Classic Games Revisited
Dark Sun: Shattered Lands Walkthrough
11. Dagolar
Once you are rested, hop over to 16 and walk towards the northern edge to go down into the Lower Tunnels. Four Dagolar Slimes are creeping around the hallways when you enter at 1. Eventually they’ll notice you and attack, so be proactive and take them out.
All skeletons marked S in blue on the map hold some random treasure. The drainage grate at 2 can be searched at least twice for some random treasure, and the hole at 3 can be searched multiple times. Spots marked X on the map have heavy bones, which can be used to solve a simple puzzle a little later, but we won’t be using them. We’ll find a more interesting way to solve the puzzle.
11.1. The Inner Sanctum
Open the door at 5 and the ‘Master of the Watergate’ (Mow) will insist on joining you to help you kill someone. You can ask him several questions, then decline or accept his offer. No matter how you respond he will follow you around to ‘help you’ anyway. Indeed, he will warn you of a few dangers that are about to come or atrocities of the past as you visit each new area. Note that if you hurt him even once (either intentionally or accidentally), he will disappear. This includes using Turn Undead with him in its area of effect. It is not critical that he stays, but you’ll get more dialogue if you keep him around.
The first thing Mow tells you is that you’ll need certain necklaces to safely gain entry into Dagolar’s sanctum via 8. The door at 8 will dish out chunks of damage if you try to open it without the necklaces. Use Turn Undead on the four zombies standing at 5 without getting too close so that actual combat doesn’t begin (if it does, the Cleric may not be the first to go), then proceed to 6, acknowledging all that Mow has to say and looting the skeletons along the way.
There are four Dagolar Guards in the room. They have been enthralled so they will not be able to respond to you. It doesn’t matter what you say, they will attack anyway. Along with some mundane gear, each guard will have a Hound Necklace, and everyone needs to equip one. You will find more of these necklaces in different parts of the map (including one more in this room) but the extras are all useless. There are two chests you can pick up in this room for more inventory space. One of the chests has mostly junk, the other is empty.
The grate at 7 may hold some treasure, depending on how many times you searched at 2 and 3. Backtrack to 8 and open the Door of Eyes after you have equipped the necklaces on everyone. Make sure that Mow is not too far away from you, but rush over to 9 to gain some distance from him. Keldar, a madman, will speak to you. No matter what your responses, he will summon three Dagolar Slimes, a few Zombies and a few Shadows, and teleport away.
Shadows are a new type of enemy—they require +1 weapons to damage them. Although I have a couple of +1 weapons equipped (plus the Staff of Parting if I wanted to use it), I will not waste my attacks on the undead. In anyone other than Bellatrix’s turn, I will attack the slimes. When it’s the Cleric’s chance to attack, she will Turn Undead. If you orchestrated this well, Mow won’t be anywhere near you (maybe even outside the room still, as was in my case). If he is in the room, be careful not to include him in the Turn Undead box if you want him to hang around for longer. Additionally, make sure that all the undead you are targeting are within the viewport, that you can see them on screen. Although the box may seem to encompass offscreen undead, chances are they won’t be affected. If the undead are too spread out for you to capture all of them in one shot, prioritize the Shadows over the Zombies.
If you really want to fight the Shadows in melee, you can equip the attacker with both +1 weapons, then transfer them to the next attacker, and so on to maximize your attacks and damage. If you don’t do this, someone wielding a +1 weapon with a mundane weapon (the axe being heavy) will be wasting half their attacks. That’s also why I’m not bothering with the 2-handed staff because that will bring down my APR.
Whenever Mow enters the room, the door at 8 will close behind him and he’ll gleefully inform you that you cannot leave until Dagolar is dealt with. You can (and should) drop all the necklaces you had equipped. There are some optional horrors to witness at 10 and 11, and if Mow is still alive he will tell you what they are. You can even speak to the fused victims of Dagolar at 10.
11.2. Clean-up and Loot
If you are not wearing the necklaces, you can also optionally speak to the prisoner at 13 after killing five enthralled Guards at 12. The other prisoners won’t want to speak to you. There is a hole in the prison that can be searched, but as before, if you’ve already searched through enough grates and holes then this probably won’t yield anything. There’s a chest at 14 and a couple of more chests at 15 with the same contents as the ones at 6. I’m going in this direction to clear out a large portion of the tunnels before chasing after Keldar.
Bellatrix can turn the pair of Shadows at 16 from outside the room. She will also turn the three Zombies at 17 from a safe distance. More interesting are the jars of slime lined up along the north wall of this room. Pick up a jar, place it within the circle (around where the map marker is), and then read the book on the pedestal. Ignore all warnings, and the tiny Tyrian Slime will be transformed into a Dagolar Slime. You can repeat this with the other three intact jars. The broken jar will not work. You also cannot do this with multiple jars at once.
Everything from 12 to 17 was optional, and we are going to one more optional area at 18, looting some skeletons on the way. Notice the cages in the room with the lone skeleton and a heavy bone—don’t get close to them or you will be bitten for some damage. There is yet another grate (near the three skeletons) and a hole (north of the heavy bone) along this route, but they are likely empty by now.
