*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=* = GANDALF THE SORCERER = * COMMODORE 64 * = FAQ / STRATEGY GUIDE = *=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=* Author: Sashanan Date: 26 September 2005 Version: 2.0 DISCLAIMER This document is a copyright of Peter "Sashanan" Butter, 2000-2005. All rights reserved. You are granted permission to make copies of this FAQ (electronical or physical) for your own, personal use. Furthermore, non-commercial, freely accessible websites are allowed to upload a copy of this FAQ as long as it is posted in its full, original form (including this disclaimer) and credited to Sashanan. You are not authorized to upload this FAQ on a commercial website and/or charge for its viewing, or make money off it in any other imaginable way, without my explicit written permission. Furthermore, you are not allowed to edit this guide in any way, use it as a basis for your own guide, or post it without giving proper credit. This is considered plagiarism. This FAQ is protected by international copyright laws and failure to comply with the terms in this disclaimer will result in legal prosecution. =============================================================================== TABLE OF CONTENTS =============================================================================== [1] Introduction [2] Overview [3] Controls [4] Basics [5] Strategies [6] Revision history [7] Final words =============================================================================== [1] INTRODUCTION =============================================================================== The older Commodore 64 action games are usually not known for their complexity. Plenty don't go beyond "left and right to move, fire button to shoot approaching aliens" or similarly simple concepts. Such games rarely require any strategy guides to help you play them either; there's little more to it than to work on your reflexes and get used to the quirks of the particular game to get your scores up. Gandalf the Sorcerer is a different beast, though. It takes some time to make sense of the game, then more time to learn how to play it, and plenty more to master it. This guide should be of help in all three of these phases. In order, I will give an overview of the game and your goal, the controls, everything you need to know about how the game works, and finally, the strategies to learn and master as you become an experienced player. It takes courage and patience to get into a game this old, and perhaps without the power of nostalgia there is not much incentive to do so. To the brave gamer that attempts it, though - and to the Commodore veteran who is revisiting an old friend - I hope my FAQ will be of some use to you. =============================================================================== [2] OVERVIEW =============================================================================== The bottom of the screen is taken up by a castle inhabited by one wizard named Gandalf (three guesses where that name came from) and three princesses; or, depending on your version of the game, they may be referred to as apprentices as well. I'll go with princesses. In front of the castle is an open field and beyond it a forest, and from this forest come hordes of trolls to storm the gate. Their goal: to make their way inside, kidnap the princess, and drag her back into the forest for whatever nefarious purpose they have in mind. You control Gandalf, and your goal is to stop these incursions. From the relatively safety of your castle, you can fire bolts of lightning at your enemies. Your powers are not unlimited, though. Every shot fired costs you a point of power, and when you run out, you won't be able to shoot anymore. You will periodically have to head to one of the side towers to recharge your wand by aiming it at a bright star burning in the night sky, but this takes time and the castle will be unguarded for the duration. As trolls slip past your guard, they will eventually manage to force open the gate and kidnap the princess. At this point, you will have to venture outside, kill the princess' captors and escort her back inside before the trolls can retaliate. This is a dangerous move, however, because the previously defenseless trolls can now retaliate with their deadly fire breath. As if all this isn't enough, poisonous spiders frequently slip from the forest into the castle to chase Gandalf down and weaken or kill him, and lightning can strike from the sky without warning, sapping some of your power and paralyzing you for a few seconds; sometimes enough for the trolls to get the upper hand. If a horde of trolls is wiped out entirely, Gandalf wins - for now. A more vicious horde is already underway, featuring faster, stronger and smarter trolls. Your goal is to fight off the trolls as long as you can, before you are ultimately overwhelmed. =============================================================================== [3] CONTROLS =============================================================================== The Commodore 64 has a joystick with only a single fire button, which somewhat limits the possible combinations. You use the joystick to either move Gandalf around, or fire his lightning spell. To aim your spell, simply move the joystick in the desired direction to move your targeting cursor. When you're at the top floor of the castle, you can aim either at targets on that top floor (which can only be the spider) or at the fields outside. On the bottom floor, you can only aim at targets which are also on the bottom floor, and not at anything outside. If you are outside yourself, you