Akalabeth: Be-Balroged, Bothered, and Beknighted

Tonight I finished up Akalabeth, and Avatar-to-be Aric is now Lord Aric, as can be seen in the handy-dandy screenshot up there. (Insert the usual joke about being told to report my feat to Lord British here.) Of course, it wasn't just a snap of the fingers that got Aric from his first visit to Lord British's castle to knighthood, so I suppose I have to back up a little

I'm a lot stronger now!

The first thing I did after getting my first quest was to pick up a magic amulet and start fiddling around with it to make myself into a lizard man and multiply my stats. Once again, sixteen proves to truly be my lucky number (at least as far as Akalabeth is concerned) as my first attempt to use a magic amulet succeeds properly. (It does help that I'm a mage and can therefore choose which spell to use rather than hope it's the one I want.) So I enter and exit the dungeon, making use of the amulet in between, until my stats are starting to push five digits.

Thus readied for battle, I delve into the dungeon to seek out a gremlin, and hope that I don't catch it on the wrong angle and deplete all my food resources after a few attacks. Luckily, I happen to catch one straight-on on the sixth floor of the dungeon, and it goes down in one hit. Y'know, it surprises me how a creature so small can manage to make off with half my food when I'm carrying several thousand units' worth of it. Exactly how big are one of these rations that I've got? And if they're small enough for a puny gremlin to make off with scads of them, how the heck do they keep me well fed?? I suppose that's why I go through them so quickly.

Pesky little thing...

I hop over two paces to tell Lord British I slew a gremlin, and he sends me back in to slay a mimic, a daemon, and a balrog, in order. After reloading on amulets (to make use of the ladder spells properly) and food (just in case I bump into more gremlins), I pop back into the dungeon to kill things, finding a mimic on the ninth floor (and several more on my way back up, hence the 'bothered' part of the title), getting some food swiped by a gremlin, and also bumping into a daemon that I zip back down to kill once I've told Lord British I did away with a mimic.

From there it was a simple matter of dealing with the daemon, telling LB I did so, then running back to about floor twelve (well, floor ten and then falling down to floor twelve) to kill a mighty balrog for my final quest... which dies in one hit. I am lizardman, hear me... screech?

So I let the king know of my accomplishment (how does he know I'm telling the truth, by the way? Did I bring some trophy back of my kills?) and as a reward he knighted me!

Akalabeth's a short little game, but it's a fun diversion while it lasts. I'll toss up another post with some final thoughts, and then it's off to Ultima I!