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Post by terrysalt on Nov 1, 2022 19:07:14 GMT
Minimum stats won't work as there's 2 unavoidable damage at the start. Skill 1 stamina 3 might be viable with your new strategy. Spoiler tags either because I'm enjoying my own deviousness or because I'm not sure I'm on the money: That's exactly the question that I'm raising. If you want to pick up the word 'when', you have to lose 2 Stamina, I agree, which is a bummer if you've rolled 2 for Stamina.
But now the situation is a bit different because the question is: If you only have 2 Stamina points, what if you make no attempt at all to pick up the word 'when' (at first)? Can you dodge the Stamina loss and still find your way to the monastery? If so you might have picked up a Stamina point or two before the crunch point.
I don't want to labour this too much in case I've made a mistake. Ah, that one is my fault. I thought it was a required part of the solution. I didn't realise it was only on the "when" path.
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Post by CharlesX on Nov 1, 2022 20:03:13 GMT
If you only have 2 Stamina points, what if you make no attempt at all to pick up the word 'when' (at first)? Can you dodge the Stamina loss and still find your way to the monastery? Yes, you can do it. Abandoning Hani or going cross-country at the start means having to beat the Mudworm (tricky with 2 Stamina even if you start with 6 Skill and reduce the Mudworm's Skill to 6). It also means you get the codewords 'art' and (if you abandon Hani) 'never' so the message will be messed up. So these options are no good.
So, you're going to have to try to ambush the mercenary instead. This requires a Ferocity roll. Rolling under your Ferocity score will send you to the arena - it's difficult to escape as you need to win a tough combat and then pass a Ferocity roll and even if you make that, you will get the word 'arena' so that's no good. So when ambushing the mercenary you need to roll equal to or greater than your Ferocity score instead - this shouldn't be too hard as if your Stamina is only 2, your Ferocity will be 2-7. Doing this will send you to the slave mines. If you escape from these (this require passing a Luck test), you can then go on to the monastery. The first codeword you will get is 'offers'. However, a possible issue with any of these looping strategies is you have to record the words in the order you acquire them. So you can't get the proper message if 'when' isn't the first word you get. As you say this is a possible issue - to me just shuffling the words is less problematic than missing the word 'when', which we've already said is debatably an option (and if we are saying it is one, the looping strategy would have no purpose in terms of getting better game results).
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Post by thealmightymudworm on Nov 2, 2022 2:03:21 GMT
If you only have 2 Stamina points, what if you make no attempt at all to pick up the word 'when' (at first)? Can you dodge the Stamina loss and still find your way to the monastery? Yes, you can do it. Abandoning Hani or going cross-country at the start means having to beat the Mudworm (tricky with 2 Stamina even if you start with 6 Skill and reduce the Mudworm's Skill to 6). It also means you get the codewords 'art' and (if you abandon Hani) 'never' so the message will be messed up. So these options are no good.
So, you're going to have to try to ambush the mercenary instead. This requires a Ferocity roll. Rolling under your Ferocity score will send you to the arena - it's difficult to escape as you need to win a tough combat and then pass a Ferocity roll and even if you make that, you will get the word 'arena' so that's no good. So when ambushing the mercenary you need to roll equal to or greater than your Ferocity score instead - this shouldn't be too hard as if your Stamina is only 2, your Ferocity will be 2-7. Doing this will send you to the slave mines. If you escape from these (this require passing a Luck test), you can then go on to the monastery. The first codeword you will get is 'offers'. However, a possible issue with any of these looping strategies is you have to record the words in the order you acquire them. So you can't get the proper message if 'when' isn't the first word you get. Yes the route you've described in the second paragraph of the spoiler is exactly what I was thinking, including the point about you having a good chance of rolling more than 2-7. You may have saved my blushes in saying that escaping requires passing a LUCK test because I'd made a mental note that it was possible to escape even if you fail the roll, but you'd noticed it costs 2 Stamina from a bash on the head which is rather a crucial point! (Indeed it's impossible to win then even for someone who started with 3 or 4 Stamina as after losing 2 they have to roll under their Stamina on 2D6 – unless they somehow eat a provision whilst half-way through regaining consciousness 'Ugh, where am I? *Nom nom nom*')
I hadn't even considered reducing the mudworm's Skill to 6 – and actually I'd feel uncomfortable doing that unless there was at least proof that it was a misprint rather than a misjudgment. So that route would remain literally impossible for a player with Skill 1 or 2, and I wouldn't want to trumpet having raised the chance of a Skill 3 Stamina 2 player winning from exactly 0 to 1-in-150 billion or whatever it is.
