Battling pesky do-gooder adventurers is the heart of the game. You'll need to battle a great many parties of adventurers on your quest. Each adventurer is a unique individual with his or her own strengths and weaknesses. Much of the strategy of the game comes from exploiting the weaknesses and guarding against the strengths of your opponents.

When you and your band of monsters encounter a party of adventurers, the game will go into combat mode. The upper left panel will list Murkon and his minions. The green panel next to it will list information about how Murkon is doing with regard to hit points, magic points, and so on.

The lower panel will list the characters you are facing, along with several key statistics, such as level, character class, hit points, spell points, AC, WC, and so on. For more detailed information about each character, you can use the 'Stats', 'Equip', 'Items', and 'View' buttons within this panel.

Moves

Combat is turn-based, meaning that every character and monster gets a chance to make one move in each round of combat. At the beginning of each round, you will be prompted to enter which move you would like to make in the round. The monsters and adventurers will decide for themselves what they will do.

The moves you can make in each combat round are as follows:

• Fight - Fighting is self-explanatory. Pick an opponent and engage him in physical combat. Note that you can only attack one of the first three characters in a party of adventurers (unless you are equipped with a long range weapon); the other characters remain behind the front line. Similarly, only the first three characters will be able to attack you or your monsters directly. The rear characters will only be able to fight if they are equipped with long range weapons.

• Invoke an Item - If you have any magic items you can invoke in combat, you may do so by selecting the item and hitting the 'Invoke' item. Note that many items may only be invoked once, after which they will be removed from Murkon's inventory. There are many different invokable items you may come across that you might want to employ in battle.

• Cast a Spell - As Murkon progresses through the labyrinth, he'll gradually recover his deadly attack magic. By casting a spell, Murkon will be able to launch a fire, cold, or poison attack at a particular opponent.

  The effectiveness of the attack depends on how many magic points are allocated to the attack. The 'Fire Spell', 'Cold Spell', and 'Poison Spell' stats (viewable from the 'View' screen outside combat) indicate the maximum number of magic points Murkon can allocate to a single attack spell. These values will increase as the game progresses.

  Also a crucial consideration is the fire, cold, or poison resistance attribute for the character you are attacking. Launching a fire spell against a character with 1 fire resistance will be much more damaging than casting the same spell against a character with, say, 10 fire resistance. Still, damage will still be done even against a high resistance. The elemental resistances of each character are listed in the yellow panel at the bottom of the screen during combat. Fire resistance is listed first, then cold, then poison.

  Obviously, these spell moves will not be available if Murkon is out of magic points. Furthermore, spell attacks will be unsuccessful if Murkon has been silenced by an enemy.

• Breath Attacks - As an alternative to casting spells, Murkon can breathe an elemental attack on his enemies. Breath attacks also use magic points and are also stronger when more magic points are allocated to the attack and when the characters have lower resistance values for the element of the attack. The main differences between spells and breath attacks is that breath attacks affect all opponents rather than just one but do less damage per target than an equivalent spell. Breath attacks also work even when Murkon has been silenced by an enemy.

• Run - If a band of adventurers is just too strong, Murkon can choose to run from the battle. When Murkon runs, any monsters that might have been travelling with him remain behind to be slaughtered, so only run from combat when there's no alternative, because Murkon will immediately find himself in need of a summoning portal. On the other hand, if Murkon is already near a summoning portal, running might be a valuable combat strategy: fight, run, summon fresh monsters, and fight again.

  Running may also be a good strategy if Murkon is low on hit points and lacks a way to heal himself in combat. Once out of combat by running away, Murkon (and his monsters) will automatically heal, and then he can face the adventurers again (who still have their wounds!) in perfect health.

  Beware, though: hitting a checkpoint causes any partially wounded parties to have a chance to heal their wounds. This invalidates a tactic where you partially wound a particularly tough party, run away, go hit a checkpoint to save your progress, then go try to finish them off -- because, upon hitting the checkpoint, that partially-wounded party will take the opportunity to restore themselves to full health.

Note that Murkon's 'Fear' statistic is important here. If Murkon has a positive value for 'Fear,' then there is a chance he'll be too afraid to act in the heat of battle. As Murkon wins some early victories, his 'Fear' will go down to zero and below. Once at zero or below, Murkon will only ever be too afraid to act if an enemy spell is used to raise his 'Fear' attribute above its normal value.

Battle

The center panel will narrate the events of the battle. Each character and monster will be given a chance to make a move in the battle. Characters and monsters will high agilities will tend to move before characters and monsters with low agilities. (Tip: If you find adventurers thrashing you and your monsters before you can fight back, there are two things you can do: one, summon more agile monsters; two, try raising your own agility.) Hit the 'OK' buttons to read the account of the battle.

Murkon's performance in battle is the direct result of his various attributes and his opponents. In hand-to-hand combat, for example, Murkon's dexterity and weapon class are balanced against his target's agility and armor class to determine whether his attack hits or not; Murkon's strength and weapon class are balanced against his target's armor class to determine how much damage is done by a successful blow.

Dying

If Murkon dies, time will be rewound to the point where you reached the last checkpoint. This may require you to replay some of the game, so if you have not reached a checkpoint in a while, play conservatively and pick your battles.

Victory

Rounds of battle occur until one side or the other is dead. If all adventurers are paralyzed or dead at the end of a round, the battle ends. The paralyzed characters are dispatched, and Murkon may then scavenge for gold and equipment.

Looting is an important component of the game. Be sure to check all the equipment each party is carrying, as there could be items you'll be able to use. In fact, you might want to examine the inventories of the characters before battle. If one character has a good invokable item in his inventory, you may want to try to kill that particular character first, before he has a chance to invoke the item against you, using it up.