=============================================================================== ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS: POOL OF RADIANCE (NES) WALKTHROUGH Version 1.0 Walkthrough By Doommaster1994 Questions/Comments? E-mail me at doommaster1994@yahoo.com =============================================================================== PPPP OOO OOO L P P O O O O L PPPP O O O O L P O O O O L P OOO OOO LLLLL OOO FFFFF O O F O O FFF O O F /\ OOO F || || RRRR A DDDD IIIII A N N CCC EEEEE || R R A A D D I A A NN N C C E || RRRR AAAAA D D I AAAAA N N N C EEE __||__ R R A A D D I A A N NN C C E |____| R R A A DDDD IIIII A A N N CCC EEEEE || || == ====== INDEX ====== 1. Storyline 2. Already-Generated Characters 3. My Characters 4. NPCs That May Join Your Party 5. Enemies 6. Copyright 7. Places in New Phlan 8. People of New Phlan 9. Computer and NES Version Differences 10. Walkthrough a. New Phlan b. The Slums c. Sokal Keep, Thorn Island d. Mendor's Library e. Kuto's Well f. Podol Plaza g. Kovel Mansion h. Braccio's Quest i. Textile House j. Wilderness Missions 1. Nomad Camp 2. Kobold's Cave 3. Valhingen Graveyard 4. Yarash's Pyramid 5. East Marsh 6. Buccaneer Base 7. Zhentil Keep k. Stojanow Gate l. Valjevo Castle m. Tyranthraxus' Place 11. Game Ending 12. Optional 13. Errors In the Game 14. FAQ 15. Comments and Responses 16. Cheats 17. Contacting Me 18. Glitches/Easter Eggs 19. Credits/Special Thanks 20. Other 21. Tavern Rumors 22. Updates ================ 0. Introduction ================ This is a strategy guide/walkthrough for my favorite game of all time. It was also the first game I ever played, which may be why it's my favorite. The game is both a first person and third person RPG (if you can call the Area option that.) I normally hate RPGs. Can't stand them. But this one somehow got me hooked. Maybe it was the beautiful graphics, or the amazing music, or the fun factor. Either way, it's my favorite game, and I'll take it to the grave with me. This was the first ever Advanced Dungeons & Dragons game. It was released on many home computers including the Commodore 64/Amiga, MS-DOS, Macintosh, and PC-9800. Unfortunately, the game only saw one home console port, and that was (obviously) the NES. Fortunately, it's (in my opinion) the best. Before starting this walkthrough, I'm going to assume you've already read the manual and are familiar with the menus, options, etc. You may say, "But I don't own the manual, I'm playing on an emulator/I only own the cart and/or box." You can find a manual scan on NintendoAge or Digital Press' website. I'm not going to post links here due to spam, but you can type it in Google and I'm sure you'll find something. If you still have trouble playing through this game, I have a full walkthrough on YouTube you can watch. It consists of over 40 segments though, each around 10 minutes long, so make sure you've got time to kill. If you're still having problems, please do not hesitate to contact me. My e-mail can be found at the top of this strategy guide, or you can send me a PM through GameFAQs. Please note that while I'm on GameFAQs frequently, it does not notify me whenever I get PMs, so message at your own risk. ============= 1. Storyline ============= The city of New Phlan is in ruins, as an evil spirit named Tyranthraxus has posessed the body of a bronze dragon and has plans to claim the entire Moonsea region. It's up to your party to defeat Tyranthraxus and restore New Phlan to it's original state. Along the way, you'll have side quests such as finding the source of the contaminated water in the wilderness and stopping it, or helping people or monsters so they don't join Tyranthraxus. ================================ 2. Already-Generated Characters ================================ If you have been confused with what characters to make, the game has some characters already made for you to use. They are: NAME RACE CLASS ALIGNMENT GENDER Gwydion Human Fighter Lawful Evil Male Felgar Human Cleric Lawful Good Male Goldleaf Human Magic-User Neutral Good Male The Famicom version (Japanese NES) has different names for the pre-generated characters: USA Name - Japanese Name Gwydion - Rampart Felgar - Ganglion Goldleaf - Aspect However, the game's manual gives you a party suggestion: Dwarf Fighter Human Magic-User Human Cleric Half-elf Magic-User/Cleric Elf Fighter/Magic-User/Thief It also tells you what weapons to buy for them: FIGHTERS: CLERICS: THIEVES: MAGIC-USERS: Banded Mail Banded Mail Leather Armor Darts Long Sword Flail Long Sword Staff Shield Shield Short Bow Here is an experience table (taken from the manual). For those of you not familiar with AD&D, everytime you win a battle, experience points (or XP for short) are divided among all your party members. Once your characters have enough experience points, they can go to the city's Training Hall and level up their character to get more HP, learn new spells, and even lower their armor class (AC). Note that each training session costs 1000 GP which seems like a lot, but later on in the game you'll have more than enough. Also, each time one of your characters is trained, they get a different amount of HP upgraded. For example, you could train your fighter and he'll go from having 10 HP to having 15 HP, but if you reset the game and train him again, he could possibly get 18 HP instead of 15. It's always different. Be careful because rapid resetting on an NES console could erase your progress so do it at your own risk. If you're using an emulator, you can just create a save state. Make sure you walk around a bit before you re-train your character or the amount they get will be the same. (Mind you, I'm not the best ASCII artist so this may look a little sloppy. Also this is my first time ever doing something like this.) Level Experience Hit Points Spells Per Level 1 2 3 _____________________________________________________________ Cleric 1 0-1,500 1-8 1 - - | 2 1,501-3,000 +1-8 2 - - | 3 3,001-6,000 +1-8 2 1 - | 4 6,001-13,000 +1-8 2 2 - | 5 13,001-27,500 +1-8 3 3 1 | 6 27,501+ +1-8 3 3 2 | _____________________________________________________________| Cleric 9-12 - - - | Wisdom 13 +1 - - | Bonus 14 +2 - - | 15 +3 +1 - | 16 +4 +2 - | 17+ +5 +2 +1 | | Note: Bonus spells are only available when the cleric is | entitled to spells of that level. For example, a 5th-level | cleric with a Wisdom of 18 can memorize the following spells:| _____________________________________________________________| Level Can Memorize | # Spells 1 5 | Per Level 2 5 | 3 2 | _____________________________________________________________| Level Experience Hit Points Spells Per Level 1 2 3 _____________________________________________________________ Magic- 1 0-2,500 1-41 1 - - | User 2 2,501-5,000 +1-4 2 - - | 3 5,001-10,000 +1-4 2 1 - | 4 10,001-22,500 +1-4 3 2 - | 5 22,501-40,000 +1-4 4 2 1 | 6 40,001-60,000 +1-4 4 2 2 | 7 60,001-90,000 +1-4 4 3 2 | 8 90,001+ +1-4 4 3 3 | _____________________________________________________________| Fighter 1 0-2,000 1-10 | 2 2,001-4,000 +1-10 | 3 4,001-8,000 +1-10 | 4 8,001-18,000 +1-10 | 5 18,001-35,000 +1-10 | 6 35,001-70,000 +1-10 | 7 70,001-125,000 +1-10 | 8 125,001+ +1-10 | _____________________________________________________________| Thief 1 0-1,250 1-6 | 2 1,251-2,500 +1-6 | 3 2,501-5,000 +1-6 | 4 5,001-10,000 +1-6 | 5 10,001-20,000 +1-6 | 6 20,001-42,500 +1-6 | 7 42,501-70,000 +1-6 | 8 70,001-110,000 +1-6 | 9 110,001+ +1-6 | _____________________________________________________________| You can have up to five of your own characters and 1 NPC total. If you want to use my party, here they are... ================= 3. My Characters ================= Here is my party that you can use for the best results when using this guide: Nicholas (Me) - Half-Elf - Fighter/Mage - Chaotic Evil - Male Goldleaf - Half-Elf - Fighter/Mage - Chaotic Evil - Female Thief - Human - Thief - Chaotic Evil - Male I also use the pre-generated character Gwydion and Felgar, so here's my line-up: Gwydion Felgar Nicholas Goldleaf Thief This is the inventory I buy my characters (the pre-made characters already have weapons which is one reason why I choose them.) Nicholas/Goldleaf - Long Sword, Shield (They also get bows, but there are a couple magical Short Bows you will find in the Slums, so don't bother buying anything at the store.) Thief - Just a short sword. ================================= 4. NPCs That May Join Your Party ================================= If you're not familiar with RPG games, NPC stands for Non-Player Character, in which the computer player controls the character. While they have some advantages to help your party, there are some things that may make you think twice about helping them; One thing is that after a battle, the NPC can take and hide their share. You may assume, "Okay, I can just trade any weapons they have in their inventory.", but no. They will refuse to give up anything in their inventory. However, there IS a way to get their items. Look in the glitches/easter eggs section to find out. Fortunately, this only applies to the NPCs in the training hall. The NPCs you find outside of Phlan don't do this. Names in parantheses are the character's in-game name, as there's not enough space to fit the whole name in. Update (12/17/2011): Added locations. Skullcrusher (Crusher) - Male - Human Level 4 Fighter Location: Textile House Skullcrusher was Councilor Cadorna's servant, but when he went to take on the evil forces in the textile house to reclaim Cadorna's family treasure, he was captured and locked up. Magician - Male - Human Level 6 Magic-User Location: Valhingen Graveyard He is found in the graveyard. This NPC is an NES exclusive, as he is not in the other ports. He will beg you to help him rid the evil forces of the graveyard. Pretty funny how he's about to cast a powerful spell while in combat but then just suddenly stops the spell... Oh well, I'm sure it's nothing... right? Princess Fatima (Fatima) - Female - Human Level 4 Fighter Location: Kobold Cave Fatima is the princess of the nomads. She came to the kobold cave to defeat the evil kobold king, but unfortunately was captured in her attempt. She will give you the chance to join forces with her in taking out the kobold king's army. Unfortunately, she will not leave the cave with you. Madman - Male - Human Level 1 Fighter Location: Mendor's Library The most useless NPC character in the game (and possibly the realms). He is a mentally insane guy who you'll find in Mendor's Library. You can take him to the temple in New Phlan near the dock if you want. Dirten - Male - Human Level 5 Cleric Location: New Phlan The bishop Braccio's servant. He will aid you to help reclaim the shrine across the river. Genheeris (Genheris) - Male - Human Level 7 Mage Location: Tyranthraxus' Lair Genheeris is Tyranthraxus' servant, and is the only mage in the game to be past full-level. Fortunately, you can get him to fight on your side. Here are the NPCs from the training hall. Remember, these characters can hide their shares after winning a battle. If you use my party, you shouldn't need to hire these guys. I'm pretty sure these are all of them, but if I missed any, then please shoot me an e-mail. Acolyte - Male - Human Level 1 Cleric Curate - Male - Human Level 4 Cleric Evoker - Male - Human Level 2 Magic-User Hero - Male - Human Level 4 Fighter Robber - Male - Human Level 4 Thief Theurgist (Theurg) - Female - Human Level 4 Magic User Warrior - Male - Human Level 2 Fighter ============ 5. Enemies ============ Here are descriptions of the game's long list of enemies. Some of these come straight from the instruction manual, but others aren't in the manual, in which the enemy will be listed NIM (Not In Manual). I will also give my own descriptions of the enemies. You'll also see a Rarity scale from 1 to 5, with 1 being extremely common to 5 being extremely rare (possibly only being fought once in the game.) You'll also see their location so if you want to fight them for the XP, you'll know where to go. I've also listed their HP and AC just so you get an idea on how difficult the enemies are. Remember, the lower their AC, the lesser chance an enemy has of being hit... AIDES (NIM): These are weak fighters, but can usually be armed with bows, so they can attack long-range without having to get near you. HP: 18 AC: 5 Location: New Phlan, Wilderness, Zhentil Keep Rarity: 3/5 AL-HYAM DAZID (NIM): Al-Hyam Dazid is a mage that you will fight if you battle the commandant of Zhentil Keep. In the NES version, he is credited as a 6th Level MU. HP: 22 Location: Buccaneer Base Rarity: 5/5 ANKHEGS: Burrowing monster usually found in forests and farming areas. It resembles a legged worm armed with wicked mandibles and sharply hooked limbs. (Ankhegs can also poison and spit acid on you, causing additional damage. In the southwestern part of the wilderness, there is a part where two of them lunge and attack your party.) HP: 40 Location: Wilderness Rarity: 3/5 BANDIT (NIM): These are easy enemies. They can only be found in the wilderness. You can parley your way out of a fight, but if you want the XP or money (and sometimes some cool items), then feel free to fight them. BASILISK: A giant eight-legged lizard. Once of the most dangerous creatures in the realms because their gaze can turn characters to stone! (There is only one of these in the game and it's a good thing. Pretty much a monster version of a medusa.) HP: 31 Location: Mendor's Library Rarity: 5/5 BUCCANEER (NIM): Need I explain what a buccaneer is? They are pathetic enemies which leave behind a pretty good reward for their difficulty. The only one that can be a challenge is the one found in The Pit in Podol Plaza, and even then, the game only calls him a buccaneer when he's a #th Level Fighter. HP: 4 Location: Podol Plaza, Wilderness, Buccaneer Base Rarity: 3/5 BUGBEAR: Hideous giant-sized goblin who stands over seven feet in height. Bugbears look clumsy but are strong, quick fighters with great stealth. (You won't find many of these guys in the game, but they are around. Without an experienced party, these guys can take you down. Try to use long-range attacks and spells.] HP: 16 AC: 5 Location: Slums, Stojanow Gate Rarity: 3/5 CAPTAIN (NIM): The captain is the leader of the Bucaneer Base. He will offer to sell you the boy for 35000 GP. He is a very strong fighter, in fact, he is stronger than Tyranhthraxus himself. He has more HP than Ty, and he has a bunch of assistance. HP: 110 Location: Bucaneer Base Rarity: 5/5 CENTAUR: These good creatures are half men and half horse. They are capable fighters and can be valuable allies. (That's just wrong because they don't ever help you in the game.) HP: 20 Location: Wilderness Rarity: 3/5 CLERICS (NIM): Clerics are basically magic users that heal other party members. HP: 1st Level: 8 2nd Level: 8 5th Level: 29 7th Level: 42 Location: New Phlan, Training Hall, Valjevo Castle Rarity: 3/5 COMMANDANT (NIM): The Commandant runs Zhentil Keep. He is not a friendly guy so I would highly suggest not battling him unless it's for the experience points and your characters are highly trained. Plus, he's got 20 more HP than Tyranthraxus. HP: 100 Location: Zhentil Keep Rarity: 5/5 CORPORAL (NIM): These guys are pretty much the 'police' of Phlan. They are easy to kill and they are not much of a challenge. They look like Aides. HP: 13 Location: New Phlan Rarity: 4/5 DIANE (NIM): I assume these are Fighter/Clerics since they share the same character portrait as the Male Fighter/Cleric from the character generation. They are only found in the secret section of the Pyramid in the wilderness. HP: 21 (or 20?) AC: 9 Location: Yarash's Pyramid Rarity: 5/5 DISPLACER BEASTS: Six-legged puma-like creature with two ebony tentacles growing from behind its shoulders. This beast has the magical ability to displace its image about three feet from it's actual body, making it an especially tricky opponent. (One of the harder enemies because of their HP, damage ratio, and low AC. Use paralysis spells such as Stink Cloud.) HP: 30 AC: 2 Location: Wilderness, Yarash's Pyramid Rarity: 3/5 DRIDER: A strange mix with the torso, arms and head of a drow elf, and the lower body of a spider. This horror is the wicked counterpart of a centaur. (A little story about Driders; They were originallly elves who took a test from their godess. If they passed the test, they would become Drow elves. If they failed, they were doomed to being turned into a drider. In combat, sometimes they can paralyze a character with their arrows or fire arrows even if your party is next to them.) HP: 36 AC: 2 Location: Wilderness, Yarash's Pyramid Rarity: 3/5 EFREET: A large, powerful genie from the elemental plane of fire. They are very arrogant and will only serve a powerful master. (Samir Awohl is the efreet's name in Pool of Radiance. You can use him to help kill the vampire.) HP: 55 Location: Kobold Cave Rarity: 5/5 ENVOY (NIM): The kobold king's 'agents'. They're not to be taken lightly, and can easily take your party out if you let your guard down. Paralysis spells work good against them. HP: 45 AC: 2 Location: Kobold Cave Rarity: 5/5 ETTIN: These creatures look like giant two-headed orcs. They have great strength and usually wield two spiked clubs that inflict terrible damage in combat. (There are only four of them in this game. Stink Cloud works great against them.) HP: 50 AC: 3 Location: Stojanow Gate Rarity: 5/5 FIGHTERS (NIM): Fighters are basically warriors with no magical knowledge. HP: 3rd Level: 18 4th Level: 30 5th Level: 39 6th Level: 45 AC: 2 7th Level: 62 7th Level (Dwarf): 50 8th Level: 87 Location: New Phlan, Stojanow Gate, Valjevo Castle, Wilderness, Yarash's Pyramid, Zhentil Keep Rarity: 3/5 FIRE GIANT: These wicked giants have flaming red hair and are immune to all fire attacks. They usually attack with giant two-handed swords. (A tougher variant of the hill giant. By the time you get to them, you should have the Haste and Stink Cloud spells which you can use to your advantage.) HP: 59 AC: 3 Location: Valjevo Castle Rarity: 4/5 GIANT FROG : These are giant carnivorous frogs. They are fast, dangerous predators that may be poisonous. (The game itself calls them poisonous frogs, even though they cannot poison your party. They are the easiest enemy in the game. No, really, they are.) HP: 4 Location: Sokal Keep, Textile House Rarity: 3/5 GIANT LIZARD: These are the giant cousins of the common lizard. HP: 16 Location: Kuto's Well, Wilderness, Lizardmen's Castle Rarity: 3/5 GIANT MANTIS: These are the giant version of the common mantis. These creatures are fast, strong, and have tough natural armor. (They don't do much damage but take a while to kill because of their large amount of hit points.) HP: 55 Location: Wilderness Rarity: 4/5 GIANT SNAKE: These are giant poisonous snakes. (I'd say the giant snake is without a shadow of a doubt one of the hardest enemies in the game since any successful hit, no matter how strong your party is, will poison and kill the hit party member.) HP: 25 AC: 5 Location: Wilderness, Valjevo Castle Rarity: 3/5 GHOUL: These are vile undead whose touch may paralyze a man in combat. They feed on slain bodies and attack all living creatures on sight. (As far as I know, they aren't much different from zombies, besides the fact that they can paralyze you. Have your clerics turn undead to try scaring them away.) HP: 10 Location: Textile House, Valhingen Graveyard Rarity: 3/5 GNOLL: These creatures are hyena-headed humanoids who stand over seven feet tall. (Don't let their size fool you, Gnolls are one of the easiest enemies in the game.) HP: 10 Location: Slums, Kuto's Well, Wilderness, Valjevo Castle Rarity: 2/5 GOBLIN: These are small humanoids common in the Realms. HP (Guard): 4 (Leader): 7 Location: Slums, Podol Plaza Rarity: 3/5 GUARD (NIM): Definitely the weakest human enemies in the game. However, they carry long bows and come in huge numbers. The good news is your fighters can sweep them if they are leveled up enough. HP: 4 Location: Wilderness, Zhentil Keep Rarity: 4/5 HILL GIANT: These are one of the smaller, more stupid giants, but they are still tough opponents. They usually carry large clubs. (Ah, I remember this enemy literally giving me nightmares as a kid. Use Stink Cloud and Haste.) HP: 41 AC: 4 Location: Valjevo Castle Rarity: 3/5 HIPPOGRIFF: These magnificent creatures have the forelimbs and head of an eagle and the body and hind legs of a horse. (I've always wondered why they're called hippogriffs when they have no resemblance of a hippo. Obviously, they're also known as Griffins.) HP: 18 Location: Wilderness Rarity: 3/5 HOBGOBLIN: These are human-sized, intelligent relatives of the goblin. (A little harder to hit than Orcs. Other than that, they're pretty easy.) HP: 6 (Grishnak): 24 Location: Slums, Textile House Rarity: 3/5 KOBOLD: These are small, cowardly humanoids who delight in pain and torture. HP (Regular): 3 (Leader): 4 AC (Regular): 8 Location: Slums, Kuto's Well, Mendor's Library, Podol Plaza, Wilderness Kobold Cave, Yarash's Pyramid Rarity: 1/5 LIZARDMAN: These are lizard-like humanoids. They are omnivorous but they have a particular fancy for humans. (One of the harder enemies, as they are hard to hit and can hit a character multiple times in one attack.) Location: Kuto's Well, Wilderness, Lizardmen's Castle HP: (Lizardman): 11 (Mutant Lizardman): 18 AC: (Lizardman): 4 (Mutant Lizardman): 3 Location: Kuto's Well, Wilderness, Yarash's Pyramid, East Marsh Rarity: 3/5 MACE (NIM): Mace is an orc cleric who controls the shrine across the river. HP: 25 Location: Shrine of Bane Rarity: 5/5 MAGIC-USERS (NIM): Magic-Users are also known as MUs or Mages. If you've played D&D before, you should know that they are able to cast spells. The only bad side to having them in your party is that they have very low HP, thus making them easy to get killed. HP: 3rd Level: 9 5th Level: 20 6th Level: 23 AC: 7 Rarity: 4/5 MEDUSA: Hideous women-creatures with coiling masses of snakes for hair. They can turn a person to stone with their gaze. (There's only one in the entire game and is only slightly harder than the basilisk in Mendor's Library.) HP: 30 Location: Tyranthraxus' Lair Rarity: 5/5 MERCHANT (NIM): These are traders. They are sometimes armed with bows and arrows, but if you parley, you can avoid attacks with them since they are good. They are usually accompanied by warriors called Sub-Captains. HP: 6 MINOTAUR: A huge creature with the head of a bull and the body of a man. These creatures stand over eight feet tall, and are dangerous foes. (One of the harder enemies because they can bang up your party quite good.) HP: 33 AC: 6 Location: Wilderness Rarity: 3/5 MUMMY: These are powerful undead with great strength. The mere sight of one has been known to paralyze a character in combat. The touch of the mummy causes a strange rotting disease. (Another enemy you fight only once, and fortunately, it's optional.) HP: 33 Location: Valhingen Graveyard Rarity: 5/5 NORRIS THE GRAY (NIM): Norris runs Kuto's Well. When you beat him, the well is yours (and Phlan's). HP: 25 Location: Kuto's Well Rarity: 5/5 NYMPH: These are extremely beautiful creatures that appear as ever-young females. They usually inhabit wild lakes in streams. (Note: I don't think these enemies actually made it into the game, but if you see them, please send me an e-mail of what they look like in the game!) HP: ?? Location: ??? Rarity: ?/5 OGRE: These are large, foul-tempered, ugly humanoids. They are strong fighters. HP: (Ogre): 21 (Ogre Leader): 32 Location: Slums, Podol Plaza, Sokol Keep Rarity: 3/5 OHLO (NIM): Ohlo is a wizard who lives in the Slums. He asks you to get a potion in the rope guild that he is not able to get for some reason. You can start a fight with him but be warned, it's not easy. HP: 9 Location: Slums Rarity: 5/5 ORC: These are vicious, pig-faced humanoids. (Probably the hardest enemy at the beginning of the game because of their low armor class.) HP: (Orc): 5 (Leader): 8 AC: (Orc): 6 (Leader): 5 Location: Slums, Podol Plaza Rarity: 2/5 PHASE SPIDER: A giant spider with the magical ability to "phase out" after it attacks. This power, combined with its venomous attack, makes it a great danger. (Note: These are EXTREMELY rare to find. I've only found them 2 or 3 times out of the millions of times I've played this game. I recently found them again and got 9840 XP and 1200 Gold. I also got leather armor, a halberd, shield and scroll.) HP: 35 Location: Wilderness (Northeastern region) Rarity: 4/5 QUICKLING: These are small, fast-moving creatures. Because of their great speed they are invisible when they move. (While quicklings can put up quite a challenge, the treasure that they leave behind makes the battle worth it. If you're looking to fight one of them, go into the northwestern region of the wilderness. They're hard to come across but you will eventually find them. At the time of me writing this part, I actually found them in the south western region. When I won the battle, I got 7969 XP, 1656 Gold, 18 Gems, a necklace and a potion.] HP: 7 Location: Wilderness Rarity: 4/5 SHAMAN (NIM) - The magic user of the nomads. You don't have to fight him unless you decide to go against the nomads. If you help them, you'll get his wand. HP: 20 Location: Nomad Camp Rarity: 5/5 SKELETON: These are the least of the undead. Skeletons are usually controlled by some wicked force. (Tough enemies, not because of their strength, but they're hard to hit.) HP: (Skeleton): 5 (Giant Skeleton): 24 Location: Sokal Keep, Valhingen Graveyard Rarity: 2/5 SPECTRE: These are one of the most powerful of the undead. Their touch can drain the life out of character. (Note: Don't you mean "A character"?) (A little tip: Try to avoid battles with these guys if you are able. They can drain experience levels and if the character is level 1, they will be literally killed.) HP: 38 AC: 2 Location: Mendor's Library, Valhingen Graveyard Rarity: 4/5 STIRGE: These are small, blood-sucking birds. (Easy enemies, but annoying to fight because they come in large numbers.) HP: 5 AC: 8 Location: Wilderness, Yarash's Pyramid Rarity: 2/5 SUB-CAPTAIN (NIM): Sub-captains are a soldier that usually lead other warriors. HP: 18 Location: Wilderness, Zhentil Keep Rarity: 4/5 THIEF (NIM): Thiefs are found in various places in the game, but have also taken over Kovel Mansion. HP: 1st Level Thief = 4 AC: 4 7th Level Thief = 28 AC: 4 (Note: In the computer version there are 6th Level Thieves instead of 7th Level.) Location: Tavern, Kovel Mansion THRI-KREEN: Also called Mantis Warriors, this creature resembles a large praying mantis. They possess tough natural armor, cunning, and great agility. (Thri-Kreen can also paralyze your characters, so be cautious when you fight them.) HP: 33 Location: Wilderness Rarity: 3/5 TIGER: These are noble beasts who are both strong and silent. Though their normal prey are animals, they have been known to become "man-eaters." (They can be found around the northwestern region of the wilderness. They can also 'scratch' an enemy, which can cause some additional damage.) HP: 38 Location: Wilderness Rarity: 3/5 TROLL: Ravenous horrors found in almost all climates and locales. They attack with their dirty, clawed hands and must be slain quickly because they regenerate hit points. (I'd say this is by far the toughest enemy in the game since they can possibly defeat a party member in one hit. If you have Stink Cloud, Fireball, and/or Haste, use them all. If you can avoid battles with trolls, definitely take the opportunity.) HP: 36 Location: Slums, Wilderness, Kobold Cave, Valjevo Castle Rarity: 4/5 TYRANTHRAXUS (NIM): Also known as "The Boss", Tyranthraxus plans to take over Phlan and the Moonsea region. In Pool of Radiance, he takes the form of a bronze dragon, but there is also a human version of him which is fake. HP (Fake): 40 (Real): 80 Location: Valjevo Castle, Tyranthraxus' Lair Rarity: 5/5 VAMPIRE: These are one of the most dreaded undead in the Realms. They can drain life levels, are strong fighters and are sometimes powerful to magic users. (Note: You will battle him the second time in the room shaped like a cross.) [Tip: Make sure you have Samir Awohl, the efreet from the Kobold Cave. He will make your life a lot easier.] HP: (First Encounter): 43 (Second Encounter with Sanctified Coffin): 15 Location: Valhingen Graveyard Rarity: 5/5 WARDOG: These are large, strong dogs, trained for battle. Orcs, goblins and other humanoids are known to use them. (Note: Again, like the Nymph, I have never ONCE found these enemies in the game. If you happen to, though, please send me an e-mail.) HP: ?? Location: ??? Rarity: ?/5 WIGHT: Nightmarish undead creatures that attack with vicious claws and are immune to all except silver or magical weapons. (Note: They also drain levels when they hit you. If you are level 1 and are hit, you will be killed.) HP: 23 Location: Textile House, Valhingen Graveyard Rarity: 4/5 WILD BOAR(IV): These creatures are the wild relatives of the pig. (Note: Also after you kill them they "Get Back Up" and fight. Luckily, they are still relatively easy to take down.) HP: 18 Location: Wilderness, Kobold Cave Rarity: 3/5 WOLF: Large canine meat-eaters, found in nearly all parts of the Realms. (Note: You only fight these once. That is when you are battling the first encounter with the Vampire.) HP: 18 Location: Valhingen Graveyard Rarity: 5/5 WRAITH: A powerful undead spirit that absorbs characters' life energy. These creatures steal levels from characters. The stolen levels can be regained by earning new experience, or have a Restoration spell cast at a shrine. (Note: You fight the wraith once in the graveyard and it's an optional fight.) HP: 24 AC: 4 Location: Valhingen Graveyard Rarity: 5/5 WYVERN: These creatures are distant relatives of dragons. They attack by biting and using the poisonous sting in their tail. (Note: You will HAVE to fight one of these in the Kobold Cave at the beginning and trust me, it is NOT fun.) HP: 42 Location: Wilderness, Kobold Cave Rarity: 4/5 YARASH (NIM): A mad scientist who runs the pyramid in the wilderness. He is also responsible for the dirty water. HP: 27 AC: 4 ZOMBIE: Magically animated bodies controlled by a wicked force. Zombies always fight back until destroyed or turned. [The easiest undead enemy in the game because of their low HP and high AC. There is also the Juju Zombie who can be found in the southern region of the graveyard. He's just a stronger version of a zombie.] HP (Zombie): 10 HP (Juju Zombie): 24 AC (Juju Zombie): 6 Location: Valhingen Graveyard Rarity: 2/5 (If there are any monsters or enemies that I have missed please let me know!) ============= 6. Copyright ============= This FAQ/Walkthrough is © Copyright Doommaster1994. If you would like to publish this guide on your site, please contact me first before posting. If you send me an e-mail, chances are I'll give you permission. The only website allowed to use this guide without my permission is GameFAQs, since this is where I uploaded it. If you decide to go ahead and upload my guide to your site without my consent, that is a violation of copyright and you will be severly punished. With that said, let's move on... ======================= 7. Places in New Phlan ======================= There are lots of places in Phlan: PASSENGER DOCK - This is where the game begins. You can go here to go to Sokal Keep on Thorn Island, and after that take boat to different regions of the wilderness. TAVERNS/BARS - Here, you can listen to gossip. They removed the option to gamble due to Nintendo's censorship policy, though that doesn't explain the large amount of casino games that were released on the NES. If you choose to listen to gossip, sometimes, you will either get caught in a brawl, get robbed, or feel someone groping you. All of the gossip is listed below near the end of this guide. ARMS/ARMOR SHOP - This is where you want to go to get weapons. You can also sell items/weapons, get them identified, and more. You can also do this in the other shops. SILVER SHOP - This is where you buy more expensive, yet stronger weapons. SHOP - Useless place, there is nothing here that you really need. INN - This is where you rest and save your game. 5 Gold Pieces to rest. This place is also ultimately useless because you can sleep in other areas for free. SHRINES - There are 3 shrines in Phlan: Tempus, Tyr, and Sune. You can go here if you need to cure someone's poison, revive a dead party member, etc. The problem is that it's highly expensive, so you'll have to be careful. TRAINING HALL - This is where you can hire some NPCs or Duel, or train to a higher level. You can also save your game there. CITY HALL - The most important place in the game. This is where you get commisions and rewards. CITY PARK - There is nothing here. STOJANOW RIVER - Now called the "Dirty Barren River" because of its contamination. But you will take care of that later on in the game. THE SLUMS - Old Phlan. This is the real Phlan but it has been overrun by monsters. It's your job to reclaim it. ======================= 8. People of New Phlan ======================= CITY COUNCIL - The woman who gives you the commisions in the City Hall. CITY GUARDS - Basically, the police of Phlan. You don't want to fight them... COUNCILOR CADORNA - The main councilor of New Phlan. Looks like a big hairy ape! TEMPLE CLERICS - There are two women and one man clerk at the shrines. INN CLERK - An old woman. Not much to say. SHOPKEEPER - This guy is useless. I don't know why they put his shop in this game. JEWELER - The same woman who runs at the inn. Or, at least, it's the same character portrait. ARMORER - The guy who runs the arms and armor shops. There is one that is open all day. ======================================== 9. Computer and NES Version Differences ======================================== 1. In the NES version, your only currency is Gold and Gems, but in the computer versions, you get Electrum, Copper, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Gems and Jewelry. Also, in the NES version, you're allowed to carry as much Gold as you please, while in the computer version, you're limited as to how much money each one of your characters can carry, which is represented by their Encumbrance which can be seen if you view the character. 2. This is an upside to the NES version; In the NES version, you have infinite darts and arrows (and maybe some other missile objects I don't know about) while in the PC version, you must constantly go to the stores and buy ammunition. Usually you will find arrows from battles from enemies that use them. 3. In the computer versions, items (usually worth no value) are dropped by the enemies while in the NES version, it's a little more rare to find dropped items after battle (and the items are worth quite a bit of gold). 4. Some doors in the computer versions are locked, forcing you to either cast a Knock spell or to pick or bash open the door. This is very annoying because near the beginning of the game where you have to go to Mendor's Library, the door REQUIRES a Knock spell to open it. Same thing goes with the temple in Podol Plaza. In the NES version, even though it gives you the option at the training hall to obtain the knock spell, there are no locked doors in the game (or at least, none that require a knock spell), so the knock spell is ultimately useless in the NES version. 5. In the computer versions, all the text and dialogue is all on one screen, while in the NES version, the game has to scroll down to view text and dialogue. It probably was a good idea though since if they made the text take up more of the screen, the first-person perspective would have to be smaller, making the graphics look worse. 6. In the NES version, you're strictly limited to how many kinds of characters you can create (For example, you can't create a Fighter/Magic-User/Cleric) and you can't customize how their character portrait or how their icon looks in combat while you could in the computer versions, but the NES version also had a bigger variety of character portraits to choose from. It's just too bad they are assigned to a certain alignment, race, etc. 7. Some of the NES version's maps have been slightly altered, Plus there are some places where the Area map will work in the computer version where it won't in the NES version. 8. A minor difference; some of the NPCs' names are shortened while in your party. For example, Princess Fatima is simply Fatima, Skullcrusher is just Crusher, and Theurgist is Theurg. 9. Here's an important one, since disks could be copied and there weren't any files to protect it, the developers of the computer versions made Copy Protection, where at the beginning of the game, you must use a 'Translation Wheel' and enter the word that the game asks you for. You match up an Elvish and Dwarvish letter/number. Also, in the game, a lot of parts of the game will tell you that you write something down as Journal Entry (insert number here). This was another part of copy protection, and the journal entries can be found in the 'Adventurers Journal' that came with the game. Since the NES version was cartridge based and developed using private tools, the NES didn't have to worry about copy protection, so you'll see the so-called 'Journal Entries' can be seen in the game itself, rather than going into the manual to read them. You also don't have to translate anything in the NES version, while in the computer versions, you would have to translate dwarvish and elvish letters/numbers to get through some of the game, again, another form of copy protection. 10. The NES version has in-game music for just about every part of the game. Everywhere you go, there is a theme for it, whether it's reused or a new song, whereas in the computer versions, there were usually either no songs at all or just a title song. Though I believe the Amiga version had some in-game music. 11. The resting mechanism in the NES version is different in the computer versions. When you rest in the NES version, it will ask you if you want to sleep for 24 hours, or until morning (5 AM). Each 24 hours regains one hit point while I believe the computer versions regenerate your characters' hit points by the hour. This can be very tedious, especially later in the game when your characters have a lot of HP. On emulators, it's not so bad since you can use the throttle option, but I am talking about the real deal here. Real NES whether it be the front loader or the top loader. It can get very painful. You can have your clerics cast "Cure Light Wounds", but then you have to choose the spell X amount of times and then rest for them to memorize the spell. In the computer versions, you can also choose exactly how long your party rests. 12. In Mendor's Library, in the NES version, while you can go inside the garden room, you can't actually move around in there, where in the computer versions, you can. There is no real point, really, all I remember the garden doing in the computer version was draining my characters' hit points! 