MisterDee wrote:Incidentally, was there a logic to the colormaze, or is it just blind pick after blind pick?
I don't think there's an optimal path through the colour maze, and if there is, like I said the difference is probably minimal. Other than the rainbow section where some mysterious soul sacrificed himself to heal us, there's only one other section that was purely beneficial (we can stop to pray for some dead souls and regain stat points). Every other section contain some sort of obstacle that we can get past with the right item or spell, so whether those sections are the 'right' place to go depends entirely on what items or spells we picked up earlier.
And as is usually the case, even if we don't have the right items or spells, the penalty is usually not serious, like a few points of STAMINA loss (that rats section, for example, there were several ways to get past it....the Speed Spell, Dispel Illusion spell, an ivory statuette of a cat will all get us past that, but even if we don't have any of those, we just get bitten for 2 STAMINA before we run away), so it really doesn't matter too much which path we take to reach Mordraneth.
There
are a few sections where we can get killed outright if we don't have the right item or spell, but those are extremely rare. Actually, there's only one of those I can remember in the colour maze, and we can escape from that with either a spell or an item (we had the crowbar, so we would have survived that one too).
angelfromanotherpin wrote:This seems like a beginner's book. It's quite forgiving, and has no challenging concepts. Unfortunately, it's pretty dull by veteran standards, mostly because it's also trite and predictable. There are no plot twists, there are no really distinct fantastic elements, it really does seem to be just 'go place, stab face.' Compare the similarly 'for beginners' Talisman of Death, which is running over with cool weirdness. Fuck, even Warlock of Firetop Mountain had the key-collecting sidequest.
Finally, the copious blind choices are still just bad writing. I can see an argument that if the consequences are minimal (such as a choice of hazards), then it can evoke the sense of being lost in unfamiliar territory. But even if it's true, it's still boring and disempowering, and at least one of those has to go. Just off the top of my head, I'd expect an illusionist's lair to be full of sensory cues that were false. You come to an intersection, one path echoes with sexy lady giggles, the other smells like baking bread, and neither lead to the kind of encounter those would indicate. It's effectively a blind choice, but it's much more engaging in the moment, and the result is more intriguing and disorienting than bland left vs right.
Can't argue against that.
I think the reason I had such fond memories of it is probably because it's one of the books I read it as a "beginner" to FF and gamebooks in general, probably in the same way a lot of FF fans would have fond memories of Warlock of Firetop Mountain (which I read much later and didn't care much about). The fact that I read it after absolutely failing to solve Creature of Havoc and House of Hell probably helped too, back in a time I was naively still trying to play the FF books legitimately and win fairly.
Anyway, with regards to the rest of the book that we missed......I don't think there's many that I'd go into detail. Mostly, they're the standard encounters that involves a fight, finding a plot coupon, or encounters that require the use of a plot coupon, sometimes a combination of 2 or 3 of the above. The first part of the dungeon, similar to the colour maze, contain many possible routes, but I think the "optimal" one involves going through them in such a way that we basically pass through ALL but one encounter (hence netting us every single possible plot coupon). But since, like I said before, missing a plot coupon is never lethal and seldom too punishing, it's not really necessary to go that route. There isn't any opponent I can recall with a SKILL above 9 other than Mordraneth himself. There's only one straight insta-death-trap that I know of in the entire book, and that's basically the "singing in the wind" that the scroll warned us about (which we never encounter in this playthrough). Basically, if we weren't warned about it and decide to follow the singing, it's immediate game-over.
At the crossroad before we entered the dungeon (where we chose to follow the feathers and encountered the tribesmen), we skipped one encounter, although that one terribly important either. Alkandis warned us about seeing Hobgoblin down that route, and he wasn't lying:
If we manage to stay out of sight, though, we can just let the dueling Hobgoblins kill each other, and rescue his prisoner:
He doesn't really have anything to offer us, though. If we show him the scroll, he just refers us to Alkandis. The only small benefit we get for that path is that we pick up a few extra gold for our shopping list with the tribesmen.
Speaking of which all the gold we picked up after entering the dungeon serve zero purpose. Money is only important for Alkandis' shopping list and nothing else.
We didn't really make the optimal picks for the shopping lost, although we probably got the most important one (Ebony Key). In fact, it's so important that the author decided to give us a chance to get it even if we don't have enough gold. Remember when we gave the tribesmen a gold upon the first encounter? That option would be important if we decide not to buy anything from Akandis later. Basically, if we refused to buy anything, Alkandis isn't happy about it and give us shabby lodgings.....unless we already gave the tribesmen a piece of gold, in which case we can avoid offending him by convincing him that we have no Treasure left. And he will offer us a return gift....which is the Ebony Key.
Personally, for the shopping list, I would have gone for Key, oil (gets us the healing incense blocks later), and the cat statuette (useful against the rats) or gem (gets us past the statue with LUCK bonus). The rope can actually be found in another part of the dungeon (although we missed that encounter), while the silver feather doesn't actually give us any material benefit. If can be used in an encounter, as a gift to this Bird Guy:
In return he basically gives us some information about the Razorbeak bird and hints about some treasure in its nest....which we still won't be able to access with some rope and grappling hook anyway (the grappling hook is found near the first part of the dungeon, where we'd have to fight a couple of weak Ratmen). Nothing we really need, though.
One minor difference in this book from standard FF is that several of the quest coupons can be used in more than one encounter. The Ebony Key unlocked 2 doors and 1 box for us. Our silver medallion could also help us destroy a certain Giant Beetle Illusion, although we didn't encounter it. The Bronze Ring protects us against the heat in the Red section of the maze as well as Mordraneth's fireball. And there was a bunch of keys that we could have gotten by killing a Troll in the dungeon. That's the bunch of keys that could have helped us free the pair of prisoners we encountered earlier, and also unlock Alsander's shackles. Speaking of which, here's the picture of Alsander smacking the torturer with Fire Globe:
Lastly, of course, there's the encounter with Mordraneth. Apparently, he didn't have enough time to trap both stairs with spells (despite knowing that we're there for some time), so if we picked the right stairs, we'd only need protection against the fireball (Bronze Ring) before we reach him. He won't have time for a second spell.
If we had Fire Globe, the spellcasting contest will be conducted like a single round of combat. Whomever wins the round gets to smack his opponent for 6 STAMINA before we then proceed up the stairs (if we survived).
If we used Speed, again we have to conduct it like a round of combat to determine if his fireball hits us before we finish our spell. If we succeed in casting our spell, we can run up one of the stairs. Picking the right stairs means we run up so fast that he has no time to cast any further spells, and we get a free hit on him before we proceed to normal combat. If we pick the trapped left stairs, then our speed spell counteracts his slowing spell, and he still gets to throw one more fireball at us before we reach him, but we still get a free hit because we reach him faster than he expected.
And that's it, I think.....the writing and design here is too standard for there to be much memorable encounters, so there's not much more I can add.
I've been thinking about whether to run another FF playthrough after this......would anyone here be interested in one of the new Wizard-published books. The one I have in mind is
Night of the Necromancer by Jonathan Green (who seemed to be the only FF writer besides Livingstone still actively writing for the series). This one is anything but standard, with the player in the role of a recently-murdered guy who has to not only identify the mastermind behind his murder, discover his own powers of as a ghost, look for allies within the remains of his household and find out which of them are still loyal to him, and of course seek revenge for himself, while protecting the last surviving member of his family from the murderer. Let me know if you're interested!
