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PID Tour of Duty Chapter 5: The Dark Bowers
Posted By: Lion O CyborgDate: 10/9/16 6:04 a.m.

Chapter 5: The Dark Bowers

Last time on Tour of Duty, we went underground for the first time and met the corpse of Muller.

We also found an Easter treat, an SMG and some treasure we’ll need for deeper down. Sorry for all those references last time, I’d come up with a few good ones but got carried away with them. I try to keep them down a notch or two here. You can expect at least two other ooze ones over the rest of the floors starting here.

We begin by the ladder to Feel the Power. I descend down it and put my new pistol and SMG skills to the test.





Needless to say; they’re not happy at my newfound gun skills, or the flames of the red Isfet crystal. Just due north of that last snipshot where I was, I run into a ghoul and a dead Nazi. My Minecraft sense is tingling and sure enough, I find one of my two favourite metals lying on the ground nearby.

I take some damage from oozes while looting Walter for ammo. No sign of the cedar box though and I can’t remember what floor it’s on. (I am writing the start of this at My Own Private Lh’owon during the rain.)
Walter says that they did find the box and that they needed 11 bars of gold plus the one Walter had. He isn’t pleased about my “finding” it. He was killed by the oozes but they don’t seem to have eaten him.

I explore further south after finding another MP-41 clip and use a save rune before resting. On the east side of the map, I find a bottle of silver and a machine gun clip guarded by a bunch of oozes, but it’s a dead end.

I find another save rune in the north corridors and pick up some MA-75 clips… I mean level up my MP-41 to Novice just as I reach the ladder to the next floor.

This ladder is different to the others in that it’s made of yellow crystals, much like the lower ladders on the other path were blue crystals.

The next floor is more of the same texture wise; it’s called “A plague of demons.” It’s only 20 past 1 on Sunday afternoon but it will be night time soon enough further down.

Hang on, plague you say? What could...

It’s a blob of pink jelly coming out of nowhere like the ones from Devil’s Castle II! I sometimes get blocked by thin air just before they appear and I find them hard to dodge because their source is invisible. What a horrible night to have a plague.

Is that a dead Bob? He has a broken M16 and a clip for it. The M16 clips are useless as none of the ones in the game are in working order. He also has an HE grenade and a pair of Night-vision goggles.

I catch a glimpse of something white disappearing as I put them on. I must have killed the wraith that followed me here without seeing it as I looted the solider.

This guy is John. He tells us that the others were losing hope and in trouble. Steven had the bomb and he changed the code after we were lost. John doesn’t know the new code.
If you ask about John’s name, he will look at you funny and think you’re pulling his leg. Understandable when only we, the players might not know his name.

John was killed by the wraiths and the rest of the guys stayed with him until he died. He seems to have forgotten Jason but he does have high hopes for Greg.

Of course he will, just not in the game anyway. He does seem to have vanished off the face of the Earth in real life however. Maybe the Jjaro gave him a tux and sunglasses before taking him to their homeworld. Or was it an overcoat?

I can’t find any more dialog lines as I can’t remember the other soldiers so I press on.
The room in the southeast of the map has the cedar box so we will head there. I was able to add the maps and check where it was after getting home again.

I get jumped by a wraith sneaking up behind me while fighting two others and an ooze and find some ammo in the north and south ends of the southwestern passage which is filled with mushrooms.

More wraiths at a 4 way junction bring me down to 0.9 health so I am forced to drink one of my silvers.

I come to a bronze door, I think there is a banshee hiding behind it. One of three actually I think.

I was wrong: there were a bunch of wraiths in there instead. Same with the door at the end of the room, plus at least 1 ooze. I know that they are here however, somewhere in the eastern halls.

I find the box in its room behind a silver door that suspiciously has a bronze lock of sorts. Good thing I did too, as I am down to my last two pistol clips and am running out of SMG ammo.

I continue on through the maze of tight hallways filled with wraiths and oozes. And come to a bronze door on the left. The room inside is empty…

Nani Datte?!

EEEEEEEE!

Yatta! That red glow is meant to be the red crystal’s fire by the way. You can’t see these guys with the night vision goggles on so their appearance here seems to be a practical joke to keep players on their toes as they’d be so used to fighting wraiths by now.

You’re meant to see nothing in the room and either check the corners or wander off, then get ambushed by the banshee (like I was) and see that there’s nothing there unless you take the goggles off.

Past another room with some wraiths, a banshee and a save rune in it at the north end of the map, is a long hallway with wraiths that you can’t dodge unless you dive into the short hallway with the third banshee in it soon before the end.