13. In the wilderness in the computer versions, you'll find randomly placed caves which aren't in the NES version, and there is a place called 'The Grove' which also isn't in the NES version. It is said these aren't in the NES version because you can't have 'Search' on in the NES version while in the wilderness, but that is simply not true. By being at a dungeon or town (wherever the first person view/area map is used), you can turn on Search mode and it will be on when you are in the wilderness. This is something I came across by accident, but it works. For some reason when you are in the wilderness in the NES version, you can't select Look or Search. I never understood why that is, but oh well, that's just how they made it. 14. The NES version is 'censored'. What I mean by that is, some of the spells have been renamed, like Bless in the computer is Empower in the NES version. Nintendo of America didn't approve of religious symbols or uncensored stuff in their games, so the developers had to remove it. Also, in the taverns in New Phlan, the computer versions ask if you want to gamble, which was removed in the NES version. 15. This is a weird difference, the NES version's box art is the same as the computer versions', but uses blue instead of gold, but the Famicom version (Japanese NES if you didn't know) uses gold on the box art. 16. In the NES version, you are allowed 5 controllable characters and 1 NPC character. In the computer versions, you were allowed a bigger party, but the battles are much tougher as well. 17. When you beat the NES version, you are given what I can safely assume are the longest passwords in a video game, Character Sheets, in which you can use your character in another game. Unfortunately, the game's sequel Curse of the Azure Bonds was never made for consoles, rendering the character sheets useless. In the computer versions, CotAB would come with a transfer utility. 18. Probably one of the most important ones, and this game's biggest flaw; In the computer versions, you are given saves A-J (10 game saves), but in the NES version, you only get ONE! So... make sure you save in the right place at the right time. 19. In the taverns in the computer versions, you can gamble by playing some sort of weird game. Because Nintendo of America had a problem with gambling (despite the large amount of gambling titles for the NES), this was removed. 20. In the NES version, after you complete the game, there's no way of provoking the guards. In the computer versions, the only way to provoke the guards after beating the game was to get in a fight at the tavern. In the NES version, whenever you try to Listen To Gossip, you only get this; * Who on Earth knocked down The Boss? 21. Unlike the computer versions, there are no cheats in the NES version, which means you'll have to play it honestly. There's not even any GameGenie codes. The only way to cheat is to use an emulator with a hex editor such as FCEUX. =============== 10. Walkthrough =============== (NOTE TO HACKERS: If you want to find out how to beat this game immediately, check the cheats section.) Now it's time for the walkthrough. With everything above in mind, let's get this party started! ============= a. New Phlan ============= After you create your party or take the characters automatically generated from the game itself, you will get a message of how you arrive Phlan by boat and how a man approaches. The man is Rolf, Phlan's tour guide. He will show you the dock (Where you start), the Temple, the Training and City Halls, the park, and the monster-infested Slums of Phlan. Then he leaves you and the game tells you that you are on your own now. Let's go to the City Hall. If you forget where it is or another place is, just use the "Area" map. The City Hall is in the central area of Phlan. You know when you're there because the game always brings up an annoying message about it. At your entry, you are told by the game that there's a corridor going south, and there is a door at the end being watched by guards. Take one more step and your party will open the east door to find the council clerk with the guards watching you. Enter the east door. The council clerk will first check whether you are due a reward. Then, she'll give you your first tasks: A. Recover the Slums (Old Phlan) B. Recover Sokal Keep on Thorn Island C. Find any books about the history of Phlan (in Mendor's Library) You must go to the Slums first, but before you do that, go to the weapons shop. On the area map are many 1x1 rooms (including a 3x1 room at the bottom). Go here to find the weapons shop. If you used my party, buy a long sword and shield for Nicholas and Goldleaf. We'll also want a Short/Long Bow, too, but we'll get two pretty good short bows for free in the slums quite easily. Now is the time to go to the Slums. In case you've forgotten, it's located at the west end of the map. That means we must go to: ============= b. The Slums ============= MISSION - Kill the leaders and recover Old Phlan. REWARD FOR CLEARING - Council reward, free resting place. REWARD FROM COUNCIL - 500 Experience Points and 500 Gold. NPC ENCOUNTERS - None MONSTERS - Bugbear, Hobgoblin, Kobold, Kobold Leader, Gnoll, Goblin, Goblin Leader, Ohlo, Ogre, Shopkeep *UPDATE* This will probably save me some e-mails, but it turns out that if you complete one of the following battles, you can rest in wherever the battles took place for free, rather than having to go back to New Phlan and pay to sleep at the inn. Your sleep won't be interrupted by monsters. When you first enter, the game states how large creatures run underneath your feet and how you can hear an alarm sound far away. You will encounter monsters at random times, so you never know whether you will run into monsters or not. If you encounter them, you can choose to Wait and usually the monsters will run away unless the game says one of two things; that they're angry or you've been surprised by them. Talking with them will sometimes have them warn you to never come back again, or they'll make you pay them in order to let you go. There are inns in New Phlan which you can pay 5 gold pieces to rest at, but there is no point in doing so, as any battles you clear here, you can rest in the rooms you battled in without being interrupted. Otherwise, if you attempt to sleep in an unsafe enemy, you will encounter monsters. Go into the 2x4 room in the northeast corner and next to it should be a 3x2 room. Walk into it and orcs are arguing over some papers... ============= Orc Battle 1 ============= MONSTERS - Orc, Orc Leader This battle is a fairly easy one. If your mages have memorized "Sleep" then cast it on them to make the job easier. Collect the treasure that they leave. Now you can rest here without interruption. Also, while you're resting, as you may have guessed, it's a good idea to re-memorize your Sleep spells. Now there is a 2x2 room just west of the room you are in right now. In order to get to it, you must enter from the south side. There is a Goblin Leader teaching younger goblins to fight. When you are seen, the teacher says that their opponents have arrived. They're about to get schooled. (Please excuse my puns!) ================ Goblin Battle 1 ================ MONSTERS - Goblin, Goblin Leader This is an easier battle. Just keep hitting them and you should win. Walk up the orange/brown colored goblin so he can't shoot darts at you. If you want, you can cast sleep on the goblins, but that would make the battle too easy. Besides, you can rest here after you win, and you will. Exit the room and follow the corridor west into a 2x3 room. Now move south once and then go west into the next room. The game will tell you that the room's dirty and smelly. Go north into the next room and the game says that an animal once lived here. Select the Look option and you'll find a leather bag. Open it to get 950 XP, 100 Gold and 2 Gems. You'll also get a short bow. We're not done though, go into the 1x1 room in the northwest corner. To get in it, enter it from the east side through the illusionary wall. You'll get 2700 XP, 350 Gold and 8 Gems. You'll get another short bow. There is a battle just south of this room, but we'll get to it later. Go back to the room which is dirty and smells. West of that room are two rooms next to eacher other (a 1x1 room on the bottom and a 2x1 room on top). If you enter the bottom room, you'll meet a gypsy who will read your fortune for a Gold Piece. All she'll tell you is that there's a labyrinth and monsters, and that theses monsters are undefeatable. Then she'll get tired and ask you to leave. If you kill her, you'll get 4 XP and 4 Gold. The game will tell you that you feel you made a big mistake. I don't think this really affects anything down the road, or at least, I haven't noticed. Don't even go in this room. Instead, go into the room across from it and an orc will get mad that you have broken in their home... ============= Orc Battle 2 ============= Here there's four orcs and a leader. Just have your mages put them to sleep. I got 1468 XP and 14 Gold. I also got three long swords, a flail, and chain mail. Now, go back to where the secret treasure room is and go into the room just south of it. There will be hobgoblins arguing over gold, and they will shout "Thieves!" when they see you... ================= Hobgoblin Battle ================= Here, there are four hobgoblins. They're kind of hard to hit because of their low armor class (which I'll refer to from now on as AC). Put them to sleep and finish them off. I got 144 XP, 16 Gold from this. After this, the game will tell you that you found the hobgoblins' treasure which got me 300 XP and 100 Gold. I also got leather armor and a potion. Now go to the 2x2 room just west of where you fought the goblins. You can enter this room from the west side. You'll interrupt them eating. ============== Kobold Battle ============== Before I walk you through this part, I'll call the green kobolds 'regulars' from now on and the leaders...well, leaders. Anyway, there's five regulars and a leader. The leader can shoot arrows at you, so be careful. If you have archers, have them attack the leader. If an enemy is standing next to your archer(s), they won't be able to shoot arrows. I got 1262 XP and 6 Gold from this battle. I also got bracers, which you should give to one of your fighters. Bracers will lower your AC, making you harder to hit. Now it's time for our battles to be a bit harder... In the lower-western region of the Slums is a 3x3 room connected to a 1x2 room south of it. The 3x3 room is a monster meeting place where you'll hear different rumors. Go into the 1x2 room, in which you'll be confronted by the monster guards... ===================== Monster Guard Battle ===================== Here, there's five regular goblins, a leader, and a new opponent; an ogre. Ogre's can do hefty damage, so kill this one first. Then focus on the goblins and the leader. If you're lucky, the goblins will end up surrendering. I got 293 XP and 11 Gold. Now, select Search from the options. Go north and then go east into the room. The game will tell you there's absolutely nothing in this room, and then right after say that you find a hidden treasure. This will yield 1810 XP, 1000 Gold and 2 Gems. I also got a shield and a scroll. Now, make sure you turn the Search mode off right after, since the Search mode increases your risk of running into random encounters. Now, there should be a 1x3 room just west of the monster meeting place (the 3x3 room). Enter it from the south and the game says a monster blocks your path... ================= Semi-Boss Battle ================= This battle is similar to the previous one, except a little bit more difficult; there's five regular orcs, two leaders and an ogre. Take out the ogre first. Your magic-users should be able to put all the orcs to sleep. I got 388 XP and 30 Gold. ======================= BOSS - Monster Leaders ======================= Here, there's an ogre, a gnoll and a hobgoblin. All of which are leaders. Kill the monsters in this order: Ogre, Hobgoblin and Gnoll. Don't worry about the gnoll because of his size, he's a laugh. (Literally, they're hyenas). I got 586 XP and 25 Gold. Even though we killed the bosses, we're not done with the Slums just yet. But before we get to the final battle, let's run a little oddjob. In the lower west region of the slums is a 3x2 room. Enter it from the east side to meet Ohlo. When you enter his room, he will ask what your business is. You can choose to leave, talk, or attack. If you attack him, you will be put up against a battle you may not have a chance in winning. Read the optional section of this guide to see the battle specifics. Parley Nice with him and he'll tell you to go to the rope guild and get a potion for him. The entrance is in the southwest region. The rope guild is the whole lower part of the Slums. After you enter, the game will 'Engrishly' (if you will) tell you that everyone's who's entered this place "ever" come back. It's your lucky day because I'm here to give you directions! You may ask why you would need my directions since you've got the Area command. There are some parts of the game which disable the Area map. As you may have guessed, this is one of those places. After you walk forward and the game disables the Area map, take these directions. N = North, S = South, E = East, W = West: S2, E2, N2, E1, S2, E1, N2, E2, N1, E2, S1 and go into the door to your left. The shopkeeper will apologize and tell you that he's closed. If you decide to attack him, it will lead you to a battle with four ogres. Parley with him and one of your party members will tell him that Ohlo sent you. He'll then grab a package and give it to you, asking you to please take it to Ohlo. After that, take these directions to get out of the guild: N1, W2, S1, W2, S2, W1, N2, W1, S2, W2, and then head north out of the guild. We'll be coming back here later, but for now, take the package back to Ohlo. When you enter his room again, he'll ask you for the potion. You can either give it to him, refuse, or demand for a better reward. If you refuse/demand or if you picked a fight with him earlier, you'll be lead to a pretty tough battle with five hobgoblins, two hobgoblin leaders, two ogres and Ohlo. Choose to give the package/potion to him. The reward is always different, but make sure he gives you a necklace. After this, you'll leave the room, and when you come back, he'll just tell you he doesn't have time for you and the game will automatically make you leave. If you want to know what his character portrait looks like, go to the Glitches/Easter Eggs section of this guide. The reason why I had you do this oddjob is because that necklace is really gonna help in the next battle, which also happens to be the last. Go back to the entrance of the rope guild and follow these directions after the game disables the Area map: W4, S2, W1, S1, W1, and head north into the room. You'll find monsters playing with flour sacks. One of the monsters will break his and he'll get upset and ask what he'll use now. Another monster will point to your party and tell him that he can use your party. ==================== ACTUAL Final Battle ==================== Oh, boy. This one's not gonna be fun. You have four kobolds (simple enough), but there are also two trolls. Trolls have 36 HP, and do massive damage. Not only that, but if you kill them and take too long, they can regenerate and come back to life! First, cast a sleep spell on the kobolds to use as a barrier so the trolls can't get to you. Then, use the necklace you got from Ohlo. Or, alternatively, you can have your fighters hack and slash at the trolls, but be warned, the trolls can put your characters out in one hit. Make sure you use the long swords you got throughout the slums for heavier damage against the trolls. I got 1962 XP and 4 Gold. I also got two scrolls. Congratulations! You've beaten the Slums (Old Phlan) and may now rest here for free instead of going to the inn. Go back to New Phlan and meet up with the council clerk at city hall to claim your reward. ============================= b. Sokal Keep (Thorn Island) ============================= MISSION - Find Ferran Martinez's spirit and tell him the truth. REWARD - Reward from Council, Go to wilderness by boat. COUNCIL REWARD - 5000 XP, 1250 GP, 15 Gems NPC ENCOUNTERS - None MONSTERS - Zombie, Skeleton, Poisonous Frogs, Ogre, Orc, Scorpion Now, before you attempt this mission, it is important to have trained as many characters as you can. When you're ready to head to Sokal Keep, go to the docks from the beginning of the game. The boatman (Rolf?) will tell you that the ships can only go to Sokal Keep. Head to the end of the dock to catch a boat... When you get there, move forward and the game will tell you that moss is growing and you can barely hear footsteps inside the keep. Now, before you go through those doors, go to the northwest corner of the room to find a dead elf body. You'll have the choice to leave, search the body, attack, or even talk to it. If you try to talk to it, the game reminds you that you're talking to a long-deceased body. If you attack, you'll destroy the body and everything with it. Choose to search it. You'll find a scroll with some elvish words on it. Now go through the northern doors. Try going into the room in the northeast. On the way, you'll encounter skeletons. If you want to fight them, you'll be put up against 6 skeletons and zombies. Instead, choose to Parley. You'll read all the words from the scroll you found and the skeletons will leave you alone. From then on, the game will give you the choise to fight them or give the password when you encounter them. As I said before, look for a door in the northeast region. The room looks like a 'T' piece from Tetris. Go in it, and you're greeted by the sounds of frogs croaking. Take literally a couple steps more and the croaking gets louder. You can actually try to talk to the frogs, in which the game will respond telling you the obvious fact that the frogs have no idea what you're saying... (In the computer versions, it will say, "CROAK!") ====================== Poisonous Frog Battle ====================== Poisonous Frogs are easy to kill even though they are big. I don't even think they are really poisonous (or at least, I've never had them poison one of my characters). I got 156 XP from this. After the fight, go through the door and go to the northeastern corner of the room. There is an illusionary wall here. If you go to the northeast corner, you'll find items that haven't been ruined within all these years and you can take them if you'd like. Now go to the 3x3 room. From there, keep on going west into the next 3x3 room. The game will tell you that it was a barracks but now it's trashed beyond belief. Take a couple more steps and you'll hear spirits crying. You can't attack them; they just fade away moaning. Instead, choose to advance, and then choose Parley. Your party will try the words from the scroll and then the spirits will tell you why they're so upset. They were the original defenders of the keep who died trying to protect it. Then one will point to the floor and tell you to read the diary hidden under it. The diary says that they've been trying as hard as possible to defend the keep but they're slowly losing the fight. Then you'll find gems in the diary. Take them. You'll get 1250 XP and 5 Gems. Now go back into the room segregating the two 3x3 rooms. Walk south and suddenly, monsters crash through the wall! ===================== BOSS - Ogre and Orcs ===================== Here you have 7 regular orcs, 3 orc leaders, four hobgoblins and two ogres. Go after the ogres first, then the hobgoblins, then the orc leaders and lastly the orcs. One rhinestone from the necklace you got from Ohlo should send those monsters @$$3$ packing! I got 818 XP and 63 Gold. After the battle you find a note in the one of the Ogre's pocket. It is from Tyranthraxus that says to kill your party if you arrive. Now go south into the next room and the game will say you're in a small shrine and there's some orcs with twisted faces. Go to the south end of this room to encounter Ferran Martinez. Choose to Parley. Once again, you'll try the words from the elf's scroll and Ferran will introduce himself to you. Then, he'll ask you