The Field of Glory would also receive a large expansion this update. Now if you explored two floors down you would find an interesting area with energy fields and if you brought a pick, you would uncover a hidden hole which let to Tibia's largest dungeon to date. NPC Marlene in Northport would inform you of this so it wasn't like you would have to pick the whole dungeon to find it.
These four floors of pure hell would be known as the Maze of Lost Souls (MOLS) and oh boy was it a doozy! The whole place was a complete maze with many paths you had to choose from at each split. What was worse was that some holes were called smallholes and could only be entered and couldn't be roped out of. You would be committed to finishing the maze, either finding your way to the lowest levels or returning to the maze entrance. Much of the maze was filled with nearly every creature in Tibia including a GS which was a very serious encounter to find in a single square path. Many players became lost while traveling the dungeon and it was not uncommon for players to take days to escape. If you entered without enough supplies, you could easily end up in a serious situation.
In the maze you would also come across a treasure room with a Great Shield and a Crown though there was no way to access these items. Players like myself spent an outrageous amount of time trying to get to the exact spot above the treasure to see if we could open a hole and loot the items. This was not an easy feat as the maze was incredibly challenging to navigate.
An update some years later added another line of squares to the top and bottom of the screen which revealed even more treasure in this room. After the jaw dropping treasure reveal in Kazordoon, I raced to see if this room would also be something amazing. Though rare, the Demon Armor, was not world shattering as the Dragon Scale Legs.
Additionally, there was a leaver near the end of the dungeon which a nearby signpost cheekily asked you to "Pull the leaver!", which would deploy a large energy field trap, damaging you. I won't even try to tell you of all the different paths, and even navigating by looking at the map was very difficult, so only through trial and error could you learn your way around the area.
If you managed to navigate getting to the end of the maze, which if you knew the path took exactly 45 minutes, you would reach the fabled Demonia, the city of Warlocks. Upon entering the short tunnel to get into the city you would come across a blackboard sign that proudly remarked "Welcome to Demonia!"
The city itself was a red brick structure set in a huge lava cave. Warlocks, which could be found here, were the most powerful monster magic user, possibly more deadly than even the Demon. They were a magical dynamo and hit with so much magical force that it was very easy to be killed if you were not paying attention. Making you way into the city would pit you against several at once, and often they would turn completely invisible so you wouldn't know where they were or how many were attacking you. Ironically some of their loot would be invisible too, and their loot would be changed entirely the following update. CIP had set them to drop the new Pear item but unfortunately forgot to set the sprite so though they dropped the food, very few noticed. Falx accidently discovered this secret when he was dragging items out of the body and displayed the invisible pear for other players in his Thais house.
Entering the entrance put you in a large L shaped hall with stone pillars. This led to your first Warlock encounter and a fountain at the end of the path which split east and west, both leading to staircases to the next floor. This next floor was a huge banquet hall with many Warlocks and a large immovable table. There were many chairs at this table and as Warlocks spend most of their time invisible you might first notice one by watching the chairs suddenly move away from the table without any indication as to why. Their UE and beam were very nasty, and they kept their distance during the whole fight and fled at nearly dead. The only way to kill them was to trap them in a corner and hit them with magic to keep them visible which put both the paladin and knight at a disadvantage as melee fighters.
There were three paths in the north of this large star shaped room. The east path led to a long hallway with a central lava pit with more Warlorks and even Elven Arcanists. In the center of the lava was the very rare Mightwand which was a rare artifact. Above this room by flanking stairs to the north was another room with more Warlocks which overlooked the area below by a huge banister. I believe bookshelves also existed on this level but no books were in this library.
The central staircase from the main star room led to a long hall with a small room at the end. This room contained many Warlocks and Dragons. Once per save the Crystal Wand and a multishot SD would spawn in the room which happened to be the Warlock throne room. Those who searched this area's flanking bookcases on the west and east walls would find books to read. On the table was one other treasure, a scroll from Ferumbras, demanding the warlock king Gelunidas deliver on his promised Twinkiller Rune or face grave consequences. His dry remark about the exaggeration of his death would have instilled fear that Ferumbras would return again, letting players know that they hadn't seen the last of this fearsome mage.
If you took the west staircase, you would find yourself in another hall which took you to an intersection in which two Warlocks would attack you and I think two Stone Golems could be found here. The path forward led to four rooms with beds and furniture and a final path led a short way north to some food. The exit portal was to the south in which a sign claimed this to be the "teleport to the surface" but given the previous luck with signs it was difficult to trust. Those who took the leap found that it would teleport you directly to the surface of the Fields of Glory. My first time I walked all the way back, not trusting the sign.
Though if you traveled instead north at the two warlocks in the hall you would instead find yourself at a library which had many bookshelves, a few solid tables and some chairs, and two staircases leading to the upper floor. The upper floor was also a library with the same features as the basement, but you could overlook the floor below. This was the largest library in Tibia and wow was there a lot to find. When it was first found by Taghor he collected all the books from it which were unlike anything else in game. Very colorful, and different these contained many interesting bits of information and Taghor wasted no time selling the approximately 50 books to another player, knowing that they would spawn again. These were so rare that I paid the guy who bought them 20k to have a copy made which I still have today. I couldn't contain my excitement from reading these which provided new lore to items and the Tibian world. The NK library has all these book available in their original form on the site found here.
The only added creature this update was the Warlock who had made an appearance several times before as part of special events. Now you would be able to challenge this dangerous monster in the depths of Demonia, the Warlock city. This creature was frightening, as it would turn invisible and cast deadly magics. Fortunately, they were incredibly weak to physical violence so if you could keep them visible, you could beat them up with melee attacks. They would always run away from you and liked to quickly flee at low health. A useful strategy was to trap them in a corner so they couldn't go anywhere and bring an explosion rune to keep them visible. Their loot at their introduction was different than the loot we know today, but I can't recall what that was other then the invisible Pear as few risked the maze.
You may know of Warlocks for the grand items they dropped, like the Blue Robe and Skull Staff. None of these items were dropped by them at this time and it is not known what they dropped in these early days other than the bugged invisible pear. Even after Demonia became more well-known it was considered too time consuming to travel to and was considered very difficult to hunt. Players were mainly a low level so they couldn't carry many supplies and though the loot could be very rewarding, the number of supplies used was vast and made for a short hunt. Walking 45 minutes to hunt only 15 or 30 minutes didn't seem like a good trade off so people avoided it. Players like me had other ideas and when Smoke, Dark Serphant, Kiyoshi and myself found the route there and realized we could exploit it, we worked on making the trip there shorter. We first learned that there was a quicker route through the dungeon if we placed two strategic rope chars in the dungeon to bypass large chucks of it. We could then drop the travel time to 20 minutes which was ok. Though all of us were knights we knew that UH and Explosion runes was mainly what took up space in our inventories, so we used mule chars to carry extra supplies and later just pushed huge quantities of runes through the dungeon. This allowed us to effectively overcome the time limitation on the monsters. Warlocks were very weak to physical attacks so if we surrounded them, we could prevent them from fleeing and never miss the explosion rune as we always knew where they were. This tactic allowed us to kill them very efficiently and soon we had huge amounts of money pouring in.
We were starting to get rich with this strategy and it wasn't long before others figured out what we were doing and found solutions on their own. Our secluded hunting spot was now busier which ruined much of the magic. Smoke, in his mischievous way, thought it might be a fun idea to plant a rumor that Warlocks dropped HotS but very rarely. This spread like wildfire and soon the place was packed with people killing these monsters, but no one ever received a HotS and eventually people moved on. Though we stopped hunting them, we still used the maze's natural defense to privately train in its depths.
