So I finally worked out which place to visit… with the help of a friend who’d never played the game, whom I just confronted with the choice ‘Mausoleum or Mansion?’
He picked ‘Mansion’, so here we are, at the Palace of the Immortals. Or the Palace of the Immortal. Once again, we have an area named different things on the map and on its description.
![[Palace of the Immortals] Loading Screen Hmm. This looks familiar...](http://lioleus.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/screen0032.gif?w=497&h=393)
Hmm. This looks familiar...
![[Old Palace] Oh, yeah... Oh, yeah... this place. Well, there aren't any harpies, but it looks similar.](http://lioleus.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/screen0341.gif?w=150&h=118)
Oh, yeah... this place. Well, there aren't any harpies, but it looks similar.
I’m not quite sure what most of the classes are, here. From the dress, the woman in the centre should be a Priestess, but she looks more like a Sorceress with long hair and a staff, or maybe a Priest gone crossdressing. The woman in the back looks like a Priestess, though. There’s the male Thief at the front, the only one I can definitely identify, and then a female Warrior or Hunter to the right.
And harpies. Lots of harpies. The loading screen got that right.
So, the Palace of the Immortals. I always thought it was more of a mansion than a palace or castle, name aside, but now that I look at it again, it does seem to be laid out like a medieval castle; lots of guest bedrooms, a very sizeable kitchen area, large dining hall for the peons… but whatever it is, it would happily fit into almost any horror-themed adventure game from the 90s. I swear every single one of them involved a mansion at some point; House of the Dead, Alone in the Dark, Resident Evil…
I’m halfway certain this is a parody, with the amount of fetching quest items you need to do to get through this area. I must remember to screenshot the quest item screen at the end of the area, just to show off how many items you end up with. Well, first I must remember where on earth I’m supposed to start; I remember the rough chain, but I can’t remember the beginning of it.
So much for this place being quicker. Well, it is… if you know where to go, and I know where to go, except for the first item. It’s been slightly under a decade here, so it’s not surprising I’ve forgotten bits and pieces of it.
![[Palace of the Immortals] Fresh Water Well, I know I need a flask here to collect water...](http://lioleus.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/screen0011.gif?w=150&h=118)
Well, I know I need a flask here to collect water...
I’ve never been able to remember the start of the sequence, though. I need a flask for water here, to put out a fire in one of the fireplaces in a dining hall, to collect… a key? An emblem?
Then there’s a book that I need to slot into a bookcase in the library, to open a nearby door or passage with another item at the end. And there are the rooms that need keys, and the thing that combines two different gems into a purple gem.
But I always end up wandering around randomly, having forgotten the place where the first item can be found.
![[Palace of the Immortal] Fountain Would any sane person drink out of a fountain decorated with a skull? No.](http://lioleus.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/screen0051.gif?w=300&h=237)
Would any sane person drink out of a fountain decorated with a skull? No.
So, how about I go on about the general area instead, whilst I search? The Palace of the Immortal is, as mentioned earlier, a mansion; convoluted nonsense puzzles aside, it’s probably the most sensible area in the game. It’s instantly recogniseable as a house, albeit very large and with far too many bedrooms.
Like the mines, this place has a lot of dead ends and mostly-pointless areas where the only thing you’ll find is monsters, in the form of a lot of the rooms you end up searching.
![[Palace of the Immortal] Useless Area Like this room, here; you'd think there has to be something important, and yet... it's totally irrelevant.](http://lioleus.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/screen0061.gif?w=150&h=118)
Like this room, here; you'd think there has to be something important, and yet... it's totally irrelevant.
Unlike the Mines, dead end rooms in the Palace of the Immortal tend to just have monsters there as soon as you enter. It’s a good place for levelling or grinding for loot, as if they’re close to the entrance of a room, you don’t have to spend much time between encounters, but otherwise they’re a timesink. Some of the spawns even change depending on whether you’ve been in the room previously; at least two of the rooms full of red warrior-type evil-element enemies change into rooms full of plain zombies when you return. At least, if you ignore the warriors and just go straight through. Maybe you can get something good from the warriors and the game doesn’t want to let you farm them? Who knows.
A further room doesn’t do that… but if you kill the red warrior-types, you always seem to get to fight a few extra zombies in the next room. Kind of minor interesting, but interesting nethertheless.