what's happened to Phlan. Tell the truth, as anything else will fail your mission. If you choose Remains Destroyed, he'll scream that you're liars and disappear. Choosing to Leave Without Answering will just have you go back to the entrance of Sokal Keep. Keep in mind that he won't reappear. Again, choose to tell the truth. He'll tell you that he was the head defender. He will also explain that Mendor the Wise gathered many books, but then his library was overrun and the books disappeared. Ferran will then give you the password to avoid the undead guards (which is ultimately useless). Then finally, he'll say that since New Phlan exists, he can rest with ease. He'll then disappear. Congrats! You've officially beaten Sokal Keep! Now head back to Phlan for your reward. Not only will you be rewarded by the council, but you'll also be able to take boats out to the wilderness! Radical!! (Note; There is another battle you can do here, but I'll list it in the Optional section since it's not mandatory.) ==================== d. Mendor's Library ==================== MISSION - Collect important books in the library. REWARD - Reward from council COUNCIL REWARD - 400 XP and Gold per book (each book adds 50 GP more) NPC ENCOUNTERS - Madman MONSTERS - Basilisk, Kobold, Mendor's Spectre Mendor's Library can be located just south of Kuto's Well (which is west of the Slums). Enter the 3x3 northern room. The game will tell you that there are some art decorations and you feel safe here. Let's cut to the chase; there are four 1x1 rooms in the northern region of the library. Here is where you'll find the books. In order to take the books, simply choose the 'Look' option. Start by going in the northwest room. The game will tell you that the section of the library is labeled 'Philosophy'. After that, you'll see a basilisk. Sometimes it doesn't see you and other times, it will and it hisses at you. Either way, you're going to have to fight it in order to beat the mission. ================ Basilisk Battle ================ Basilisks, as you may know can turn your party to stone. If you bought a mirror from the shop, you could be lucky. The mirrors protect you from turning to stone. The basilisk has quite big HP. Sleep won't work on it. You probably won't have Stink Cloud either by this point, but if you do, use it on the basilisk to weaken it or even hold it. I got 3368 XP from this. (After playing through this game again to update this guide, after I beat the basilisk I got a scroll, a cloak (which are always worth a LOT) and two potions.) After you defeat the basilisk, keep using the "Look" option to look for books you need. Do it for ALL the sections until you can't find anymore. I usually select the Look option in each section 10-20 times before leaving. You should find some books with interesting information. I won't say it here to avoid spoilers. You'll know if you got all of the books if the council clerk in New Phlan stops mentioning for your party to find the books. Now try to exit until you meet the spirit of Mendor. He will shout that he will sacrifice his life for his books, not realizing his death. One of your party members will mention that he's dead and then the battle will start. ====================== BOSS - Mendor's Ghost ====================== Obviously, Mendor won't take kindly to book stealing. The only way to hit Mendor and all the other spectres in the game is if you use a wand or magic weapon agsinst him. Normal weapons will not work. Wands will ALWAYS hit him. Plus, they're long range so you have some distance between you and the ghost. It is highly important to get some distance from Mendor if you can. If he hits your party members, he will drain one or more levels from them. If the player is already level 1, they will be slain. After beating him, all I got was 2030 XP. Before we leave, let's do some optional stuff here. You will see some 2x1 rooms in the southern region. Go inside them and use the 'Look' option to find some treasure. Each one will give you 100 XP and Gold. There is also a 2x3 room under one of the 2x1 rooms. The game says the furniture is rotten to the core, and that there are human bones on the floor. Then you'll find a bottle. You'll get 240 and three potions. The huge room in the southwest is just a garden. Don't go in there, as there is no point. If you try, you will get burned by the garden. In the computer versions you can walk around in it, but you end up getting damaged. If I remember right, one of your party members could even drown in it. Go to where the southern 2x1 room is and try to go in the southeast room. You'll find a madman here. You can take him with you if you want, but all he is is just an annoyance. When you get to Phlan, he'll randomly start picking fights. You can take him to the temple near the dock and they'll take care of him. To take him with you, select Wait. Parleying just makes him say a bunch of weird stuff. The madman will refuse to join you, but you have the option to force him to join you. The choice is yours. He doesn't make the game any easier. Moving on, go into the southeastern room. The game will say that it looks to have been a study. Upon entering, go east and then south and then choose the Look option. You'll find treasure among the junk which will give you 5000 XP. You'll also get a manual of bodily health which is worth a whopping 25000 Gold. Apparently, it's supposed to raise a character's constitution level, but I heard that it doesn't work in the NES version. I used the manual and it didn't change my character's stats at all, so I can confirm that the manual of bodily health does absolutely nothing. Sell it. *UPDATE* Thanks to a reader, it turns out the manual does in fact work, but you must wait 30 days after using it for the point to be added to your character. If your character's constitution is 18, it may not work. Above this room is a 3x3 room. Go into it to find five kobolds sitting at a table. One will shout not to kill them. Choose to parley and they'll raise their hands. Choose to parley again and one will tell you that they will tell you some valuable information. They'll tell you that the boss of the Textile House is in a secret room. Then, they'll run away. If you are trying to get every little piece of XP that you can, you can kill them but other than that, there's no reason to kill them. Well, that about does it for the library. Go back to Phlan for your reward. If the council clerk still mentions to get books at the library, then you didn't get all of them and will have to come back. =============== e. Kuto's Well =============== MISSION - Find and kill Norris the Gray REWARD - Reward from Council, free resting place. COUNCIL REWARD - 1250 XP and Gold (x2 if you beat Norris) MONSTERS - Orc, Ogre, Norris, Lizardman, Gnoll, Kobold, Giant Lizard, Goblin Even though the council doesn't commision it to you, you will get a reward for completing it. Kuto's well is west of the Slums. Remember, since you completed the Slums, you can rest there for FREE before you go to Kuto's Well. We will not be going to the wilderness yet, even though we can because we are not ready yet. In the area map, the well is the 3x3 tiled square. Go into the middle square to where the well is. Kobolds will have been waiting for you this whole time. I wonder how long they were waiting for you there? ===================== Kobold Killing Spree ===================== There's six leaders and two regulars in both rounds. I got 120 XP and 8 Gold from both rounds. Now climb down the well and go forward. A kobold will shoot an arrow at your party. If you need to rest, go back one step to where the well entrance is an rest there. If you try to rest anywhere else, you'll be ambushed by Norris the Gray. To get to Norris, follow these directions from where the kobold shot your party at: S1, E2, N3, E1, and then go north to encounter Norris the Gray. He'll tell you that you were wise in finding his hideout and will then demand that you surrender. Choose to attack. =============================== Norris the Gray and His Guards =============================== Here, you've got an ogre, five goblins and Norris. First, focus on the Ogres. Then kill Norris. Cast a Sleep or Hold Person spell whenever possible on the Orcs. Norris obviously can do some damage to you and your party. But with any luck, you will complete the fight. Since Norris has good AC, use your fighters to take care of him. Winning this battle got me 2190 XP, and 10 Gold. I also got a sword and bracers. After you beat him, your party will search Norris' body only to find a letter from Tyranthraxus offering Norris to work for him and to go to the port city with Norris' guards and follow the ogres there. On the other side of the letter is Norris' reply saying he refuses to work for Tyrantrhaxus unless he can lead. Now you have a safe place to rest in Kuto's Well. Even though we just cleared the main mission of Kuto's Well, we're not quite done here yet. Go into the northeast corner and select Look from the options to find Norris' treasure. I got 5900 XP, 300 Gold and 20 gems. I also got more bracers. Even with that done, we're not 100% done with this place. There is an optional part that I would like to walk you through. Again, this next quest is optional but I personally recommend it. Go to the middle south part of this place (the room that's under the well on the area map.) Then try to go forward and you'll see that lizardmen and giant lizards guard a sealed door. Let's find out what's behind that door... =================== Lizardmania Battle =================== Lizardmen are hard, but not as bad as trolls luckily. Just cast Sleep on them. The lizards can't really do any harm. I got 764 XP and that's it. No gold or gems here. Make sure you rest your party soon if they took any damage (which they most likely did.) After the battle, collect your treasure and go through the door (You must pick it first) to find a woman. She tells you a "Wicked One" (Tyranthraxus) has come out of the pool and that you cannot recognize him at a glance, BEWARE! And then before you can say a word, she disappears. Now go to the menu and select "Look" to find some secret treasure. NOW we can go back and get our reward. Now let's see what's next on the list, because we are far from over. Before you leave, there is something else you can do here but it's not required and won't make the game any easier or harder for you. In the room parallel to this, there is a 2x2 room. If you walk around in it for a while you will come across a bunch of limping ill kobolds. They will try to sneak away from you. If you try to talk to them, the leader will ask you not to hurt them, as they are wounded and exhausted, and that their king sent them as scouts, they are not fighters. He will also mention hearing about the Pool of Radiance around here. The king wanted them to find it but so far, they haven't been able to. The kobold will again ask you to let them go, as all they want to do is return home. If you select Question they'll start begging for you to let them go. If you still decide to attack them, the game will put you up against three regular kobolds, no leaders. If you let them go, they will leave. Before they disappear from the distance, one will turn around and wave to you, thanking your party for setting them free. (When I battled the kobolds on the Famicom version, there were 12 of them instead of 3, but I also had the game completed as well.) (Note: If you wish to clear out Kuto's Well 100%, that means no enemies will ever be encountered here again, simply run into enemies and keep killing them until you stop encountering them. I believe it's around 10-25 random encounters to get them to stop coming. Personally, I wouldn't worry about it until you've beaten the game unless you're really desperate for the XP.) =============== f. Podol Plaza =============== MISSION - Find out what kind of weapon is being sold at the auction. REWARD - Reward from council COUNCIL REWARD - 1250 XP and Gold NPC ENCOUNTERS - None MONSTERS - Ogre, Orc, Goblin, Bucaneer (4th Lvl Fighter) Now the council commisions the party to go to Podol Plaza to see an auction. Podol Plaza can be found west of Kuto's Well. When you enter you have 3 choices on how to get in: 1.) Enter boldly 2.) Disguise yourselves as monsters 3.) Go forward stealthily Choose to disguise yourself as monsters. The game will love to scare you here. For example, you will encounter monsters in the plaza and the game will say something along the lines of "The monsters see you..." and after pressing a button the game will either say something along the lines of "They attack you!" or "They leave laughing", etc. Also, you can hear the monsters' rumors. They will mention a man barely touching a pool and melting from it, or that the orcs were pushed out of their castle by the giants. The auction is on the left side of the 1x3 room, which is in the middle of the plaza. You will encounter an Ogre auctioneer. He will be holding a certain kind of staff (IE A Wand of Fear, or a wand that lets you make an army!) Don't select anything except Watch or else you'll start a fight and lose the misison. That's literally all you've got to do. Easiest mission in the game and possibly in video game history. But don't worry, the game's gonna make up for this mission's easy difficulty later on. >;) If you try to bid on it, you won't end up getting the item, as a monster will cast a spell that makes everything go dark. You can go after him but you won't find anything on him, and thus the auction will end. Sometimes when you bid on it, the monsters will look at your party. Sometimes they will notice your disguises and other times they don't. If you want to do another optional mission in this place, go into the bar aka The Pit. It is on the west and is a 2x3 room. When you enter, you will accidentaly knock the door into a drunk buccaneer aka a 4th level fighter. Of course, he doesn't take kindly to people knocking doors into him and says that one of you will pay for the insult. You'll have three choices: Fight a duel, offer him a bribe (1/10 of your gold), attack with the goblins on your side, escape. I personally choose a duel or attack with the goblins. Whatever you do, when you're in the tavern, DO NOT choose to Drink, if you do, you will fall unconscious, wake up only to find all your gold and gems are gone. If you try to leave, a hobgoblin will insult you. Just ignore him and leave. It's not worth getting into a brawl over. Unless that is, you want to beat the game 100%, then go ahead and fight them. ================= Buccaneer Battle ================= This fight will be kind of hard, because you will be dealing with a 4th Level Fighter. You'll also be fighting a ton of orcs, but with the goblins on your side, you should get the job done a little easier. Use Sleep and Stink Cloud spells to knock the enemies down. For beating the bucaneer in a duel, I got 2382 XP and 2 Gold. He also dropped a Long Sword, Chain Mail and Banded Mail. After the fight, the game will say the bar is a shattered ruin. Now go back to Phlan for your reward. There is also a shrine in the southwest corner. The priestess says you may stay there as long as you wish. (In the computer versions, you have to cast a Knock spell to get in.) There are two ways to get back to Phlan, if you decided not to clear out Kuto's Well 100% and you want to avoid fights, you can go west out of Podol Plaza and end up in the wilderness. Then go south west to the boat, it will take you back to New Phlan. Of course, you also risk getting into battles with the wildlife. Also, this is the last time I'll tell you in this walkthrough, try and train your characters after each mission is complete. If you can't afford it, try selling some of your treasure that you got along the way. ================= g. Kovel Mansion ================= MISSION - Defeat all the thieves and recover the mansion. REWARD - Reward from Council COUNCIL REWARD - 1150 XP, 400 Gold, 3 gems. NPC ENCOUNTERS - None MONSTERS - 1st Level Thief, 4th Level Thief Note: You can skip to the next quest and have Dirten in your party and do these two missions at once since the two places you need to go to do the missions are literally right next to each other. Having Dirten in your party will make these easier. If you do so, make sure you do this mission first, since Dirten will leave your party after you recover the shrine. Your party is now ordered to go to Kovel Mansion, which has been overrun by thieves. To get to the mansion, all you need to do is take a boat north and go to the south gate. Just as a warning, you cannot rest here or else some thieves will ambush you. You'll lose gold and I think you'll even lose some items in your inventory. Not good at all. When you first enter, keep going straight. On the Area Map if you see a hallway in the southeast corner, go into it and encounter a 4th level thief. He will try to attempt to kill one of your party members with a knife. Sometimes he will succeed, but most of the time, you catch him. The game will tell you other thieves are trying to sneak away and you'll have the option to attack the thief or not. Don't bother unless you need every trickle of XP you can get. Now go into the first room on the right and see some thieves beating up an older thief. One of the thieves will ask what you're doing here and attack you. ============= Thief Battle ============= This battle is easy, just kill all the 1st level thieves and win. No magic is needed here. The thieves here have only 4 HP and are easy to hit. At this point in the game, they should be no match for your party. Winning this battle got me 150 XP and 50 Gold. After that battle, you try and rescue the older thief, but unfortunately, it's too late for him. He will let you know that before he dies. Before he dies, he'll give you a note, talking more about the almighty Tyranthraxus, that he may be a dragon. Now exit the hallway and enter the 2x3 room at the south of this place. Now the thieves will ambush you. Time for the meat and potatoes of this mission! ========================= BOSS - Thief Army Battle ========================= In this battle, there's five 5th Level Thieves and fifteen 1st Level Fighters Cast Sleep on them to hold them. Or use Hold Person if you have a cleric in your party. After a while, the thieves will start running away, so if you have archers, use your bows and arrows to finish them off. In the combat field, there's no way to escape the battle, so you'll have no choice but to defeat the remaining thieves. But don't worry, they won't even try attacking your party. From this battle, I got 2500 XP and 45 Gold. You can search around the mansion more for treasure if you'd like. Note that to find some of these treasures, the Search mode must be on. In the bottom southeast-most corner of Kovel Mansion, you will find some tapestries, with two of them being fine. You'll get two Fine Tapestries and a Splinted Mail as well as 875 XP. In the room just north of that, a glass bottle will fall and break, releasing yellow poisonous gas. Your party should only take minor damage, but if a party member is unconscious, they will probably die. In the same room in the north- east corner, you'll find three wooden cabinets, presented with the choice to search one of three cabinets. If you fail to disarm the traps, a spike from the back of the room will hit your party with minor damage. Sometimes you will not even get a chance. If you attempt to open the same cabinet again, choose to break the cabinets. Funny thing is if you attempt to open the same cabinet again, you'll get some Engrish (cabinets is locked). I'll describe what's behind each cabinet: Cabinet 1: You find documents, which reveals the thieves were spying on certain people in