Temple of Cthulhu
| “ | The temple of Cthulhu consists of many concentric circles of columns. You will surely encounter many Cultists there, who believe that a pilgrimage to the inner circles will bring them closer to Cthulhu himself, and Grimoires which surely contain many interesting secrets.
The circles in the temple of Cthulhu are actually horocycles. They are infinite, and there is an infinite number of them. |
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The Temple of Cthulhu is a sub-area of R'Lyeh which can be accessed after collecting 5 Statues of Cthulhu (10 in Orb Strategy.) The treasure is Grimoires. The player can only collect Grimoires from the N'th horocycle in the temple, where N is the number of Grimoires he has already collected. So if the player has already collected 3 Grimoires, he must enter the 4th horocycle (or deeper) in order to collect more Grimoires. In general this means one Grimoire per horocycle; however, it is also possible to enter several layers of horocycles at once and then pick up a whole bunch of Grimoires from the same inner circle.
Enemies
Cultist
Fire Cultist
Cult Leader
Tentacle
Items
Grimoire
Strategies
The deeper into the Temple the player enters and the more Grimoires collected, the more enemies will spawn and the more dangerous it becomes. The big statues of Cthulhu come in handy here; the player can swap places with them, and they block the way of all monsters except cult leaders. This can be exploited to keep monsters at bay or trap Tentacles. The Orb of the Dragon can also come in useful: instead of throwing it directly at enemies, it can be used for blocking off the paths of incoming enemies. It is especially useful for trapping Tentacles and forcing them to withdraw, and for stopping Cult Leaders who are not stopped by the big statues of Cthulhu.
One configuration to avoid is to swap places with a big statue of Cthulhu and end up surrounded by walls and statues. Since you cannot push statues when your tile is on fire, all it takes is for one fire cultist to throw fire and your day is ruined. Instead, always make sure there's an alternative escape route whenever you push a statue (or look very carefully that there are no fire cultists around) in case things go awry suddenly.
Tentacles can also sometimes be useful when escaping from cultists, especially cult leaders: if your Orb of the Dragon has run out and cult leaders are hot on your trail, dodging behind a tentacle can slow them down enough for you to make your getaway. Similarly, if you can somehow wedge a non-leader cultist in between, then you can use a statue to block the cultist, the cult leader will also get stuck behind him. This is generally much more dangerous to execute than dodging behind the inert body of a tentacle, though.