I think every single room being a part of the puzzle would be worse; as contrived as the puzzles are, it’d be moreso if every single room were ’significant’ in some way. The Palace of the Immortal makes some sense as a house, and every room looks like it should be part of a house. That’s enough.
![[Palace of the Immortal] Booooook... Booooook...](http://lioleus.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/screen0082.gif?w=497&h=393)
Booooook...
![[Palace of the Immortals] I should probably have searched this one first as it's closest, but... eh. I keep thinking they're both locked.](http://lioleus.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/screen0091.gif?w=150&h=118)
I should probably have searched this one first as it's closest, but... eh. I keep thinking they're both locked.
Yay, finally. Okay. Basically, all you need to do in the first floor of the Palace of the Immortal is look everywhere and watch out for a glint like this. However, the interval between glints is pretty long, and it’s entirely possible to enter a room, take a cursory look, and leave thinking there’s nothing there. The Palace of the Immortal is one of the only areas in the game to rely on visual clues and items; not everything you need to do is highlighted by a glint. For example, this book; you know I’m going to take it to the library, as I mentioned that earlier, but…
![[Palace of the Immortal] Bookshelf If you look carefully, you'll notice the gap. And the colour.](http://lioleus.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/screen0101.gif?w=300&h=237)
If you look carefully, you'll notice the gap. And the colour.
There’s no glint where you’re supposed to take it. The Palace of the Immortal is one of the few areas you’ll see a glint being used to highlight an event object, as in most other areas they’re being kept in chests or bags, or are large environmental things like the river or the cave of glowmoss in the Mines. I’m not really sure why they’re used here, either; the Gate Crystals in the Old Palace/Ancient Tower weren’t glinting, and some the objects here that aren’t keys ARE visible.
So I like the Palace of the Immortal for not simply handing us everything and solving its own puzzles, but sometimes it just treats the player as an idiot and assumes it needs to highlight a book.
![[Palace of the Immortal] Shortcut Aren't portals normally red?](http://lioleus.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/screen0174.gif?w=300&h=237)
Aren't portals normally red?
This is the shortcut you can take to and from the end of the first half of the level. You know, like the lift you can take back to the first underlevel of the Mines after beating the Baby Dragon, or the portal initially blocked by the stone totem head in the Wood of Ruins. Nothing comes to mind for the Old Palace except going through that horrible, horrible level for the portal back up, or just climbing down normally, though.
In some cases it’d be handy to be able to access these when you’re capable of taking on the second half of each area, but they’re all unavailable unless you’ve reached that far, and reset if you leave the level. They’re rather pointless for me now that I have Teleport, but for any other class, or if you forget to bring a Rope of Return, these… save you the humiliation of being killed by a bee on the way back, or something.
![[Palace of the Immortal] More Skulls More skull-themed decorations. They're probably Ogre skulls from the size, but they're still creepy. Also pictured: zombies. I'm not kidding about the RE-ness.](http://lioleus.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/screen0181.gif?w=497&h=393)
More skull-themed decorations. They're probably Ogre skulls from the size, but they're still creepy. Also pictured: zombies. I'm not kidding about the RE-ness.
Moving swiftly on, the second floor is really more along the lines of the first; quest-item collection to open up further areas. Boring. How about another tangent? Skip down to the next picture if you don’t want to read it.
According to GameFAQs, Resident Evil predated Blaze & Blade by approximately half a year, but Resident Evil wasn’t the first game I encountered that had you wandering aimlessly around a mansion. Alone in the Dark came first, via a demo CD on a computer magazine at some point.
Resident Evil was just the one that made no sense to me. Alone in the Dark – the original one, from 1992, not the new one that dropped the numbers since the makers decided no one would have played the original trilogy any more – was a vaguely- to moderately-Lovecraftian horror adventure with horrible controls and a penchant for killing players less than a minute after starting, if you don’t know how to push stuff. It being Lovecraftian, and dependent on a ‘humans are insignificant and will be driven insane by the true nature of things’ atmosphere, contrived puzzles such as firing an arrow at a painting on the wall to ‘kill’ it before it kills you sort-of made sense, as ‘magic’ exists in such a setting and strange things like that may work. Taking the direct approach to killing stuff usually just got you killed.
Resident Evil, however, is a setting based in science; a virus, rather than magic, creates most if not all the enemies you end up fighting in the course of any but the most recent games, which took the phrase ‘virus creates zombies’ and replaced ‘virus’ with ‘parasite’ since everything science!zombie-related started copying them after they got successful.