Expect to take some hits here as they’ll see you before you see them, even with both the goggles and torch on. The banshee times his attack just as I’m preoccupied dealing with the wraiths that chased me into his hallway.

Finally I can take off those damn night vision goggles. (For now)





Ah, this looks nice.



We start in the square room with the yellow crystal columns in the centre on the map. I won’t use many screenshots for this floor because it primarily consists of big rooms with square pillars in them like on EUPMD. We want to go to the northeast corner. I am in two minds whether to get the purple crystal first or go to Need a Light.

This save rune is just outside the bronze door in the last snipshot. As you may have guessed from the level name, this floor is flooded with nightmares and also a couple of oozes. The small spaces juxtaposed with little clearings here and there allow them to ambush you quite easily, even if you are able to dodge.

As soon as I reload after coming back to this writeup, I get jumped by two nightmares right off the bat, but are able to dodge them.

Is that…? Kuso, it wasn’t the diamond necklace; it was just a clod of dirt. A couple of oozes, nightmares and bronze doors later, we find an MP-41 clip and the real diamond necklace, just about north and south of each other.

Any idea what the bit in parenthesis means? Some entries in the PID story page try to encourage you to take it off but don’t listen. While it doesn’t appear to have any power like other treasures, it still looks great as unisex jewellery.

If I see Kristina again, she might like this lovely treasure to go with that blue crystal image on her blog, of which seems to have mysteriously vanished. She must have deleted it for some unknown reason. (the blog that is)

Maybe I could also spend 3.62p in the nearest wishing well so another 5D being can send an exact mineral 3D photocopy across time and space to his human friend, signed in the name of “Empty Vacuum (in space terms).”

I now have 23 XP so the next treasure item will grant me more health, of which there are a couple on the following floors.

The area past the next door is flooded with nightmares and an ooze tries to jump me from the left as I enter. In the southeast corner of the map is a gold door, behind which is the gold that Walter was sent to find, but we can’t get in because we have no key.

Up a short hall with pillars in the east is a save rune and a small room behind a bronze door with the ladder to the next floor.

This ladder is purple crystal. Yes, that’s right: this is the other path’s entrance to the labyrinth. I’ve decided to go to Need a Light first before getting the crystal after all.

We all know that this floor is randomised every time we go to it, much like Minotaur: the Labyrinth’s of Crete (I still want a modernised rerelease for Windows and OSX with a botmatch option) or the Binding of Isaac as a more recent example.

Still though, what are those flying electric balls?

Besides all of the Lovecraft. Evil Dead, Alien and Bevis and Butthead references of early Bungie games, are the shocking spheres a reference to the Prisoner?

It takes me a long time to go through the labyrinth; until 8 past 4 in the afternoon on Sunday, though mainly because I slept upstairs to make more ammo. The ladder we want is in the southwest but the floor isn’t making it easy to get there.

The spheres are everywhere and the décor of this floor gets me wondering:
What is this glowing purple crystal ore in the walls? Is this a weird dream? Where is the kuso ladder? Going by the trippy texture on the ceiling and floor, would this texture set appear in a Terry the Termite WAD if this was Doom?

I actually have to use turbo to backtrack to a path I missed, because I noticed I was just going to loop back, and drink some more silver because my burns were too much. I even levelled up my SMG soon before I got to the ladder down.

We have to go in the east door and make our way to the small intestine area to the south. Our squad is there waiting for us and we don’t want those accursed ayakashi to get them first. Texture wise, this floor is the same as HHCC and doesn’t have any secrets. Secrets in this game are rare anyway except treasure hidden in alcoves or cul-de sacs.

Our ladder is in the middle if the centre square and we must go north to the save rune and the aforementioned east and west doors to the outer square.

Typo police spoil your sentence. Eddy is found in the southeast of the middle square and is glad we’re alive. He’s apologetic about our name question due to a bloody face and his missing an arm.

Ed was killed by a nightmare and taken over here out of the way. I promise him to tell his girlfriend Anna what happened and how brave he was. Now I just have to survive the escape…

Greg had taken the bomb for some reason. He doesn’t remember how John died and didn’t see what happened to the others. He doesn’t even respond to asking for the code.

I leave Ed to his devices and head back to the doors. After a long battle against tons of monsters in the east half of the outer square, I enter the intestine and the door locks behind me. The first door locked too to stop newer players from chickening out too late.

I’ll be taking that! We levelled up our health again with the grenade launcher and this gives us 25 XP.

