Ok, so I leveled for a little while in the aforementioned spot. One time when I headed back to town to reset up, I decided to try to buy those spells again. I was level 19 at this point, and I was able to buy them. Sweet.
I headed back to the cavern and decided to try to clear it. I enjoy leveling, but the whole point of this is to plow through games, and leveling slows it down and sometimes burns me out.
Every time I stood in front of a treasure chest, I got attacked by a nasty Earth Elemental. I still think my guys are on the high side of the levels they need to be, so it wasn’t too bad.
By the way, have you ever been in a cave? I have. Several. And you know what? No treasure chests. Of course, I’ve never seen dogs walk around with piles of money, either.
Anyway, I made my way to the third level. At the center of it was an obviously weird-looking bat. Would you believe it was a vampire? Because it was.
The fight lasted one round. Like I said, my guys may be higher-level than they need to be. To Lestat’s1 credit, he did get one nice hit in, smacking the shit out of Yurto. Yurto barely survived (the things he’s seen, man), though, and Kai cast Diaga on Count Chocula, who promptly exploded.
Behind Vampy was a chest which held a Star Ruby. I SHALL PASS. Later.
Oh, and it was around here that I noticed something. You can save in dungeons. No, I don’t mean save points. I mean anywhere. This is almost blasphemous. There’s no way the original allowed this, right? Don’t get me wrong — it’s super-convenient. Still, it just doesn’t seem right.
A couple rooms further in I found a stone slab in the floor. The game informed me that an evil force emanated from within. I don’t know what that means, but I assume it means if I pressed my ear up to it I’d hear Monster Mash or Time Warp.
Now I’m going to make my way out2 and head back to Giant’s Cave.