So if it’s based in science and rational thought, why does a sentence like ‘use this jewel on the tiger statue in the white hall, and it will move around to the side revealing the wind crest’ need to appear in a walkthrough of the game? Rational people don’t build mansions like that. (Most) rational people don’t want to have to solve three puzzles before they get to eat breakfast. At least in something based on Lovecraft’s works, you can rationalise that the architect was driven insane thanks to the influence of very inhuman creatures. Or, in the case of the standard Haunted Mansion area in Shining the Holy Ark, the owner and possible architect IS an inhuman creature. It’s much easier to forgive strange architecture and puzzle where magic of some kind may be involved, I guess.
Additionally, to my eyes, very few of the human enemies in Resident Evil had good motivation for what they did. ‘They’re insane’ isn’t great by itself; it doesn’t tell us why they’re insane, or why they think releasing a potent virus into the city’s water supply (or something; it’s all as forgettable as a Metal Gear Solid plot to me) is a great idea, or even how they’re insane beyond the plan that will kill us all, doom all life on Earth, et cetera…
Thankfully, storywriters since seem to have realised the error of writing antagonists like this, and tend to give them motivation and ‘reason’ to do what they do and oppose the main characters, but I still never got why Resident Evil was so popular.
Anyway, back to the game.
![[Palace of the Immortal] Not-so-hidden Place Here's a not-so-secret entrance to a not-so-deadly area.](http://lioleus.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/screen020.gif?w=497&h=393)
Here's a not-so-secret entrance to a not-so-deadly area.
This place? It’s not really hidden because it hides a key that’s necessary to continue. However, it doesn’t appear on the map at all, just like those rooms in the Ancient Ruins, and possibly the hidden area in Amongst the Summoned… though I never checked the map there, as I just teleport out after reaching that point.
Still, there aren’t many true secrets in the game; probably only the Old Palace area with the spell applies. Oh, and that Wood of Ruins (2) area where the Fairies learn their Forbidden Spells. The rest are either very obvious, as here, or hinted at by text in the area, like the rooms in the Ancient Ruin.
The second floor has some stupid traps that must have been designed by the architect who built the Old Palace, but for the most part it still looks like a mansion or castle; more like a castle, as this point, as it has at least two courtyards, one with a built-in waterfall. For some reason the pool in that area is bottomless, but otherwise it sort of makes sense.
![[Palace of the Immortal] Fountains! Unlike the fountains on the lowest floor, these are usable. One or both are poisonous, naturally, but what did you expect? Also pictured: I'm about to be draaaained again.](http://lioleus.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/screen0262.gif?w=300&h=237)
Unlike the fountains on the lowest floor, these are usable. One or both are poisonous, naturally, but what did you expect? Also pictured: I'm about to be draaaained again.
Something else odd about this area; the Ghosts can reliably hit a level 184 Sorceress with Drain status. This doesn’t really impair my ability to tear things to pieces here, but it’s odd when every single other spell tends to get resisted. You can ‘outrun’ the drain spell if you keep moving away from the projectiles; they only move at approximately the same speed as any character save a Rogue, and if you reach a door before you get hit with Drain status, the red sparkles just whirl upwards angrily whilst you go to another location. The sparkles fade to invisibility as they chase you, but that’s really just to get you to drop your guard; I’ve never managed to run around long enough that they time out and disappear properly. That said, running long enough seems to lower and/or negate the chance that you’ll get hit with Drain status. Maybe it relates to the distance from the Ghosts?
![[Palace of the Immortal] I'm rich, I'm fabulously wealthy, I'm... I'm rich, I'm fabulously wealthy, I'm comfortably well off! ...hey, wait a moment, no one takes GOLD as payment in this game. Hmph.](http://lioleus.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/screen021.gif?w=497&h=393)
I'm rich, I'm fabulously wealthy, I'm comfortably well off! ...hey, wait a moment, no one takes GOLD as payment in this game. Hmph.
I always used to think this was a room of straw or hay, honestly. Maybe the old TV screen couldn’t handle the small sparkles? Maybe I just didn’t notice?
Either way, we have a roomful of gold and it’s not actually VALUABLE in this setting. Everyone uses Gels for currency, which are something like disks of demon bone or crystals or glass or SOMETHING that isn’t gold. Maybe the Sagestones could mass-produce the stuff, and therefore devalued the element?
