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Post by elnombre on Aug 14, 2020 17:32:02 GMT
Recently played this for the first time, really enjoyed it but was disappointed at how short it was, and the fact the Svinn chief welched on his promise that I could have anything I wanted for saving his daughter. 10 gold and a key wasn't what I had in mind, chief.
Something I wondered was, if you leave your weapon in Dhumpus and don't have a spare you get -4 skill "until you find another". In the final passage you are instructed to restore Skill/Stamina/Luck to initial values, but I never found another weapon until I got a bow somewhere in Kharé. So it seems strange to have max skill again despite still being just as weaponless as I was when I was given the skill penalty. Or you could just assume that because you now have the freedom of the village and everything that you would have been given one, but I wasn't keen on this.
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kieran
Baron
Posts: 2,453
Favourite Gamebook Series: Fighting Fantasy
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Post by kieran on Aug 14, 2020 17:48:25 GMT
Recently played this for the first time, really enjoyed it but was disappointed at how short it was, and the fact the Svinn chief welched on his promise that I could have anything I wanted for saving his daughter. 10 gold and a key wasn't what I had in mind, chief.
Something I wondered was, if you leave your weapon in Dhumpus and don't have a spare you get -4 skill "until you find another". In the final passage you are instructed to restore Skill/Stamina/Luck to initial values, but I never found another weapon until I got a bow somewhere in Kharé. So it seems strange to have max skill again despite still being just as weaponless as I was when I was given the skill penalty. Or you could just assume that because you now have the freedom of the village and everything that you would have been given one, but I wasn't keen on this.
Ah the classic Attack Strength/Skill confusion. I would assume you retain the penalty til you're explicitly told you acquire a replacement.
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Post by vastariner on Aug 14, 2020 23:05:43 GMT
So it seems strange to have max skill again despite still being just as weaponless as I was when I was given the skill penalty. Or you could just assume that because you now have the freedom of the village and everything that you would have been given one, but I wasn't keen on this. I think it makes sense that you get another weapon. The Svinn are not going to think you have a hope in Hades that you would beat a manticore with your bare fists. Unless you're a wizard.
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Post by Max on Oct 31, 2021 1:23:54 GMT
Was reading through this book tonight and noticed what might be a mistake (or just a red herring, like the Giant stool you can pick up for no apparent reason). When you defeat the Wolfhound in the Elvin village, you have the option to take its green jewel studded collar. No value in gold is assigned to it, and it isn't meant to be the jewel studded medallion for the ZEN spell (trying to use the spell in the snake pit later fails because it says you don't have the medallion). Is this an oversight?
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Post by CharlesX on Oct 31, 2021 5:52:28 GMT
SJ probably just included one or two useless objects over the Sorcery! series. Way fewer than IL.
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Post by Max on Oct 31, 2021 14:25:40 GMT
SJ probably just included one or two useless objects over the Sorcery! series. Way fewer than IL. Yeah, I thought that might be the case. It's just very odd in this case. TSH in general seems to lack redundant items so an optional item which is remarkably similar to a spell artifact is very out of place
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Post by vastariner on Oct 31, 2021 18:40:36 GMT
I assumed oversight. I was of the same opinion when playing through and getting to the same point.
After all, if you muck up the ZED spell, you could end up right back there with all of your spell equipment, because the book does not instruct you to take everything off your adventure sheet.
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Post by a moderator on Oct 31, 2021 22:05:59 GMT
After all, if you muck up the ZED spell, you could end up right back there with all of your spell equipment, because the book does not instruct you to take everything off your adventure sheet. That depends on which edition you're playing. The Wizard reissues have the ZED spell strip you of all equipment when sending you to an earlier book.
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Post by Peter on Nov 2, 2021 5:54:12 GMT
I think it is something that is deliberately similar to a spell item, so that you might mistake it for the actual item if you haven't learnt the spellbook thoroughly ("oh good, I need a jewel-studded ... um ... thing"), and be rudely disappointed when you try to cast the spell later ("medallion?! oh, no..."). You can find orange powder somewhere too, which seems like the same ruse.
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Post by Max on Nov 15, 2021 20:47:55 GMT
I think it is something that is deliberately similar to a spell item, so that you might mistake it for the actual item if you haven't learnt the spellbook thoroughly ("oh good, I need a jewel-studded ... um ... thing"), and be rudely disappointed when you try to cast the spell later ("medallion?! oh, no..."). You can find orange powder somewhere too, which seems like the same ruse. Where is the orange powder found? From what I remember it was in book 2?
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Post by a moderator on Nov 15, 2021 21:22:30 GMT
You can get some from the She-Satyrs in The Crown of Kings, IIRC.
