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Post by marblefigure on May 20, 2019 20:53:19 GMT
Can't you get one from a Klattaman?
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Post by arekkusu on May 21, 2019 2:03:41 GMT
Can't you get one from a Klattaman? No. You can obtain a Sun Jewel from a Klattaman at tSS:251, but not a Jewel of Gold.
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Post by marblefigure on May 21, 2019 13:11:26 GMT
Just an instance of Jackson not thinking things through. A pity, since the Sorcery! series was unusually well planned for Fighting Fantasy. On the Wizard path, gameplaywise the only flaw was the life or death luck test on the lake in part three. That could easily be fixed by giving Fenestra's luck talisman the property of granting a free luck test.
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Post by Wilf on Jun 16, 2019 23:46:25 GMT
Just an instance of Jackson not thinking things through. A pity, since the Sorcery! series was unusually well planned for Fighting Fantasy. On the Wizard path, gameplaywise the only flaw was the life or death luck test on the lake in part three. That could easily be fixed by giving Fenestra's luck talisman the property of granting a free luck test. Libra can restore your stats for you, so calling on her beforehand would maximise your chances of being Lucky.
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Post by johnbrawn1972 on Jun 17, 2019 17:04:00 GMT
Just an instance of Jackson not thinking things through. A pity, since the Sorcery! series was unusually well planned for Fighting Fantasy. On the Wizard path, gameplaywise the only flaw was the life or death luck test on the lake in part three. That could easily be fixed by giving Fenestra's luck talisman the property of granting a free luck test. Libra can restore your stats for you, so calling on her beforehand would maximise your chances of being Lucky. Not sure about this.
The stamina restoration probably takes precedence.
I would suggest using the two luck pendants to push the probabilities as far as possible. I agrees with the rule interpretation Champskess takes where the different pendants are both valid because they are different.
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Post by Ed on Jan 28, 2022 17:34:48 GMT
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Post by bloodbeasthandler on Jan 28, 2022 17:50:33 GMT
I'm not a mod so hope you don't mind me diverting your question off the solutions thread, Ed, and onto here... Yeah, I dunno. I can't say I'm a fan of the 'baddy crawling through a porthole to get you' style. Is that a snattacat we've got on the Seven Serpents? If so its physique looks a bit more humanoid than I might have expected. More were-creatureish than quadruped. But then I've never had a tiger climb through a little window at me. Maybe that's what their legs go like. And Crown of Kings - is that the Archmage? If so, for me the Archmage is always going to look like John Blanche's original cover, but I do like what Robert Ball has done. I would like to see the whole figure, though, not just the head. All this is better than the Crystal of Storms cover though.
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Post by Ed on Jan 28, 2022 19:07:37 GMT
Agreed but I've no idea what either of those new covers are supposed to represent in terms of the actual books.
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Post by a moderator on Jan 28, 2022 19:52:06 GMT
I suspect that bloodbeasthandler is right about the cover of Serpents showing a curiously bipedal Snattacat. Crown could be depicting the Netherworld Demon emerging from Farren Whyde's corpse.
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kieran
Baron
Posts: 2,453
Favourite Gamebook Series: Fighting Fantasy
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Post by kieran on Jan 28, 2022 21:12:40 GMT
It looks like it has a serpentine neck so is it one of the hydra heads?