For me the codewords order isn't a problem at all. Where do you record codewords on your Adventure Sheet? Surely in the Notes section. So all the codewords are swept off when you return through the double doors. This does have the consequence that you have the stats benefit of training in a martial art without being able to act as if you know it, but I'm comfortable with that. Figuring things out without knowing how you got there is not unlike the way that waking from dreams usually is, even when supernatural forces are not involved. In a way it's a shame otherwise I think you could have "Spider king offers wood when king offers sword" amongst other things.
Anyway I'll write up a couple of inserts for the solution now.
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kieran
Baron
Posts: 2,458
Favourite Gamebook Series: Fighting Fantasy
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Post by kieran on Nov 2, 2022 8:39:05 GMT
You may have saved my blushes in saying that escaping requires passing a LUCK test because I'd made a mental note that it was possible to escape even if you fail the roll, but you'd noticed it costs 2 Stamina from a bash on the head which is rather a crucial point! (Indeed it's impossible to win then even for someone who started with 3 or 4 Stamina as after losing 2 they have to roll under their Stamina on 2D6 Well, you get +2 to your Permanent Stamina for being a miner. So you could theoretically make that roll if you start with 3 or 4 Stamina (or 2 Stamina if you allow semi-conscious chomping), but your chances are pretty poor. I still suspect it was a misprint rather than Marc Gascoigne deliberately changing its Skill, but that's just me speculating I guess. You could still argue though that even if it was a deliberate decision on Gascoigne's part, author trumps editor. Ah yes good point. This then makes the mudworm and arena paths at least theoretically viable even if your chances are pretty poor.
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Post by CharlesX on Nov 2, 2022 14:28:33 GMT
It's almost ironic sleepyscholar\Paul Mason isn't commenting here - he's either (a) busy working (b) taking a laissez-faire approach (c) doesn't give a hoot (or some form of combination). If he hasn't just stopped using the forum altogether. As we've said the loop doesn't seem an invalid interpretation of the rules in any way at all, and might well be intentional, the notion of piecing together the message if you're unable to retrieve the word 'when' seems generous but not unthinkable.
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Post by thealmightymudworm on Nov 3, 2022 6:54:59 GMT
Well, you get +2 to your Permanent Stamina for being a miner. So you could theoretically make that roll if you start with 3 or 4 Stamina (or 2 Stamina if you allow semi-conscious chomping), but your chances are pretty poor. Ah yes, you're right. So a failed Luck roll dooms a Stamina 2 character to slavery rather than death. I think you may very well be right about it being a transposition of Skill and Stamina, but given that there are other possibilities – one of which you suggested yourself – it seems a big call to change it. Much bigger than e.g. assuming that the Kris knife gives an attack strength bonus as having a super-statted monster is merely cruel rather than nonsensical. But I wouldn't blame anyone for changing the stat just the same. I think it may be impossible to get to the monastery from the arena...? Not certain, happy to be corrected! But yes the mudworm route is theoretically possible.
Perhaps someone will be tempted to see if they can work in a defeat of the mudworm 'by the rules' – if they roll high stats and then visit the monastery before taking it on it's doable.
It's almost ironic sleepyscholar\Paul Mason isn't commenting here - he's either (a) busy working (b) taking a laissez-faire approach (c) doesn't give a hoot (or some form of combination). If he hasn't just stopped using the forum altogether. As we've said the loop doesn't seem an invalid interpretation of the rules in any way at all, and might well be intentional, the notion of piecing together the message if you're unable to retrieve the word 'when' seems generous but not unthinkable.
I don't think I've ever seen him on the solutions threads actually. Once I've got a reasonably clean set of inserts posted up here (I'm going to post a quick and dirty one today then tidy it up) I'll probably tag him in. I'm quite intrigued to see his reaction!