can aim anywhere. To fire your spell, simply tap the fire button. A bolt of lightning is fired and impacts at the location of your targeting cursor. Your targeting is then reset, and you will have to acquire a new target. You cannot fire more than one spell at a time. To move Gandalf around, press and hold the fire button, then move the joystick. In the castle, you can only move left and right. When you go through one of the doors at the sides of the castle, you can switch floors by moving the joystick up or down. You can also exit the castle through the main gate by standing in front of it, pushing the fire button and moving the joystick up. This is only possible if the gate has been forced open by the trolls; you cannot open it yourself, nor would you really want to. Outside, you can move Gandalf in four diagonal directions (horizontal and vertical movement is not possible). You can only exit this screen by entering the castle through the main gate again. Note that Gandalf cannot move if he is currently targeting a spell. You must either fire or return his pending spell to his hand before he can move again. Another thing to keep in mind is that your spell automatically returns to you if you stop targeting. This makes pinpointing a target (particularly a quick moving one) tricky. Fortunately, your spells have limited homing capabilities - once you align your sights on a target, your cursor will automatically track the target for a short time. If Gandalf has run out of power, he cannot fire any spells until he has recharged his magic. You can still target, but pressing the fire button will do nothing. =============================================================================== [4] BASICS =============================================================================== Gandalf starts each game with 50 power points. One point is spent for every spell he fires, 8 points are lost for being struck by random bolts of lightning (only occurs while you're on the top floor), and his power is set to 0 if he's bitten by the poisonous spider. Gandalf's power is shown at the top of the screen, and as a quick visual aid, he will also change colour as it's drained: POWER COLOUR 41-50 white 31-40 yellow 21-30 green 11-20 light blue 0-10 dark blue Gandalf can die in two different ways. First, if he is bitten by the spider when he has no power at all, he dies. (This happens most often when the spider manages to bite you twice in a row. The first bite reduces you to 0 power, the second kills you.) Gandalf is also killed if a troll hits him with his fiery breath when he ventures outside, regardless of remaining power. For this reason, it's important to be careful outside. Trolls appear from the top, left and right sides of the screen in the fields outside and will head for the gate. Any troll you fail to shoot down before he disappears from your sight will contribute to forcing the gate; the number of trolls necessary to do it decreases in higher levels. Once the trolls manage to open the gate, one will rush in to capture the princess and run back outside, leaving the gate open. Trolls will continue to march on the castle after this but no longer enter it; all they want is the princess. If you kill a troll from the top floor of the castle, he'll leave gold behind. The princess remains stationary at her cooking pot near the gate at the bottom level of the castle until the trolls manage to come in through the gate and she is kidnapped. At that point you will have to go outside to rescue her. If you do not, the gate will close and the next princess will enter to resume her cooking. The first princess is yellow, the second red, and the final one white. If all three princesses are captured and you fail to rescue the last one, the game is over. If a princess is dragged outside and you kill the troll dragging her away (which can only be done if you go outside as well, you won't see her and her captor from inside), she will stand in place, waiting for you to take her hand and escort her back to the gate. Another troll can move in to capture her at this point, or you can jump in, grab her hand and lead her back to the castle. Personally, I'd go for the latter. Once you bring her back inside, the gate will slam shut and the whole cycle of trolls trying to force it open will begin again. While the trolls are only after the princess and will not be a threat to you unless you venture outside to rescue her, there is also the slight matter of the poisonous spider. It will first appear halfway the first stage, coming from the forest just like the trolls and heading for the gate. You can stop it, but you'll have to be quick. If the spider reaches the gate, it will be able to slip inside as soon as the trolls manage to lift it just a bit. Once inside, it will run to one of the towers on the side, then periodically sweep across either the top or the bottom floor to the tower on the other side. If the spider touches you, you lose all your power instantly, and need to recharge in one of the towers. If the spider touches you and you had no power to begin with, you die. It's tough to kill the spider when he's already inside, because he's small, fast and hard to target. Even if you do kill him, a new one will appear almost immediately. You'll have to resign yourself to the fact that, especially in the later stages, there will almost always be a spider running loose in your castle. In later stages, the spider becomes quicker and quicker, and also spends less time lurking in the darkness of your towers. He'll come out more often. The spider cannot harm you while you're in a tower, but he can attack you both