I had another major attempt at finishing up Serpent Isle again last night. I still haven’t actually managed it but I must be getting close.

Today’s first job is collecting all the water from the various temples. I head back to the temple with the moons eye first and while I’m there I use the moons eye and get a vision of my companions all loitering around in the White Dragons Castle. I know where to go now at least but I will need the water to create the prisms first I expect.

I don’t seem to be getting anywhere is this temple so I leave and try the temple of ethicality. When I double click on a serpent carpet here I’m teleported into an ethicality test. First off an automaton asks me a series of fairly easy questions, then I get to actually prove myself for real in a series of tests.

First off I have to save a man by pressing a button in the middle of a load of fire.

The next test is a little trickier. I have to prove that blood is more valuable than money whatever that means. There are a couple of gold statues I ignore but what I have to do is to place some valuable objects that have appeared in my inventory on a pedastel before walking down a corridor and pushing a button.

For the final test Batlins back and I have to fight him again.

You can tell its not the real Batlin as he beats me in battle easily then asks me to yield. I refuse and thereby pass this final piece of the test. Completing this test fixes the fountain and I get my bucket of water

The next temple (logic) is in the north. I have to navigate a maze then hack through these icy blocks.

I expect a few logic puzzles for this one and am not disappointed. The first involves walking on a load of teleport pads in the correct order as described in the notebook.

The next puzzle is a bit trickier – I have to place the runes in alphabetical order. Not all that difficult but figuring out that this is what I needed to do is not obvious.

The final puzzle involves figuring out which automaton has stolen the key to the fountain room and murdered its owner.

This isn’t too hard to solve – number 4’s alibis are contradictory and I accuse him. He attacks but is easily beaten off and I get the key and the water.

I decide at this point to go back to tonights first temple and have another go. There is a suspicious looking green thing on one wall which when I double click on it turns out to be the trapped soul of a child. I free this child by hacking the column in the middle of the room which nets me a further lodestone. A bit of expirmentation with the lodestone and I find out that when I use them on the pillars near the water it seems to have some effect. Unfortunately one of my companions had 2 of these from earlier so I trek back to retrieve them.

This place is truly a mess and I start running out of space to put stuff. I do find them anyway and while I’m here I also fix the daemon sword.

For some reason, I get distracted here and try another temple before heading back with the stones. I find the death mage from Moonshade standing on a middle of a small island. He says he got teleported here and wants me to release him somehow.

This guy is clearly useless – he could just wade across the tiny gap and I just have to telekinesis the drawbridge down to free him anyway. He says he can’t find his way home on his own either and joins the party. He does offer to teach me some new spells.

As soon as I get outside he is struck by lightning and is gone again. This doesn’t seem to have gotten me anywhere. A bit more exploring in the temple and I find a guy in the basement who seems to have been waiting for centuries and somehow kept alive. From him I gather that the pedastle that got swapped for the mage should fill up anything placed on it, so I must have to go to Moonshade, find it and put a bucket on it.

I hold off on the walk to Moonshade for now and take the last 2 lodestones to the previous temple. I can’t see anything happen when I use the last 2 but using the bucket on the water gets me the water I was looking for. Using this on a prism changes its colour so thats the first one done.

The next temple has some sort of 3D maze to negotiate before I can get in.

Other than the maze this is dead simple. I get a key out of the altar next to a locked door and just stroll in and fill my bucket from the well. That just leaves the 1 prism.

I head off to Moonshade and am don’t find the pedastle where I expected it – I only tried this on the offchance as I could have sworn it was in Moonshade from the start. All that counts is that it worked though so thats all the prisms done.

Following up on Natreg’s advice that there are no side quests in this game, I head out looking for Hawks treasure. This doesn’t take that much tracking down – the starting point is on the cost to the west of Fawn.

The treasure is in a hollow tree stump and includes the serpent crown which I will no doubt need.

While I’m here I have a look around Fawn. Everyone is dead except for the guy who stops me on the bridge every time I go in or out (who deserves death more than the rest of them for this) + the ugly Britannian. He tells me that Iolo killed everyone else and stripped the queen of her beauty and she has fled into the swamps.

I knew the queen had been stripped of her beauty but not her skin. She is wandering around in the swamps and not exactly hard to spot.

She wants the comb of beauty when as luck would have it, I’m still carrying around.

As a reward she tells me how to get the serpent armour through a secret passage in her throne room.

I head for the treasure and find a load of chests down there one of which contains the armour.

I find another broken serpent gate, the one to the great northern forest doesn’t work either. The nearest I can get is to teleport to the Sleeping Bull and walk through the swamp. While I’m in here Wilfred volunteers to join me. I’ve been on my own for ages now so I don’t turn down the offer.

There is a note outside the castle inviting me to join the party. The moment I enter the ghost of the white dragon himself show up and attacks.

This castle is quite good fun, its one room after another where the banes attempt some sort of trick. In this first room full of mirrors Iolo shows up….