Sorry, this is Jason, but it doesn’t matter (apparently). The thing that killed him and the others is blue, huge and grins. If you’re reading this entry in bed at night on your PDA or phone, perhaps it’s hiding under your sheets with its shark face on right now…

I don’t think he’d take my 3.26p for my 5D girl’s diamond necklace copy now, but maybe he still might if he does get the jok…




AAAAAAHHH!










It’s not the cheesy grin that scared me; it’s the fireballs it shot out of its hands into my face. We now have met Greed, a stronger nightmare than the others and the first boss of the whole game. I’ve described him before as a Doom Baron of Hell crossed with a Mancubus from Doom 2.

Unlike the second boss Malice, or Selfishness as he may also be called (not really the same thing), Greed is killable through sheer bullet hell and liberal use of Isfet Crystals. He isn’t even immune to fire, despite being able to launch it:

Greed will give you plenty of time to fire on him and back up around the corners because his firing animation is quite long before he actually fires. The green columns are there in the bigger sections to give the false impression that you can try to dodge the fireballs.

It takes me less time to kill it than before as I use both the blue and red Isfet crystals on it as I’m firing. Just as I go around one of the middle bends in the intestine, my bullets must have punctured his armour because Greed bursts into flames and evaporates.

I picked up the next soldier’s dropped flashlight at the start of the boss fight, so I drop it and charge up the yellow crystal to speak to the next man.

The guy in question is Steven. He’s glad we’re alive and we may be the last hope. (no surprise there) Were he not dead he would be pissed we don’t recognise him if we ask his name.

So according to the OSX version’s built in PDF of the manual, the new code is 6580334. I am reminded of System Shock 1 again when I think of the bomb code, as you also need to find a code in that game to send a Space Colony’s reactor into meltdown, and then escape from an upper level. (not after the final boss this time).

Hang on, we all arrived here very early this morning didn’t we? It’s only 6:54 PM Sunday evening. I guess Bungie weren’t expecting us to arrive at this floor before Monday, so they left his dialog the way it is and we weren’t supposed to notice.

At the end of the intestine just before the door to the west side of the outer square (I guess that would be the large intestine), there is a potion of all three kinds so far in the small room along with a mysterious ring.

Actually, the ring will make our crystals recharge much slower if we wear it. It’s a stupid idea to do so unless you like the challenge so don’t bother. Keep it anyway for the treasure value.

I now make my way through the outer square again to the west door to the middle and centre squares. There are nightmares and oozes to kill along the way, including a posse who wait just outside the intestine door to ambush you while you go for the treasure. I test out my new grenade launcher on them. I should conserve ammo though; later enemies will need those HE rounds to kill.

I save on the save rune in the middle square and rest until after 20:00 to make some more HE grenades, killing a nightmare who ambushes me in my sleep before I get enough grenades.

That’s all for now, join me next time when we will tackle the Labyrinth properly at last and move downstairs again to Lasciate Ogne Speranza, Voi Ch'Intrate in Chapter 6: WTDVC.

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Replies:

PID Tour of Duty Chapter 5: The Dark BowersLion O Cyborg 10/9/16 6:04 a.m.
     Re: PID Tour of Duty Chapter 5: The Dark BowersLion O Cyborg 10/9/16 9:25 a.m.
           Re: PID Tour of Duty Chapter 5: The Dark BowersLion O Cyborg 10/9/16 9:30 a.m.
     Re: PID Tour of Duty Chapter 5: The Dark BowersVikingBoyBilly 10/9/16 12:04 p.m.
           Re: PID Tour of Duty Chapter 5: The Dark BowersLion O Cyborg 10/9/16 11:21 p.m.
                 Re: PID Tour of Duty Chapter 5: The Dark BowersVikingBoyBilly 10/10/16 7:10 a.m.
                       Re: PID Tour of Duty Chapter 5: The Dark BowersLion O Cyborg 10/11/16 6:40 a.m.
                             Re: PID Tour of Duty Chapter 5: The Dark BowersVikingBoyBilly 10/11/16 9:09 a.m.
                                   Re: PID Tour of Duty Chapter 5: The Dark BowersLion O Cyborg 10/11/16 9:47 a.m.
                                         Re: PID Tour of Duty Chapter 5: The Dark BowersVikingBoyBilly 10/13/16 12:27 p.m.
                                               Re: PID Tour of Duty Chapter 5: The Dark BowersLion O Cyborg 10/14/16 6:32 a.m.
                                                     Re: PID Tour of Duty Chapter 5: The Dark BowersVikingBoyBilly 10/14/16 4:13 p.m.
                                                           Re: PID Tour of Duty Chapter 5: The Dark BowersLion O Cyborg 10/16/16 4:49 a.m.

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