ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Kryl Feijan, that big demon thing. I beat it.

My question is... how could I have saved the woman?
There's really no explanation for what I'm supposed to do here. Which is kind of dumb. I mean, I tried looking up a solution, but I couldn't find anything helpful.
The quest failed, so I know I can save her somehow... but there's no clue as to what I should be doing.

You have to kill the 4 cultists. Thats the only way. Each time you kill one you get a few extra turns. Basically you will have a hard time if you are melee but it is doable with rush/movement infusions. It took me 10 times to get it right with my arcane blade. I had a 36% global speed infusion with 5 charges, and two movement infusions and I barely made it.

That level has a time limit. If you kill all the cultists in that room before the time limit (which represents how much time you have until their ritual is completed), you can save the girl. You start with a very tiny time limit, and every time you kill a cultist, you gain more time (the less cultists there are left, the more time the ritual takes them to complete). Movement abilities such as Rush, Movement infusions, and controlled phase-door are very helpful here. Having powerful ranged attacks is also quite helpful, but not absolutely necessary. If you kill all the cultists in time, the girl will start following you around. Now get her safely to the exit. Be warned though, she acts a lot like an escort, and this is a dangerous area! As long as you're in her LOS, she'll follow you, unless there's an enemy around. Then she becomes Leroy Jenkins.

I like to teleport away from Melinda while she's still in the room where I found her, and clear all the enemies on the floor before returning for her.

Are these "random" quests (the Thief Lord and the Dark Crypt are the only two I've yet encountered) a one-shot deal? I accidentally rejected the Dark Crypt quest while hitting the keys too fast and snuck away. Will I get another opportunity or am I forever locked out of that one with my current character?

Only one chance, sorry. The Crypt's rewards are minor, if that's any consolation.

On the other hand, I've reluctantly decided that the quest is generally worth doing for melee characters, even without saving the girl. I used to just skip it with my melee guys, but then realized I almost always find the Titanic shield in there, as well as a number of other good drops. Actually, the only real reason I care about saving the girl is that I HATE seeing the big red fail line in my quest log.

Actually, yeah. It is pretty good for artifact drops, since there are so many humanoids.

Reviving a dead thread here, I know, but as a noob I found this quest shockingly difficult.

I'm wondering what the triggers are? Seems like the only two times I got it my chars were lvl 24+ or so. The first guy, that was the end of him, the only life he had left was the Blood of Life, and so got hosed as soon as he resurrected. The second guy, a Cornac archmage, made it through, I'm very happy to say, but only after giving up his last two lives and his Blood of Life life. These elven wizards and freaking brutal.

Um, so I guess I'm asking, for anybody else who may do a search for Dark Crypt and come upon this thread, what's the recommended level for this? I know if you turn it down you won't get another chance, but blowing several lives is not good for anybody's game. And, as stated above, there doesn't seem to be any real reward for this quest other than art drops (which I got several of, but useless to me as a mage).

There's no recommended level for it because you can't really choose when to do it. I think it can trigger any time you move on the world map and your level is greater or equal to 24. The chance is fairly high, so you'll pretty much always be level 24 or 25. If you don't think you can handle it, just turn it down, the quest doesn't really have any major impact.

tekrunner wrote:There's no recommended level for it because you can't really choose when to do it.

You can But it's a kinda boring way. To choose your character level for Dark Crypt before gaining level 24 you must go to Shaolin ... sorry ... Ruined Dungeon and spend time there. The current setting of RD allows you to call monsters level 26-30 indefinitely (just don't try to really solve the riddle, pick a wrong sphere and touch it again and again), so you can routiiiiiiiinely progress in character level up to, say, 35 (higher you go, harder comes exp). Called monsters are not unbeatable for character of level 23+, and layout is good enough for fighting, hiding around the corners and teleporting to have some rest.

Also you get many useful drops

The bad thing it's that higher level don't helps you much against cultists: how fast you move and kill matters more than how high level you are.

There is an easier way to increase your level before the Dark Crypt encounter.
Use the Farportal.

Faster, you mean. Maybe. Definitely not easier, heh.

Farportals will eventually kill you. Ruined dungeon scumming probably won't. The crypt can be left alone, but being eaten by a farportal doomboss is forever.

Frumple wrote:Farportals will eventually kill you. Ruined dungeon scumming probably won't. The crypt can be left alone, but being eaten by a farportal doomboss is forever.

I couldn't agree more. Beating 3d Farportal boss I encountered, luminous horror boss, was harder than any bunch of monsters in RD. Even 3 multi-hued wyrms or dread master were much more easy.