Phlan. Cabinet 2: 15 sacks of gold coins. (43 XP and GP) Cabinet 3: 18 sacks of gold coins. (1800 XP and GP) Nearby is a 3x2 room. If you look in the northwest corner, you'll find the thieves' booty (Haha, they said booty!). You'll get 1552 XP. You'll also get a short sword, leather armor, a silver mirror and silver scarab, two daggers, and a potion. Now we'll make our way to the southwestern region of Kovel Mansion. On your way there, you'll come across a trap (a swinging ceiling sword). You may have the option to avoid or disarm it. (Note: There's still work to do here. I'll work on it in the future.) =================== h. Braccio's Quest =================== MISSION - Recover the Temple of Bane REWARD - No council reward, reward in temple COUNCIL REWARD - Hidden shrine treasure. NPC ENCOUNTERS - Dirten MONSTERS - Goblin, Orc, Mace, Ogre To find Braccio, go to the temple near the dock. There will be a 1x1 room connected to it. That's where Braccio is. (If you tried to go in there before, a priest will tell you that he's busy and cannot see anyone at the moment.) When you enter, he'll introduce you to his worker, Dirten. Dirten will then introduce himself and tell you that Orcs took over the shrine across the river and begs for your assistance. Accept him into your party. If you don't, you can come back later and he will ask if you have changed your mind. You can also go in this room now (Not that it matters). To get to the shrine, take a boat north. Then after you get to the wilderness, choose to Leave. Then go east and then south. After you take a step south, the game will give you some different directions. Choose to take the South Gate. When you get there, all you need to do is head west. There are some things to do in this current area, but they're optional, so keep going west until you get to a new area. Now you should see a huge room that takes up most of the map. Enter it from the west. You'll meet a blind orc who will want to search you. If you let him search you, he'll draw back and yell something along the lines of 'Nonbelievers! Slay them!' This is because you don't have a Leather Symbol of Bane. You can get one from the random encounters around here. Fighting some orcs got me 65 XP and 4 Gold. If you fight the ones at the temple entrance, there's 7 regulars and 1 leader. Fighting the orcs at the temple entrance gave me 166 XP and 17 Gold. Now there's two ways to start the boss fight; try and leave the temple or go to the back of the shrine to find a podium. One of your party members will mention they feel sick. Then, attempt to destroy the podium. =========================== BOSS: Mace and His Minions =========================== There's 14 orcs, two bugbears and Mace. My tip to you here is to use any paralysis spells like sleep, stink cloud and hold person. Go after the bugbears first, then take care of Mace and the orcs. If you can, cast a sleep spell on the orcs. It'll make your life easier. I got 1139 XP and 16 Gold. And how convenient, I got a 'mace', too. (Haha) After the battle, the game will tell you as you destroy the podium, you feel the sickness go away. Dirten will thank you for your assistance and say that in return, you can have the secret treasures in the shrine. He says he will stay behind, but I have never ran into him here ever since I completed the mission. You will also be able to sleep here without interruption. To find the treasures, use Search mode and look in every corner of the temple and find a trap door. Open it to get treasure! ================= i. Textile House ================= MISSION - Save Skullcrusher and get Cadorna's family treasure. REWARD - Reward from council, Cadorna's family treasure. REWARD FROM COUNCIL - 5000 XP and 20 gems. NPC ENCOUNTERS - Skullcrusher (Crusher in gameplay) MONSTERS - Poisonous Frogs, Ghoul, Wight, Grishnak (Goblin Boss), Scorpion, Hobgoblin, Hobgoblin Leader, Skeleton If you haven't done so already, talk to Councilor Cadorna before heading here. He will tell you his family treasure is in the textile house. He will warn you that his servant Skullcrusher never returned. The Textile House can be located south of Podol Plaza. Sometimes while walking around the textile house, you'll find notes on the ground. Here's an example; The number of undead in Valhingen Graveyard is increasing. The Boss is very angry. He ordered me to the Graveyard to find the cause. I think there's a Vampire or some other monster. I'll make a preliminary investigation with my men. Also, if your party needs to rest here, go back to Podol Plaza and the south west section is a shrine that you can rest at for free. It functions exactly like the ones in New Phlan, except you can rest here. (Only do this next part if you have a thief in your party.) When you get here, look for a 1x1 room around the northwest region on the west wide of the map. Go there, and the game will note that there is a hole and 'Thieves Only' is written on the walls. Have one of your thieves go down it to meet Restal. He'll offer to forge the seal on Cadorna's family treasure if you agree to split it 50/50 with him. Accept his offer. He'll blindfold your party and lead you through a passage which takes you to the soutwestern region. Head west for the semi-boss battle. (Read this part either if you don't have a thief in your party or you don't want Restal's help.) Look for a 2x2 room in the southwest. If Restal took you, just head to the left. Since there is another 4x4 looking room with it (1x2 rooms combined), look for the 2x2 room beneath that one. Enter the room. When you do, the game will state that it is the sanctuary of some dark force. Then one of your characters will imply that they feel sick. Then an old hobgoblin named Grishnak will see you and she'll get mad that you interrupted her ceremony. ================ Grishnak Battle ================ Here, you have 8 regular hobgoblins, 2 leaders and Grishnak. Grishnak won't be easy to kill, as she has some goblins by her side. Have your fighters and mages (magic-users) hit the hobgoblins. Have your fighters then go up to Grishnak and slice her up. Be lucky you're not playing the computer versions, because in those ports, she's got cleric spells. Winning this battle got me 1060 XP and 40 Gold. (Another occasion I got 1120 XP. I also got two scrolls and a potion) Grishnak should also drop a scroll, potion, and a brass key. This key will be used in a few minutes, so make sure you take it. Now it's time to rescue Cadorna's servant (which is why we need the key.) Cadorna's servant isn't required to beat the game, but he's a great help. Go south into one of the 1x1 rooms. The game mentions there are crude black handprints on the walls. Go south again to encounter the same battle as the previous one, but without Grishnak. I got 360 XP and 40 Gold. The game says there is graffiti on the walls. Now go south again to enter a small, dark room. You'll find Cadorna's servant in chains. There is a piece of paper next to him... It mentions that giants and trolls are immigrating into Valjevo Castle, and that ettins and bugbears patrol the gate into the castle and that it is rumored that smugglers sneak things through the gate to Tyranthraxus. Choose to save him by using the brass key. He will tell you the whereabouts of the leader. I'll give you the directions. Follow them starting where the entrance to Grishnak's room is: E4, S2, E1, S1, then E2. Skullcrusher will say that the eastern wall is an illusion, and the chief is there. ==================== BOSS: Leader Battle ==================== In this battle you will face 8 hobgoblins, 2 hobgoblin leaders and an ogre. To win this battle, just have your magic users cast sleep on all the hobgoblins, kill them, then finish off the ogre. At this point in the game, the ogre shouldn't be able to slain you, so if he defeats one of your characters, they should be Unconscious or Hurt. Bandage them if they are Hurt to keep them from being Slain, when then character's HP is -10, they die (slain) and they lose a point every turn. Winning this battle got me 560 XP and 45 Gold. No gems here. Now you will get this text: "You find an iron box, across the lock is the seal of the family of Cadorna." And then it will warn you that if you open the box, it will damage the seal beyond repair. You can do one of the three things: 1.) Open it 2.) Take it unopened 3.) Take the box to Restal at his guild. If you chose choice number 3, Restal will offer to forge the seal on the box for half the treasure. If you chose choice number 1, when you get to Phlan, Cadorna will say that he will never forgive you. If you chose choice number 2, He will thank you and I believe the Council will give you a reward. Whatever choice you make, go back to Phlan and go to the City Hall. When you get to Phlan and get close to the city hall, Skullcrusher will tell you that he has to leave your party. If you choose number 1 with Skullcrusher in your party, he will warn you not to open it, that it's the property of Cadorna. If you still open it, you will get 17000 XP, 2000 GP and 60 Gems. I personally chose choice number 3 and took the box to Restal for half the treasure. Doing that will get you 8500 XP, 1000 Gold and 30 gems. Wow, that's a lot! If you decide to open the chest as soon as you get it, you'll get a whopping 17000 XP, 2000 Gold and 60 gems. Skullcrusher will first warn you not to open it though. Congratulations! You've beaten the textile house (kind of). If you want to really beat it, keep fighting random encounters until no more enemies are encountered. When you get back to Phlan, the city guards will take Cadorna's treasure from you and say they will 'definitely' give this to Concilor Cadorna. When you go near the City Hall, Skullcrusher will tell you that he must go to Cadorna and will leave your party. ======================= j. Wilderness missions ======================= Before we start any missions here, let's analyze what's there: First, we have a nomad camp, then we have a pyramid around it, then we've got a kobold cave, a dragon's den, a castle to the east, Zhentil Keep to the west, and a bucaneer base. You may not be able to see all these things. Don't worry, we'll get to them later and I'll tell you how to locate them. Also, these are in no particular order, although I do strongly urge you to do the Kobold Cave before you go to Valhingen Graveyard. Now time to go back to the wilderness. Let's first start out with: ============== 1. Nomad Camp ============== MISSION - Help the nomads kill the incoming kobold army and to keep them from joining Tyranthraxus. REWARD - Reward from Hassad and Reward from council REWARD FROM COUNCIL - 4000 XP and 16 gems NPC ENCOUNTERS - N/A MONSTERS - Nomad, Hassad, 4th Level Fighter, Shaman, Kobolds The nomad's camp can be located near the pyramid. When it says you have found a recently abandoned camp that means you are close. It should be just north of the trees. There should be four blocks of brown ground over the trees. That's where the camp is. Enter it. Now you'll either trip a wire after a step or two which will trigger an alarm or guards will locate you. The game will tell you that children come out of the tents but their mothers quickly bring them back in. Then you're told that the nomads wait for your next move. Select Advance and then Parley. The Nomad leader Hassad will appear and welcome you. He will tell you that he is holding a feast tonight and asks if you'll join him. If you refuse, he'll order you to leave. You can choose not to leave at this point, but then he'll attack you. Just accept his offer (besides, why pass on free food?). After you accept, the music will go back to normal. He'll then take your party to a large tent to take part of their various happenings which go on for the rest of the day. Hassad will then talk about some stuff during dinnertime, like Yarash's Pyramid in the southwest, the castle at the eastern marsh, and that Zhentil Keep isn't perfect either. Hassad will beg you to stay and help them fight. Before you can accept or refuse, he will tell you that you'll have a night's rest to think about it. You are then brought to a tent to temporarily rest. Choose to rest. Hassad will wake your party up in the morning and ask what your decision is, to stay and help them or leave. Choose to help them, as the reward you get for your assistance to the nomads will be well worth it. If you refuse (at any point in this mission), Hassad will order you to leave right now. If you say no, then you'll end up getting into a fight with them. Just be nice, please. (Maybe I'll cover this battle in the optional battles section later on.) If you try to leave the camp, Hassad will find you and say you broke your promise. You'll then be given a choice to stay, leave the camp, or escape. If you try to leave, the nomads will attack you. Hassad will tell you the kobolds are on their way to the camp. Rest and then at about 23:00 you will be awoken from the sounds of battle. The kobolds have arrived! ================== Kobold Battle 1/3 ================== Here there are 15 kobolds; 12 regulars and 3 leaders. Fortunately, you've got four nomads to accompany you. I got 176 XP and 16 Gold. Another time, I got 159 XP and 15 Gold. ================== Kobold Battle 2/3 ================== Exactly the same as the first battle. Once again, I got 176 XP and 16 Gold. Also got 159/15 another occasion. Now for the last battle Hassad will ask you to fight one last battle with him. If you refuse, he'll end up winning the battle (though one soldier ends up getting killed). He'll then get mad and you won't get your reward and you've failed the mission. All you'll get is 500 XP and Gold. Just accept. Besides, this next battle will be really fun, I promise... ================== Kobold Battle 3/3 ================== The calvary has arrived! Now Hassad and the elite nomads will join in the battle with bows and arrows. But now there will be more kobolds too. Specifically; 10 regulars and 5 leaders. The elite nomads on your side certainly make this battle easy, but fun. I got 175 XP and 15 Gold this time. Hassad will then give you the promised reward. More specifically, 8900 XP and 5000 Gold. If that's not enough, you also get a two-handed sword and Shaman's wand. The wand alone makes all those previous battles here worth it. Hassad will then ask you to leave, as they are going to hold ceremonies for the fallen nomads. Why they don't want you to attend is beyond me. It's like they were just using us. No matter though. We'll be on our way. The game tells you that the nomads give you their word not to join Tyranthraxus' side. The game will then force you out of the camp and you cannot go back into the Nomad camp again. Kind of like how when you complete a temple in Zelda 2 and it turns to rock. Go back to New Phlan for your reward. ================ 2. Kobolds Cave ================ MISSION - Kill the kobold king, Find the efreet (optional). REWARD - Reward from council REWARD FROM COUNCIL - 6250 XP and 25 gems. NPC ENCOUNTERS - Princess Fatima (can't leave Kobold cave) MONSTERS - Kobold, Boar, Troll, Envoy, Wyvern Before you take on this mission, make sure your party is fully rested, equipped, and has all their spells memorized, because you won't be sleeping in this place! Also, I would suggest doing this when your party is nearly fully trained. Also, if you visited Diogenes, he will tell you about the kobold cave and there is an efreet you'll need there, but after you get it and go back to his cave, he is no longer there. I wonder what's up with that? Anyway, let's start this mission. (Note: His name is pronounced D O Gi Knees) Go to the docks and take a boat east. Now just keep going up north following a stream. At the end of the stream is a big mountain with a couple small mountains next to it. Here are the directions in case you're still stuck: Up 14 times, left 1. Now the game says a bunch of screaming kobolds attack you! ===================== Kobold Killing Spree ===================== Here there are 18 kobolds; 15 regulars and 3 leaders. You know the drill; kill the leaders first, then the regulars after. These guys should be a laugh by now. I got 536 XP and 18 Gold from this. Surprisingly, I also got a Long Bow! Fair enough... After the battle, move down (into the completely brown square) and you will see a huge amount of kobolds entering a small cave masked by some shrubbery, and that there's a large cave next to it. Enter the large cave. Now follow the corridor by simply hugging the left wall. You'll see a doorway. Try to enter it and the game will tell you that there are a bunch of rocks here. Choose to Go forward and you'll be noted that you just woke up a monster. More specifically, a Wyvern. Alternatively, you can go the other way (North) and the game will say the Wyvern climbs down from the nest and attacks you. =============== Wyvern Warfare =============== If you haven't read through my monster guide, a wyvern is a type of dragon that can poison your party. That only happens with almost each time he hits you. Make sure your strongest are first so they can rid the wyvern easily. Stink Cloud can paralyze the wyvern, so if your magic users have that by now, try that. If you do use Stink Cloud, make sure you rememorize it. Sometimes you can rest here. I got 1345 XP for this. After that, go into the wyvern's nest to find some treasure, which yields: 3710 XP and 7 gems. You'll also get three scrolls, a long sword, chain mail, and a hammer. Now go into the dead end and find a one-legged kobold. He will beg for water. If you threaten him, he just draws back further into the crack. If you slay him, you...well...slay him... Be nice and give him the water. Where the water came from, I have no idea... Anyway, he will then climb out of the crack. Then he says that the king didn't like him so he threw him into the wyvern's nest, and that he's lucky only to have lost one leg. Then, he will ask if you met the guard, and to be careful of the traps around here. The game notes that he's done talking and is about to walk away. You can let him go or kill him. Doesn't matter which option you choose. I chose the former though. Now go back through the rock passage from earlier. Go forward and you'll find a kobold sleeping here. You can pass by him, wake him up, or kill him. Choose the second option, as passing him will result in you getting hit by wall spikes, and then a net capturing your party leading to a fight with 9 regular kobolds and 1 kobold leader. The kobold will ask if you're the envoys Tyranthraxus sent and if you want him to take you to the king. If you pick No, he'll tell you to leave him alone and he'll go back to sleep. If you kill him, he'll ask what you're doing with your swords and tell you not to joke. Then, he'll laugh, and he'll still laugh even during his last breaths. Weird! Pick Yes and follow him. Along the way, he'll knock on the walls and proceed to guide your party. He'll then tell the king he's got company. The king will respond with a simple "Take them!". The kobold will then lead you a little bit more and go back to sleep. Now, this is where the hardest part of the mission is, but before we start, why not look for help? Turn left and go west a couple steps. The game then says you hear kobolds and humans' voices. Go south two steps, then head west until you get to a wall. Turn right facing north and you'll see a door. Follow the corridor. The game says you hear a blur of voices which sounds like a kobold patrol, but you notice something unusual; there is a woman there in barbaric clothes. She will release the body of a kobold she just killed. She will then notice your party and introduce herself as Fatima, the daughter of the chief of her tribe, and that she came her to dispatch the kobolds for her tribe. She then tells you