.It also has a lot of spoilers.
This was my first time playing CSB, and I wanted to get through it with as few hints as possible, so I didn't use any maps. I had heard that CSB's map design is very chaotic, but I didn't find it that bad. It was really fun to learn how to navigate through all those places. He who designed the dungeon must have been a genius. To make pit transportation work through all those levels must be hard.
I played the Amiga version (wonderful stereo sound, hearing a dragon moving nearby just feels great), and I used the same characters which I played through DM last time: Daroou, Hiss, Tiggy and Woof.
Before I started with the ways, I experimented around trying all the pits and getting familiar with the Supplies for the Quick area and the Junction of the Ways. I guess it's kinda cheating to try things and load the save, but I wanted to understand the place first.
I played the ways in this order: Ku, Neta, Dain and Ros as the last one. I had heard beforehand that you could get some good weapons from Ku, so when I saw it I went there. At first I was surprised at the combat difficulty when compared to DM: Infinite number of monsters spawning very fast, a dragon as a seemingly normal monster in the middle of a dozen worms and such. It felt really intense. My characters were high enough level though, so it didn't matter that I had no idea where to go and could try all the places. Then I got stuck at the KU door in DDD level. I ran the hint oracle, and it told me that the dragon carries the solid key. At first I killed the wrong dragon, the one below the DDD level, and got only steaks. Then I killed the dragon that I met in the beginning of Ku and got the key. Finally finding the corbum felt nice. Then I went up the stairs and explored the place. Because I had saves, I tried the teleporters and found myself at the FulYa pit. I couldn't believe I found the ending place already. After that I had a better view about the layout of the dungeon.
Neta way was fun and easy. The trap which drops you in the middle of a pack of gigglers and then even further down was hilarious! But Dain way was really annoying at first. I couldn't find the key to the Dain door in DDD anywhere. I had to check from the walkthrough. The solution, putting an item to the vorpal blade niche, was something I wouldn't have thought to try out on my own...
Playing the Ros way was fun. When I came to the maze which consisted of illusion walls, pits and dragons I thought "are they joking?". That was the only place where I used the magic map, with the oh gor ros spell that was given earlier. Never really needed a map elsewhere, but that place would have been way too hard without it.
Now I'm coming to the bug I mentioned in the topic. I couldn't find any way to get to the Ros area of DDD, even with clicking the hidden button next to the pit that blocks the way, so I looked from a walkthrough, and it said you need to click with an item on the eye behind the door where a skeleton must be teleported and where you get to the Neta area. However, I already did the Neta path, and the door was now closed again. Teleporting skeletons behind the door didn't open the door anymore, so there was no way to click the eye. I had to resort to editing my save with dmute and opening the door that way. After that I could get forward. Is this really a bug, or is there some other way to get the door open again if you don't know to click the eye when doing the Neta way?
After jumping into pits a hundred times I got the last corbum. Then I went to the FulYa pit using the teleporters and avoiding the demons that way. Satisfying ending.
I don't know if it's good or bad, but it took me 4 days to finish this game. Considering it was my first time and I didn't use any maps, and looked only 2 things up I'm satisfied. I must say that the game was far better than I thought. I expected something maybe as good as DM, but it turned out I liked CSB much more.
I tried to play quite thoroughly, but I still missed a lot of things. I got the complete Dragon armor, but I missed poleyn and greaves of the Ra set. I got the dexhelm, crown of nerra and boots of speed though. I also found 5 keys of B, but I have no idea what they are used for... Also another vorpal blade would have been nice, but I don't know if it even exists.
When I started I thought food and water would be a major issue in this game. I was so wrong. I think I never needed to dring from a waterskin, I always found fountains when needed. And I got 6 waterskins. In the beginning I killed a lot of worms in the starting room to get some food reserve, but it was a complete waste of time. In the end I had 64 dragon steaks, most packed in chests, lying in my storeroom. I never needed to eat even one dragon steak. And I found out that in the Ku path dragon den even when you kill all of the dragons a new one spawns when you go there again, so you'd never run out of steaks. I guess one reason why I needed so little food and water was that I almost never put my characters to sleep.
I guess I'll study CSB maps now, to see what I missed. Later I want to take Tiggy, who I soloed through DM earlier, alone through CSB as well. That should be fun
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