Not pictured: stupid tiny jumping section with collapsing platforms or the door that locks behind you in the previous room, making you go back through the waterfall courtyard again. I swear, most of the place makes sense as a mansion rather than an adventure location.
![[Palace of the Immortals] Rogue Area That entrance I'm pointing at? Needs a Rogue. This is probably the largest 'locked' room in the game.](http://lioleus.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/screen023.gif?w=300&h=237)
That entrance I'm pointing at? Needs a Rogue. This is probably the largest 'locked' room in the game.
Whilst most areas have some use for either the Rogue or Elf, this place is skewed heavily towards the Rogue for unlocking doors; conversely, an Elf is more useful than a Rogue at the Old Palace. Just so you know.
Of course, I’m neither, which is a bit annoying.
![[Palace of the Immortal] Multiplayer Puzzle Looks rather empty...](http://lioleus.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/screen0241.gif?w=150&h=118)
Looks rather empty...
Here’s the multiplayer bonus puzzle for this area. It’s similar to the Abandoned Mines puzzle in that both players need to be reasonably skilled, or at least work well together; the pressure plates on the right cause floating platforms to appear, and if you’ve only got two players, that means one player needs to jump just slightly behind the other. Naturally, this one’s much easier if you have the full four players in-game, but it’s still doable with just the two.
Strangely, you don’t get treasure for completing it; you just get a shortcut through the rest of the area, though by this point you nearly have all the items to get through, anyway. It just saves you from needing to backtrack all the way around again. It’s perfectly usable from the other side, too, as there’s a plate that makes all the platforms permanently appear, to let the other person or people across.
![[Palace of the Immortal] A Cinema?! I kinda want to own this place now. It has its own cinema. Well, technically a theatre, but it looks more like a cinema than a stage...](http://lioleus.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/screen0282.gif?w=497&h=393)
I kinda want to own this place now. It has its own cinema. Well, technically a theatre, but it looks more like a cinema than a stage...
![[Palace of the Immortal] Sanity! It's a pity I can't remember what speech option I picked. This makes more sense than any of the others I've read.](http://lioleus.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/screen0312.gif?w=300&h=237)
It's a pity I can't remember what speech option I picked. This makes more sense than any of the others I've read.
Well, I’ve already typed more than enough for today, so I’ll just skip through the rest. The third floor, like the first two floors, is another series of puzzles to progress, this time involving summoning unholy forces through four ready-made magical circles and a ready-brewed ‘elexier’ to animate… gargoyles standing in front of doors, so you can transform them into itty-bitty stone fragments and proceed to the upper portion of the floor. The fountains are once more not-drinkable, and on the upper section you can unlock several rooms on the lower section, one or two of which may be useful, depending on your class.
![[Palace of the Immortal] Mid-point Shortcut Happily, there's a shortcut.](http://lioleus.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/screen0322.gif?w=150&h=118)
Happily, there's a shortcut.
Unfortunately, to get the Elexier, you need to go back down to the first floor and use a few keys you’ve picked up. The Palace of the Immortal is one of the few areas I’ve seen that has a first-part mid-point shortcut, in addition to a shortcut at the end of the whole first section. This one takes you to one of the rooms you’re liable to think is ‘useless’ up until you know this is here, and then you’ll bless its existence, as it shows the designers do care after all. Then later you’ll curse them again for putting in a mid-mid-boss to waste the time you saved using the mid-mid-point.
I suppose it makes up for them giving up on putting items outside chests and signifying them with glints sometime part way through the second floor, hm?
Anyway, this is the bit – aside from the whole ‘mansion with zombies’ thing – that makes me almost certain the whole area is a parody of Resident Evil and other ‘you’re stuck in a haunted (?) mansion’ games, involving combining a red and blue gem to make a purple gem to break the seal on a door. Or did the designers slowly run out of colours for the keys?
Anyway, third floor over, you hit the Clocktower. There’s really very little to say about this area; you climb upwards, you throw a lever, and you climb further, the lever having… lowered a section of platform, or something.
Oh, and don’t forget the blasted oil. Mmph. The lever you need it for is an infinite source of the red warrior-types, by the by, if you need to train or something. They dropped a creepy/nice looking sword whilst I was there, must remember to keep that for IDing.
