Wumpus 2000

By re-starting the game we're back in room 18 (the starting room), and we'll "get all" and "fill canteen." If you like, "wait" until the barrel oozes, then drink the ooze. After doing this you're still only at 11% of your potential maximum strength...in other words, don't fight anything yet. You can keep waiting and drinking until you hit 15%, at which point this ooze just isn't potent enough. Doing this has the side benefit of raising your current health to 100% (you can't fall down a big hole and expect to arrive without a few nasty bumps, can you? You always start the game at 75% health)

Swim and (if you aren't automatically swept there by the current) follow the stream through exit 2. Then I recommend you take exit 1 (to room 4) then exit 2 (to room 15). Examine the walking stick that's in room 15, and then examine the stone spear you (luckily) got when you executed "get all" in room 18. You're told that the stone spear is 8% effective, whereas the walking stick is only 4% effective. So don't bother with it, and also drop that useless 2% bone club that you also got in room 18. Only carry what's necessary because the weight of your inventory is a factor, especially when you're weak, you little shrimp.

Now let's make our way downhill to those two unexplored passages in room 11. Type "down" twice to get to room 5 (and that's a hint..."down" will choose the lowest exit and "up" will choose the highest), then go through exit 4 (to room 13) and, finally, exit 1 to room 11.

Have you pieced together the rules for successful cave mapping? Here they are:

1. Always finish mapping one level as much as you can before descending to the next.

2. Map rivers last, just in case they sweep you away (sometimes all the way down to level 5, where you definitely DON'T want to be yet).

3. Choose exits that are the same depth as your room before descending, because rooms tend to cluster around similar depths. This will increase your chances to making a coherent map.

This is why I'm choosing to explore the passages in room 11 instead of room 6 (rule #2), and why I'm going to choose exit 3 instead of exit 2 (rule #3). So type x3.

Voila! Room 36 must be the continuation of our river from Level 1. Let's call it "River Muffy" because it has a nice ring to it. I know it's the same river because it's coming through exit 1, which rises to a "distant" room (meaning that it's on a different level, almost certainly the "orange" level, and the only room with an unexplored water exit was room 6). So, on a new sheet of paper -- for level 2, the "brown" level -- draw a fair-sized double-circle (since it's watery), label it 36, draw one broken line to an uncircled room 11 and a broken double-line (representing a river) to uncircled room 6. Put an arrow on the line to room 6 to signify a slope. As a finishing touch put an "unfilled loop" on the edge of room 36 (to signify exit 2), and don't forget to draw a new grid in the corner of your page for this level's twenty rooms (21-40).

We've dipped our toe into the brown level -- and found the "loop" we suspected all along -- but let's go back to room 11 and try the other exit before we go this way. Why? Rule numbers 2 AND 3: this unexplored exit "drops sharply" AND is part of the river, which means that if you go down you're probably not coming back up.

So type "back" to get back to room 11, then type x2 to find yourself in room 21. But look at this description!

We've encountered a "region." In regions, each cave is just part of a larger area, in this case a "steam room." We have no idea how many caves are in this region, but there are at least three more sections because the three unexplored exits lead to "part of this room." There are eight different types of regions, each with distinctive characteristics. Steam rooms are moist, very hot, and have no wind. I haven't mentioned wind much so far because it doesn't really matter to the player. Wind influences how temperatures change and poison spreads, but is otherwise unimportant.

Anyway, chances are this area isn't going to connect to room 36 soon -- there's no sound of water and no sharp descent -- so you can safely draw the parts of this region (when you explore them) away from 36. But there's no getting away from the fact that regions are harder to map than regular rooms; I enclose them with a circle comprised of arcs that gradually form as I explore. Check out my example.

Also note that you can hear a distant waterfall (probably room 36) and a larval sucking sound...a grubling is chowing down on the fungus that grows so well in hot, moist rooms.

Let's try exit 1 first. If your game is like my game, it's pitch dark! Turn on your handy glowbar and see that the walls have been "gouged by something." A grubling ate all the fungus off this wall. Since you can hear a distant waterfall -- and you're now more than two caves away from room 36 -- I bet this room is approaching unexplored parts of "River Muffy," so I'm going to draw it near room 36 (and continue my open arc, to indicate I'm still in the steam region).

I find it easiest to map regions if I do a lot of backtracking. So go back through exit 1 -- DON'T type "back," because that command gets confused in regions, since all caves in a region have the same number -- and then try exit 3 (remember rule #3!). Great, a dead end to this region...and here's a "sneaky grubling." The word "sneaky" doesn't really tell us anything about this particular grubling, it's just a randomly-chosen word to help differentiate between similar creatures if you run into more than one at a time.

The whole concept of this cave ecosystem owes more to Piers Anthony than it does to Wumpus. Before he became an insufferable, creepy hack, Anthony wrote two books -- "Phthor" and "Chthon" -- about a prison planet full of vast, complex, largely-unexplored caverns. I highly recommend these books to anybody who gets as much of a kick out of caves as I do. Anyway, "Wumpus 2000" was originally set on Chthon and was populated by Chthon's monsters, but then my conscience got the better of me. This could explain why the "Wumpus 2000" plot is so flimsy, besides the fact that the plot really doesn't matter. Anyway, grublings only attack you if they've been wounded, but if you've got the stone spear and you drank some of that ooze on level one you can probably beat this one up if you want, you savage.

At this point I'm getting hungry so I "eat fungus" twice (take advantage of the fungus while it's still around). Also note that large monsters can't escape through an exit that you're standing in front of, so the poor grubling is stuck in this dead end until you decide to leave. And you might as well...take exit 1 back to the first room in the region.