she was captured but just killed the guard and was about to get out of here. She'll then say she notices you also came here to get rid of the kobolds, and asks for your help. Choose to cooperate with her. To be honest, she doesn't help much, but she's good 'bait' for the upcoming battles... There is a map you can find in the cave as well, but the game says it's poorly done and you can't decipher it, but are able to find that it shows that a monster is at the end of a small passage here. Good thing we already took care of it! Opposite of where you find the map is a pond. Don't go near it or one of your characters will fall into it. They won't die, but they will warn that they may have lost something while in the water. That's about all there is around here. If you try resting, kobolds will throw rocks at you, but you don't get to attack them back. Now are you ready? You better be, because this is where the going gets tough and the tough gets going. Walk back out to where the kobold lead you to. It should be an open area. Walk north and you'll see a bunch of kobolds, and the kobold king is sitting on his throne in the back. There are two envoys standing to his side. One of them will order to kill your party, that Tyranthraxus would love it. Then the king will order them to kill you. (Note: I'll also list the Japanese version's battles since they're tougher. My only tip to you is to use your fireball necklace if you still have one. You should, as I haven't told you its a necessity until now.) ======= Wave 1 ======= In this battle, there are 6 regular kobolds, 2 leaders and a troll. That's 9 enemies in case you couldn't do the math. Go after the troll and try not to give him a chance to attack. Then go after the leaders and then the regulars for the kobolds. If you still have the fireball necklace from Ohlo, use it once or twice. Save some of its attacks for the upcoming battles. Be careful though, a troll regenerates its health when it's dead. If it gains enough, it will come back, so make sure you dispatch the kobolds quickly. If you're lucky, the kobolds will surrender. I got 901 XP and 8 Gold here. (In the Japanese version, it's much harder; there's 10 regular kobolds, 2 leaders, and not one, not two, but THREE trolls! I got 2500 XP and 12 Gold with one of the trolls escaping. I also got a hammer.) After the battle, the kobold king will be fed up with your party and will order a ballista to fire rocks at your party. So, if you took heavy damage from that last battle, things are going to get a lot worse. ======= Wave 2 ======= Now they've spiced up the difficulty a little bit (though that's to be expected), now there's 4 regular kobolds, two leaders, a troll and a wild boar. Here's how you should do this; First - Troll, Second - Boar, and Third - Kobolds. Remember, the trolls can regenerate themselves, so swiftly kill the other enemies. When there's around four kobolds left, they should surrender. I got 1040 XP and 6 Gold. Not worth it... (In the Japanese version, there's 7 regular kobolds, 3 leaders, three trolls and two wild boars. Use the same strategy. I got 2867 XP and 10 Gold.) After this intense battle, the envoys will coldly smile and one of them will say, "I'll show you how a warrior fights!" ======= Wave 3 ======= Now is the tough part, now you will be facing the king's bodyguards-Envoys. They are very tough to beat. Have your fighters hit the envoys first with everything they have. Also if you have any effective spells that will paralyze/hold, or at least do damage to a monster, then use it. That will make your life a bit more easier. I won 2806 XP and 14 Gold for this battle. I also got two 2H swords which I assume are what the envoys used, but their combat sprite shows them holding one sword in one hand and a shield in the other. Another time, I got 3006 XP and 14 Gold. I got the 2-handed swords again, but also got a Long Sword. (In the Japanese version, there are 8 regular kobolds, the two envoys, four wild boars and thankfully only one troll. I got 3313 XP and 18 Gold. I also got the envoys' 2H Swords.) After the fierce battle, one of your party members will notice the king is gone. Again, you can't rest here, so if your party is in bad shape, there's nothing you can really do except to cast Cure Light Wounds. What you CAN do however, is have your clerics re-memorize the spells, and then pray that when you are memorizing spells in your sleep that you aren't attacked. Now, go north into the alcove which is an illusionary wall. Go through it and follow the corridor. It will lead you to... ================ Bodyguard Brawl ================ This will be an extremely tough battle because of the damage you have taken and the amount of enemies in the battle. You are up against 10 kobolds, 3 kobold leaders, and 2 trolls. Do the math to find out you are up against 15 enemies. Again, kill the troll first and the kobolds last. If you have good AC, then it should be hard for the kobolds to hit you, even the leaders. A good strategy here is to let the kobolds come to you and block the trolls from attacking you. While doing this, attack the leaders and then attack the troll. If there are other kobolds that can come up and block the path, then go ahead and kill a kobold. I got 1767 XP and 13 Gold. When you're done, go to the alcove. There is an illusionary wall. After that, follow the corridor. You'll enter a room with two ways. The game will notify you that the kobold king fell in a spike pit and is now dead. Take the left door and after you enter the door, face south and select Look from the options. You will find a bottle in a crack of the wall. Choose to Pull it out and your first party member will accidentally pull the cork off instead and an Efreeti will come out. This Efreeti's name is Samir Awahl, the vampire hunter. Samir will ask you if you are vampires. Say no and he will tell you only to let him out when there is a vampire around. You will get 3950 XP for finding him. Have one of your party members take the bottle. There's also a long sword you can have. If you want to, you can tell him you are vampires. Then he'll say, You devils! I'll destroy you with my bare hands! and a fight will start. Just say you aren't vampires. Now go around the corner to find the kobolds' treasure. You'll get 3545 XP, 500 Gold and 10 Gems. You'll get three rotting tapestries, a silver mirror, three scrolls and a necklace. Take as much as you can and make sure you take the necklace. It will prove very useful. Use it sparingly. (Note: If you're like me and don't have enough inventory space, go back to Phlan. Don't worry, you can come back here later.) Now, you are done with the kobold cave. Maybe you can make it so no more enemies can be encountered but I have not tested this. Now, try and find your way out of the cave. You will most likely run into kobolds that offer to take you to some treasure. If you do, accept, or they will knock on the wall and rocks will fall on your party and possibly kill one or more of your party members. You will either have to take the treasure or leave it. It's your call but if you choose to take it, you can just sell the tapestries to the shops. If you go the way the kobold used to guide your party, a net will fall from the ceiling and entrap your party. Then 1 leader and 9 regular kobolds will ambush you in your struggle to escape the net. Beating it should give you 98 XP and 10 Gold. Now get ready to take one last kick in the butt before you leave; walk forward and some spikes will shoot out of the wall at your party. It will only slightly damage them, but if a party member's unconscious, it can kill them. If one or more of your party members are unconscious, have your clerics use a Cure Light Wounds spell on them (if you still have one). Now just go through the doorway, head right and follow the corridor out of here, hoping you don't run into anymore kobolds on the way. (There will be random encounters with them.) When you try to leave the cave, Fatima will tell you she has to go and that she will always remember you. If she didn't make it, the nomads will be here instead to claim her body. Congratulations! You've beaten the kobold cave, one of the hardest parts of the game (if not THE hardest). Once you exit, you'll see the cave now has a spot on the map in the wilderness. Like the Lizardmen's castle, you can come back here anytime you want. Once you get to the city hall, the clerk will say that the fall of the kobold army will be a major loss for Tyranthraxus. That's releiving to know! ======================= 3. Valhingen Graveyard ======================= MISSION - Destroy the undead and eliminate the Vampire REWARD - Reward from Council REWARD FROM COUNCIL - 35000 XP, 140 Gems (For killing Vampire) NPC ENCOUNTERS - Magician MONSTERS - Zombie, Giant Skeleton, Ghoul, Skeleton, Vampire, Wight, Wraith, Wolf, Magician, Juju Zombie, Mummy I don't know how to 'activate' it or when it's supposed to happen, but sometimes, the council clerk offers you a special weapon for this mission. (A 2H Sword and a scroll with two cleric's Restoration spells and 420 XP). For those of you who aren't familiar with the restoration spell, it will restore experience levels for any characters who have been hit by a wight, the wraith or vampire. You'll get more of these scrolls in the graveyard. Also, if you clear out certain parts of the graveyard, you'll be awarded with 325 XP, 75 Gold and a gem. I also got 9265 XP, 15 Gold and 37 Gems for destroying a lot of undead. If you need to rest, simply leave the graveyard and go back to Kovel Mansion (North part of Phlan on the wilderness select screen.) Since you took care of the thieves, you can now rest there uninterrupted. To get to the graveyard, simply go to the passenger dock and board a boat to the north. Choose to go north. Then when you get to the wilderness, one of the chocies is the graveyard. Choose that. First off, let's talk about some of the enemies. The spectres, wights, wraith and the vampire will drain one or more experience levels with any successful hits. Sure, you can use the restoration scrolls you find in the graveyard, but I find it easier to just reset the game. I've reset my physical copy of it hundreds of times on my NES and it's still got the game save to this day. At your entry, there will be a gust of wind and a bolt of lightning. First, follow the passage until you see a door to your right. The left passage will lead to skeletal hands coming out from the ground and grabbing one of your party members resulting in a fight with 10 skeletons. It's not worth it, plus it's optional, so I'm not going to cover something so irrelevant. Attempt to walk inside said door and then skeletons burst out to attack you. ================ Undead Battle 1 ================ Here, there are 10 skeletons. They're not tough, but they have a low armor class, meaning they're harder to hit. Plus, you need magical weapons in order to hit them. (You should have picked them up by now.) If you have Stink Cloud, then use a couple of those. If you choose your cleric(s)' Turn option, you can either scare the skeletons so they run away, or if they're strong enough, they will disappear! This battle got me just 190 XP. Now just walk down to the end of the hall and you'll find a giant skeleton with his retainers. He's the only giant skeleton in the whole game. ====================== Giant Skeleton Battle ====================== Now you will be facing 18 skeletons and the giant skeleton. My tip to you is to have your clerics Turn which means to turn undead which will scare the undead sometimes. Now when you come to the Giant Skeleton, have your fighters come in first. Luckily, the Giant Skeleton can't drain levels but can hit for lots of damage. Just have your fighters hit the Skeleton with everything they got. You will get 593 XP for it...and that's all. Not worth it since that giant skeleton can do some heavy damage. After that, walk to the end of the corridor/hall and select 'Look'. You will find a marble box. Open it for treasure. You will get 9050 XP, 70 Gold and 34 Gems. You'll also get four/five scrolls of Restoration. If you want to clear out this place 100%, then go into the southwestern room, which looks like a 2x2 room over a 1x2 room. The game will tell you it's a mausoleum with bones around it. Try walking into the door and skeletons will burst out of the tower to kill you. ======================== Skeletons in the Closet ======================== Here you will battle 10 skeletal warriors. Just have your clerics turn undead and slash them to pieces. That's all there is to it. Sometimes if you're lucky, the skeletons will disappear when your cleric turns undead. This usually works if you're fully trained (my cleric was level 6 when it did this.) I got only 190 XP from this. After this, the game says that some toxic gas comes out of the door nearly impairing your vision, it's so thick you can't even see inside the mausoleum. When you enter, your throat and eyes will hurt from the gas and you'll lose a bit of health. Go forward into the next room where the game will say you startle a spectre animating a skeletal warrior. Any choice you choose results in a battle... ================= Skeleton Spectre ================= If you have stink cloud (you should by now), cast it on the spectre. Usually, you can freeze him with it, thus making this an easy battle. If he touches you, your experience levels will be drained. I got only 2030 XP from this battle. Now look on the Area map for a 2x2 room under a Tetris 'T' flipped room (the room you're looking for is on the bottom, it's kind of in the middle of the bottom of the map.) Try to enter and zombies will shuffle down the stairs. ============= Zombie Horde ============= Zombies are a little easier than Skeletons since their armor class is higher. There are 10 zombies. They shouldn't be hard to dispatch, and they cannot drain experience levels. All I got was 400 XP from this battle. No gold or gems. Enter the door and a zombie with 'hard, gray skin' looks at you with hateful eyes. This is the Juju Zombie. Where they came up witht that name I will never know... ============ Juju Battle ============ This is an easy battle. It took my party just a couple swings to kill the zombie. This time you're facing him solo. There are no other zombies or skeletons in this fight. I got 206 XP from him. After the battle, the game will say there are various objects scattered around the room and it will give you the option to pick them up or not. Pick the former and you'll get 3280 XP. You'll also get a potion, a lightning wand and two scrolls. Did I say kill? Oh, I meant defeat. You can't kill what's already dead... If you choose not to pick up the items, you can come back and get them later, but make sure if you come back for them, to do it when you haven't defeated the vampire, or else they won't be there anymore. Now go to the "Area" map and look for a nearby room which looks like the T piece from tetris flipped to the right. Go in there and there's nothing, just one more step and you encounter a stone sarcophagus, which slowly opens up revealing mummies. Right before the battle starts, one of your characters will shout "It's a mummy!" ======================= I Don't Want My Mummy! ======================= This battle will be quite tough. You will face quite a few mummies that can Hold your character and disease your character within one successfull hit. Sometimes the game will glitch and say your character was paralyzed, but in reality, they're not affected (or infected in this case). Fortunately, they are very easy to kill. Just have your fighters (or clerics for that matter) hit the mummies. Then take the treasure. If your party is hit by the mummies and diseased, simply have your cleric cast 'Cure Disease'. Your cleric(s) should have the spell by now. I got 5656 XP from this battle. Again, no gold or gems. Here's another optional part where you can fight a wraith, which is the only one in the game. Up and to the right of where you're currently standing will show a 2x2 room with a 1x1 room inside it. Go there and the game will tell you it's a big tower. When you try entering, voices will speak out telling you they attempted to defeat Tyranthraxus and will warn you to leave or die. After you select Attack, the game will say wights attack you. =============== Wights Galore! =============== You'll be faced with a few wights. The best strategy use can use it to have your cleric(s) turn undead and pray that the wights (at least most of them) get scared. If not, then just hack and slash at them and hope they don't hit you, becuase one successful hit will drain a level and if they drain a party member who has been drained to level 1 (You should have your party members way past that level at this point) then they will be Slain. In other words, they're really dead, and they can only be brought back to life at the Phlan temples and I believe it costs 55,000 GP to restore them. Restoration spells are also available at the temples, so if you want to spend most of your GP to get your characters levels back, then do so. Otherwise, just reset the game. I got 1965 XP only. Another occasion, I got 2620 with a few wights who ran away. After the battle, enter the building, then go inside and follow the path to the end of the building (in the 1x1 room). In the NES version the text says "There is a coffin with a spirit hovering above it moaning: I am protect this body. Leave of suffer my wrath." Luckily, you have the DOS version to correct that: "In the chamber is a single crypt. Floating above the crypt is a wraith. 