Once again turn the Zombies at 18 from a safe distance, loot the skeleton, then turn your attention to the northwest corner of the room. There are six vials of Dagolar Powder, which you can throw one by one in the vat in this room for some random outcomes. Everyone could take a huge amount of damage (in which case reload because there is no way to rest right now), it could spawn a solitary monster for you to fight, or it could summon a monster (Zombie or Slime) to be your ally. Mow will protest and warn, but we have been ignoring him so far anyway.
11.3. Keldar: Old Dog, Old Tricks
Finally, let’s make our way to Keldar at 19 (turn off animations to zoom across the map after you have passed the room with the cages, which will also leave Mow far behind so there is no danger of offending him). Once more, after some crazy talk, Keldar will teleport away, leaving a few slimes, zombies and shadows to fight. Use the same tactic as before. Let the Cleric handle the initial clean-up of as many undead as she can capture in one shot, prioritizing the shadows, and let the others take care of the slimes. Loot the nearby skeletons and we have cleared out most of this map.
11.4. The Big Reveal
Let’s go meet Dagolar’s brother, shall we? When you try to open the door at 20, Mow (if he’s still following you around) will vehemently protest. Apparently Goburnix, a terrible zombie, is in the room. As soon as you enter the room, the zombie will animate and the door will close behind you. You need to follow a specific dialogue path here. Choose the following responses:
Wait and see what happens.
Your name is Goburnix?
What are you doing here?
Who were you?
Do you understand this scroll?
Dagolar is your brother?
You’re losing your memory?
Help you? You want my help?
You want to go with me?
You want to go to Dagolar?
Okay, let’s go see Dagolar.
The party will get 1,000xp and Goburnix will open the door. He will now follow you everywhere. Mow, upon seeing Goburnix, will momentarily reveal himself as Dagolar, then teleport away. Goburnix will point you to the northwest. Head over to 21. Your path will be blocked by a flaming doorway. There’s a pressure plate on the other side. Without Goburnix, we would need to hurl all the heavy bones (marked X) strewn across the map on to the pressure plate. With Goburnix, simply examine the flames.
Goburnix will walk through the flames, step on the pressure plate and turn them off. How cool is that? There’s yet another chest at 22. I am now carrying 18 containers. I will collect six more so that the left column in everyone’s inventory will be filled with containers.
11.5. The Man, The Myth
Wait outside the door at 23 to make sure Goburnix is right at your heels. Open the door and inch your way forward to make sure Goburnix follows you before Dagolar initiates dialogue. Dagolar will question Goburnix’s loyalty, who in turn will go in to hug Dagolar, but in a fit of fear Dagolar will disintegrate Goburnix. Fear soon turns to rage, and he will annihilate Keldar.
Dagolar will spawn ten Dagolar Slimes. There are two ways to handle this combat (the third way would have been not having Goburnix with you and having to fight Keldar too—that can also trigger if Goburnix is out of Dagolar’s vision, which is why we inched our way into the room). You can, if you wish, attempt to fight every slime and Dagolar with spells and melee attacks. It will be a difficult fight, especially if a party member or two get held in the slime’s webs. Not to mention that Dagolar himself is a formidable opponent. If this is your chosen approach, buff up before opening the door at 23.
A much better way is to head over to 24 and play the organ once. If Dagolar whimpers, you are on the right track. If he doesn’t, you will take a little damage and will have to try again. There’s a 50% chance of either outcome. End your turn (Q) after Dagolar complains. If everything went right, the slimes will despawn, and Dagolar will be surrounded by a horde of shadows. You will once again be in combat mode, but do not attack anyone, not even Dagolar. Don’t even put anyone into Guard mode in case a shadow gets too close. After a short battle, the shadows will fuse him into one of the statues, the kind of which you may have seen at 10.
For all this, the party gets 12,000xp! Okay, we didn’t get the XP for the slimes or Keldar, but Goburnix himself was so much fun and we came out unscathed. You can even examine the fused statue to hear Dagolar screaming in agony—this permafreeze fate gives me additional satisfaction for the kind of pain he has inflicted on his victims, and I’m willing to leave behind a little XP for that.
Note that all three approaches are possible (in fact a lot of players get into regular combat and eventually win because they don’t know about the organ’s function), but obviously with no way to rest in these tunnels up to this point, taking on 10 slimes alongside Keldar or Dagolar might involve some Power Word Save and Power Word Load, more so if anyone gets webbed.
11.6. Rewards
Keldar’s body has some heavy armor. Whichever route you chose to take care of Dagolar, he will drop a wand that casts Control Body, yellow grapes, a lemon, a mundane quarterstaff, a Living Cloak that confers Inertial Barrier on the wearer, and the best prize of all, a +3 Dagolar’s Dagger. Although just a dagger, this can hurt every enemy in the game. It also increases the wielder’s Charisma by 1.
But wait, there’s more. A chest at 25 contains a Wand of Missiles, a scroll of Mirror Image (level 2 spell), another lemon, and a bracelet that can be used to learn or upgrade Project Force. This is a kinetic psionic that does just 1 to 6 damage, so I am not a big fan at the level I currently am. I will probably sell the bracelet for 9,000cp and buy Ego Whip in exchange.
If Dagolar left you to fight Keldar and the slimes at 24, he will have teleported here (25), awaiting his ultimate demise.
Rest up at the campfire and return all the way to 1 to exit Dagolar’s Tunnels.