Game:

Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos (1993)

Duration: 13:21

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Once the Rocklings are cleared, I explore the area a bit. It’s not very large, but there’s a staircase leading down to the fourth (and final) level of the mines. There are a couple of things down there that we need, so I duly head down the staircase. It leads to a small enclosed room that looks like a dead end, but a switch in the wall causes a portal to appear. I go through the portal, and promptly get transported to a separate part of the fourth level. We’re now in a corridor with two visible switches, one right behind us and one on the wall a space down. I make sure to turn around and hit the switch behind us first—that turns off a missile trap straight ahead—then move forward and hit the other switch to reveal an extra path. This path leads to a door with two separate locks on either side of it; Paulson is actually on the other side of this door, but we’ll need to unlock both locks to get to him. There’s little we can do about that now, so I turn back and head down the main corridor. I head right and continue exploring, eventually encountering a Rockling. We engage and defeat it, and when it dies it drops a strange object called a Bloodstone. Essentially a small piece of its hide, a Bloodstone is what we need for the Elixir. I happily pick it up and add it to our inventory, right next to the other two ingredients.

The corridor dead-ends at this point, so I backtrack and move to the north, near the center of the map. There are four wheel switches here, each surrounding a spin square. For each switch that’s in the “up” position when we step on the central square, we’ll spin once. Three of the four switches are in the up position currently, and so we’ll need to try and get all of them in the down position to avoid spinning. I manage to do this fairly quickly, since I know exactly which ones need to be flipped (the ones to the south, north and east). Once that’s done, I decide to head west first. There are two large corridors in this direction that are both blocked by rocks; we’ll need to use the pickaxe to clear them. I tackle the one to the left first, and we discover a Rockling on the other side. This Rockling drops a Bloodstone after we defeat him, but I leave it behind—we only need one, so taking a second wastes an inventory slot. There’s nothing else in this corridor, so I head towards the other one. We’re intercepted by a Trez—this level has that enemy type just as the lobby does—so I briefly equip Michael with the Crossbow Valkyrie to engage it. Once he’s dead, I clear out the rock pile and head down the path to a dead end, where we find a pile of bones. Clicking it causes the bones to briefly become possessed by the spirit of their owner, who warns that we’re in danger and urges us to flee. That’s interesting, but the main reason the bones are important is they have the Rusty Key. That’s one of the two keys we need to unlock the door to Paulson, so I backtrack and use it on the appropriate lock. We still need the other key, though, and we’re not going to find it for quite some time.

I return to the spin square location and, after briefly checking the eastern area, I head north. We engage and defeat a Trez, and then we come across a second pile of bones. This one has a note about a missing part for the water pump, and sure enough there’s a gear device within the bones. We now have what we need to fix the machine upstairs, and after briefly going through a couple of unexplored corridors it’s time to backtrack to the Urbish Mining Company lobby. In order to do that we have to go east at the spin square, which takes us to a portal. Going through that returns us to the staircase between the third and fourth levels, and from there it’s simply a matter of retracing our steps. I head up the stairs to Level 3, return to the mining cart, ride back to the central area, and then head over to the portal near where we fell in. Going through it instantly transports us to the lobby, and I head towards the machine room. Predictably, we’re intercepted by yet another Trez, so I briefly stop to engage and defeat him before continuing. Once we’re in the machine room, there are three steps we need to perform. First, we’ll need to open a little side-door in the machine and place our lump of coal inside to serve as fuel. Once we’ve done that, we’ll place the gear on the machine next to a couple of other gears. Finally, we’ll have to pull the lever to get the machine actually pumping. I carry out all three steps, and it starts working. This is important because without the machine working, a stairway we’ll need to access in the mine is actually flooded and inaccessible. With the machine working, the water is cleared out and we’ll be able to use the stairwell. We’ve completed a key step, and now it’s time to head back down to find Paulson. Before I do, though, I equip Baccata with the Great Sword and Trident Mantis—we should be done with Rocklings and the bladed weapons will work fine going forward.

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