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Post by bloodbeasthandler on Jan 28, 2022 21:35:44 GMT
I suspect that bloodbeasthandler is right about the cover of Serpents showing a curiously bipedal Snattacat. Crown could be depicting the Netherworld Demon emerging from Farren Whyde's corpse. That was my initial idea but I discounted it because I thought [hoped] that they knew that we've already got an illustration of that creature in the book, and that Scholastic cover doesn't look anything like it. Maybe I was giving them too much credit. Edit: Kieran. - yeah... what IS that behind the head? Is it another face, another head that the demonic face has emerged from? Another edit: Or short I say, according to the FF site, the Arch image of Kahkabad
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Post by a moderator on Jan 28, 2022 22:10:03 GMT
I suspect that bloodbeasthandler is right about the cover of Serpents showing a curiously bipedal Snattacat. Crown could be depicting the Netherworld Demon emerging from Farren Whyde's corpse. That was my initial idea but I discounted it because I thought [hoped] that they knew that we've already got an illustration of that creature in the book, and that Scholastic cover doesn't look anything like it. Don't the Scholastic books have new interior illustrations? If they're not reusing John Blanche's artwork, they may not feel obligated to stick with that image for the creature. And if the cover illustration of the Scholastic Kharé is supposed to show the same creature as the Penguin and Wizard covers (and I'm not sure what else it could be), they already have form for deviating from established appearances.
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Post by a moderator on Jan 28, 2022 22:25:39 GMT
It looks like it has a serpentine neck so is it one of the hydra heads? It's a possibility. A bit of an unusual choice if so, but it wouldn't be the oddest pick of encounter to put on the front of a FF reissue.
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kieran
Baron
Posts: 2,453
Favourite Gamebook Series: Fighting Fantasy
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Post by kieran on Jan 29, 2022 0:59:30 GMT
It looks like it has a serpentine neck so is it one of the hydra heads? It's a possibility. A bit of an unusual choice if so, but it wouldn't be the oddest pick of encounter to put on the front of a FF reissue. The link doesn't seem to work for me.
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Post by a moderator on Jan 29, 2022 1:22:24 GMT
How about now?
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Post by CharlesX on Jan 29, 2022 6:32:42 GMT
Link didn't work for me before but defs works now.
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Post by bloodbeasthandler on Jan 29, 2022 9:34:53 GMT
Don't the Scholastic books have new interior illustrations? If they're not reusing John Blanche's artwork, they may not feel obligated to stick with that image for the creature. And if the cover illustration of the Scholastic Kharé is supposed to show the same creature as the Penguin and Wizard covers (and I'm not sure what else it could be), they already have form for deviating from established appearances. Ah! I should have thought of that. Yes, you are right. If and when I see the book in the shops I'll see if the cover tallies with the interior illustration. It's a possibility. A bit of an unusual choice if so, but it wouldn't be the oddest pick of encounter to put on the front of a FF reissue. I wonder how they choose what to put on the covers. Does 'snattacat' strike us as a good choice for a Seven Serpents cover? Was Fenestra the Sorceress an odd choice for the old version? Were we very nearly treated to a jib-jib or a disease-ridden she-satyr corpse on the new Crown of Kings over?
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Post by vastariner on Jan 29, 2022 13:22:12 GMT
Goatlike ears for no. 4? Netherworld Demon, surely.
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Post by Peter on Feb 3, 2022 1:58:53 GMT
Yes. The sabre-like teeth suggest a cat of some kind. The face super-imposed over another face suggest a double identity or usurped body, such as the Archmage/Farren Whyde/demon situation.
I guess they didn't want to show one of the serpents, as there are supposed to be seven, not a big one plus six others. Apart from them, the most significant opponents would be the baddu-beetle or the snattacats. Maybe the wraiths. The beetle and wraiths had good internal illustrations in the original, so if they do so again in this edition, the cat makes a logical choice for the cover. And they are hard to avoid, whichever route you take, whereas the others are only on one pathway and therefore easy to miss.
In the final book, everything is leading up towards the archmage encounter, so the cover should reflect that. Other than that, the birdmen were introduced in this book as the dominant native creatures of the high, inaccessible peaks of High Xamen, so perhaps they would have been the second-best choice for cover illustration.