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Post by thealmightymudworm on Nov 3, 2022 19:52:24 GMT
This is a first brush attempt at modifying Champskees's solution. I'm still very much in the middle of fiddling with it all so it's probably not worth debating the fine detail such as the martial art to pick (or criticising my formatting!), but if anyone was keen to give TCT a playthrough to see if it sort of works go ahead. I am interested in hearing about any really thumping errors (e.g. following a modification definitely kills you, or that it is possible to get to the monastery from the arena). Insert: - If Stamina = 2 exactly: o Wait and try to ambush the mercenary o 2D6 Test Ferocity. (If you 'succeed' you arrive in the arena and can't win. Maybe if you escape, try to kill the mercenary leader.) o Lose provisions and wooden sword. +2 Ferocity o Wait to see what does next o +1 year to Age (-2 Ferocity, restore Temp to Perm Stamina) +2 Permanent Stamina, +2 Ferocity (net zero effect to Ferocity) o Determine to escape o +1 Provision o Test LUCK o If Unlucky o -2 Temp Stamina o If you survive leap up and try to escape o 2D6 test of Stamina. If fail (which you will if you started on 2 Stamina) ––> slave o If succeed +1 LUCK o If Lucky o -1 Temp Stamina o You have escaped the prison mine o Rejoin Champskees's solution at 'Head North' Delete both references to starting again. o If 'successful' on roll, skip to 'Start your journey to Baochou' o If 'fail' the roll but lose the fight o Restore Stamina to Permanent Stamina. o +2 Ferocity o skip to 'Start your journey to Baochou' Insert o If you have the word 'When' on your Adventure Sheet, continue with Champskees's solution, if not... o If your Age is 17 or your Skill is 1 or 2 and Ferocity 9+ o Pick cleaning duties o Watch and train in secret o Add word: crane, +1 Age (-2 Ferocity), +2 Skill, +3 Perm Stamina o If your Age is 16 or below o Choose kitchen or laundry (doesn't matter) o +1 Age (-2 Ferocity), +2 Perm Stamina o Say you are pleased with your lot o +1 Age (-2 Ferocity), +1 Skill, +2 Perm Stamina, + either monk's knife or monk's staff o If your Age is still 17 or under o Ask to be taught the martial arts o Add word: wood, +1 Age (-2 Ferocity), +2 Skill, +4 Perm Stamina o If your age is 18 or over o Say that you feel the time is right to leave the monastery o Add word: sword o Agree to help them o Rejoin Champskees's solution at 'You have a Red Robe' Insert o If you have the word 'wood' o Fight Sk 8 St 8 White Faced Monk – if you lose this fight you can't win: either become a monk or chase down the mercenary leader o Rejoin Champskees's solution at 'Give him your most prized possession' Insert o If you are missing either the word 'when' or 'sword' from your Adventure Sheet o Return through the double doors. o Scrub your Equipment and Notes sections and return to paragraph 1 and the start of Champskees's solution
(Incorrect monastery solution section edited out:) o If your Age is 16 or below o Choose kitchen or laundry (doesn't matter) o +1 Age (-2 Ferocity), +2 Perm Stamina o If your Age is still under 17 o Say you are pleased with your lot o +1 Age (-2 Ferocity), +1 Skill, +2 Perm Stamina, + either monk's knife or monk's staff o Otherwise/then ask to be taught the martial arts o Add word: wood, +1 Age (-2 Ferocity), +2 Skill, +4 Perm Stamina
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Post by CharlesX on Nov 3, 2022 21:22:08 GMT
Very good, only I wonder whether an Avatar which loses to Death's Messenger is necessarily one that's tough enough to survive Crimson Tide? IIRC Champskees once mentioned that to him odds of under 5% are statistically insignificant and therefore not worth the bother. I guess a rubbish Avatar always has the Mercenary leader path. I suspect if I were trying to beat Crimson Tide with a Skill 1 Hero I'd just roll up another one. Can you imagine a hero as weak as a Jib-Jib? .
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Post by Peter on Nov 4, 2022 6:59:00 GMT
Excellent discussion. This book is even more complex than I thought. I obviously haven't spent enough time on it.
