We were still on level 3. After the three challenges were the 4 elemental rooms. Unlike the three challenges before, all 4 elemental rooms must be completed to move to the next stage.
The thing about the elemental rooms is that once you complete all 4, the party will immediately be teleported to another puzzle in the form of a chessboard. At that point, some players report that if they head back to the surface, out of Durlag's basement, they can never return. I'm not sure if that's true, but why risk it? So once we clear three elemental rooms, we'll take a break to empty some inventory space with the shop outside, rest to regain spells, and then only trigger the final stages of Durlag's Basement. The fourth elemental room is like a 'soft' point of no return in that sense.
Therefore, seeing as how we were going to not have a good place to rest once we've committed to the 'soft' point of no return, I would prefer to leave the easiest elemental room for last. Easiest in this case meaning using less spells/resources to solve.
From top to bottom, er, north to southernmost elemental rooms, the themes were ice, earth, air and fire.
-Ice had 4 winter-wolves and one uber polar bear with frost breath.
-Earth had the Fission Slime, which as suggested by the funny masks will replicate itself if killed with blows or spells, and can only be finished with fire.
-Air had a 3 Invisible Stalkers (meh) and one uber wyvern. Yes, again.
-Fire had two Phoenix Guards, a mage and a warrior which explode into fireballs upon death.
I considered what I knew after scouting each room to remind myself of the mechanics.
Fire would require my front liners use Resist spells to resist the explosion at the end, so the fire room does NOT go last.
Air would use at least one Detect Invisibility spell. Poison immunity is probably a good idea but that would come from a scroll, not a spell.
I suppose I could kill the Fission Slime with Fireballs and Firebombs.
I had easy access to Ice immunity thanks to Gorion's Belt of Antipode belt. Maybe the ice elemental room goes last?
So I went with Fire, Air, Earth, then take a break before doing Ice.
---
Both Phoenix Guards have a habit of self-resurrecting themselves after death with 8 hit points. The Phoenix guard warrior had 48 hit points, AC2, Thac0 6, 3 attacks. The Phoenix Guard archer had only 8 hp and got chunked in a single backstab. Immune to fire thanks to Jaheira's Spells and some potion usage, they didn't really pose a threat to us. QED.
The uber wyvern, or Air Aspect, had 90 hit points, AC-4, Magic Resistance 20. Thac0 5, Strength 21, 3 attacks per round, great saves. Basically it was a less ridiculous version of the uber Greater Wyverns from before, but this time we had no helpers to summon from statues. Guzzling a Potion of Agility, Protection from Evil (wyverns are evil) and Girdle of Piercing was enough to ward of hits from it long enough for the team to take it out before it could poison Khalid with that poisoned tail. Bless and Chant helped us hit it, Dispel Magic removed its Haste.
Funnily enough, the Invisible Stalkers were so deep in the cavern that they didn't even notice our battle.
The Fission Slime has 65 HP and a host of various resistances and immunities, but not to fire. It died to two Fireballs, a charge from a Fire Wand, and an oil of Fiery Burning. …thinking about it, I probably should have used my Potions of Fire Breath and Wand of the Heavens since it was a single target. Eh, whatever.
That left only the ice elemental room.
From there we took a pause in our expedition to go up for some shopping with Erdane outside and rest as planned. But even after so much selling, there's too much loot in our inventory! A trip to town in order to store and identify items was in order. Back to Beregost, some identification, then back to Durlag's to face the ice elemental room.
---
The last room was an immediate fight with Kaldran the bear and four winter wolves.
Winter wolves were level 6 monsters with 45hp, AC5, Thac0 13, one cold attack per round.
Kaldran the Bear had 106 hit points, AC2, Thac0 5, 3 attacks (crushing) per round. It had an ice-breath which did both cold damage and froze opponents solid. Kaldran's savings throws were too good to bother with debuffs that allowed one.
Both were immune to cold, of course. Strangely, Kaldran is also immune to electricity.
The thing is, winter wolves only do cold damage. Jaheira wore Gorion's belt of the Antipode and Khalid wore the Boots of the North and drank a Potion of Cold resistance rendered the two tanks immune to winterwolves' damage. Khalid also wore the Belt of Crushing to help him tank Khaldran better. In retrospect, I should have asked him to drink a Potion of Absorption since both benefits of the potion would come into play soon.
With the tanks being immune to winterwolf damage, the whole party focused on Khaldran to burn him down as soon as possible before he got in too many hits on Khalid.
Meanwhile, I sneaked around to get a hit in on Khaldran the uber bear. As soon as I got there however, I realised I had a quandary. How does one backstab a bear? The head of the bear is on the front, with only the butt facing me.
… would that really work? Eh, worth a try.
Khaldran's suddenly froze, a whimper released from it's mouth. It fell over sideways, twitching in pain.
"...what did you do to it exactly?" Neera asked as she saw me positioned behind it.
"Something I already regret," I said, tugging at my precious Quarterstaff +3. "I pushed it a bit too far in. Must have rearranged the bear's organs on the way in."
"...and I already regret asking," Neera muttered, face-palming even while Khalid and Jaheira cut down the winter-wolves with looks of despair and disgust on their faces.
Thankfully I had guzzled down a Potion of Hill Giant's strength, so I got my Quarterstaff +3 back no worse for wear. Stinky, but no worse for wear.
Before we could say much else, the whole party was whisked away to another location by magic.
---
We were whisked away to a chessboard. Each of us was standing on one side of the chessboard, on a different square each.
Before we could move, a voice announced, "Welcome to the game of chess. You have just defeated the last of the four elemental guardians and so this is your next stop. I hope your stay within my tower has been pleasant, but if you have been bored, I have included this game to spice things up somewhat. There are some rules that must be adhered to while playing the game."
The rules were as follows:
- Party member 1 cannot move at all.
- Party member 2 can move to any square.
- Party members 3 and 4 can only move to squares the same color as they started on.
- Party members 5 and 6 can move to any square, but have a 25% chance of being struck by lightning, regardless of where they move.
- Failing to adhere to the rules above results in getting struck by a bolt of lightning.
- Enemy pawns which reaches our side of the board is promoted to a queen.
- The game ends once the enemy king is down.
We weren't going to bother obeying these rules though. While in stealth, I moved to the enemies on the other side, and ran behind them. Bolt after bolt of lightning shot out at me, filling the whole giant chessboard with a huge torrent of electricity. With so much carnage across the board, the golems of the chess pieces were fried in short order, first the pawns, then the knights, queens and bishops, and I finished off the King with one tap to the back of the head.
The fourth level priest spell, Protection from Lightning, granted 100% lightning immunity. Potions of Insulation and Protection from Lightning scrolls did the rest.
Loot:
Two-handed sword +3, Arrow +2 (x40), Dart of Stunning (×10)
2 Medium shield +1, 10 plate mails which we had to leave behind,
Mage scrolls of Emotion: Hopelessness, Remove Curse,
Priest scrolls of Protection From Evil, 10' Radius, Champion's Strength
Potion of Frost Giant Strength