'I am the protector of the paladin. I guard his remains for all eternity. Leave or suffer.' " If you choose to stay... ============================== Feel My Wraith! err... Wrath! ============================== Even though there's just one to fight, the Wraith is NOT, I repeat, NOT an enemy to be taken lightly, any successful hit will drain life levels. Fortunately, he's definitely not the most challenging opponent in the game and can be easily hit by a skilled fighter with magical weapons (If the council clerk gives you the sword for the so-called 'Graveyard Menace' then now would definitely be a good time to use it, or any time you're in the graveyard.) You'll get a pretty nice reward after you defeat him. The game will tell you that you the body has armor and weapons. Take them. I got 719 XP from him. You get 1890 XP from the body's inventory and a hammer, sling, two scrolls and a potion. Now go to the "Area Map" and there will be a narrow path. Walk in it and find a robed man. If you wait or Parley he will come closer. He will beg you to help him get rid of the monsters in the graveyard. You can accept him into your party but it's not going to be good for you later down the road. If you accept him, he will tell you about the vampire hiding in the northeast corner. If you try and leave the graveyard, he will leave your party, but he will be back where he was when you return. Wait a minute...why won't he come with you out of the graveyard? Well...to make a long story short. He works for the vampire. Sorry if I spoiled anything. If you wish not to fight him at all, just let him join your party, then go to the options, then select Encamp and then Remove, then select Magician. He won't be in the graveyard anymore. Not even if you leave and come back. He won't appear where you first found him. Anyways, moving on, follow the corridor that you found Magician at and around the corner, you'll see a mausoleum. Then lighting will strike around the building and the game says a wight appears behind it. They made a serious typo there... ================== The "Wight" Fight ================== Oh man, this is one of the (if not THE) toughest battles of the game. Any successful hit from a wight will drain one or more levels from your party members, and if they're drained at level 1, they'll be Slain. You'll be up against 6 wights. To defeat these guys, have your clerics turn. It doesn't work all the time but sometimes it will do you justice. My tip to you too is to stay back as far as you can from the wights and use wands, arrows (if composite bows) and any other projectile weapons. If you get drained, start over again. Just keep turning until all the wights (or most of them) are afraid of you and run away. Your cleric(s) might be at full level by now, which means you have a better chance at scaring off the wights. If you let Magician join your party, then you will notice, he is about to cast a powerful spell, but then cancels it. That's weird... This battle gave just 3275 XP, but gave me 1965 XP when a lot of the wights got away. Another time, I got 3930 XP after killing all of them. Now walk into the mausoleum for another spectre battle. When you enter, the game says there are pieces of glass all over the first floor. Suddenly, you're thrown into the air and take some damage. Take one more step and you'll find a spectre developing wights. So THIS is where they're all coming from! The game says the spectre continues animating the wights, as it doesn't see your party. Any choice (besides flee) will start the battle. ============== Wight Spectre ============== Again, just use stink cloud and try to paralyze him before he hits any of your characters. You will get 2030 XP for killing him. Now go to the Area map to find a room that looks like a cross. Go inside it.Before you enter, the game will mention a sign near it that says "A DARK ONE SLEEPS HERE. ENTER NOT!" Also the game mentions that there is garlic and other stuff that can kill a vampire. Disregard the warning and enter the building. In the middle is the vampire's coffin. The game will ask you what you wish to do with the coffin. Choose to Sanctify it, as this will weaken the vampire. Again, I will show you another optional fight, but leaves behind some cool stuff. If you want to skip this, then you can go to the vampire. Anyway, around the top-left on the area map, you should see 2 1x2 rooms next to each other. The game will notify you that you're in front of big double doors which have illustrations of warriors fighting hordes of the undead. When you try to enter, a spectre will float out from a crack underneath the double doors. (In the computer version, it's two ghosts) so this takes us to... ============== Super Spectre ============== He's just like the other spectres you've battled here. You know the drill. You will get 2030 XP for killing him. After you finish off the spectre, walk into the building he was guarding and follow the path to the end and you'll start to hear the encounter music playing, but don't worry, there's no fights here. You'll see a grave and then you'll hear a voice telling you to take his legacy. I'm guessing this is the voice of the spectre you just defeated. Then, a shadow will come out of his grave and gives you a sword. You will then get 2630 XP, including some items; Plate Mail, a Long Sword, a Shield, a ring of Fire Resistance, and four scrolls. Note that if you leave the Graveyard to go back to New Phlan and sell excess items to get the ones from the spectre, you'll have to fight him again. Now, before we fight the boss, let's go into the room shaped like a cross. Before you enter, it will say 'A dark one sleeps here. Enter not.' on the door. Then, there are some various objects including a braid of garlic. Walk into the room and you'll find a coffin. You will also find a scroll. If you read it, it will tell you to sanctify the vampire's resting place to kill it. Then you will be prompted on what to do with the coffin. Choose what the scroll said. This will make one of the future battles easier. Now go to the Area map and go to the room in the northeast corner. If you have Magician in your party, he will exclaim that the vampire is behind the illusionary wall. After you go through the illusionary wall, walk forward to find the vampire. If you have Magician in your party, the vampire will ask him if your party are new victims. Magician will tell him yes. Your first party member will then say, "You deceived us! You traitor!" If you have the Efreeti, Samir Awahl (you should), the cork will then pop off and Samir will say, "Wicked one! I shall destroy you!" ============== BOSS: Vampire ============== Unfortunately, the Vampire can drain levels. Hopefully, you have the Efreet from the kobold's cave or things will be a little harder. The wolves are nothing to worry about. They don't hit you often, and even if they do, they don't do much damage. Now when you have the Efreet at the Vampire, let him take care of business. It will make things a lot easier. If one of your character's levels have been drained by the vampire, just restart. If the Efreeti dies (which has never happened to me) then you are on your own. Unfortuantely, the Efreeti's stuck in the back, so he doesn't get much chance to attack the vampire. Now that I think of it, was it really worth it to get the Efreeti? I got 4761 XP from this battle. After the battle, the game will tell you the vampire turns into mist and disappears. He's still alive and you have to finish him off one last time once and for all, but first before you leave, select Look from the options and you will find the vampire's treasure, which is a whopping 16230 XP, 9000 Gold and 12 gems! Not only that, you'll also get a wand, shield, three potions and scrolls. Remember the place that we sanctified the vampire's coffin? Go there and... Hey, what's the Vampire doing here? No matter. Let's take care of him. ================= BOSS: Vampire II ================= (Note: Before you fight this last battle, make sure you didn't leave behind any treasure, because it will be gone after you defeat the vampire.) If you did as I said and sanctified the vampire's coffin, you'll greatly weaken the vampire, as it won't even take a few hits from your party to defeat him. Lucky for you, you won't have to go through those danged wolves. It's just the vampire and this is the last time throughout the game you will see the Efreet in combat. Let the Efreet do things for you. Even better, this time around, the vampire's health is very low this time; 15 HP... that is if you sanctified the coffin. Otherwise, he'll have his original HP. After you (or Samir) finishes off the vampire, if you really want to, you can kill the efreet if you want. I personally just end the battle after I kill the vampire. This time around, you get 3980 XP. Another occasion, I got 4316 XP. Then, I got 7042 for also killing the Efreet. I guess it's a free bonus for those who really want/need the XP. You'll also get 6 Gold. It's not much but hey, it's at least something. After this (if it is daytime) the graveyard will light up. Now there are no more zombies, ghouls, or anything. You can rest here (but the place still gives me the creeps due to the music). And you can go in any place of the graveyard that you want. Since you don't need the Efreeti anymore, go ahead and sell him at one of the shops in New Phlan, and you'll get 17500 Gold for it. That's enough for 17 training sessions! Also, if the council clerk gave you the two-handed sword, you'll get an extra reward for clearing the graveyard. I won't tell you the reward because it's always different everytime you play. Okay, well I'll tell you what I got this time: 23370 XP, 120 GP and 93 Gems. ==================== 4. Yarash's Pyramid ==================== MISSION - Take out the contamination which floods Stojanow River. REWARD - Reward from council, Lizardmen Reward (if you save them). REWARD FROM COUNCIL - 19000 XP, 250 Gold, 75 gems. NPC ENCOUNTERS - N/A MONSTERS - Cleric, Diane, Displacer Beast, Drider, Dwarf Fighter, Human Fighter, Kobold, Lizardman, Minotaur, Mutant Lizardman, Stirge, Yarash. You know the black and blue water in the wilderness? We're going to make it blue completely again. First, go to the pyramid in the wilderness. You will notice how you can't get into the pyramid. Go just north of the pyramid along the shore and the game will tell you how you find a boat which will take you to the pyramid, then you will find a secret enterance. Enter the pyramid. Now just walk forward until you get to a 2 alcoves. Step into the 2nd alcove and the game will tell you there are small stones and every time you step you it hurts. Don't worry, your party will not take damage. Go forward and then you will be teleported to either a blue or red area. The blue place is where you want to be. The red section is optional and I will cover it in the optional section. Now keep following the corridors and ignore any secret doors that the game notifies you of. You will eventually come to dead ends which ask you if you want to go forward, go back, or throw a small stone. When it asks you to throw a small stone, Throw one and walk forward. You will eventually come to a fork in the road. Go right and it should be straight forward from there. You'll know if you're where you need to go when you see a wooden door. (Note: In the computer versions, for copy protection, it asks you to enter a certain word before entering. After you enter the word, the game will ask you if you're sure that's the word. If you say yes, and it's the right word, then you can proceed into the next room. If you say yes, and it's the wrong word, it says some beast comes out of a secret door and kills your entire party. But seriously, you should at least get a fighting chance. If you are playing the computer versions, the the answer is 'Noknok'.) You will find the chamber which has been spewing all the bad water. Break it. If it says you hear a noise from the pipes, its your decision whether you run back into the room or not. it always varries whether the pipes break on the first try or not. If the game says its surely broken, it's still there and the game lies. If you need to keep breaking the pipes, do so. If your characters get hurt, just rest. Now go right before entering the left room (which leads to Yarash) to find chained Lizardmen. Advance and then Parley Nice with them and they'll tell you to visit the castle in the east and will thank you for helping them. If you attack or parley haughty, sly or abusive, the lizardmen will throw poisonous water at your party. If any party member is hit with the poisonous water, they automatically are slain. Now go into the room next to this one to find Yarash. He'll say that he's glad you've arrived because your party would make fine specimens... ============================= BOSS: Yarash and his Mutants ============================= This will not be an easy battle, for the mutant lizardmen can do more damage to you (they have 11 HP I think) than a regular lizardman can. have your Mages use any paralyzation or hurting spells on the mutant lizardmen first to take them down. Then focus on Yarash. He doesn't cast any spells really but he does have a lightning wand which can inflict some serious damage. If you have mages, have them cast sleep and stink cloud on the mutant lizardmen. That should help greatly. Killing Yarash and his mutant lizardmen earned me 6121 XP and 40 Gold. Yarash should also drop bracers, a wand, and three potions. After the battle, walk forward and you'll see some of Yarash's documents on a table. Select Look from the options to read them. You will read a letter with Tyranthraxus offering Yarash to join him, and that he'll make Yarash a general if he joins him. On the other side of the note, Yarash refuses, stating that he works by himself. Now if you step in the northeast corner, you can teleport to the entrance of the pyramid. Otherwise, you can turn the dial (next to the teleporter) to different colors (blue, bronze, silver, gold). After you set it to bronze, silver or gold, go into the teleporter and you'll be teleported to a room. The game will tell you there's mostly garbage. Select Look and you will find some treasure. It's mostly random what you find but usually you get 1000 XP or 1150 XP with a long sword, javelin, and either a short or long bow. Set the dial to other colors to find different treasures. You can come back here if you want. This optional part of the game I will cover here in case you need the XP. At the entrance, go back to the alcoves. Step in the left one to be teleported to the red area. Alternatively, go to the right alcove and throw a small stone and then go forward. I can't really help you as far as getting around, but I can help you however with the fights. There are two sections to this place. I'll cover the battles first (in alphabetical order) and then tell you how to get to the next section of the pyramid. If you need to rest, look for a cleric digging a hole out of the pyramid. You can exit the pyramid, go back into the entrance and just rest up your party. When you find the cleric, he'll smile at you and beg for you to help him finish digging the hole out of the pyramid since he no longer has the strength to do so. If you wish to attack him, look just below at '2nd Level Cleric'. ================= 2nd Level Cleric ================= No strategy needed here. =================== 6th Level Fighters =================== The game will tell you they are human fighers. Then, the leader of the group will wave their hand yelling that they're going to be okay. Don't fall for it. These guys are hard to hit, so what I'd suggest is to have your clerics cast Hold Person or your mages cast Stink Cloud. Hold Person works more effectively, though. I was put up against four of these guys. I got 1684 XP and 4 Gold. ========================= 7th Level Dwarf Fighters ========================= Probably the hardest enemies in the pyramid. Dwarf Fighters not only have good AC, but they have a lot of HP and can do some heavy damage to your characters. Cast Hold Person and Stink Cloud on these guys. When I used Hold Person on them I was lucky enough to hold them. All three of them. I got 1884 XP and 9 Gold for this one. ================== 7th Level Thieves ================== The game will tell you they are in leather armor. These guys can do some good damage. Around 8 points to be exact. Hack and slash through these guys. Your party should be able to dispose of these guys pretty fast. I got 1365 XP and 18 Gold from this battle. ================= Displacer Beasts ================= There are five of these things. While they're not impossible to hit, they can do some bad damage. Hack and slash through these guys and use Stink Cloud if you've got it. Like the lizardmen, they can hit you multiple times. I got only 3575 XP from this battle. ======== Driders ======== Driders are drow elves that failed the drow godesses test if I remember correctly. They're one of my favorite enemies in the game because they look cool. Here, I was put up against two of them. If you are right next to them, they have the potential to paralyze your character. I got 3896 XP, 70 Gold, and 6 gems. ======== Kobolds ======== You don't need a walkthrough to kill one of the easiest enemies in the game. There are a total of 20 kobolds; sixteen regular kobolds and four leaders. At this point in the game, your fighters should be able to 'sweep' the enemies. (That means they can attack more than one enemy if they are next to more than one enemy) That should make the battle almost too easy. But the fact that there are twenty kobolds means it will be just a little more difficult. Use your archers if you have any. I got 212 XP and 20 Gold from this battle. After fighting all the enemies listed above, you should be able to sleep here without interruption, but we're not exactly done. There's another section of this place to be cleared. In the southeastern section of this place (close by where you found the cleric digging the hole out of the pyramid), there is a secret door. Walk through it and at the end of the corridor, you will be teleported to face more enemies. Here's the next batch of enemies you'll be facing up against... =================== 7th Level Fighters =================== Just like the battle with the 6th level fighters, except there's only three of them and they're MUCH tougher. Just use the strategy for the 6th Level Fighters; use Stink Cloud and Hold Person and pray that they get held. Be careful though, the fighters will try and hit any of your party members preparing spells. I got 1986 XP and 9 Gold. ====== Diane ====== The game calls them tired elves. (Or emaculated in the computer versions.) These are the only ones in the game. There's only three of them. Just hack and slash them. They're not much of a threat. I got 903 XP and 3 Gold from this. ======== Driders ======== Exactly the same as last time. ======== Kobolds ======== Exactly the same as last time. ========== Minotaurs ========== Ah, who doesn't know about these bull-headed men? Anyway, these guys are tough. There's six of them! They can do pretty tough damage and hit you multiple times, doing a great deal of damage. Cast Stink Cloud on them. I got 3984 XP and that's it. No gold or gems here. ======== Stirges ======== Or as I call them...vampire birds. These things are birds which suck blood. They're not hard, but they're annoying. Just the fact that there's 10 of them... Hack and slash here. No magic needed here. I got only 460 XP from this. If you look around, you'll find a dead man. All of his belongings aren't there. But if you select Look from the options, you'll find a book he wrote. He mentions Yarash breeding creatures for increased ferocity, and that most of his experiments usually fail. He also mentions the fighters, dianes, thieves, and dwarves all work for Yarash. He also warns about the teleporters in Yarash's room. The message reads: Yarash has been breeding creatures for increased ferocity. Most of his experiments fail and perish young. Also, all the fighters, thieves, dwarves, and elves are Yarash's men. Be careful of the Teleporters. There are three kinds of them. One has only one destination, but the others have two or four destinations. Around that place is a teleporter that will take you to a blue section of the pyramid. Follow the corridor and at the end you'll step on a teleporter that takes you to a room with lizardmen. If you helped the lizardmen near Yarash's room, these lizardmen won't attack you unless you attack them. If you didn't help the lizardmen out or are rude to these ones, they will throw poisonous water on you, possibly killing one of your characters. Enter the secret door behind you and follow the corridor until you end up back at Yarash's room. Then step on the teleporter in his room without messing with the dial and you'll be back at the entrance to this pyramid. After exiting the pyramid, you'll notice all the water is blue and the dirt on the shores are gone. Now you can cross the water to get to the other side of the wilderness. Not that you couldn't go there before, but now you don't have to go around the pyramid. Head back to Phlan for your reward. ============== 5. East Marsh ============== MISSION - Kill Drythfi and stop the lizardmen from joining the Boss' side. REWARD - Reward from council REWARD FROM COUNCIL - 10050 XP, 50 Gold, 40 gems. NPC ENCOUNTERS - N/A MONSTERS - Lizardmen, Drythfi At this point in the game one of your magic users may be able to reach level 5. If so, you are able to select a level 3 spell. Choose haste. While it makes your party members older, it's one of the best spells in the game, as you can attack more than once and do lots of damage. It's an EXTREMELY helpful spell. Then later in the game when you progress, you should memorize Fireball and Lightning Bolt. If you can't get these spells at the moment, don't worry, they're not going to make