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PID Tour of Duty Chapter 6 non-WAP Edition take 2
Posted By: Lion O CyborgDate: 10/22/17 11:18 a.m.

(WAP parts edited out because there isn't any point in referencing them when the character sets don't work and they just confuse people who don't understand the language. I'll try and keep such references down in later entries)

*New note from last time: the image trouble in the last post was due to my missing out an equals sign in the image reference code. (oops!) It should be fixed now.

LOC

Chapter 6: Where’s that DAMN violet crystal?

Last time on Tour of Duty, we followed Feel the Power to the end of its path, started on the Labyrinth, and killed a Big Blue Baron of Hell what kicked our friends asses. Seems our buddies are dead.

We now tackle the Labyrinth proper and get the violet crystal in the centre.

Our next path is Lasciate Ogne Speranza, Voi Ch'Intrate or Abandon Hope
All Ye Who Enter Here, which is something I saw on a stone sign in the
Loch Ness castle levels in the expansion pack of Tomb Raider 3.

Sorry for these long hiatus’s, but college work, Christmas and time with my family has been an obstacle in these writeups, as has other games. I
currently start not long before New Year. It turns out it wasn’t Friday
13th May 1994, nor December 21 2012 that was supposed to be the beginning
of Armageddon: it was going to be a series of unfortunate events
throughout 2016 all along.

Anyway, we start by the ladder to the labyrinth. This is sort of what it
looks like:



Now, only the corner most areas matter on this floor. All the rest is
randomised except for the centre area where the violet crystal spawns. Getting there is a challenge and we will be hounded by Rovers all the way.



Now this is going to be difficult. It is now half past eight on Sunday night
and it is a horrible night to be trapped underground and hunted by
ayakashi. If you're wondering what those are, they are monsters or demons born out of people's nightmares. I think that's an appropriate description of PIDs monster though they aren't the same as the mythical demons. The shocking spheres are immune to crystals and we will need all
our SMG ammo to fight them off.



I had to reboot the game after starting as the audio went out of sync in the time it took to make the entry screenshot. After minutes of wandering
trippy halls with the occasional mushroom colony or puddle, I finally find
the violet crystal in the dead end I’m at in the map above. An ambush in
the final hallway forced me to drink a silver bottle to stay in good
shape. I now have 21 XP and 20 HP.





This crystal pulses charges of lightning between a cone of monsters and deals more damage than the red crystal. We will be using this more often but will fall back to the red one from time to time.

It’s a relatively short stroll to the ladder and I would have escaped from a shocking sphere that started chasing me if another one didn’t clip
straight through the wall. It came out right beside the corner too, and
not around it. I couldn’t get a snip before I killed it so I can’t prove
it guys, sorry.



Oh boy. These spider things are called skitters. They shoot balls of web
soaked with *ahem* stuff in it and will eat you if they “kill” you. Why
their webs deal damage when those guys aren’t venomous I have no idea.
Maybe they shoot the webbing so fast it gives you a concussion?



We need to go to Watch your Step to proceed because the way is blocked. The green crystal is on that floor and we will need it to get past the guys
stopping us.



As you can see, the columns are replaced with towers of skitter webs and
piles of blue silk occasionally litter the floor. Ahead is a blue potion
but it is guarded by this asshole:



Feel free to discuss who these guys are. They might be worshippers of the
W’rkncacnter who protect certain rooms on a couple of floors. Those monks
generate an energy shield that stops us going past. Ayakashi can pass and
fire through the shield undisturbed.



They can only be killed with the Green crystal so we will have to come back.

I find a couple of dead ends and kill some skeletons. I didn’t think we’d
see those guys this far down. Since I’m an expert machine gunner, they die
pretty quickly. Sure it should be quic…



What was that?! That’s actually a ghast, not a normal skeleton. The
German on Ascension warned us about those; they yell and reach their arms
out to cause earthquakes. That is why my health is now low.



This red velvet bag is a Forever Bag; a container whose inside is on the
astral plane, allowing for an infinite amount of items to be stored. I
think it would have been easier to use 5D space instead but I guess that
is reserved for the space anomalies on the Marathon and the inside of
TARDISs. I store my HE grenades and my treasure and German stuff bags
inside it to make some more general inventory room.

