Lands of Lore Part 34: The Second Floor

I step through the door our Mystic Key opened and move into the main part of Floor 2. We approach two more doors, both of which have buttons we can press to open them. The first door is a dead end, while the second door leads to a room filled with pressure plates. This room is actually quite dangerous, as the plates can trigger Fireball traps. Nevertheless, we’ve got to go in to retrieve a particular Mystic Key, so I head in and the party takes its lumps from the fire blasts. Luckily, nothing happens while we’re standing still, so we can rest to get our health back as needed. We make it through and find two niches, one of which has a Fireball scroll-we got that spell long ago, so I just drop it-and a second one with our key. From there, I backtrack and explore the second floor landing to get it on the minimap, then resume exploring the second floor proper. At this point we have our first encounter with a Stark, the main enemy type on Floor 2. It looks like a bald chicken with an eyestalk, but despite its appearance its actually quite dangerous from range-it can shoot Fireballs, and they do serious damage when they hit. Luckily, they’re not too tough in melee, so we quickly dispatch this one.
With the Stark defeated, I resume exploring, and find a door we unlock with the Mystic Key we just retrieved from the Fireball room. That leads to a staircase taking us to the third floor, which we definitely don’t want to visit yet. I ignore the staircase and keep exploring the second floor, finding four more doors. Two of them can be opened with buttons, but there’s nothing inside. Another one can likewise be opened with a button and leads to what looks like an empty room, but we can solve a puzzle to get a Mystic Key here. A sign says “dark room”; this is a hint that we have to close the door behind us and then press a switch on the wall. I demonstrate that pressing the switch with the door open doesn’t do anything, but if we close the door first it opens a niche with our Mystic Key. I put the key in our inventory and then go to the fourth and final door, which has a standard keyhole that can be picked. Michael picks the lock to open the door, and when we go inside we’re confronted with a large room that has nothing but pits in the floor. As we enter, the door automatically closes behind us, trapping us inside!
Strictly speaking, we’re not trapped. If we fall through any of the pits, we’ll find ourselves behind some of the Floor One doors we couldn’t open earlier. Those doors are openable from the other side, so we’d be able to come out and then come back up to the second floor to try again. But I don’t want to fall through any of the pits, and getting through this area requires knowing a specific piece of information: some of the pits are actually illusions and can be walked over. I already know exactly which pits are safe, so I manage to traverse the pit room, where we find another Mystic Key lying on the ground. I make sure to pick it up, then press a switch in the wall. Pressing that switch causes one particular pit near the door to disappear, which sets the stage for solving the puzzle. From there I backtrack to the front of the room and place our new Mystic Key in a keyhole, causing the door to open. We can leave now if we wish, but I don’t want to yet. I step over the now-solid floor where the pit disappeared and turn to face the wall. There’s what looks like another pit blocking the way, but it’s a fake. I move over it and press a switch on this wall, causing a pit in the rear row to disappear. This particular pit was next to what the map reveals is a secret passage, and making our way over there allows us to go through the wall into a new area.
From here, we have a large mazelike corridor to explore. I pick up a Rapier Talon near the start and open a door leading to the maze. There are a lot of Starks throughout this area, but fortunately we’re able to defeat them with little trouble. Eventually we reach a dead-end at the eastern “wing” of the maze, where we find the Helm Prentiss. I equip it to Michael while moving his Great Helm to Baccata, then we go through a straight hallway with four switches (those switches don’t do anything) to a western wing. As we approach the new wing, Baccata notes that a pressure plate is nearby. He’s right, and it also happens to trigger a Fireball trap. Fortunately, stepping on it causes the Fireball to shoot parallel to our position, so we’re able to continue. There’s a hidden pressure plate farther down that triggers Fireballs to shoot AT us, and inconveniently Baccata doesn’t reveal it to us until after we’ve triggered it a couple of times. Still, he eventually does and I weigh it down to keep it from causing any more problems. Regardless, we clear this wing and then backtrack all the way to the staircase leading to Floor 3. We’re now ready to head up there, but it won’t be easy. Floor 3 is by far the toughest floor in the White Tower.