Gnome Island (Good) – Champions: Return to Arms

This guide will walk you through the Gnome Island in the Pit of Ill Omen as a good-aligned player in Champions: Return to Arms.

Summary

Description

Before you leave the docks, the gnome Babik will beg you to save the eight gnomes in his village from sea monsters. If you do, he promises to take you somewhere by ship that only he can get to… which will be Gothic Castle. You don’t need to go to Gothic Castle at all to finish the game. You will want to go there later when you are carrying a Bag for some nice rewards, but not right now. It is difficult to save all eight of the gnomes especially if playing solo, so don’t worry about it and let them die. Later when you go to another plane and return to this one, the gnomes will all be alive and need rescuing again and that is when you should save them.

One thing of special note in the village is Babik’s Store, which is the only store outside of your hub. The quality of the equipment available at your hub upgrades at the start of each plane, but Babik’s Store’s quality is static. That means that if you haven’t finished the Pit of Ill Omen yet, Babik’s Store will generally have better stuff for sale than you can buy at the hub until you get to the Plane of Torment, and even then it is comparable. Consider buying the best equipment possible and waiting until the Plane of Disease or Plane of Fire before upgrading everything again. So ignore the death cries of the gnomes and step over their corpses and go shopping. After all it doesn’t matter if you are helping the good guys or the bad — you’re in it for the stuff!

All three of the Sea Cave entrances are marked by two torches outside. The first entrance is easy to miss and is just past the save point on the left side, the second is on the left wall opposite Babik’s Store, and the last is past the village directly away from where you left the boat. There is a side path on the right side of the village, but there is nothing down there except boxes of fruit, and it is generally not worth exploring. If you have the Conch and don’t care about the gnomes or Babik’s Store, you may want to enter the first entrance to the Sea Cave and later enter the village from the caves.

Saving the Gnomes

Before attempting to save the gnomes, make sure you have a save before the start of the fight to load in case you fail. You can get into the village by following the sandy path past the save point. When you want to actually save all the gnomes, rush to the village and ignore all boxes, the Sea Cave entrance and everything other than the sea monsters.

The sea monsters are the same large crabs you fought on the Island of Lost Hope. They attack the village from the three directions where you would find Sea Cave entrances. If you hear a monster, try and hit it with a ranged attack. This often makes it walk by the gnomes and come after you. If it doesn’t, you should try and get into melee so that the sea monster is trying to hit you instead of the gnomes. There are two types of gnomes, warriors (sword and shield) and peasants (bags). The warrior gnomes will run at the sea monsters while the peasants will try and run away, so if you see warriors running in a direction, you should attack in that direction even if you can’t see the sea monster yet. You want the sea monsters to come into the main part of the village because the gnome warriors will run at the sea monsters in a futile attempt to attack them, spreading themselves out and almost guaranteeing one of them gets picked off somewhere you can’t see. At least the peasants run away from the monster making it harder for the monster to attack them.

If you can see all eight gnomes, then don’t go looking for a sea monster, let them come to you. When the waves of sea monsters have stopped coming, you will get a notice of how many gnomes you saved. If you didn’t save them all, Babik will attend to the dead instead of taking you to Gothic Castle, and he will pay you a paltry amount of gold for your troubles. If that happens, the only way to get to Gothic Castle is to reload and try again, or reset all of the current planes by exiting the mission, going to a different plane, exiting again and then coming back to this plane.

Most Efficient Route

If not saving the gnomes or shopping, enter the 1st Sea Cave entrance on the left after the save point. Exit the Sea Cave so you come out the 2nd entrance. Make your way counter clockwise around the village to the 3rd Sea Cave entrance, and enter when you are ready to continue delivering the Conch to the mermaid.

Fastest Route

Follow the left wall into the village. Enter the 2nd Sea Cave entrance that is on the left side of the village.