It’s mentioned on the story page that this might have been the solution to a weight puzzle involving the gold cache upstairs that was cut from the
final game. Hmmm…



Now, the next floor looks like this. Both the two ladders made of skitter web in the south centre corners lead there but they come out very far apart.

This floor is also littered with purple pods that look a little like copies of Twilight Sparkle’s bum all smashed together. They explode when
we step over them, and they can kill us so let’s leave them be.



Shit!Now what? Oh, forgot about them. These lizard things are like
the rats in the walls back in the watery floors except running away or
turning our torch off won’t help us. To get rid of them we have to…*sigh*
step on the pods and blow them away.

I’ll need a drink of Colloidal Silver after this to heal up. Right, we are headed to the south. I came in via the left ladder which put me on the east side of the map. There are two sapphires in the middle of this floor but only one will give us XP of which we have 21 after getting the Forever Bag. We still get the treasure value from the other one however, and that means more bonus points at the end so let’s get them both.

I end up electrocuting a group of skitters and a ghast while under attack
from the lizards. Guess I’ll need my drink now.



The green Isfet Crystal triggers earthquakes that damage monsters in a radius around you and also deals more damage than the violet one, even through walls.

I mentioned in my review that aside from the monks, you will never ever use this crystal. It takes too long to charge, there are not as many charges
as the others, it’s unlikely to kill any monsters except really weak ones
when you use it, and there is no telling that there are any monsters
behind you or around walls, besides the ones in front of you, so using it
is likely wasting charges.

We cannot let this run out until we kill all the monk guys, a couple of which guard a very special item on this floor, and the save rune.



Urm, that is actually a ruby but OK, they’re the same mineral anyway. Also, counting this and the crystal, we now have 32 XP. I find a passage way
blocked by a monk and I crush him in a quake. He makes a funny noise and
pulls a funny face before he falls over. There is a save rune at the end
of the webby hall which I make use of.



Oh come on. This leads to the special item we need. I’ll need to deal with
those guys too. Naturally, the green crystal will take a week to charge up
so I’ll need to use my gun alone if the earthquake doesn’t kill all the
skitters as well. I also get attacked by Lizard Squad again just as I turn
back into the hallway after dodging. Isn’t that nice?

There is a dead solider at the end of the hall. I accidently use the green
crystal trying to speak to him because I rearranged my yellow crystal to
go with the rest and forgot to equip it. Oops.






Hey, it’s Greg! I have so many questions! What happened to Duality? Are you and the guys gonna get back together for some new Marathon titles? Can we get a Pathways into Darkness PC port and a full remake? Remakes of the
Marathon Trilogy too? Where have you been all these years, have you been
abducted by the Jjaro? Will you do the writing for all the new Marathon games and Remakes? Are you still ali… oh.























That dishwasher incident is real by the way, in case anyone asks, courtesy of the story page for that information. That’s funny how he mentions street
fighter, I guess the dishwasher bruise made it hard to concentrate.




Greg also informs us that Steven changed the code if we haven’t already found out. He hid the bomb in one of those pods for some reason. It just
absorbed it without exploding. Those pony clones must feel pretty
uncomfortable with such explosive diarrhoea waiting up there.

Sorry, that one was terrible.



Interesting, but we have to set it off before we can get it. Oh boy.



This is the pod. Here we go.










We can’t arm it here, we’ll need to descend lower and it’s not going to be easy.

I head back up to Lasciate Ogne Speranza, Voi Ch'Intrate and retrieve the
silver from the first path before heading around the hallways to the
ladder. More monks lie in wait and I’ll spare you the journey as the
passages look the same.

I do say that the walls and floors resemble an Egyptian pyramid or temple,
what with the hieroglyphics in the walls, ceiling and floor. You could say
this cave is not a natural formation: someone built it. Maybe those monks
made it in honour of their sleepy god? Or did it make this place and those
guys too? I can certainly see where this place gets its zombified
skeletons from, Ghasts and the normal kind.



This is the ladder to the next area, I’d Rather Be Surfing. Now I’m walking into the Skitter webs. (leave a message and I’ll call you back)




Oh for God’s sake.

