Missed Classic: Dungeon - Gold Carded (Request for Assistance)

Written by Joe Pranevich

Pushing against the wall. Literally.

Welcome back! Last week, I became a “Winner!” in Dungeon, at least according to the score, but am not quite at the end yet. I have played for more than 24 hours and suspect that I could give it a fair rating, but a victory seems hollow while there are still puzzles to solve and a mysterious “endgame” to find. I’m pumped! Unfortunately, I’m also pretty stuck. This post will bring you up to speed on the final puzzle that I managed to solve, where I am with several puzzles that I have not, and request your assistance for how I move forward. I hope I need only a nudge or two to drive this first game in my marathon to its conclusion.

As soon as I got my “winning” score last week, I searched all of the map again to see if any new areas had opened up. I vaguely remember that something did when I beat Zork I two decades ago, but I do not recall where and I have no idea if Dungeon bases that off the score or the number of treasures in the case. In the end, I gave up and looked at the various puzzles that I had left. I suspected that there was treasure in the dead-end pit room after the Thief’s den, if only because he told us that there was none. Last time, I became trapped and had to restore, but this time I thought of something new: pushing the wall. It gave way and opened up a brand new area!

Map of the sliding puzzle maze.

With the wall pushed out of the way, I find myself in a strange little area. The “maze”, if we can call it that, consists of sandstone and marble walls arranged in a grid. We can push the sandstone ones, as long as there is nothing behind them, but the marble ones are fixed in place. It doesn’t take long to realize that I am in an oversized sliding tile puzzle. I map out the entire thing onto graph paper, carefully noting the original positions of every block that I move. It takes a couple of reloads to complete since we cannot “pull” any of the blocks back into place if we push them against a wall. Fortunately, all the rooms turn out to be square so this approach works well.

I discover a few things:

• Our starting location is the only area to have a hole in the ceiling. 
• Two of the sandstone walls have ladders on one face, one west and the other east. Since neither of them are under holes, we cannot climb up, but it implies a potential objective. 
• Under one of the sandstone blocks (the one I labeled “S4”), I find a “gold card”, a pass to the Royal Zork Puzzle Museum. I do not know if this is where I am now or somewhere that I will need to find later. I push every block at least once to check for other things under them but to no avail. 
• In the south of the maze, I find a security door with a card slot. I can use the gold card to open the door, but the card is sucked inside in the process. Poking my head outside, I realize that it is the steel door near the thief’s room. 

Even though I found the exit, I did not find the treasure that the thief had hinted at. The obvious solution was that I needed to use the ladders, but there were no holes other than the one that I came in through. Is the gold card the treasure? At first, I did not think there was any way to maneuver the ladders into a position where I could climb out of the original hole, but after sitting down with pen and paper and working it out like a logic puzzle, I found a solution! It takes twenty moves, but I am able to get the west-facing ladder in a spot where I can climb back out of the hole. I wish I had the talent and time to make a nice animated GIF, but at least you can see the end state:

Is there a simpler solution?

With that, I escape with the gold card and place it in the case. My new total is 501 points! I worry that I missed something with the east-facing ladder, but I can’t move it anywhere useful.

What I Have Left

Although I am stoked I made it as far as I did, with help from my twenty-year old memories of Zork, I admit defeat. This is my formal “Request for Assistance”. I hope that you will be gentle with me and leave your hints in rot13 with escalating levels of obviousness; I’d still like to figure out as much of the rest as I can but I need a little push.

The entire dungeon, so far. Orange denotes an unsolved puzzle.

I have been working on:

• Glacier Room - I am unable to pass the wall of ice. It seems to melt easily but always with my death. I have not found a way to melt it from another room yet and gigging didn’t work either. 
• Volcano - I can enter the volcano and view it from a ledge, but I can find no way either down or across to a ledge on the other side. Can I build a bridge or to jump the distance? Or is there another way to the other ledge? 
• Explosives - I have explosives with a fuse but nothing to blow up. There’s a wall with a crack that I initially thought might be bombable, but this is not The Legend of Zelda. 
• Implementer Crypt - I can find no way to interact with either the heads or the crypt itself. The room breaks the fourth-wall and I fear there is some “creative” solution that I’m simply not thinking far enough outside the box to find. What about the Coke bottles and line-printer output? 
• Poisoned Flask and Magic Cakes - I still have the flask and some cake left from Wonderland. The cakes don’t seem to work outside that area but a poison must be useful for something. 
• Suicide Knife and Other Items - What good is a knife that kills you when you use it? I also haven’t found a use for guano, the burned-out lantern, or a few other items. The chalice, grail, and coffin are containers but never used as such. Do I need one of them to solve a puzzle? 
• “Granite” Wall - There are a couple of walls labeled or called “granite” in an obvious way. Is there something to it? 

I appreciate any advice that you can provide! If it turns out to be something silly, I will be disappointed but sometimes you miss the obvious when you stare at the same thing for so long.

Treasures Found: 23* (Painting, Portrait, Pearl Necklace, Coins, Platinum Bar, Grail, Sapphire Bracelet, Jade Figurine, Crystal Trident, Ivory Torch, Stack of Zorkmids, Emerald, Diamond, Statue, Gold Coffin, Chalice, Fancy Violin, Crystal Sphere, Tin of Spices, Clockwork Canary, Glass Bauble, Pot of Gold, Gold Card)

(* Last week, I neglected to remove the gold egg after it was replaced by the clockwork canary.)

Time played: 2 hr 30 min
Total time: 27 hr 00 min