Game:

Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos (1993)

Duration: 15:00

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1

From this point forward, we no longer encounter Boglytes in the swamp. They’re replaced with the “living sticks” that stole the helmet, anthropomorphic trees called Hurzels. Hurzels are significantly easier to kill than Boglytes in my opinion, so this is a positive development. One of the Hurzels is carrying the brass helmet, and once we kill that particular Hurzel he’ll drop it. It might seem like we’ll have to scour the swamp looking for our target, but as it happens the Hurzel in question is always in the same general area. I’ll just need to head there, claim our prize, and return it to the chieftain. Of course, first we’ll need to get our swords back. I head out of the chieftain’s compound and pick up the weapons we dropped earlier, reequipping them to both Michael and Baccata. Now we’re ready to go.

I backtrack towards the area with the witchdoctor and fletcher, but instead of going in to see them I take a path to the east that we haven’t explored yet. It isn’t long before we encounter our first Hurzel, and while they’re not too difficult as opponents they do have the special ability to grab a party member’s weapon. That happens to Michael on two separate occasions, but it’s just a minor nuisance—I simply pick it back up and reequip it as necessary. After winning the fight and resting everyone to full health, I continue forward until we come to an area with two sinkholes. We have to go past these sinkholes to get to the Hurzel in question, which may seem impossible since there’s no alternate path past them. However, that’s where the Freeze spell comes in. Besides inflicting damage on enemies, that particular spell has the ability to temporarily ice up sinkholes so we can go over them. I have Baccata cast Level 2 Freeze, and we go over the now-frozen sinkholes to engage a Hurzel waiting for us there. We engage it, with Michael’s fighting skills jumping to Level 4 in the scrape. Sure enough, when we dispatch it, it drops the ceremonial helmet that the Gorkhas want. After resting, I have Baccata cast Level 1 Freeze so we can go back, and we return to the chieftain’s compound. There’s a Hurzel waiting for us right outside the compound area, but we dispatch it and head in to see the chieftain.

When we hand over the helmet, the chieftain is thrilled. He formally declares us “Heroes of the Swamps”, and not only gives us the Ruby of Truth but the excellent Trident Mantis as well. This trident is the best weapon we’ve got by a considerable margin, so I happily swap out Michael’s longsword for the trident while also equipping him with the Ruby of Truth necklace—it doesn’t seem to have any impact besides its importance to the story, but that’s alright. Baccata gets Michael’s longsword and the extra longsword still in our inventory. From there, I head right to the witch doctor. As a benefit of being Heroes of the Swamps, the merchants now give us 50 percent discounts, so he’ll answer the remaining three riddles for 50 crowns each rather than 100 crowns each. For the reduced price, he explains that “the creature whose flesh has never lived” refers to a creature made of rock, “powders from the heart of our mother” refers to earth powder we can get at the city of Yvel, and “the deadly depths” refers to the swamp water in sinkholes. We now know all four ingredients, but we’re not done yet. The witch doctor also sells Fireball Wands for 300 crowns each, and while that’s pretty expensive it’s worth it. These wands cast the Fireball spell, which we haven’t gotten yet, at Level 4. They do eventually run out of charges so they’re not an unlimited resource the way having it in our spellbook would be, but I still want the increased power. I buy two of these wands and make my way back to Opinwood—the plan is to clear out the Opinwood area and then return to the swamp. I do make sure to get some swamp water from a sinkhole using the glass jar we have, then leave the swamp and backtrack to where we landed at Opinwood. Sure enough, there are a lot of Orcs waiting for us, but we have little trouble cutting through them. The Pentrogs are still the more serious threat, which is why I got the Fireball Wands—the plan is to mow through the ram-headed creatures with fire attacks.

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