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Post by CharlesX on Nov 15, 2021 22:12:24 GMT
I think it is something that is deliberately similar to a spell item, so that you might mistake it for the actual item if you haven't learnt the spellbook thoroughly ("oh good, I need a jewel-studded ... um ... thing"), and be rudely disappointed when you try to cast the spell later ("medallion?! oh, no..."). You can find orange powder somewhere too, which seems like the same ruse. IIRC it's deviously written something like "orange powder, which might come in handy for spell ingredients", which it definitely doesn't. Might just be remembering it wrong though.
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Post by vastariner on Nov 16, 2021 8:40:28 GMT
I don't recall that option but it would be a different fish of kettles to a jewel-studded collar/medallion. Not least as by that point you could have got yellow powder legit anyway.
Plus there's the problem with the Sham's vial - Steve's attention definitely failed there...
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Post by vastariner on Mar 30, 2022 16:56:10 GMT
Playing it as a wizard with Sk9 I found I could complete it without casting any spells. Thanks to a couple of very decent attack strength boosts. I did use spells in the boss fight for the sake of convenience - it would have been marginally in my favour fighting just with a sword - but there seems to be an unfairness in that you can HOT the manticore but it does no good at all. Should there not be e.g. a -8ST for it? Otherwise it's a useless spell unless you follow it with another one.
Also, by not using spells, the PC had no idea Jann would stop any spellcasting. Strange that the spell resistance does not work when it comes to the Missing Page spell...
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Post by vastariner on Apr 3, 2022 17:57:35 GMT
A few more thoughts on this.
Shamutanti is easy because it has to be. No point in having a hard adventure at the start of a linked epic. You want to feed an easy level to the player first and get them hooked on the overall concept. If you die in a Sk12 fight in the third paragraph, forget it.
It is however too easy to boost a wizard character to close to unbeatable in fights. If I were revising Sorcery!, I would leave the wizard's skill as is, but cut the damage in a fight down to 1St per round, and restrict the a/s bonuses (e.g. ban Alianna from giving the armband to a wizard). And via that make the fights more of a spell battle. So that literally every opponent can be beaten by a spell of a combination thereof. Add a spell - EAT - that permits a wizard, for 1 St, to transmute any organic object into provisions, so that there is more stamina restoration possible post-fight, so that casting spells remains an option. Doing so though makes the books a very different experience between wizard and warrior.
I would also cut down on some of the spells in order to give a wider choice in appropriate circumstances. FOF/WAL and ZAP/HOT are, functionally, the same. DOZ, DIM, SAP, and DUM are more or less the same. HOW and SUS are often interchangeable. I've no idea why YAP and RAP should be differentiated. FIX and ROK have the same effect. And so on. It would be more interesting to have a combo of spells to win fights, as with the manticore; such as being able to use, say, GOD, only if you first DOZ an opponent thus giving you time to cast a second spell.
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Post by Peter on Apr 4, 2022 7:41:08 GMT
Depending on how you play and what decisions you make, you can gain certain advantages in the subsequent books. If you pick up spell items you have more options later on, if you gain combat bonuses you will lose less stamina, and of course there are a few significant things that I would need to hide in a spoiler warning if I mentioned them.
So it is easy to get to the end, but it is not so easy to set yourself up for success in the whole series. This takes more careful consideration (as well as some trial and error).
I think the Alianna armband option is a bit of a loop-hole. As it is written, you can choose either, but I'm sure the intention is for you to restrict yourself to the appropriate choice. I have to admit that when I was younger I never considered the alternative - I had it firmly fixed in my mind that, as a wizard, I was not a good fighter so I could not rely on my sword, and instead I should focus on acquiring as many spell items as possible, because spell-casting was where my real strength lay.
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kieran
Baron
Posts: 2,453
Favourite Gamebook Series: Fighting Fantasy
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Post by kieran on Apr 4, 2022 10:17:13 GMT
I think the Alianna armband option is a bit of a loop-hole. As it is written, you can choose either, but I'm sure the intention is for you to restrict yourself to the appropriate choice. I have to admit that when I was younger I never considered the alternative - I had it firmly fixed in my mind that, as a wizard, I was not a good fighter so I could not rely on my sword, and instead I should focus on acquiring as many spell items as possible, because spell-casting was where my real strength lay. Not sure I agree - it seems quite plausible to me that a wizard may want to work on his weaknesses rather than build his strengths. Unfortunately, a warrior who has the same mindset about gaining some magical devices just gets given a bunch of useless junk and then in all likelihood goes on to get munched by the overpowered manticore. Although the warrior can benefit from asking Fenestra about magic (hey, maybe they have an academic interest in it) so it's not all bad.
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Post by soulreaver on Apr 23, 2022 4:58:01 GMT
I'm curious - what do people think is the 'intended' way that paragraphs 221 and 265 work? In 221 you're in a cave with the floor covered in 'small pebbles' and you're told you can take whatever you want from the cave. Is there anything stopping me from taking a sack of 10,000 pebbles to fuel every POP spell I will ever need? And in 265 it tells me I can take whatever I think will be useful from the giant's corpse. The obvious thing to do is to take his teeth... but how many teeth does a giant have? I'm sure it's more than just 1...