Chapter 6 Part 2: Monky Business

Jesus effing Christ, I took way longer than usual to get back to this, sorry. It is now 25.9.17 and 20 to 11 Sunday night in game. I didn’t use the
Reset cheat so I’m surprised that I made it this far in the time I did.




These doors are important: behind the one on the left, is the exit we will
take from the final floor on our escape to the surface.

If we ate our Easter Egg before now, we would have warped to the final boss
but that left door would be locked as it only opens from this side, and
we’d have screwed over the entire game except for any backup saves, and
we’d be missing the bomb, as well as something else to help us get out
alive.

Anyway, I kill the skitters and three ghasts behind the doors and now I
present the map.




There’s only one silver potion on this floor and a body in the northeast room before the ladder. Another monk guards the passage around the corner and the save rune to the north. There are a lot of monsters in the pillared
hallway to the south.

The two paths to the west and east of the first save rune are dead ends and skitters are hiding in them so we need to go south. I take a quick nap to heal and make more grenades.

: It takes me until 11:10 PM to make it to the end of the monster hallway, with only half my health left. There were a lot of skitters and ghasts in that hallway. I’m scared to rest again in case I’m ambushed, killed and forced to do it all over again.

I noticed that there are a lot of bones on this floor, are enough humans
blundering down here to keep the skitters well fed? Or are they the
remains of other monsters? There’s no infighting in Pathways so what’s the
reason besides spooky decoration?



I only just noticed the ghast when taking the snipshot as the game was not
paused. I discovered that I can still shoot through the monk’s force
fields like the monsters can; just not pass through. The second save rune
is at the end of the hallway, in a room full of skitter webs.




What is that skeleton? Some sort of bird thing, talons, a couple of Xenomorph tails… any ideas?




The exit ladder is just across this room. We should loot the body too…






Chapter 6 part 3: Airlock Love

We are now locked in and there is no way out. Leaving one of the crystals
won’t buy us out so let’s talk to the corpse in the corner.











So it wasn’t monsters that killed him; he suffocated to death, but why is he bleeding? Did he commit suicide like he suggested we try, or did those
skitters nibble on his body before we arrived?

This man is Pedro. He was part of the Spanish tomb raider group who took
Walter’s gold key. His companions made it through the door but Pedro was
trapped in here, despite his 5 friends’ efforts to get him out. Pedro says
that the doors will only open hours later, after we’ve used up the oxygen
in this room and wait to kill someone else.











We will meet those three momentarily. Sleeping here will allow us to make
more ammo but Pedro is right.




There is one way to get out of here alive. Remember the cloak we found in the monster closet where Muller’s Nazi group died off? Well we need that in order to survive this room as it speeds up time for everything else except
us.

I have to say that the red cloak is a good example of an adventure game
puzzle as it’s a mostly useless item that only comes in handy once, but
unlike many adventure games, it actually gives us a hint on the solution
i.e. Pedro’s dialog, and any experimentation with the cloak beforehand.

So now I put on the cloak and rest to make more ammo while I wait. It takes about 3 hours or so for the door to open.

I take a longer sleep after making enough grenades and I hear the door open
in my sleep. We need to be quick to wake up and take the cloak off as
there are ghasts and skitters waiting for us.




Or not? At the bottom of the ladder we get ambushed by a ghast but kill him
before he triggers an earthquake. The next floor is Warning: Earthquake
Zone, which means there are a lot of these guys. The poo monsters AKA
oozes also return badder and stinkier than ever.

With any luck and less distractions, join me next time on PID Tour of Duty
for Chapter 7: THIS IS MY BOOMSTICK!

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Pre-2004 Posts

Replies:

PID Tour of Duty Chapter 6 non-WAP Edition take 2Lion O Cyborg 10/22/17 11:18 a.m.
     Don't you wish we had an edit button? *NM*VikingBoyBilly 10/22/17 4:24 p.m.
           Re: Don't you wish we had an edit button?Lion O Cyborg 10/23/17 3:50 a.m.
                 Re: Don't you wish we had an edit button?VikingBoyBilly 10/23/17 12:19 p.m.
                       Re: Don't you wish we had an edit button?Godot 10/24/17 9:18 a.m.

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Pre-2004 Posts

 

 

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