Soon afterwards, the name of the area changes to ‘The Fantastic Palace’.
Why can’t you be consistent with area names, Blaze & Blade? I started out uncertain whether to call the place ‘Palace of the Immortals’ or ‘Palace of the Immortal’, and now you’re calling it ‘The Fantastic Palace’?
I also swear I remember the gears moved after you turned the lever, or something. Maybe I’m getting it mixed up with Mario 64, or something. Or maybe the version Europe got was better.
Oh, and don’t trust the fountain.
![[Palace of the Immortal] Screw Me? The area had one last 'screw you' for me, though...](http://lioleus.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/screen0451.gif?w=497&h=393)
The area had one last 'screw you' for me, though...
I’m just not sure how to get through here. I can’t remember how. Maybe it’s part of the short way back from the second portion of the whole area? I don’t know. I’ve forgotten far too much about this area, though memory says the second part is less of a slog through one giant puzzle and more just somewhere to get terribly lost.
The way onwards is actually through the library, so I’ll need to remember where the Iron Book is for once, anyway. Though it seems that I NEED the Jewel from the Labyrinth of the Dead to go onwards, since it’s not opening right now.
Maybe that is also the way onwards after the boss? I’ll check when I return, whenever that will be. I think I’ll try taking on the Fire Dragon again for a break from horribly-long areas, before going to the Labyrinth of the Dead. I need a break from listening to the same piece of not-that-likeable music for five hours straight.
Loot
![[Weapon] Blood Dagger [Weapon] Blood Dagger](http://lioleus.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/blood-dagger.png?w=51&h=43)
Blood Dagger
[At.42, Evil.10]
[Rog]
A dagger stained red by the blood of its victims.
![[Accessory] Feather Gloves [Accessory] Feather Gloves](http://lioleus.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/feather-gloves.png?w=68&h=50)
Feather Gloves
[Df.4]
[All]
Gloves made from feathers.
![[Weapon] Bloodsword [Weapon] Bloodsword](http://lioleus.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/bloodsword.png?w=66&h=57)
Bloodsword
[At.20]
[War]
Red from the blood of those it has killed.
![[Accessory] Silver Anklet [Accessory] Silver Anklet](http://lioleus.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/silver-anklet.png?w=31&h=31)
Silver Anklet
[Df.4, MDf.4, Int.8, Wil.8]
[All]
A beautifully decorated silver anklet.
Blood Dagger drops off the Weretiger, and if memory serves is a nice weapon for a Rogue, as it has a life-stealing effect. Has pretty good attack if the Bloodsword is anything to go by, too. Any item that can keep your health up without taking up a slot normally used for loot is great, if you don’t have a Priest around to let you completely dispense with the things in favour of anything better. Not that it’s easy to find anything better than equipment that heals you.
Bloodsword is the nice/creepy weapon the red warrior-type evil-element enemy dropped near the lever. I just like the look of the thing. Apparently it also drops from Durahan/Dullahan, and drains life like the above dagger, if you couldn’t guess from the name.
Using either is a bad idea against the undead, though.
The Feather Gloves apparently do nothing but those four points of defence, and are rather pointless as a result. The Silver Anklet boosts your normal and magic defence by four points, and on top of that adds eight Willpower and Intelligence, making it a better pick both in general and for a mage.
Item(s) of the Day
![[Object] Gray Ash [Object] Gray Ash](http://lioleus.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/gray-ash.png?w=63&h=46)
[Red/Gray] Ash
[All]
Supposedly from a Saint’s hand.
(Increase[s STR/AGL])
Ah, stat-raising items. Ashes are a lot less common than Fate Coins and Blood Extracts, but they work on your base stats rather than something derived, and as a result they can raise more than one thing, indirectly. They also don’t have the chance of lowering the relevant stat, as Fate Coins can. I’m not sure why the description leaves off the ’s’ for Gray Ash, though; lack of proof-reading? In this case, I picked up the Strength and Agility Ashes. Handy for anyone who needs to melee… less handy for someone who can fry stuff on command.
The Palace of the Immortals is probably the best place for stat-raising items; wolves, as always, drop Blood Extracts, but Zombies will happily drop at least one or two types of ash. I’m not sure whether one was dropped by the red warrior-types, though. I didn’t pay attention to what I was killing.
Is there an item for raising MP? I’ve never seen it.