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Post by vastariner on Oct 16, 2022 21:05:20 GMT
Some thoughts on a recent replay. 1. It's imbalanced. The bit before you get to Fenestra is often extremely eerie, there are some encounters that remain mysterious even now, and it's a genuine achievement to get through it - if you're not overpowered from the first two books. Then, when you get to Fenestra, it's 4 serpents in about 30 references. Suddenly you're zhoonked through to the finish. Was there a deadline/maximum words limit? 2. One of the least logical instadeaths in FF: you get to the lake without the whistle. Fenestra should be giving it to you anyway given that she's on your side. But the idea that an adventurer who has spent a week or so slogging through chaotic lands is just going to sit there and give up when faced with a lake is farcical. If nothing else, why is there no option to use Libra to get over? 3.The snattacat is a bit of a daft idea but it hints at the chaotic magic nature of the Baklands, which we see with some of the encounter creatures - perhaps this could have been ramped up a bit more with the PC? Like having some magic either backfire or be up to 11?
4. You have a surprising number of allies in the Baklands...
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Post by terrysalt on Oct 17, 2022 6:52:26 GMT
Some thoughts on a recent replay. 1. It's imbalanced. The bit before you get to Fenestra is often extremely eerie, there are some encounters that remain mysterious even now, and it's a genuine achievement to get through it - if you're not overpowered from the first two books. Then, when you get to Fenestra, it's 4 serpents in about 30 references. Suddenly you're zhoonked through to the finish. Was there a deadline/maximum words limit? This is my biggest complaint about the book. That and the fact that the sun serpent may as well not be in the book at all for all the impact it has on your quest.
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Post by vastariner on Oct 17, 2022 19:31:58 GMT
I didn't mind the sun serpent bit because it was a neat twist and also a kind of test if you could work out whether you could use the serpent ring against it. What might have been interesting is to have the sun serpent escape at some point in book 4...
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Post by Peter on Oct 18, 2022 9:26:09 GMT
I didn't mind the sun serpent bit because it was a neat twist and also a kind of test if you could work out whether you could use the serpent ring against it. What might have been interesting is to have the sun serpent escape at some point in book 4... And also it makes Fenestra a real character, with motivations of her own.
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Post by misomiso on Oct 18, 2022 13:05:25 GMT
Yes it's strange as this book is often the most enticing of the Sorcery series but the execution remains very strange.
The concept is so interesting, but as others have said it feels very rushed; it feels that it really needed to be around 600-700 entries to get the whole story done, but this was probably not needed / too much for publication at the time.
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Post by bloodbeasthandler on Oct 18, 2022 19:43:05 GMT
I didn't mind the sun serpent bit because it was a neat twist and also a kind of test if you could work out whether you could use the serpent ring against it. What might have been interesting is to have the sun serpent escape at some point in book 4... And also it makes Fenestra a real character, with motivations of her own. I think it works well, too. It makes a nice change in an FF book for YOU not to be the one having to collect up all the objects/kill all the baddies. Here is an enemy of the 7 Serpents taking one down and helping you out. You might get to the end of the book in your first reading having beaten 6 of them, thinking you've failed to bag the lot... but then are told nope, all 7 are taken care of. I quite like it.
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Post by alziel on Jan 19, 2024 14:42:57 GMT
Nice to see the return of John Blanche's original illustrations for the Scholastic reprint of this title, but it's a travesty that this version has cropped off the top and bottom sections of the trader caravan's illustration opposite reference 315! They've snipped off at least one price tag by doing this (for the Chainmail on the bottom shelf), so no player with this version of the book is ever going to be able to purchase that item unless they happen to spot the reference when flicking through! (or unless they have played before and happen to remember the corresponding reference!)
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Post by scouserob on Jan 19, 2024 14:53:35 GMT
They've snipped off at least one price tag by doing this (for the Chainmail on the bottom shelf), so no player with this version of the book is ever going to be able to purchase that item unless they happen to spot the reference when flicking through! (or unless they have played before and happen to remember the corresponding reference!) Wow! That really is a terrible error, orphaning a paragraph of the book. The lack of care and quality control is saddening. 🙁
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