Chest Rooms

Spoiler Warning: This page contains spoilers which may affect your IVAN experience negatively

There are usually two Chest Rooms found randomly in the Gloomy Caves. These are large square shaped rooms with two layers. The outer layer is easily accessible, but the inner layer has walls made of meteoric steel and contains a large treasure chest, containing 1 or 2 special items.

Hmm... how do I get in?

Finding the Room

• Scrolls - Use a scroll of detect material and detect Mithril, which will reveal the large chest inside the room.

• Exploration - Sometimes the chest room will be connected to part of the main dungeon level, such as shown in the above picture. Keep walking around until you have explored the entire level map and you might get lucky.

• Mining - A pickaxe can be used to dig through walls, allowing you to explore parts of the level which aren't normally walkable. Be warned that mining will rapidly make you hungry!

• Ethereal - Polymorph into a ghost via a Ring of Polymorph or zapping yourself with a Wand of Polymorph and you will be able to 'walk' (float) through walls and see in a 1-square radius around you. This is a much faster way to 'scout' for Chest Rooms.

Accessing the Room

Once you've found the room there are several ways you can access the inner chamber concealing the chest.

• Acid - A bottle full of Sulphuric acid or a Wand of Acid Rain will corrode the walls to rubble. These are fairly common items and a good way for a beginning player to gain access the chests. Just throw the bottle or zap the wand at the wall and after a couple dozen turns it will dissolve. Make sure to have strong acid protection before you walk through the puddle or the acid will melt your feet off! A poor man's version of this is to vomit on the wall. This obviously will not dissolve the wall, but will eventually cause the wall to rust which makes it easier to dig through.

• Teleporation - With a scroll (or wand) of teleportation and with TeleControl, you can land right on top of the chest. Pick up the chest, teleport yourself back out, and drop it. Be sure that you try to teleport in the exact middle of the inner chamber and be sure that you have a 'return ticket' (ie; 2 scrolls) to teleport out before you go in!

• Tunneling - While very difficult it is not impossible to tunnel right through the meteoric steel walls. Use a Mithril or stronger pick axe.

• Wand of Door Creation - The wand will create a row of doors in the wall. You can then unlock them if you have the key of appropriate shape or you can just kick/explode them open.

• Explosions - A powerful enough explosion will destroy the walls outright. Be careful though, as this can damage the contents of the chest inside. Make use of backpacks full of gun powder, mines and wands of fireballs to get the job done.

• Ethereal - Polymorph into a ghost as mentioned above, then wait inside the room until you turn back into a human. A Ring of Polymorph is recommended for this purpose.

• Kicking - You can kick the walls to rubble if you have truly insane leg strength.

Opening the Chest

Once you get access to the chest, it's now a matter of opening it.

• Lock - These chests require special keys that are very hard to get a hold of. If you somehow have the key, use it!

• Kicking - It's much easier to kick the chest. Make sure it is set against a wall. If it's inside the inner room still, that will be fine. If you use the scrolls method to get it, make sure you drop it next to a wall. Then kick it into the wall until the lock breaks. You will need very strong legs and tough boots for this. Note that this may shatter fragile items inside, which is all the worse since it usually contains extremely valuable items.

• Change Material - You can always change the material into something softer. You will still need to kick it if you don't have the key, but it won't require as much leg strength. An easy way to do this is to get Loraticus angry at you and wield the chest as a weapon. Pray to Loraticus and he will most likely change it into banana flesh. This is much more useful than wasting a scroll of change material.

• Wand of Polymorph - Polymorphing the chest will work on the chest itself, revealing its content without altering it.

• Wand of Striking - One zap is usually enough to break the lock, at the severe risk of damaging the contents.

• Explosions - as above, a powerful enough explosion with obliterate the lock, at the risk of damaging the contents.