Locked Chest

This page describes a secret.

The Locked Chest and its Key are made on the same level, the one level of the Mines that holds the Udjat Eye: the chest in a nook in the rock, and the Key in place of one of the level's treasures. Carrying the Key to the chest opens it, and the Eye pops out. Unlike a Chest, it can't be opened with up and the attack key, and it never holds a bomb.

The Key is picked up and thrown as any item is (Throwing): crouching over it with empty hands, the attack key lifts it, and while he holds it, it points the way he faces ^{[3] [4]}. When the Key touches the chest while the player is holding it, the chest opens: the Key leaves his hands and is used up, the chest plays its opening sound, and the Udjat Eye pops out of it, up at 2 pixels a step and across at up to 3 either way, as the chest vanishes between two puffs of smoke ^[1]. Picking up the Eye puts it on (Udjat Eye). A Key that touches the chest without being held, thrown at it or lying beside it, does nothing ^{[5] [6]}.

In the clip, the player picks up the Key from a ledge as a bomb he dropped by the entrance blows open the way down, and carries it down to the chest without letting go: the chest opens as the Key touches it, and the Eye pops out ^{[7] [8]}.

The chest is heavy, like a Crate: the player can pick it up and carry it higher than other items, and throws it at 4 pixels a step plus his own speed, rising at 2, or at 4 upward ^{[9] [10] [11]}. He can't hold the chest and the Key at once, and the chest opens only to the Key in his hands, so it's the Key that has to be carried to the chest. Either of them, thrown faster than 2 pixels a step into a monster, takes 1 hit point from the monster nearest it, as any thrown item does ^[12].

The level that makes them is level 2 one time in 3, level 3 one time in 2, and otherwise level 4: the roll is made on each of those levels until one has made the Key ^{[2] [13]}. On it:

• The chest goes in a nook, a space one block high with rock above it and a wall beside it. Each nook that gets no Web rolls for it, at 1 in 8 for the first and one likelier for each that fails, so by the eighth nook it's certain ^[14]. If no nook takes it, it goes beside the exit instead: on its left if that's open, else on its right, else on the exit ^[15].
• The Key takes the place of one of the level's treasures (gems, gold) that isn't inside a block. Each takes a roll of 1 in 8, for up to seven passes over them, and if none wins, the first of them is taken ^[16]. Only the Key's making ends the rolls for later levels: a level with no treasure lying in the open would make the chest and no Key, and the next of levels 3 and 4 would roll again ^{[13] [17]}.

The Key can be anywhere in the level, and sometimes in a pocket of rock that nothing leads into (The Udjat Eye's key sealed in rock), the chest with it at times, which a Bomb or the Mattock has to break open ^[6]. In the second clip, two bombs have opened such a pocket, and the player crawls the Key under the low rock to the chest inside ^[18].

No shop sells either, and the level editor has no tile for them.

• Exits. The Key isn't heavy, so carried through a level's exit it's in the player's hands on the next level, and drawn with him on the screen between levels, the HUD showing it in the box for the held item ^{[19] [20] [21] [22]}. It opens nothing there: no later level makes a chest ^[23]. The chest is heavy, and the player sets it down at the exit, so it stays on its level ^[24].
• Bombs. An explosion throws the chest and the Key away from it without breaking either ^[25].
• Lava. Either one that touches lava stops and sinks, and is destroyed once it's under the surface ^[26]; the Key lost there is the Eye lost for the game.

• The Key is always one of the level's loose treasures, so on a level with a locked chest, a key lying where a gem or gold would be is the one.
• Keep the Key in hand all the way: only a held Key opens the chest.
• A Key lost in lava or left behind can't be replaced: no later level makes another chest or key.

• Opening the chest switches it to its open sprite, and then destroys it in the same step, so the open chest is never drawn: the Eye comes out between two puffs of smoke instead ^[27].
• A commented-out line in the game's drawing code would have shown the player's distance to the chest above his head ^[28].