on the first and the second floor. If you're stationary or moving towards him while he bites you, you suffer only one hit. Be very careful when you run away from him, because if you're moving away from the spider as he touches you, he'll touch you twice in a row, which means instant death. To recharge your power as it depletes from shooting at trolls, being hit by lightning or being bitten by the spider, you can enter either of the towers to draw new power from the bright star at the top of the screen. However, you cannot do so while the thunder cloud moving across the screen is in front of it. Worse still, if the princess gets captured, the cloud will move in front of the star and stay there, forcing you to go outside (whether or not you try to rescue the princess) before you can recharge again. This is particularly annoying if you've been reduced to 0 power by the spider and cannot do a rescue to begin with. Scoring in Gandalf the Sorcerer is measured by the amount of gold you collect. Gold is left behind by any trolls you kill from the second floor, and is collected either automatically at the end of each stage, or by you when you venture outside to rescue the princess. Collecting the gold manually will yield more, but is obviously more risky as well. If you don't do it, however, a yellow critter will occasionally dash across the field outside, too fast for you to hit it, and it will steal any gold it touches. =============================================================================== [5] STRATEGIES =============================================================================== Any game of Gandalf the Sorcerer tends to go from calm and controlled to hectic. Once you've played your first few games, the basics are easy enough; destroy trolls as they arrive, hop into the tower if your power runs low, stop the spider when possible and if he does slip in, spend a little time chasing him down and destroying him. As the game moves faster, though, it gets much harder to keep things under control. Trolls will come in much faster than you can stop them, that damn spider becomes harder and harder to stop, and it seems that whenever you go outside to rescue yet another princess, odds are you'll be scorched by a troll almost immediately. So what to do? The following approach should help you survive long enough to clear at least a couple of hordes and set a decent score. - Remain at the top floor whenever possible, shooting trolls as they come. Prioritize the spider when it appears, it's better to let a few trolls through than him if you can help it. - You do not need to recharge until your power is almost out. No need to run to the tower just because your power is now 20. Don't go until you're out of power. The exception is when the spider is in the castle and waiting until your power is 0 could kill you. In that case, go to recharge when your power hits 9; this ensures that even if the game chooses this moment to zap you with lightning, you'll still have 1 power left and can survive the spider's bite. - Lightning is random. There's no real way to avoid it apart from not being on the second floor, and you need to be. You'll simply have to accept getting zapped from time to time. - If the trolls are getting close to entering the gate, you can still prevent the kidnapping. Quickly head down, stand in front of the gate and hold down the fire button. As soon as the gate opens and a troll steps in, he'll run right into you and your spell and die; and the gate slams shut again! - If the princess gets caught anyway, get outside to help her; if you don't, the thunder cloud moves in front of the star and prevents you from recharging, which can be very dangerous if the spider is inside. Once outside, aim very carefully, because missing a shot outside means you have to walk and collect your wand before you can fire again (it won't return automatically like it would inside). - When outside, focus on destroying the troll that captured the princess. This will also cause your wand to lie in place, but that works to your advantage now; any troll that moves in to capture the princess will likely die in turn. Move in quickly to grab the princess (don't get close to any troll) and bring her back inside. Until you're confident with how the trolls move outside, don't collect gold and don't be out there a second longer than you need to. Any kills you score while outside are useless: they don't yield gold, don't contribute toward finishing the level, and the trolls get replaced immediately. - Whenever you are outside, clear any monsters near the entrance before you reenter the castle. They will still be in the same positions when you come out the next time, so if you left anybody near the entrance, you could be killed almost instantly. On the higher levels, when the trolls move that much faster, this becomes more and more important. - If the princess has already been carried so far away that you can't get to her safely, and she's not the last one, let her go. You have three princesses, but only one Gandalf. Defend only the last one with your life. - The spider will inevitably get into your castle especially on higher levels. To beat him, move close to the opposite tower from where he is and wait for him to come out, then quickly target and destroy him. If he comes out on the other floor than you expected, quickly get away from that tower. When shooting at the spider, don't rest your targeting cursor on the tower he's going to come out of; as soon as he does, your cursor will reset and you will not actually hit the spider this way. - When hunting the spider, don't bother to recharge to power 