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Post by thealmightymudworm on Nov 5, 2022 5:17:05 GMT
Very good, only I wonder whether an Avatar which loses to Death's Messenger is necessarily one that's tough enough to survive Crimson Tide? IIRC Champskees once mentioned that to him odds of under 5% are statistically insignificant and therefore not worth the bother. I guess a rubbish Avatar always has the Mercenary leader path. I suspect if I were trying to beat Crimson Tide with a Skill 1 Hero I'd just roll up another one. Can you imagine a hero as weak as a Jib-Jib? . Well there are two different questions there. Death's Messenger is the toughest challenge in the book in that there are only two fights you have to deal with, the other one being one of the monks who have the same stats as DM on the winning/final path and you can improve your stats before the latter. With this return loop you should be able to pick up at least 2 Skill and several Stamina points before encountering the monk and then Death's Messenger. So someone starting on e.g. Skill 3 Stamina 4 would struggle with a Skill 6 Stamina 6 opponent, but might be all right once bumped up to Skill 5 Stamina 10, especially with a bit of Luck use. Whether someone on stats of Skill 1 with low Stamina has much of a chance, I'm still not sure. If they can get their Ferocity down to 0 before they face the monk, that's worth 2 Skill points on it's own. It may still be that some stat combinations still have a pretty low chance of winning, but I would hope it's no worse that somewhere between 1 and 10%. I think I would play with those chances so long as I didn't have to suffer those odds on every playthrough. Once this is cleaned up, hopefully someone with maths/programming skills will try recalculating the percentages. I think we'll see much more green than red. (There are no pictures of 'YOU' in TCT – unless you include the wackadoodle front cover – so perhaps we can't be sure the hero isn't a jib-jib...? )
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Post by thealmightymudworm on Nov 5, 2022 5:25:50 GMT
Although I'm being cagey/defensive about the details of the modifications, I might as well explain my thinking on choosing the chores/martial art in the monastery.
As mentioned, there are two necessary fights in TCT: Death's Messenger and the monk on the clay bowl quest. Neither losing to Death's Messenger nor missing him/it destroys your chances of winning because of the double doors, but losing to the monk does.
The key thing to avoid is having a much lower Skill than the monk because, due to the way FF combat works, whilst having a slightly lower Skill score is bad, having a significantly lower Skill score is not just worse but much worse. Extra Stamina matters too – more so when Skill scores are similar. Reducing your Ferocity score in itself, e.g. to ensure 'failing' the Ferocity roll for DM is much less important. But if you can get your Ferocity down to zero (before you turn 18) you get 2 Skill points.
So your options are Laundry/Kitchen: +1 year (-2 Ferocity) +2 Perm Stam, [optional extra year, +2 Perm Stam, +1 Skill], learn 'wood' which takes +1 year (-2 Ferocity) + 4 Perm Stam Total effect: +3 Skill, + 8 Permanent Stamina, – 8 Ferocity
Cleaning: learn 'crane', +1 year (-2 Ferocity), +2 Skill, +3 Permanent Stamina
So the 'wood' route looks much better and mostly it is. However, learning wood leads to you fighting a Sk 8 St 8 monk instead of a Sk 6 St 6 one (the book doesn't ask about 'crane') so it leaves you 1 Skill point down relative to the monk compared to crane and needing to hit him once more, which might not be worth the extra Stamina. That is, I think e.g. a Skill 2 Stamina 4 adventurer might have a better chance if they became a Skill 4 Stamina 7 adventurer fighting a Skill 6 Stamina 6 monk with a bit of Luck than if they became Skill 5 Stamina 12 and had to fight a Skill 8 Stamina 8 monk.
This is all with a big caveat that again, Ferocity reduction to 0 will give you 2 extra Skill points. If the wood route will give you that, you should probably go with that regardless. That's why a high Ferocity of 9+ is relevant.
Alternatively, if your age is 17 (and this is presumably your second trip to the monastery, with another yet to come!) you only have 1 year to increase your Skill/Stamina. The cleaning/crane route lets you grab 2 Skill and 3 Stamina in that year whilst the laundry/kitchen only yields 2 Stamina with no difference in Ferocity reduction (-2 for the year – no more, no less) which may or may not take you to zero.
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Post by fingersonthepages on Nov 29, 2022 18:30:26 GMT
hot take: The mudworm being stupidly unfair and nigh unbeatable might be a mercy, because if you go that way you're ****ed.
Though if your reading this book you should definitely cheat, its complete bs. Or go read something better
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Post by thealmightymudworm on Dec 1, 2022 16:04:37 GMT
hot take: The mudworm being stupidly unfair and nigh unbeatable might be a mercy, because if you go that way you're ****ed. Though if your reading this book you should definitely cheat, its complete bs. Or go read something better That's one of the possibilities certainly. It's either that or some sort of cock-up – most likely a transposition of Skill and Stamina as Kieran suggested. What do you think of my strategy for making this book much less statistically brutal? (I'm assuming you haven't read through this whole thread yet.) I'm asking because I had a 'love/hate–but–mostly–hate' attitude to this book and it's making me tip the balance somewhat away from the hate.
