This message is mainly directed to Foucter, who may or may not be lurking this forum.

I have managed to reach Level 28, and found three Ruby Power Node(s):

- one in the North-West, in a room full of barrels, where the RPN dropped after blowing up a nest
- one in the North-East, after solving a 'focus rod'/'extractor machine' puzzle
- one in the South-East, in a room with nests, where the RPN dropped after shooting a discoloured wall crystal

But I cannot find the fourth RPN. I have pixel hunted every 'room' in D28, shot every wall crystal and every rock, and found nothing. I have cast Detection and scanned the map, and found nothing. I have replayed the level from an earlier save, and nothing different happened. I have exhausted all avenues of progress, and am completely stuck.

For what it's worth, I've already found all the Amethyst and Sapphire Power Nodes, and I'm pretty sure this is the very last puzzle before the end-game sequence. I've spent over a decade (intermittently, of course!) trying to beat this custom quest, and I can almost taste victory. One final push, and all that.

Hi notanotheruser,

First, I apologize for not responding sooner. Summer is my busy time, and so I haven't checked for posts since June. Sorry!

OK, to the point. I am very glad for your exact details. The only purpose of Level 28 is to find the nodes. But those nodes are random. There are ten different combinations spread across ten rooms. Because I am very detailed myself, I made charts and maps of those combinations.

By your details, the combo is #1, and the last node is Camo, meaning it's sitting on the floor covered in dust. It looks like the floor, so zooming in and spinning the camera helps to see it. You should find it in Room One, which sits between the two large earthblood pools. It's unique because it has four tables in the center. The node is in the left corner as you enter the room.

I hope you have enjoyed this quest. Someday, I'll finish my current playthrough. I just started the Paths of the Dead.

Of course, let me know if you can't find it. 8)

I was starting to think I'd never receive a reply!

Your solution was correct, and I was indeed able to find the fourth RPN and obtain the Crystal of Strength. It went by so fast that it hasn't even sunk in yet! It has been almost fifteen years since I first attempted to complete The Avenger, and I have made serious attempts at it once every few years since then.

And now it's over. I'm not even sure how to feel about this.


In lieu of further rumination, I'll let you know about a few bugs that I've found over the years.

The two most critical bugs are found in the Labyrinth of Solitude. First concerns the puzzle where you shoot projectiles through a window at a vase in the Red Master's Room. It is almost impossible to actually hit the vase, as most projectiles are intercepted by an invisible collision, as if the dungeon wall were slightly thicker than suggested visually. It is just barely possible to find an exact spot that allows you to slip projectiles past the collision, but it takes about twenty minutes to do so!

Second concerns the mini-puzzle that happens after you unlock the main vault where you obtain The Master Book of Torzian. There's a wall of bookcases that divide the vault into two disconnected pieces, and there's a trap of sorts that makes one of the bookcases vanish, spawning an enemy in the process. But the trap does not reliably activate, forcing the player to reload a save and try again, and again, over and over for about twenty minutes or so.

Apparently there is also a third bug concerning the Labyrinth of Solitude, where something goes wrong if you approach the Jewel of Jehelon before flipping the release lever. I've not personally verified that one however.

And now for the smaller bugs:

You can give Selonn his staff back before you open the door to the Wizard's Maze. You still get the Crystal of Bravery, and dialogue plays as if you have already defeated Tokoreos.

You can give Jairith his father's key back (and thereby obtaining a Concentration Rune) before using the key to obtain Pa's Leather Book. Since it is still possible to brute-force the Lever Room puzzle without PLB the player can actually complete Marghor before realising they've softlocked themselves. (This definitely didn't happen to me, once...)

At various points it is possible to sell quest items to Elmeric before you've actually finished using them. Certainly it is possible to sell the special jewellery that you find in the Master's Rooms in the Labyrinth of Solitude. (and not just the decoys, but the real ones as well!) Probably this also applies to the Key of Nimduin, but I haven't checked.

There's a bunch of weird collisions in the Catacombs, where the walls seem to stick out further than they suggest visually. This is the same as the first bug in the Labyrinth of Solitude, but a bug that was critically important there is nothing more than a minor annoyance here.

And that should be all of them! (that I know of.)


Finally, those charts/maps that you mentioned sound pretty handy. Would you be willing to make them publicly available? I can understand if you are reluctant to do so, as I've been making maps of my own, and I'm not convinced that they're ready for public scrutiny either! My progress so far is as follows:

Level 3,4,5,10,11,12: 99% complete.

Level 17: 99% complete. With the caveat that some of the terrain in the Arachnes sub-dungeon cannot be traversed, let alone mapped, unless I find some way of hacking the game into debug mode.

Level 18,21,22: the static versions (stuff that stays the same each playthrough) are about 95% complete. I haven't begun the dynamic versions yet. (And to be honest, I'd probably never do them if it were not for these charts that you've mentioned.)

Level 19,20,23,24,25: very crude early draft. I haven't played through these levels enough to get a proper feel for which elements are static and which are not.

Level 26,27,28: haven't begun mapping these yet.

Note that I'm unlikely to resume work on the maps until November at the earliest.