Dungeon Master Forum

It just disapeared after use.
It is quite near where lord chaos stand so i guess i don't need it to finish the game. But Now i am facing a skeleton lock and no key.

Are the skeleton locks only for shortcuts ?

Only the topmost lock near Lord Chaos will "eat" the key. You need to use it on ALL the other locks first.... and there's only ONE in the game, so if you lost it already, you can't open any more of those locks.

Don't worry though, they are not essential for completing the game.

Okey thanks gambit that's what I thought

Is a Skeleton Key necessary to
collect any items in CSBwin's
alternate quest? I don't remember
that it was. If so, using it incorrectly
could be a dead-end.

I only remember one possible dead-end
to that quest. On the DDD level there
is a lock that accepts two keys: the
Lock Picks and <????>. One opens
a door and the other opens a pit beneath
the lock so that if you do it in the wrong
order, you cannot complete the quest
because you cannot reach the lock again.

Is the Skeleton Key another dead-end?
Can you think of any other dead-ends
in the quest to collect all items and kill
all monsters?

I am too much of a newbie to answer this question i don't suppose you do ask me any way

I just got the lockpick, wonder what it is used for...

The lockpick can be used on some locks to save a key, but it is not necessary to finish the game. It is, however, necessary to enter the Death Row on ROS.

And there are a few locks where you wouldn't want to use the Lockpicks - I'm sure I remember using them on a lock somewhere and getting blapped by a Fireball, when using a key on the same lock had no such hazardous effects .

Hmmm, good question. I remember thinking this through before when I made those clean out the dungeon recordings without saving years ago. I thought there might have been two points, both by using lockpicks on doors which need keys. The first was in the ROS DDD section at the point where if you use lockpicks instead of a gold key you fall down a pit to the death row section in ROS, but I think that pit might close when you return. The other was another gold key lock door upstairs from the DDD from the room filled with black flames, same deal as the door described above. If you have the boots of speed you can move off the square once the trap is activated.

I think you can also put an endless amount of gor coins in the slot behind the sapphire door below the DDD, but I can't remember if you need gor coins to get any items anywhere else.

You can get stuck at the Ruby key area in DAIN if you muck things up badly enough when going in from the front entrance I think. Or at least get items trapped over pits you can't reach if you kill the orange gem carrying coatl in a bad place.

Oooh! Thought of another one, if you use all the Onyx keys on all the Onyx doors except the one in the Ruby key area, the item behind the door can become stuck forever, this is only in the atari version as there is an extra onyx key in the amiga version. Usually you can open one with lockpicks and the one on the top level is pointless as you can get to both sides anyway.

Another pretty stupid one is if you leave items lying around the FULYA pit, then activate the fireballs by throwing the wrong item across the pit then escape. Your game also becomes uncompletable.

Oh yeah, if you don't kill the vexirks by teleportation at the right places in NETA those random items that appear become stuck. I think those were there only for play testing anyway? I mean who could actually figure that out without looking at the dungeon.dat.

There's bound to be more, maybe they'll come to me later.

Oh, my. A couple of those are pretty
obvious once they have been pointed
out to me. And, of course, throwing
four corbum into the pit sorta destroys
your chances, too.

What is the cleverest way
to repair these dead-ends? Maybe I
should make an alternate 'Chaos
Strikes Back' whose ONLY goal is to
clean out the dungeon. Then the
alternate challenge would be to play
a game and create a dead-end.
Which would be a bug and would be
fixed in the next release. What should
this alternate game be called?

Bottom line??? The miracle of the 'saved game' feature.

Ah, but in CSBWin's alternate test, you are not supposed to save, if you are recording anyway. I guess you can't really 'repair' them them without being unfaithul to the original game, but they were all bugs by the original designers I guess, like the antifire and the KU/ROS corbum fake pit. To fix some of those dead ends you would need to be a bit inventive, but finding any more to add to that list would be exceptionally hard I imagine. I certainly can't think of any more at the moment. And you almost have to know about most of them to actually accomplish in a normal game, except for the NETA vexirks I can't really see people creating a dead end by accident.

I was wondering about DM as well, is there any dead ends in that? I know you can throw the corbum through the portcullis on level 9 and completely ruin your game.

I was "able" to throw a gold key in level 01 through a portcullis door. shortest amiga game I ever had... But I guess it is not the case with csbwin?


The firestaff trigger at the dragon is probably a "dead end".
eventually you will run out of food and water as well..

The firestall trigger can be circumvented by throwing the firestaff out of the room.