..and I’m having to fight a half dozen mirror images of myself. A secret door on the right gets me into the next room after the battle.

In a room full of exploding books, Wilfred decides he has had enough. A right lot of use he was.

One of the books is a journal of the white dragon who was clearly less than sane by this point.

I find my way to the basement and Dupre joins in the fun by setting a load more monsters on me.

There are still a load of presumably unaccessible rooms but I make it to the throne room of the banes and they all attack. Hacking at them with Eriond’s axe doesn’t seem to be having any effect. I gather from a walkthrough at this point that I’m supposed to use the daemon sword – how I’m supposed to know that is unclear.

I walk all the way back armed with the daemon sword this time. As a side benefit, when I get there the banes attack one at a time making things a lot easier for me.

I now need to carry all these bodies back to Monk Isle. There is only me to do it so I’ll need a couple of trips – I sling Dupre over one shoulder and Shamino over the other.

The monks revive them both. Shamino is definitely not himself but Dupre seems about the same as ever. I use the appropriate water on both of them and they rejoin the party at long last.

Even though he is still dead Gwenno, thanks me for reviving Iolo prematurely.

I head back to fetch Iolos body and give him the same treatment. As soon as he is cured a monk tells me that Xenka is returning and I’m teleported back to the monestary.

Xenka is not quite what you might expect and after waiting this long to return doesn’t tell me all that much.

She does give me a new serpents tooth however.

This means trying to find the thing in my overflowing backpack which takes a while.

Iolo and Gwenno are reunited. He doesn’t have the necklace to give her as its still lying on the temple floor. My next job is going back there and routing through the equipment to get everything important back. On my first attempt my companions die of frostbite in seconds so I have to make one trip on my own to gather fur clothing, then another with my companions.

Using the new tooth I teleport onto the isle of crypts that I previously tried to sail to on my ice raft.

I make my way through the temple. I use this scroll on a pedastel opposite a gold serpent and get teleported to a library and then to a room with two serpents.

Inbetween these two serpents is a field which I dispel to get a serpent eye.

At this point I run out of ideas for a while but there is a secret door just to the north of these serpents that gets me to the tomb of the hierophant. I cast summon shade on him and his spirit appears.

This guy has quite a bit of information to say the least. He tells me of 3 serpent items I will need – I have two and need to find the serpent staff in the fiery depths which sounds like Furnace. The 3 banes who I have trapped, need to be recombined to create the chaos serpent and restore balance. I also will need to seek out the chaos hierophant but he has no idea where to look.

Armed with this new information, I head for Furnace to find the staff. There are a few bridges who’s levers I can’t move down here. I talk to the gargoyle king and he opens up an exit bridge for me to get back to Monitor. He also tells me that the trolls have the staff. I never used this exit earlier so it looks like a good spot to find the staff.

Sure enough, this place is crawling with trolls. I kill the king, take his keys and retrieve the staff.

Gwenno is still hanging around in the library and suggests I ask Thoxa where to find the chaos hierophant.

Thoxa gives me a vague clue which points towards Sethys who was at one of the temples.

He decides to join my party to journey to the temple of enthusiasm where the remains are.

As soon as we leave the temple, the years catch up with him, but he manages to tell me where to go first.

I don’t see any remains but stand where he told me and cast summon shade.

He doesn’t consider himself on the same side as me but is as helpful as his opposite hierophant was. He tells me where to find the missing temple by blasting through some brass doors with a powder keg. Once there I can combine the banes again. First I will need some way of strengthening myself though so its back to the monks for more help.

Xenka seems more concerned with me completing my set of serpents teeth. I just have the one missing now and she points me towards the Gwani.

The gwani have pretty much been killed off just like everyone else, this time by the trapper. I can have the serpent tooth if I retrieve their missing amulet.

The cave with the trapper is empty. I’m pretty sure I was here earlier which means I must have dropped the amulet somewhere thinking I didn’t need it.

I find it eventually and return it to the few Gwani left.

They hand over the final serpents tooth and that completes the set even if a few of them don’t work. So far its just the northern forest + moonshade that don’t work and the gate in skullcrusher won’t take me to the hub either.

The game has picked up again today. Getting through all the temples has been fun and there hasn’t been too much needless wandering. The white dragon castle was one of the best areas of the game with a twist to every room. The plot has cleared up today as well, I finally understand how the banes were created from the destruction of the chaos serpent, how this imbalance drove the order serpent mad and what I need to do to cure the problem. This is a game I could actually see my myself enjoying more on a second playthrough as a bit of foreknowledge could help make the story clearer, especially the Silver Seed which didn’t mean much to me at all at the time.

I think I really can say the end is in sight now although I still don’t know how to strengthen in preparation for the ritual to restore the chaos serpent. I’ll try the monks again at this point – I expect the final tooth must have something to do with it also. I’m intending to finish this game off tonight one way or another.