The Dutch version states the doors simply open when a mummy is killed, which makes no sense at all. So again we used the US map. Also, the Dutch map has no hidden door into the room north of the center.
I've seen the question raised on both BGG as on Old Scratch:
Dirk from Old Scratch wrote:Now my main problem is this: the door that leads into the room marked with B is one of the doors that will disappear when the corresponding mummy is killed. Which implies a potentially unsolvable quest.
The door into the room marked with B will disappear when the mummy is killed. Unless you have a Pass Through Rock spell at hand, there is no way to get into the room. Due to other disappearing doors, it is quite possible that heroes get stuck in rooms without a way to the exit of the quest.
Rick Baptist from BGG wrote:My son and I played this level today and we had a question -- the fourth mummy is guarding the room with the treasure chest and the keys inside. If this mummy is destroyed, thereby removing his door, I don't see another way in. Are we to assume that the heroes lost the adventure by not retrieving the keys? Can they continue without the keys? Obtaining the keys was the stated mission, after all.
Some of the answers were pretty good:
1- I looked it up in the questbook. And you're right, this level design is not really clear. I would say the heroes fail indeed if they cannot reach the keys because the door's gone...
2- Before the 4th Mummy, there are other 3 Mummies whose deaths trigger the same effect. Heroes are supposed to understand that before they reach at the doorstep of Agrain's laboratory.. If they don't.. well.. they lose the mission and the keys!
3- Another way in is made possible by the Elf or Wizard casting the Pass Through Rock spell. A Hero then moves through the wall on his next turn and Searches For Treasure, recovering the keys. That replaces all of the removed doors, allowing him to return through the formerly-vanished door.
4- It does seem to me that there is a mistake made in the positioning of the arrow. If you follow the pattern of the disappearing doors, it shows that the door that disappears should be the door that the hero entered through. Thus the door to Agrains keys is NOT the door that should disappear. It should be the door at the top of the room as Dirk suggested. Except that the upper right mummy room would have no exit if both doors disappeared.
5- It is of course still possible that some the heroes get separated - some get to the end of the quest, and some have to start over. But starting over with less than the full complement of four heroes doesn't seem so bad because when the puzzle is solved correctly, there are hardly any monsters between the heroes and the exit door. That corridor full of monsters is the punishment for not solving the riddle, as it were.
So in the end, I think that there should be a mechanic to allow at least one hero to reach the alchemists bench, and release the other trapped heroes.
I'm partial for this solution:
Answer 4: switch the disappearing door in the last room.
First mummie dies: no problem. You move on to room 2.
Mummie 2: If you stay in the corridor (as we often do) and slay the mummie as it comes at you, the door in front of you vanishes. But there's a hidden door (which may only be found after the door has vanished). The EU version should have this hidden door added to the map. So you can always enter the room even if the mummie dies. No problem here either.
Mummie 3: this is where it gets tricky. The next two rooms present a problem is the mummie is slain from outside of the door. If this one is killed, you're stuck. Game over unless you use pass through rock or the elven cloak of passage. So basically, not only should the mummies be disallowed to leave their respective rooms, they should also keep clear of the doors, so the heroes must enter to attack (if they so choose to). Ergo, the mechanic to make this quest work should be that Morcar/Zargon doesn't allow the mummies to leave their own rooms, and stay away from the square in front of the disappearing doors, forcing any hero that wants to kill them to enter the same room.
Mummie 4: same as 3. If a hero is inside the room with him and kills it, that hero will shut out all the others that are left behind in previous rooms. But the room with the keys is right there, so he can free the rest.
Then you can choose to track back, and take the short route out, or take the secret corridor filled with monsters.
Thoughts?
cheers.
Zargon has so few chances to really beat the Heroes, I like the idea of Zargon winning this time if the Heroes don't figure it out.
