It begins with one bad fight, regardless if you choose the secret entrance with the slimes or the main with the 2 mushroom herders.
Slimes are too strong for a beginner and need very good kiting skills (or hiding behind the door and resting (see the end of the text)).
Mushrooms herders can be killed with easy kiting.
In short you need to run around and hit them with spells and arrows, never standing in one place for too long or they will cast poison cloud.
Also never stand for too long in the corners or they will surround you.
After you kill the mushroom herders they will drop the key to reopen the door from where you came and the next room.
There you will find a small alcove with a recipe for the restore energy potion and an empty flask for it.
Next room is a big hub with 4 teleports, alcoves and hints written on the wall:
There are also 2 groups of skeleton archers. Which are not really hard.
You will return in this room few times, so get used to it.
There are 4 teleporters, 4 alcoves for you to place something and 4 inscriptions which explain in which puzzle room they lead you.
First one is the most rewarding:
Time and tides
This puzzle turned out a bit hard, because I did not figure out how to take the book inside the secret room, so here it is in a nutshell:
- There is a plate, which when stepped upon makes 3 clicking sounds and then a teleporter shows above one of the trap doors.
- There are 3 throwing daggers in nearby alcove.
- Obviously you need to throw them in the showing teleporter.
- On success, the dagger falls on nearby floor plate and closes 2 of the trap doors.
Don’t forget to fall down to level 5 and collect your daggers that missed and get a maggot-on-a-stick for a snack.
Now put something heavy on the floor plate and stand where the portal appeared. Secret room with “the book of wisdom”. This book is like a free level up (+5 skill points), so be sure to take it!
Next corridor is about timing.
When you step on the plate, the trap doors start closing and after about 5 seconds they reopen.
You need to time your advance good enough and have in mind that a flyer will come to stay in your way.
(lure and kill him before starting the corridor or patiently wait for it to come).
There is a secret door opened by a button you may simply miss, there is a helmet inside.
Have in mind, that if you fall – you need to fight a bunch of skeletons down on level 5.
4 archers and 2 pikemen to be precise.
You will fall in one of the two rooms, and there is teleport back to the hub in one of them. Fight your way out (you always reemerge in the main hub)
There is a small cell which can be opened from inside only (on this – later, you need to finish another puzzle room to enter it).
Get back from level 5 and reenter “Time and tides”.
Try to walk quickly the whole trap-door corridor.
One square before the closed portcullis, turn left. You will see a floor plate.
Throw another dagger and the portcullis will open. Run there before the trap-doors reopen.
You are almost done with the “Time and Tides”- The next room is the junction. You will always end here whenever you pass a puzzle room from the main hub. They are 4 total.
All 4 parts of the hub rooms end here and have a scroll in the end, in front of the central teleporter.
Get the scroll and go in.
You are transported to the hub again.
This one scroll you just got needs to be put inside the alcove on which is written “Crimes forgotten” – “But never forgiven”
Trails of thought
There are only two rooms, but you need to know how to pass them:
Puzzle 1:
All plates create or remove 2 or more portals.
All portals take you back to the beginning and close the door to the next room (if open).
The correct way to walk over them is:
Start from the door and walk like this -> EEESWNWSENWN (Click!) ESWNESWSENES
(east – east – east – south – west – north …)
Then you need to fight a flyer.
Puzzle 2:
There are 4 floor plates.
First one in front of the door resets the puzzle.
Look southern wall while standing on the middle plate and click the secret room.
Then go back and collect the toxic dagger.
Optionally: Fall down in the trap door to level 5, so you gather 2 slime balls. Use the teleporter and get back to this part of the level. (In this case, you need to pass puzzle 1 again)
The puzzle 2 goes like this:
Start from the door and walk inside, then go EEWEWWEWNSEWN
Grab key and you are set.
There is a skeleton and another scroll saying “by this call”.
You are not done here.
- Get back to the corridor.
- In the small part of the corridor, you will see a loose brick.