There's only one exit in this part of the region that we haven't taken: x2, which descends to another part of the region with lots of exits. Uh-oh, this region is a big one, and the sound of the waterfall is "deafening." If you're like me you didn't draw this room near River Muffy, and you've just run into another grubling (a "jittering" one this time). I'm going to try exit 3...good, another dead end, and the level two barrel! Relax for a bit and drink the ooze, but watch out...the room has no fungus so your glow bar must stay on...but waiting too long will drain the power, and since the grublings are having a feeding frenzy around here you'll probably not find much fungus nearby. Always remember to turn the glowbar off when you don't need it. It recharges when it's off.

In any case, return through exit 1, then try exit 4. There's a swamp here -- a new water system that isn't part of River Muffy -- which slowly flows through an exit that leads down to level 3 (a "distant" room). Keep in mind that regions only extend within the same level, so this steam region doesn't extend down there. I name this swamp "River Panks," just because.

Return back through exit 1 and try x1, the last (and descending) exit. We're in yet another part of the region...a river (probably River Muffy) enters the region through exit 4 (probably close to room 36) and then flows down to another part of the region. Fortunately these rooms are "vast" (all regions are vast, since they're essentially part of one huge room) so you don't need to swim across the room to get to exit 3. Give x3 a try, fully aware that this is probably the most difficult mapping challenge we'll face.

Okay, things are looking good! This room with two exits must join up with that segment of the room we were in a long time ago (if you're "filling your bumps" as you go along then you'll see this means that room only has one unexplored exit left...whew!) What's more, there's a chute in this room! These chutes drop objects into the room at random times, so you'll see some good junk here. I'm seeing food and a rope...get them both and I'll show you how to use the rope later.

Take exit 2 to that long-ago room, then go through its only unexplored exit (2). All three exits go to rooms outside the region, but we're still in "mapping hell" because, if you're like me, room 36 is being blocked off from the unexplored section of room 21 that we think connects up to it. When it comes time to make a final "good copy" of our map -- once all 100 rooms have been explored -- we'll probably need to fiddle around with the steam room's placement.

For now, though, here's the Zen Man! He's here to give you hints about what's happening in the cave, in exchange for items worth $10 or more. But I warn you: he's barely implemented and not worth patronizing (and I confess that his inspiration lies with the "three half-zombies" in the "Chthon" novel). Don't bother with him unless you plan to find out how to win the game by yourself, in which case...why are you reading this walkthrough?

When people beta tested Wumpus 2000, the game was much more obscure in its hints. I was desperately trying to maintain "mimesis." But the beta testers got so frustrated that I learned that relying on a "Zen Man" -- who the player might not even FIND -- to explain things was just being stupid. But even so I never put all the clues into the game that I'd intended to...which is even MORE stupid.

Let's not worry about our potential mapping difficulties yet. Even though we haven't explored all the exits from the steam region, lets continue on from this room instead (for fear of being washed away in what we assume to be River Muffy). I know you're thinking "jeez, we went through all that trouble and we only mapped ONE ROOM?" but don't worry...for all intents and purposes, the sections of a region ARE individual rooms...they just all share a single room number (in this case "21"). So in this case we've mapped NINE rooms, and here's my map of level 2 so far. Regions aren't usually this big!

But don't despair. From the Zen Man room, try exit 2: a dead end, just when we need it!

Back to the Zen Man, then try exit 4. Hurray, another dead end! And by the way, get a load of how busy those grublings have been...they've eaten the fungus off all these walls.

Back to the Zen Man again, then exit 1. Room 26 is considered a pit (because it's generally lower than the surrounding rooms), and though one exit leads down to the third level, the second exit rises...try it. Room 37 is the "cliff" that overlooks the "pit" of room 26, and notice that it's starting to get cold and the rooms are getting smaller...I bet we're heading away from River Muffy. Take exit 1 to room 23 (freezing cold now), then exit 2 to room 38, and finally exit 1 to room 34. Yup, a bunch of caves that lead to a tiny, cold, dead end.

Count up your rooms, including all the parts of the steam region: 17. There's three rooms left on this level. A plain old adventurer would just plow on back to room 26 and go down to the next level, but we're MAPPERS, and I offer you this challenge: to be most certain of mapping all the level two rooms, go back up to level one...and ride the River Muffy!

I know it's a long way, and I'm not going to reproduce all the steps. But if I can do it, YOU can do it. One foot in front of the other, c'mon...

Oh no! On the way (in room 26) I've run into a "grinding rocker" who no doubt ventured up from that passage down to level three. The rocker is the first predator I've run into, and you need to watch out for predators...they follow your footsteps and only want to kill you. So even though I'm going to run away from it, it's going to follow me until I kill it. Fortunately rockers are slow...they only have a 10% chance of moving during each turn, so it won't be hard to outrun it. Also, if you enter a river you have a chance of not leaving a "scent" for predators to follow.

So I run back through the steam room, up into level two (hint: to move to familiar rooms, just type "go [room number]"), all the way back to room 19. Swim all the way to room 6, where the current is liable to take you down to 36 and then room 31. As we figured, room 31 connects to the edge of the steam region, but exit 2 takes us up a cliff to room 35: a totally pointless dead end, but important for sight-seers and map completists.

Now back to room 31 to finish things off. Swim to the steam room (if you aren't washed down there automatically), then through exit 2 to the final part of the steam room that you haven't seen...and chances are River Muffy will enthusiastically wash you down to level 3, because it's such an impatient minx.

Have a look at the map on the way down. Yes it's messy, but when we make our "good copy" we can easily fix it up: