EoB1 Special Quests [Spoiler alert]

Answers to the first ten special quests are known:
1. The magic that appears to protect may also empower a weapon...(Location 21).
2. Match four of what you have the most with their like. (Dagger carvings).
3. ...Do idols really need to see? (Locations 54,56,62,63).
4. The courteous adventurer leaves things as they were, but also keeps the dungeon clean. (Location 36).
5. All adventurers can benefit from a full pantry! (Location 31).
6. Those that are scattered belong together. (Location 53).
7. Find the three that hold the key. (Locations 62,64,66).
8. Ancient traps may be turned to your advantage. (Location 60).
9. Where it is written, items may pass where you may not. (Location 8).
10. Replace the treasure with that which the drow treasure. (Locations 11,12,13).

Details:
1: Put a dagger into the niche. Reward, it is turned into a magical dagger.
2: When you see the carving of a dagger on a wall, click a dagger against the carving, some carvings are illusion. Reward is half a dozen rations.
3: After you have opened the room concerned, remove all four gems from the eyes in the wall. Reward, Potion of Extra Healing and Potion of Giant Strength.
4: Pull on the chain, you may need to wander around the nearby area of moving walls first. Reward? (Drow Cleaver +3? This can be accessed at anytime.)
5: Put five rations into a niche with "Pantry" sign next to it. Reward is five rations.
6: Place all Kenku eggs on the floor of the Nest. Reward, Chieftain's Halberd.
7: Put a portal key in each of the three niches. Reward, three information scrolls.
8: Put a dart into each of the twelve dart traps. Reward, each dart is transformed into a Dart +5.
9: Throw something at wall. Reward, three Orbs of Power.
10: Put Kenku Eggs in holes on the wall in South Eastern room. Seems to require one egg per niche. Four Mantis Warriors then appear out of nowhere. Reward is the magical rings that appear when you kill them.

"Niche" is also called a shelf or a hole.

All Locations are Cluebook locations, they occur on the same level as the relevant special quest.
Gamefaqs/Gamespot helped pin down how to solve some quests.
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/564791-eye-of-the-beholder/faqs/

Not clear: 11. Those second from the ends must differ from the rest.

12. The clue to the twelfth Special Quest are part of the game itself.

On level 11 in the room of the levers, you need to take the dwarven healing potion out of the niche and put a not needed scroll into the niche.

Then you need to make all levers point downward, except the second and second last lever, which need to point upward. This is a bit tricky, since manipulating one lever may have effects on other levers as well. In the niche will then appear a new scroll, that gives you hints on how to defeat Xanathar and you will have solved the quest.

On level 8 how many darts are you supposed to receive?
In the original DOS game, I got 10. However in GoG I usually get 7 but sometimes less

Also on level 11, how many rings do you get?
Again in the original DOS game used to get 4, however in GoG I'm only getting two

I got 10 darts and 4 rings.


My question is what's the use of that special code received at the end after completing all 12 quests?

I've wondered this for years and the consensus seems to be nobody knows, but the best guess is that it was apparently going to be part of some promotional contest that never happened.

Given how suddenly rushed the devs seem to have been toward the end of the project (half the mechanics in the manual weren't implemented, inaccessible rooms with non-functional stairs, the enormous empty chamber on the south half of map 12, etc.) it would make sense if they never had time to flesh out a contest or promotion, so it seems like as good a theory as any.

I guess it's also possible they didn't expect anyone to ever solve all 12—much like Ed Boon and John Tobias (supposedly) didn't expect anyone to figure out the fatalities in Mortal Kombat—so maybe if the corporate guys nixed the contest, the devs just stayed quiet about it and hoped nobody would notice. Interesting either way!

EDIT: The two-Ring problem with the Mantis Warriors is very weird, I usually get all four but I've only gotten two once or twice. Reloading a save until you get all four seems to work, but they seem to be hardcoded to drop all the rings, by the look of the subroutine in EOB Explorer:

$0436 ADD_MONSTER $F3, LT = 0, POS = <27,24>, S = 4, D = 1, TY = 10, PI = 1, PH = 0, PA = 0,
WPN = 0, DRP = 23 (Ring of Sustenance)
// FB F3 00 1B 03 04 01 0A 01 00 00 00 00 17 00

$0445 ADD_MONSTER $F3, LT = 0, POS = <27,26>, S = 4, D = 1, TY = 10, PI = 1, PH = 0, PA = 0,
WPN = 0, DRP = 24 (Ring of Feather Fall)
// FB F3 00 5B 03 04 01 0A 01 00 00 00 00 18 00

