Crystal Hour Glass



Unique to the Catacomb Adventure Series, the Crystal Hour Glass is an incredibly powerful find. It is a magickal artifact that, when picked up, stops time for all but Petton Everhail. While time is stopped, the Player is free to move around, pick up items, and heal. While the player can't actively attack in this temporally frozen state, any Magick Missiles, Zappers, or Xterminators fired will remain in place, ready to be fired off the second time resumes. While the projectile limit will prevent this from being abused too heavily, the item is still incredible at giving the player an advantage when facing down bigger groups due to the ability to get into a good position or slip away from foes.

Unlike all the other spell items, Crystal Hour Glasses are used immediately and not added to the player's inventory like the spell orbs or Cure Potions are. The player must grab them and use them as they come, rather than pick them up and save them for later. They're also extremely fragile, like many treasures in the Catacomb Adventure Series, and will be destroyed if shot.

Important Warning
The Crystal Hour Glass, while incredibly powerful, also screws a great deal with the game engine. Saving a game while a Crystal Hour Glass is active, or loading a save of a game with an active Hour Glass can cause save instability, corruption, and render the game unplayable.

The manual even cautions about this: "When you find one of the rare Hour Glasses, save the current position of the game before proceeding to experiment with a time-frozen world."

The effect is mostly avoidable by not saving when a Crystal Hour Glass is active.

Trivia

 * The Crystal Hour Glasses and their function pre-dates the bullet time features of later games like Requiem: Avenging Angel, Max Payne and F.E.A.R..