Despite Gharik’s Forge being in New Sorpigal this dungeon is anything but easy. I was however in the mood to finish off the third dungeon in the area after I had returned to clear out the freshly respawned zone. This is a dungeon I’ve only run a couple of times ever in the almost 25 years of this game.

Gharik’s Forge itself is on one of the islands to the north. You would not think much looking at it from the outside. It goes deep underground and it is filled with fire spirits and warlocks. Making this quite a ranged engagement kind of place.

Even the door into this place once you approached screams nightmarish with the bones and other objects on strings. Not to mention that strange eyeball looking at you above the door. It’s places like this that remind you that often you are not ready to take them on.

I however was being a bit stubborn with this place. I just wanted to be done with dungeons in the first zone of the game. I would have to pull from the many bags of tricks I have in my bags to survive this place and make it to the end.

When you enter you find yourself above a giant pool of lava. Along with a narrow ramp that takes you down below. Along the way, as you descend into the madness of this place you are attacked by fire beasts.

This place has quite a lot of lava you need to keep an eye out for. A wrong step and you will start taking a lot of damage. With some of the places having no way of getting out of the pits you fall into. While others might have a teleport back but are so far away you won’t survive long enough to get to it depending on where you fell in.

This place has quite a lot of wooden levers you need to keep an eye out for. They not only open doors but they could also do other things as well. They can many times be easy to overlook if your eyes don’t catch the wooden color of them against a wall.

After clearing out a couple of tunnels and more fire elements. I started to run into magicians and warlocks. The warlocks can make your character go insane and it just so happens I don’t have any cure for that in my spell books. Yet another sign I was not ready to take this place.

Not like it would have done much to have cured it so I could mana back when trying to rest. This
place has quite a higher rate than I’m used to of getting ambushed when being attacked. That is hardly the only issue either.

Since I’m now starting to deal with a lot higher creatures my current gear did not hold up well. It was breaking a lot even more so if one of my members were knocked out. I was having to use group heals, life sharing, and getting both healers full out using their turns for healing.

Now was not a great time to find out I was neglecting my repair skill on my knight. Thankfully I could just gate out to the portal in town. I then could get cures, heals, and repairs as needed. While I had to fly back a decent distance every time. It could have been a lot worse.

I then came across my first rather nasty room. There were a lot of magicians and warlocks in it. I ended up using one tactic where I run into a room when all four of my characters have an attack, unload, then run back to avoid the furry of spell damage coming my way.

It takes a little practice to get the timing right. Even more so depending on how the creatures are positioned in a room, my entry, and some other factors. While I still do take dame on occasion it is a lot less.

The next area I came across was a puzzle that has to be solved. You have to get the top wooden bridge to move over as it is at the time of taking the screenshot. You also have to have the two doorways up there open so you can walk across the bridge.

On top of trying to solve the puzzle, you are also dealing with attacks from fire beats and other things. I decided to clear them out first.

I then ran around to what door where open. I’d pull the wooden lever down to see what it did. I then would run off to another one. After a little trial and error, I come up with the conclusion that the top levers affected digital the doors down below.

So I got the two bottom doors to open first. This gave me across to further levers that I got to use to move the bridge over. I then had to go around again to get the top doors open to walk across the bridge to the other side where I needed to go to progress along in the dungeon.

I also noticed I was on a floor that had a hidden passageway. The top lever to the right after I crossed the bridge to get to the next section opened it.

After some further walking and a fair bit more clearing, I came into another giant room filled with mags and warlocks. This one took quite a while and a full healing and repair trip to conquer.

I even moved my party against the door frame and unleashed as many area-of-effect spells as I had when I could. A few of the single damage spells I had seemed to have done little to damage. Thankfully I’ll be getting some powerful spells soon enough to make single-target takedowns not so bad when they have a decent amount of health.

I then came acorns an elevator down. Since I was porting out for cures and repairs I needed to have feather fall as the elevator could not be triggered from the top to come back up. You can also trigger it to go back to the top from the bottom as well if needed.

This then brought me to the biggest challenge of a room I’ve faced so far in this dungeon. It was covered in fire spirits, warlocks, and a giant lava river in the middle.

You can see a bit of the aftermath as I went around looting after attempting a few times to clear this room out.

I then got worse from here. If you follow the lava river down there is a safe ledge you can use to do so. There is a massive amount of fire spirits waiting for you down the tunnel. It took again a few attempts to clear them out.

At the end of that tunnel were quite a few stacks of 3k or so gold. I must have looted at least 18k gold from that side tour. One I did not need to take but I welcome the gold I got out of it. I then returned to the room before and went deeper in.

Up next was another equality as nasty chamber as the one before it. It also had a ramp going up it to the last section of the dungeon after having to cross a bridge over some lava.

While the final room was quite a pain to clear. I ended up getting this massive upgrade to replace one of the bows I have. I also pulled a few books out of a bookshelf and found the Hourglass of Time which I’ll be turning in at a later date in time to Lord Albert Newton In Misty Islands.

After that, it was time to assess the damage. Most of the gear on my characters, rings, gloves, weapons, and chest armor were broken. I decided it was time to invest further in the repair skill. As taking this kind of damage moving forward when I start hitting the hard dungeons like this one will be quite a common thing.

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Information

Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about Might & Magic 6.