$0454 ADD_MONSTER $F3, LT = 0, POS = <27,28>, S = 4, D = 1, TY = 10, PI = 1, PH = 0, PA = 0,
WPN = 0, DRP = 25 (Ring of Protection +2)
// FB F3 00 9B 03 04 01 0A 01 00 00 00 00 19 00

$0463 ADD_MONSTER $F3, LT = 0, POS = <27,30>, S = 4, D = 1, TY = 10, PI = 1, PH = 0, PA = 0,
WPN = 0, DRP = 25 (Ring of Protection +2)
// FB F3 00 DB 03 04 01 0A 01 00 00 00 00 19 00

Items in the "drop" slot are meant to be always dropped, AFAIK (the Kobolds that drop a pack of Rations and a Mage scroll in Lv1, monsters dropping keys, etc.) It's the items in the "weapon" slot that usually only have a chance to drop (e.g. the Skeletons in Lv2, 9 have an Axe in their weapon slot and can drop axes, the other 8 actually have Helmets in their weapon slots, hence why they drop helmets sometimes. The Kuo-Toa in Lv3 all have Rations in their weapons slot.)

AFAIK these Mantis Warriors are the only instance of an enemy sometimes not dropping the item in their Drop slot which is supposed to be 100%. Does anyone remember which Rings they get when only 2 drop? Is it random out of the 4 or consistent? E.g. I'm thinking it might be some kind of bug with the two copies of the Ring of Protection, which prevents either from dropping in certain conditions, because of some conflict with both calling "item 25". There are usually multiple copies of an item in the index, maybe to prevent multiple calls to the same address like this case?

So far I've gotten: 11 9E and 2573

Generally I get 1*sustainability and 1 * feather fall. I have had 1*sustainability and 1* +2.

I've also just noticed that in the corner of the room there is a button. Anyone know what it does ? It's not shown in the hint book but does show up on All Seeing Eye

Replying half a year too late, but I remember the code for that button in EOB1 Explorer was a headache to try and figure out (or at least, the Explorer's translation of that code from hex to English). Then someone on another forum posted that it disables the Mantises from spawning (i.e., it disables the Special Quest's reward lol). I haven't tried it myself though, and I have no earthly idea why Westwood would include it, but confusing content is Westwood's specialty after all (looking at you, combination lock puzzle...)

Fun fact, if you stand a tile away from that button, so that you're in front of the furthest alcove from the entrance, and you face toward the entrance, so that you can see the row of alcoves on your right, and you throw an item: it won't hit the wall, it will turn 90 degrees and fly into the last alcove (the one closest to the room's entrance). If you look at the tiles in EOB1 Explorer you can see where these instructions were explicitly written to have an item thrown from there turn and fly into the alcove.

Again, who knows why. If you managed to track down the Westwood devs that made the game I'm not sure they'd even remember why they made some of these decisions, ha.

Replying to the topic a year and a half and three days too late. AffablePeafowl, what happens when you use the dart in conjunction with the button? For example, throw the dart then push the button? Perhaps the two "oddities" were meant to be used together.

Pressing that level 10 button at position 25,30 keeps the invisible walls before each alcove / mantis warrior. You might have wondered why the mantis warriors don't attack unless you move next to them. The walls are removed once you enter any of the coordinates 26,24 - 26.30. So, if you press the button before moving into any of the coordinates, you can fight the mantis warriors one at a time. The invisible wall doesn't not prevent a mantis warrior from attacking, but it just can't move away from the alcove.

From EOB1 Explorer:

- There are invisible walls before each alcove (wall value 25).

- Pressing the button sets level flag 1.

- Stepping on any of the of coordinates 26,24 - 26,30 removes the invisible walls (subroutine starting at $0370) unless level flag 1 is set.

- If you throw an item towards the first alcove, the item is turned 90 degrees so that it doesn't hit the mantis. The invisible walls are removed.

- The other alcoves have the same kind of "item turning" code, but the devs forgot to add a "on_throw_item" trigger, so you can hurt them with ranged attacks, and the invisible walls aren't removed.

The special quest isn't actually related as it uses global flag 10, but if there's a mantis warrior in an alcove, then a new one can't spawn there. Maybe because it's considered to be a big monster that occupies one full map tile, and the game decides that there just isn't space for the monster?

The order of putting the kenku eggs in the wall niches isn't important, but the event is checked only for the top niche. So if you start from the top niche, you have to take out the egg and put it back, or put in another one to trigger the event.

Eye Of The Beholder Special Quest 12

Hi,
The special quest first, is hen you get the green/blue ping message saying special quest!. This opens a secret location to a secret level area to Xanathars treasure!. Ghost level 13.
Dave Meadows

You require the rod of Silvius to achieve this.

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