Eye of the Beholder 2 Walkthrough - The Silver Tower, Level 1
By Daniel D'Agostino, 2011-09-30 / EOB2 Walkthrough / EOB2 Info
Overview
The Silver Tower is the first of three towers that you need to complete. You gain access to it from the Temple of Darkmoon's entrance chamber (where you slew the first two clerics), by blowing the four horns in any order in front of the Silver Seal (the "carving of the four winds").
In this tower you will take the Test of the Cloth, which is done by recruits wanting to join the Order of Darkmoon. There are several difficult puzzles, the most notorious of which are probably the mouths on Level 3. Although there are ways to get through anyway, you will save yourself a lot of hassle if you are in possession of five rocks and three bones before you start this tower.
The monsters you will encounter here are quite tough. Those on the first three levels can paralyse you, poison you, or both. On the fourth you will fight against beholders, which are extremely powerful. More on these when we get to Level 4.
Arrival
When you go up the stairs, you see the apparition of an elderly priest. He welcomes you to the Test of Faith by telling you to trust only yourself - words that you will need to keep in mind for the upcoming trials.
After that, you will see many electric beams. These will hurt your whole party if you step in them, and it is very easy to lose someone like San-Raal in them (which is why I opted not to take him this time round). Passages left (north) and right (south) lead directly through active beams, while to the east (straight ahead) is a whole collection of beams, but some of them turn on and off in patterns.
The Northern Rooms
Step through the beams to your left (taking damage in the process) and you will find four rooms. After resting, check each one of them.
In one room, you will find a mantis warrior and a +1 polearm. In another, you will find just a mantis warrior. You will immediately find out that these monsters are very fast attackers and will paralyse your characters most of the time. Remove Paralysis is a useful spell here.
Another room has an injured mantis warrior, and you can choose to kill it, heal it, or leave it alone. Leaving it alone doesn't do anything, and you will be asked the same thing the next time you come back. If you heal it, it will attack you and you can kill it anyway. But if you kill it while it's injured, you get no experience points.
In the final room you will find Tanglor, a Fighter/Cleric who can join your party. What is really strange about this NPC is that he totally looks like a dwarf, but his character sheet says he's a half-elf.
The Eastern Area
Make your way back to the entrance. Since you can't rest here, take a brief trip downstairs to get back to full health.
The area full of electric beams to the east has a few beams that turn on and off in patterns, allowing you to reach the other side almost unharmed. However, several mantis warriors await at the other end, so you must be quick to kill one of them and walk off the beam before it reactivates. After killing the handful of mantis warriors there, you get a bone key and a regular dagger.
At the end of the hallway is a lever that will turn off a number of electric beams in the area you just crossed, allowing safe passage both back to the entrance and to the areas north and south (except for one beam at the south) of the entrance. Among the electric beams you can also get a -2 cursed axe, which isn't worth the trouble at all, considering you have to get hurt pretty bad just to get to it.
Go through the door beside the lever. This area has three passages. One is completely empty. Another gives you the -2 cursed long sword "Hunger", which you need to keep. In the final passage you will find a niche between a couple of cryptic plaques. If you put something in the niche, it transforms into a wand of lightning (casts Lightning Bolt). Any subsequent item you put in the niche becomes the last one you put in.
Back at the hallway with the lever, open the other door using the bone key. A button opens the next door, where you will find a mantis egg. Attack it and a mantis warrior bursts out, which you can then kill. Note: if you aren't carrying any bones, save the bone key for later by skipping this part.
Since there is nowhere else to go from here, go back to the entrance.
The Mantis Nest
Go south through last beam. There are two doors here, and one can be forced. Give the mouth three bones in exchange for a bone key.
Through the other door, you get to two locked doors, for which you need a mantis key and a copper key respectively. Even if you still have a copper key left from earlier in the game, you can't just bypass this area and go upstairs (you'll get stuck later). Use a mantis key to go through the other door for now.
After killing the mantis warriors here, you will be surprised by more mantis warriors at the end of the next corridor, as they will throw a glass sphere at you. Move quickly to avoid it, and dispatch them.
From the corridor, go to the right (the direction opposite to where the mantis warriors were) and you will end up at a pit. There is a button beyond the pit, and another to your left. Throw something towards the pit from a distance. The pit closes, and a new one opens, which you can close with the button on the left. For this little puzzle you get a mantis key.
Now, go in the other direction (where the mantis warriors were). In the room to the left you will find mage scrolls of Blur and Dispel Magic, while the room to the right gives you iron rations. At the end of this passage is a locked door.
Use a mantis key and head for the now open door. After killing the mantis warrior, you need to break the eggs and kill the mantis warriors that come out of them one by one. If you go towards the end of the room, they will all burst out of their eggs together, and rip your party to shreds.
Once all the eggs have been purged, head to the end of the room where there are two green gems sitting in eye sockets in the wall. Take the left one out and put it back in, and the wall will disappear. Here you get a mantis idol, a glass sphere, and a copper key. Now you can go back to the copper lock you found earlier and go upstairs to Level 2.