- On pressing it two trap doors in the big room will get covered.
- Above the second trap door is a button, which removes the teleporter in the center.
Enter the trap door below the teleporter and you will get to the secret room with the gear key on level 5.
Get back to the main hall and put the scroll in the alcove saying “Caverns still echoing” – “by this call”.
Use the gear key in the side corridor in the main hall and you will enter secret room with Chitin greaves in the alcove.
Beast gardens and menagerie.
Click the button and quickly stay in the way of the light blast the head is spewing (or the portcullis closes).
Kill some skeleton pikeman for experience. It is always useful. They only give 90 xp but they will keep coming until you close 3 of them in the small rooms.
No problem getting to level 7 or 8 just by those kills, so be clever and patient.
The only thing that can stop you – you will run out of food.
When fed with easy kills – open all small rooms with floor plates and lure skeletons inside.
They will be trapped but will press the plates for you.
Go to the room with scrolls and get the 3-rd one. “but still dreaming”
SAVE!
There will be a surprise when you get back to the main hall. (But if you took my advice, you will already be level 8 with your whole party and you will do fine)
From one of the grids on the floor will emerge a small hydra and start biting.
- Step back…
- advance …
- hit …
- step back …
- repeat until dead.
Drop the scroll in the alcove saying “Put to sleep” – “but still dreaming”
The catacomb
Prepare for some heavy bashing. There will be skeletons of both kinds all around.
This is the only “hard” part in this puzzle.
They will try to surround you and kill you, so be prepared. There are 5 archers and 2 pikeman in the first room.
When you clean them – fall down in the trap doors. There is a tar-bead (healing) herb.
Watch the floor. Another Toorum note saying that “He found he is not the first descending here”.
A floor plate with chunk of meat. Get the meat to de-press the plate.
There is a small room with skeletons pressing another plate. Release and kill them. May need some kiting, because 4 skeletons are still quite a threat.
In the same small room, except the floor plate there is a button.
It opens a secret room behind with skeleton and a bag with 2 tar-beads, food and leather gauntlets.
The third floor plate is in a corridor with a stone pressing it.
There is a secret room with squad of 4x skeleton pikeman in the end of the corridor, guarding a firebomb and a hat suitable for archers. The button is a bit hidden (Thanks to Tigara for pointing this out):
When you remove all weight from pressure plates – get back to the start of this area. All trap doors are closed.
The 4-th scroll says “to depths beyond measure”.
Last scroll is for the alcove – “Eternally imprisoned” – “to depths beyond measure”.
Save π
… this fight needs some guts and wits.
Run quickly in the corridor where the portcullis opens (towards the end of the level).
Turn around and make your stand.
This way you will not get surrounded.
Fight.
There will be about 20 beetles swarming towards you.
When your front chars get low on health, run in the area with the blue crystal and recover quickly.
Run back in the corridor and finish the fight.
When done, loot the room around the blue stone. Frost bolt scroll (level 13), frost bomb and a chunk of meat.
Return to the hub hall and look around the place. The alcoves where the small screaming insects were hidden have one battle-axe (lame one, can’t carry it without Axe skill 5) and a lever which opens the 4 portals again.
Slimes
Return to level 3 and go down to level 4 in the green slime secret area.
You are probably strong enough now to take them down 1-by-1.
Use “coward tactics”.
Lure them to the door and fight with only one slime at a time or they will disease you and overwhelm you.
There are 7 slimes total. The ones around the door are the most annoying, because you will get hit while trying to lure them out.
There is golden deity figurine here (Treasure 2/7).
Some slime-bells for alchemy and a green stone (emerald) in a hidden room (opened with button on the south wall).
The emerald you need to feed to the statue in front of the entrance of the slimes room.
A secret room is opened. There are 2 poison bombs and arbalet + poison bolts.
The arbalet does 20 base damage, so if you used a bow so far – stick with the arbalet until bolts run out and switch to bow just in case you need to kite like the beginning of level 4.
This concludes everything that can be done on level 4 for now.