50 every time. If he bites you, you're back at 0 anyway. Rather, recharge to 6-10 or so and try to beat him. If you manage it, you can recharge then (but be quick about it, new spiders come quickly!) - On higher levels - say stage 4 and up - the spider becomes too quick to realistically hit and he will frequently dash across the other level within a second, then appear behind you immediately. You also can't outrun him anymore at this point. Hunting him will only get you killed and/or give the trolls free reign. Give up on it and destroy trolls as best as you can, while evading the spider rather than killing him. Stay away from the side of the castle he's on, and if you can't get away from it in time, quickly enter the tower he's in and stay there until he moves. He cannot harm you when you're off screen. - If the spider is in the castle while you go outside, remember what tower he is in just before you do. He'll still be there when you return, and you never want to lose sight of his position. - If you cannot avoid the spider, don't run away from him, or you might suffer a double hit (which equals death). Stand still or move towards him. Best of all, stand still and try to pick him off with a spell close by. The chances are slim, but it's better than nothing. - This should go without saying, but you should always recharge fully between levels, while the computer is automatically collecting your gold. - As you get better at the game, you should take the opportunity to snatch gold when you're outside. But stay away from the edges of the screen where new trolls may appear, and stick with what you can safely snatch. In the earlier stages, you may even wish to allow the trolls to capture the princess, just to have an opportunity to go outside and snatch gold. This gets too dangerous in the later stages - although at that point, you probably won't be able to prevent the trolls from getting the princess anyway. - Realistically, you can finish the first three stages of the game if you stick to shooting trolls and grabbing the princess immediately once you need to. From stage four on, luck plays a bigger part. Trolls and spider alike move so fast that it's all you can do to get some quick shots in, head for the kidnapped princess again (expect them to get her every 30 seconds), and dodge the spider as best as you can. Once you get to the point where you can comfortably clear the first three stages, it's better to focus on grabbing more gold outside than on trying to clear even more stages. It all becomes a gamble here. Remember when you get this far that the lives of the first two princesses have no importance; only you and the third one matter. Save the first two only if it's easy to do so. =============================================================================== [6] REVISION HISTORY =============================================================================== v1.0: (2 Nov '00) First version of the FAQ. v1.01: (28 Dec '00) A few minor grammar corrections. v2.0: (26 Sep '05) Full rewrite. Barring any spontaneous insights, acts of God or interesting reader input, this will likely be the final version. =============================================================================== [7] FINAL WORDS =============================================================================== ABOUT THIS FAQ My FAQ writing dates back to 1996, when inspired by documents that came off "the internet" (something I myself had no access to at the time) inspired me to try some of my own. The addicted gamer that I was, I felt this was something I would want to do someday as well. This dream came true in late 2000 when I started submitting my first humble work to GameFAQs. My initial guide for Gandalf the Sorcerer (or is it Sorceror? Ah well, semantics) was the second one I ever wrote, and the first full one - my first tentative experiment was a boss guide only. Now, almost five years later, I decided it was time for a rewrite. The initial FAQ was well-meant but not very good. The info was there, but incomplete, spread out, and generally hard to read. With the experience I have in FAQ writing now, not to mention a better grasp of the English language, I was able to put together a much higher quality document. The kicker? It will probably still never be read. :) For questions, comments, suggestions, praise and criticism, please contact the author, Sashanan, at sashanan.faqs@gmail.com. This e-mail address is for FAQ feedback only. Whatever you wish to share about this document or Gandalf the Sorcerer, chances are I'll want to hear it. Any serious mail will be answered. If you wish to do anything with this FAQ except for just reading it, check the Disclaimer section at the top of the FAQ to find out what you can and can't do. When in doubt, you can always mail me. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Sashanan is a gamer and freelance programmer who ends each of his FAQs with a little section written in third person. This creates the illusion that it is actually somebody else writing it about him, which in turn implies that he is famous enough for people to bother doing so, and that strokes his ego. He is convinced this is the very reason why book authors do this as well. When he is not writing FAQs, Sashanan is usually found in the direct vicinity of his PC, playing twenty years' worth of games, or helping maintain the vast and sometimes unruly forums of GameFAQs. Sashanan lives in a quiet village in the Netherlands which has no facilities for gamers whatsoever. This document is a copyright of Peter "Sashanan" Butter, 2000-2005. All rights reserved. Disclaimer at top of document.