeon, but the reason I’ve left it for last mostly has to do with the logistics of navigating it. For the most part, it’s just a tunnel maze of one-square-wide hallways. The problem is, you’ll find a handful of non-hostiles here, but because of the utter frustration of waiting for them to get out of your damn way, you’re probably going to have to kill them.

As for those “friendly” humans, Yakuza will ask “Which way out?”, but “your guess is as good as mine”. Another will tell you to sail one sector S, then W, but how did you even get here if you haven’t already been to Narawn?

Levels 1–4 are arranged as if they are a single floor. See my comments on the bottom half of the Doors Dungeon for more on how Deathlord arranges its dungeon levels in memory to occasionally allow a dungeon floor that’s four times the usual size, which is what we have here. Exits from the dungeon can be found through false walls in the exterior walls, but they’re not all that easy to find.

Enter from the N. I’m not going to try and guide you through here; if you enjoy making maps, you should do so liberally here, and if you don’t, go download Andrew Schultz’s. I will say, if you’re going to make your own maps, the down stairs are hiding behind a false wall, so take what you’ve learned from Deathlord so far and remember to bash into every wall in case it’s false. (There aren’t any secret doors in the entire complex, so at least you don’t have to (F)search as well.)

If you really take your time and explore this maze, you’ll find a bunch of signs left by a guy named Yorik. Alas, poor Yorik, he ran out of food and died, but not before he beat you to the punch on a number of treasure crates. Some of the NPCs running around here know who he is, too.

Levels 5–8: Another multi-cell maze, though this one is really more distinctly four levels that are joined with a few hallways. Also, you now need to cast a light spell. You’re in a 5x2 area of false walls; proceed S to find the hallway. Some of the floors are dark and some have brick tile, but otherwise this is just another tunnel maze. Ignore the treasure rooms, the pots aren’t worth it. And beware of Mimics, except it’s 100% impossible to tell what’s a Mimic and what’s not, so you’ll really just run into them all over the place.

The chute down (note: no stairs) are in the SE, again behind a false wall; beware the two pit traps in front of it.

Despite the fact that you can walk directly from level 7 to level 8, there’s a chute in the SW of level 7, near Yorik’s will and testament, which drops you onto a square on level 8. This shit is messed up, yo.

Level 9: You’re dropped into what looks like a regular tunnel maze, but turns out to be a false wall maze. You have to find your way into the far NW corner to proceed. Good luck.

Level 10: What’s better than a tunnel maze? A tunnel maze full of unavoidable chute traps and teleporters! At least they’re not false walls.

The solution is 2S 2E 1N 2E 4S 2E 1S 2E 2N 2E 3N 4E 1S 4E 2S 2E 2S 2E 1S 2E 4S 1E 2S 1W 4S 1W 2S 1E 2S 1E 3S 2W 1N 1E 2N, which teleports you down into a corner.

Level 11: If you fell down a chute, your best bet is probably to just walk N and W to a staircase that will take you back up to Level 10 so you can try again. You might hit a teleporter along the way that takes you back to Level 10, or even the start of the false wall maze on Level 9. Sorry.

If you got here through the teleporter I described above, step 2W to hit another teleporter down.

Level 12: Another tunnel maze, fortunately a fairly straightforward one.

Solution, based on fork points in the maze: S (immediately after being teleported here), N, W, W, E, E, E, N. Watch out for the pit in the center of the word room.

The word is SEIYOKU. Now yell your escape word and get out of here.

Wait, you really didn’t cast S6:KAERU and you want to know how to get out? I hope you’re looking forward to navigating the two enormous maze levels in reverse…

From the word room, go S to exit, the follow these fork points: S, S, N, W. That should lead to a staircase up to Level 11. From there, do this (although the solution isn’t exactly necessary because there aren’t any chutes here): 2S 3E 3S 3E 2S 2E 2S 2E 1N 5E 1N 2E 2S 3E 3S 3E which should teleport you back to the chute down from Level 8 to Level 9. Immediately step W into the pit, lest you be dropped back down the chute into the false wall maze.

You now have to work your way across the 5–8 maze, up the stairs, and then across the 1–4 maze. Then you need to find an actual exit, because I didn’t tell you where any of them were.

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