Karnage Chronicles -- Past the Caverns of Decay

I've been playing Karnage Chronicles on and off for almost three weeks now, and I've just today finished the awfully intimidating Caverns of Decay on normal difficulty. The Caverns of Decay is the second of three dungeons in this VR RPG. It was a wild rollercoaster of feelings for me, so I thought I'd take some time to think about how it went.

A typical view of the mushroom caverns in Karnage Chronicles

First of all, the setting is pretty great. Basically you're crawling through an endless winding tunnel system full of glowing mushrooms. Being in VR, there's a lot to like with being in this environment. I just have to continually hail back to how awesome it looks in this game. It FEELS like riding through a magical journey through a Disney ride if Disney happened to make a high fantasy exhibit that wanted to kill you. Of course, you're not riding, you're "bamfing" and nudging with locomotion controls in VR. That said, sometimes after clearing an area, it's pretty cool just to look around it and be in that environment.

Since the Caverns of Decay are all about the mushrooms, take a guess what the monsters are that you fight in it?  

Time to put an arrow in his cap!

Not to worry, you also get to fight poison barb spitting plants, infected goblin zombies, and harpies . . . and in typical Karnage Chronicles fashion, you get to fight them every two footsteps forward and sometimes every one footstep forward. It really does get a little aggravating how often this game uses this "spawn in" method as you cross certain thresholds while crawling through the dungeon.

The most annoying of the bunch are these little speedy mushroom men who rush you and explode upon impact.  They come in groups of three, and I'd say 4 out of 5 times they jump scared me and blew up in my face, causing me to eat some food to regain health. The other 1 out of 5 times, I was actually able to shoot them and blow them up before they got to me . . . or at least one of the three dive bombing mushrooms, which is why it was absolutely critical to keep your health up.

A scene from the one time I killed all three speedy mushrooms before they exploded on me

Oh sure, it's easy enough to resurrect at a waypoint, but here's one of the most annoying features of this level. If you die in a section of this dungeon and leave just one monster behind, the entire section of the dungeon repops and you have to do it all over again. It got to be absolutely infuriating when I would clear this large courtyard area of 9 harpies, 4 poison plants, 3 mushroom men, 4 zombie goblin archers, and then die to something only to have to have them all repop again. To make matters worse, for some reason the game was thinking I was bound all the way back at the beginning of the dungeon and made me bamf all the way back.  This happened three times, and I was ready to rage.

After letting the game sit for a week I was ready to try again though . . . the allure of the harpies was too great.  By the way, I gotta say this . . . those harpies . . . LOL. I couldn't even concentrate on their horrible faces and vicious talons. All I could look at were their perfectly nakey, perfectly boob job boobs. It was so distracting! As I sunk an arrow deep into the areola of a harpy, I couldn't think how I should get bonus points for that bullseye. I mean, the game has a rating, but I think they could have accomplished what they were going for without it. I digress.

This dungeon was good training for how this game was most likely meant to be played:

Step 1: you bamf forward a couple steps.

Step 2: You bamf backward several steps quickly.

Step 3: You shoot to kill. 

Step 4: You drink potions from your quick belt slots, sometimes during the heat of battle.

Step 5: Gather the loot.

Step 6: Go to step 1.

I guess the other option is to pull out your melee weapons and actually stab things when they get close, but melee just doesn't feel as good as bow shooting, so I'm not going to do that.

There were a few really great trap moments in the Caverns of Decay including the old classic from Indiana Jones. Yes indeed . . . the rolling stone trap.  It was an awesome moment.  I'd play through this dungeon again just for that moment! The other trap that was fun in this dungeon involved the old giant blades swinging across a hanging bridge and a puzzle room where if you got the answer wrong, you got stuck with a billion needles.

Speaking of that puzzle room. Wow!  This room is amazing with its magical universe machine.

It was a cool puzzle . . . picture doesn't look like much, but it was cool . . . trust me

The puzzle itself was a bit infuriating. Basically there were two ways to get the clues you needed to solve it. 1) Find all the pages with the symbol clues. 2) Find the symbol clues in 3 random locations around the dungeon. It took a lot of wandering around, but eventually I found them all.  The reward? A piece to a separate, different puzzle.  For that puzzle you have to find 3 broken tiles and put them together to open up a sarcophagus with a weapon upgrade inside.  The infuriating part of this puzzle was that one of the broken tile pieces was actually sold at the vendor all the way at the beginning of the dungeon. 

Being in VR also naturally means that once in a blue moon you really have to search for a button to press around the world in a spot you wouldn't normally look. (Let's call it the VR-Button-Paradox.) This happened in that big harpy court area of this dungeon.  You have to push a button to reveal stepping stones out to a skeleton to give him an arm.  It took me forever to find that button . . . especially because I didn't know I was looking for it.  If they would have just put the button a little closer to the water's edge, it would have been easier to find. Just sayin'.

Past the harpy courtyard is the final boss, and it was a perfectly acceptable fight. Just make sure you're stocked with health potions on your quick belt and use 'em as you need 'em. Mostly you'll need them for when the boss is hitting you while a mushroom wizard is throwing things down on you from above.  Focus on the boss, then kill that pesky mushroom wizard!  Worked great for me.

Happy Dueling!