As this thread has been bumped, can I just mention before someone else does that if you arrive at the monastery without 'when' aged exactly 16, I'm pretty sure my current guidance is wrong (indeed, possibly the worst combination of choices!). I think it may still be better to go for cleaning duties (and 'crane') unless your Ferocity can be taken to zero on the other route and not the cleaning one. Regardless, if you go for kitchen/laundry, it's better to say you're happy for a year at 17 than to learn 'wood'. I'll edit something to that effect in shortly – I just didn't want such a big goof to be pointed out by someone else first. I have also come up with a rough-and-ready solution for if you want to go via the white-faced monastery first and still go on to win. This definitely isn't the route that gives you the best chance, but I think it's doable with the right stats and I like this idea that you can learn any of the martial arts in this book (and just explore more generally) and still win. Also, I think it's possible to end the book with a SKILL higher than 12, which is pretty funny .
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Post by daredevil123 on Dec 12, 2022 21:29:29 GMT
I tried thealmightymudworm's solution today and am delighted to say I won. I restarted the book twice, taking me from age 13 to 20. I had pretty poor starting scores (Sk 2, St 5, L 10, F 6), so it was a pleasure to beef myself up to a Skill of 10 (as well as +2 Attack Strength bonus from the golden sword) and a Stamina of 24. It seems champskees has retired from the site, but I'd love to see how the probabilities of completing the book change when using this strategy.
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kieran
Baron
Posts: 2,458
Favourite Gamebook Series: Fighting Fantasy
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Post by kieran on Dec 13, 2022 0:09:20 GMT
I tried thealmightymudworm's solution today and am delighted to say I won. I restarted the book twice, taking me from age 13 to 20. I had pretty poor starting scores (Sk 2, St 5, L 10, F 6), so it was a pleasure to beef myself up to a Skill of 10 (as well as +2 Attack Strength bonus from the golden sword) and a Stamina of 24. It seems champskees has retired from the site, but I'd love to see how the probabilities of completing the book change when using this strategy. That's cool. How did you feel it worked from a narrative point of view? Did it feel like one long story or more like you were just restarting with boosted stats?
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Post by daredevil123 on Dec 13, 2022 20:28:44 GMT
I didn't find restarting to be particularly satisfying, narratively speaking - there's no good in-universe reason for your stats to be higher when you wake from your 'dream', and the fact that I followed a very similar path each time meant it didn't really feel like my character was learning anything. Still a lot of fun from a gameplay perspective though.
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Post by Wizard Slayer on Aug 15, 2023 12:38:11 GMT
...you can also head back through the double doors. If you do that, you wake up from the nightmare of what happened to your parents only to find it was a premonition and you are sent back to para 1 with your notes and equipment scrubbed.
...The paragraph says "Cross all your Equipment and Notes off your Adventure Sheet" but it doesn't say anything about your stats. So taking it as it's written you restart at say Age 15 or 16 rather than 13 with potentially higher Stamina, lower Ferocity and an extra Skill point or two. ...Is all this cheating? I don't think so – in fact I wonder whether it was intended. There are a couple of reasons why I wonder that, for example that reaching para 200 pointedly gives you the option of 'failing' Ferocity rolls permanently. Something that is seemingly useless after you are likely to have achieved it, but so crucial early on.
I'll write up a little cameo insert for the solution above shortly, but what do people think of this reading?
I think it's brilliant, and totally intended. Or if not intended by the author, is the sort of thing that somebody would have put in if they'd thought of it! I've only just completed this book myself, but missed out on the words When and Sword. Now I've found out where those two hide, with regards to 'When' I always dislike when certain throws need to be failed to win the book. Of course since Black Vein also had this (as well as a Turn to 1) it's practically fitting, but I love the idea that here it was introduced as a type of strategy than a punishment. The author definitely seemed to be playing around a lot with the whole FF concept. I know he said that he didn't consider the true ending to be the best ending (likely why it's not 400) but instead one where you live out a peaceful life was better. Although that means consigning your mother to slavery for ever!
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