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Post by CharlesX on Apr 23, 2022 5:38:38 GMT
It doesn't seem even a touch unreasonable to think 'covered in pebbles' could mean a hundred or something, neither a giant would have a similar number of teeth to a human being (10 or 15 or something). Both spells are useful but hardly game-breaking. Sorcery! doesn't have rules for encumbrance, and even if it did adding 5+ pebbles and\or giants teeth isn't the most cogent argument for one.
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Post by vastariner on Apr 23, 2022 9:07:44 GMT
The main benefit in taking a dozen pebbles/giant's teeth is to trade them with Fenestra later - although I'm not sure how useful anything fresh that she can give you is...
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Post by petch on Apr 23, 2022 10:11:47 GMT
And in 265 it tells me I can take whatever I think will be useful from the giant's corpse. I take it I was the only one puerile enough to make the long trek to Mampang with a rotting giant's schlong in my backpack, then. Look, those long nights out under the stars in the Baklands can get lonely...
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Post by bloodbeasthandler on Apr 23, 2022 10:18:30 GMT
I take it I was the only one puerile enough to make the long trek to Mampang with a rotting giant's schlong in my backpack, then. Look, those long nights out under the stars in the Baklands can get lonely... Alas, petch you were not the only one.I don't know if that makes you feel better or not. And with regard to your second sentence, I might recommend you casting the ROK spell on it as soon as possible...
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Post by zoove on Jan 4, 2024 5:10:16 GMT
Just doing a replay after a few years since the last one. Had a question. If you get cursed by Allianna, you have to drop 2 skill points. If you talk to the villagers at Dhunpus, you lose your weapon and if you don’t have another you have to drop 4 skill points.
But then if you bathe in the Crystal Waterfall at Biritanti you can restore skill to units levels. However, if you’re the victim of a curse and you still don’t have a weapon, it feels like cheating to restore your skill. The text doesn’t explicitly note this but I left my skill levels low as it felt like it would be wrong to do otherwise. Anyone else ever run into this situation? Or have a thought on how to have handled it?
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Post by thealmightymudworm on Jan 4, 2024 5:57:09 GMT
And in 265 it tells me I can take whatever I think will be useful from the giant's corpse. I take it I was the only one puerile enough to make the long trek to Mampang with a rotting giant's schlong in my backpack, then. Look, those long nights out under the stars in the Baklands can get lonely... I take it I was the only one puerile enough to make the long trek to Mampang with a rotting giant's schlong in my backpack, then. Look, those long nights out under the stars in the Baklands can get lonely... Alas, petch you were not the only one.I don't know if that makes you feel better or not. And with regard to your second sentence, I might recommend you casting the ROK spell on it as soon as possible...
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Post by CharlesX on Jan 4, 2024 12:42:37 GMT
Just doing a replay after a few years since the last one. Had a question. If you get cursed by Allianna, you have to drop 2 skill points. If you talk to the villagers at Dhunpus, you lose your weapon and if you don’t have another you have to drop 4 skill points. But then if you bathe in the Crystal Waterfall at Biritanti you can restore skill to units levels. However, if you’re the victim of a curse and you still don’t have a weapon, it feels like cheating to restore your skill. The text doesn’t explicitly note this but I left my skill levels low as it felt like it would be wrong to do otherwise. Anyone else ever run into this situation? Or have a thought on how to have handled it? I've just flicked to ref 204 of Shamutanti Hills and the authorial intent sees to be unclear\guesswork. Crystal Waterfall does cure diseases along with restoring Skill, but explicitly says "but not curses". Mentioning "for washing away your wounds" might imply you shouldn't gain the Skill you lost for losing your weapon. My interpretation would be no to part one on the basis the ref mentions you aren't cured of a curse but are wasing away wounds, and no to part two on the basis you've lost skill because you've lost your weapon not because you're physically wounded. Which brings up an unrelated point about why you have a Skill penalty instead of an attack strength, and when you would get it restored; I believe Jackson didn't bother with making these sorts of things clear because they are neither true path nor interesting ways to fail.
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Post by schlendrian on Jan 4, 2024 20:53:26 GMT
I take it I was the only one puerile enough to make the long trek to Mampang with a rotting giant's schlong in my backpack, then. Though, taking that schlong and carrying it on such an adventure is kind of a dick move, tbh .
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Per
Traveller
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Posts: 150
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Post by Per on Jan 4, 2024 21:32:45 GMT
Is this what they refer to as the "unwritten option"?
If book 4 were to ask you outright if you have a giant's dong, would that be valid gamebook design?
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