or break you here. If you want to memorize fireball or lightning bolt that's fine. It won't make or break you now. In the pyramid, the Lizardmen you freed said they would give you a reward if you visited their castle in the east. Go to the docks and take a boat east. Then keep going up from there until you see a bunch of trees bunched up together. Look around in there (around the middle) and the game will notify you how you have found a castle. Enter it. If you still have trouble finding the place, follow these directions after taking a boat east: Up 19, right 2. Upon entry, the game says since there is an anti-magic shell around the castle, you will not be able to use magic here. Keep walking foward. The game will tell you that you're in the center of the keep and that the ceiling and walls are crumbling. Then all of a sudden, an old lizardman rushes up to you with his hands over his head. Talk to the lizardman. He will thank you for helping his friends escape Yarash's pyramid. He will then say that Drythfi is trying to make them join Tyranthraxus. He says that if Drythfi led them, their tribe would be destroyed. After that, a big lizardman will walk up to the both of you and tell the old lizardmen it's time to step down. He will then challenge him to a duel, and tell the old lizardman he can have a 'representative'. The old lizardman will beg you to fight for him. Accept, and choose your strongest fighter. (Note: In the DOS version, the lizardman will ask you for a certain word, which you can get if you saved the lizardmen in the pyramid in the room next to Yarash's. The word is 'Savior'.) ============== BOSS: Drythfi ============== In combat, Drythfi looks exactly like a lizardman except is all brown instead of green. He is also stronger than a lizardman and a mutant lizardman combined. If your character has a bow than things will get even easier, just run away from Drythfi and equip your bow and arrow and shoot. He will eventually die. I got only 132 XP. Goes to show how easy this battle is. The evil lizardmen will see Drythfi die and they will be scared off. The old lizardman will promise you that they won't join Tyranthraxus. He will then ask you kindly to leave because some of his kind don't like humans. That's nice...I help the lizardmen only to have them tell me they hate my kind? Sorry, I can't help the fact that I was born human...or half-elf. How rude! Personally, I'm done here, but you may not. If you went to the taverns and listened to gossip, you have probably heard about a glittering castle that has a lot of treasure and you can take as much as you want. This is the place. However, there is only a certain amount of treasure you can take because there's only a limited amount of treasure. There's around 5 to 10 of them I believe, and each one yields 1500 XP, 1000 Gold and 2 gems. That's a mighty lot of experience, gold and gems! Find one of the few stairways leading under the castle. When underground, look for pools. That's where the treasures are hidden, but beware, a lizardman will hit you with a spear. Fortunately, it doesn't do much damage. Then he will jump back in the water. The game will then present you with either jumping in the pool of leaving. Choose to jump in. The game will tell you that you jump in and look for the lizardman but you can barely see him, but you get out before he can get you. Then go forward and select to jump in again. This time, you'll get treasure. Oh by the way, did I forget to mention you can rest here as well? Alternatively, you can choose to attack him. If you choose to do so, the game will tell you that you catch him before he gets back in the water. He'll then turn around and attack you... but I didn't know lizardmen could clone theirself... ================================ Attack of the Lizardman Clones! ================================ Now there's all of a sudden five lizardmen. Where the other four came from, I have no idea, but I think it's safe to assume that they can clone themselves! No real strategy here. Just hack and slash or put them to sleep. All you'll get is 490 XP. Not worth it especially if it can be avoided (which it can.) So don't bother unless you're really bothered by missing even the smallest speck of XP that you can get. Unlike the Nomad Camp, you can come back here after you leave. I am guessing it's because the programmers thought in case you wanted to come back for the treasure. Anyway, go back to Phlan for your reward. ================== 6. Buccaneer Base ================== MISSION - Save Lord Bivant's son and return him back to Phlan. REWARD - Reward from Council/Lord Bivant. REWARD FROM COUNCIL - Lord Bivant gives you 3100 XP, a Fine Opal Pendant, and a Silver Dragon figure. NPC ENCOUNTERS - N/A MONSTERS - 5th Level Fighter, Buccaneer, Captain, Sub-Captain. (NOTE: There are different ways to complete this mission. I'll explain down below.) This is going to be kind of like the nomad camp. Go to the Phlan docks and take the west dock. When you get to the wilderness, head west until the land drops down south. Look around that part and when you get a message saying that you see some man head into a base, then you are close. Remember in order to find this place you need to be commisioned by the council to go there. If you're still having trouble, then take these steps after you get off the boat: Go left 7 times. Then go down. The game will tell you a merchant with slaves is going into the base. Go down one more time and you're there. Let the buccaneer take you into the base (It's your only way in). Surprisingly, this place has an Area map so you will be able to find your way around. As soon as you enter, the buccaneers will take you to the market square where slave traders are making camp for themselves. You can only rest in this area. Be warned that if you start trouble later, you won't get the chance to rest... If you go west around the building you're near (to the left on the map), you'll meet a man who will offer you a pass to see the captain. Of course, you're going to have to pay. You can either buy it from him or not. If you don't, the game says that the man turns the corner and is out of sight, but you can always come back if you reconsider. How much is he selling the pass for? Well, it doesn't seem to be a set amount, but more of a fraction of your money. I had 27349 Gold and when I bought the pass, I had 20511 Gold, so that's 6838 Gold I spent on the pass. That's a little excessive don't you think? If you want, you can kill the buccaneers in the guard towers (the 1x1 rooms). Each guard tower contains four buccaneers. Each battle gives you 2060 XP, 4 Gold and 8 gems. After that, you can take on one of the 2x3 and 3x2 rooms which contain 19 buccaneers and a 5th level fighter. That battle will give you 10071 XP, 20 Gold and 38 gems. After that, it leads to the buccaneer battles down below. If you don't end up looking for the guy with the pass, then walk around the 2x2 room just above you in the map. The game will tell you that you're at the slave pen, in which they're penned like animals. Then you will see a boy with a birthmark on his left shoulder. Now the encounter music will play. One of your party members will shout it's him. Then a big slave trader comes over and will mock you about getting the kid, and that he wants the kid since he would bring a good price at Zhentil keep. Now you have the option to hit him, be friendly, or do nothing. If you choose friendly, one of your characters will say that he'd have better luck than you in getting the kid. Saying nothing will just have the trader mock you a little more before heading on his way. I don't like people acting that way in front of me. He's gonna get what he deserves. If I were you, I'd hit him. The game will tell you that you bop him one in the face. He'll then fall and call for his guards... ========================== Slave Trader's Bodyguards ========================== An easy battle. Treat the buccaneers like kobolds, since they're just as weak. I got 3090 XP, 6 Gold and 12 gems. A little generous on the XP in my opinion. You then see a crowd around you. The captain will approach you. He says while he enjoyed watching the fight, he doesn't want to see anymore... Then he leaves. The slave trader will then apologize to you and leave angry. If you did decide to buy the pass, find the captain's quarters (south middle room on the area map.) A buccaneer will make you show your pass before entering. The game lets you try and bribe the buccaneer, but he won't accept. If you choose to attack the buccaneer... =================== Buccaneer Battle 1 =================== You will be set up against two 4th Level Fighters. I was lucky and got a single Stink Cloud to paralyze both of them, so try that tactic and then finish them off. I got 464 XP and 4 Gold. Then, the game will notify you that buccaneers around the base ambush you. =================== Buccaneer Battle 2 =================== This battle has twelve enemies; eight buccaneers and two 3rd Level Fighters, two 5th Level Fighters. Try to use Hold Person on the fighters and just slash through the buccaneers. I got 4676 XP, 12 Gold and 16 gems. The game says that now there are more buccaneers from the southern base. =================== Buccaneer Battle 3 =================== There are 17 enemies here. Eleven buccaneers, two 5th Level Fighters, and four 3rd Level Fighters. Here, I found that the sleep spell will actually work on the fighters, so use that. Save your Stink Clouds and fireballs and whatnot for later. This battle got me 6797 XP, 17 Gold and 22 gems. I also got Leather Armor. Now it's time for the final fight. The buccaneers are in shock that you took all of them out. Then, the captain appears, offering you to surrender or die. Attack. He will say, "No prisoners now, mates!" Time to kick his butt! ================================= BOSS: Captain and His Bodyguards ================================= This battle has twenty enemies, and all of them are the elite guards. Just a bunch of 3rd Level and 5th Level Fighters, the Captain and Sub-Captain. Use all your paralysis spells you have here. Out of this fight, all you get is 6266 XP and 67 gold. You may also get the captain's shield. Definitely not worth it. If you want to rescue the kid without any fights, on the area map, on the right side, you'll see a 2x3 room, a 3x3 room, and a narrow space in between. Go there. Move down the narrow path until the game tells you that you can open the door latch with ease. Open the latch and the animals will be running around the base. The buccaneers are now distracted and they have left their posts. You now have to hurry and save the kid before the buccaneers rescue all the animals. On the area map, is a 2x2 room not too far from where you are now. Go there, that's where the slaves are. Enter from the northern side. When you enter, you are given the choice to take the kid or leave him. If you take the kid, you will free all the slaves. If not, one of the slaves will ask if you will help them. Choose to take the kid. You will release the rest of the slaves as well. The game will randomly tell you if the animals are still running around the base or if the buccaneers got them in the pen. Hurry out of the base. (North side is where the exit is.) If they got all the animals in, they will stop you from leaving and you'll be led to Buccaneer Battle 1 listed above. Congratulations! You are done with the buccaneer base and you are another step closer to saving Phlan! In return, Lord Bivant will give you a couple treasures. Sell them, as they don't do anything. The Fine Opal Pendant will be worth a whopping 14250 Gold, and the Silver Dragon figure will be worth 1250 Gold, so in total, that's 15500GP in treasures! (Note: Like the Nomad Camp, once you leave this place, you cannot come back. The wilderness will mark the spot on the map, but you can't walk onto the building where the base is.) ================ 7. Zhentil Keep ================ MISSION - Deliver the letter to the Commandant and escape. REWARD - Reward from council REWARD FROM COUNCIL - 8000 XP and 32 gems. NPC ENCOUNTERS - N/A MONSTERS - Commandant, Guard, Aides, Commandant, Dwarf Fighter. If you are having trouble saying the word "Zhentil" I will tell you how to say it correctly. Say "Zen-til". Now let's cut to the chase. You will meet councilor Cadorna again. He will tell you he wants you to deliver a letter to the Keep. He warns not to open the letter and to strictly give it to the Zhentil commandant. He warns you that if you do open the letter, you'll be seized as spies at the keep. Let's remember that note we found in Kovel Mansion about killing everyone in Phlan except for Cadorna... I still got a hunch something's not right... Another thing I don't understand is why can't you go through the east door in the city hall and instead you can only go in the south room to talk to Cadorna? They're both the same room! Ah, whatever... Go to the docks and board a boat west. Zhentil Keep is in the southwest corner of the wilderness like the Buccaneer Base. If you have trouble getting there, take these directions after getting off the boat: Left 14, Down 2. Now the game will tell you armed men on horses approach you. Go down again and you're there. The men on horse will get nearer to you and leader will ask if you're the messengers from Phlan. If you say no, they'll leave and warn you not to come around here if you don't have any business here. Choose Yes and you'll be brought into the keep. When you enter, you will not be able to move, as a Zhentil guard will take you on a tour. The game will tell you that you see the inside of the wall and guards are walking their patrol rounds. You will then be escorted inside of the keep. You are then brought to the Commandant's room. Your party will give him the message. He will ask you to stay for a meal. He then tells you to look around until dinner. The guard who escorted you in will then start the tour of Zhentil Keep. He will first show you the barracks. He says there are over 100 soldiers in them and there are six more barracks like that in the keep. That means over 700 guards. Doesn't sound like you want to mess with these guys. The guard will then lead you to the guard towers. The guard tells you the outside wall could withstand a dragon attack. He then says the tour is over and will guide you to your room. After he takes you to your room, he will demand that you do not leave your room. Now wait just a minute! Didn't the Commandant say we could look around until dinner time? Something fishy's going on here! You have some alternatives here. The game will tell you that you can either wait in your room until dinner or walk around. Let's stay in our room for now. If you decide to leave, right when you leave your room, one of four guards will demand you to go back into your room. You can either go back into your room, attack them, or bribe them. Bribing them is useless, as all you'll get is a message of the guard saying he can't be bribed. If you decide to attack them, one of the four guards will raise the alarm and a battle will start... =========== En Guard 1 =========== Treat these guys like kobolds. They're just as weak. Only thing is that they have bows and arrows. Your party should be right next to them though. Your fighters should also be able to 'sweep' them. I got 60 XP and 4 Gold here. After the battle, more guards come in and the sergeant demands you to surrender. Attack them. =========== En Guard 2 =========== Just like the last battle, but instead of four guards, there's twelve of them. This battle got me 180 XP and 12 Gold. After the battle, the game says a huge amount of guards run towards you... =========== En Guard 3 =========== This battles similar to the last one, except this time there's sixteen guards and four Aides. Try Sleep spells, since they'll work against all of them. This time I got 428 XP and 20 Gold. After the battle, move two steps. The game will then tell you that guards being led by a dwarf attack you. Here you can skip to the later part of this guide on making your escape... If you decided to play it safe and stay in your room. Select Encamp from the options and rest. At around 19:00, the guard that escorted you will take you back to the commandant's room for dinner. ---------------------------- Talking With The Commandant ---------------------------- I'm making this little section here so you know what the Commandant knows. There will be baked wild boar and cider. Then the Commandant will ask what you would like to talk about. You can choose to say nothing, talk about monsters, magic, or politics. Here's what happens when you select these choices: A.) Say Nothing The Commandant will tell you silence is good, but he feels lonely without conversation. He will then ask you about New Phlan's militia strength. 1.) No answer The Commandant will say you are discreet but not interesting guests. He will then leave and you will be brought back to your room. 2.) Perfect He just says, "Oh, it's very good." 3.) Normal He says he hopes Phlan will withstand the attack. 4.) Poor He will smile coldly and wish Phlan luck. That's interesting... Why would he smile like that? Oh well, I'm sure it's nothing... right? B.) Monsters The Commandant will tell you that there was once a powerful monster, that he remembers to be a flame clad monster, and that he heard that it has returned. he will then ask if Phlan could repulse an attack by it. You can reply with nothing, yes, or no. 1.) No answer. The Commandant says you are discreet and asks, "Yes, you can't talk of such things with people of a foreign power...can you?" Then he will ask you what else you'd like to talk about. 2.) Sure He will just simply say, "Oh, it's very good." 3.) I'm afraid not The Commandant will smile coldly and wish luck to Phlan. There's that evil smile again! C.) Magic The Commandant says he's not too keen on magic. He will ask what magic stories you might have heard about... 1.) About the magic items The game says you talk about different kinds of mythical artifacts and items. The Commandant will thank you for the stories. 2.) About pools The Commandant says he heard once about the Pool of Radiance and that he heard it gives great powers, but at the same time the power is wicked. Interesting... D.) Politics The Commandant will ask you if you think Cadorna should be Phlan's mayor... 1.) No answer. The Commandant will apologize for asking a rude question and that he didn't mean to 'pry'. 2.) Yes The Commandant says he completely agrees with you. 3.) No He says that in his personal opinion, he thinks Cadorna would be perfect for the mayor of Phlan. After around four conversations, the Commandant says it was a pleasant meal, but it's getting late and will wish you a good sleep. Okay, so there are two things weird around here... when you say Phlan's defenses are poor, he smiles coldly, and he says you can look around before dinner but the guards won't let you. Something's definitely going on here. And what's up with him saying Cadorna would make a great mayor in Phlan? Remember that letter we picked up in Kovel Mansion? The one that said they must kill everyone EXCEPT for Cadorna? Alright, well, I thought I was being paranoid at first, but now we KNOW something's definitely not right here! When you are brought back to your room, the game will let you choose to either go to sleep or stay up. Choose to stay up. Guards will attack your party only a few minutes later. I don't know what Cadorna wrote on that letter, but it must have upset the Zhentil Commandant. ================= Zhentil Guards 1 ================= This battle will put you up against four Aides. They have bows and arrows so they can attack long range. Have your fighters slice them and your archers attack them with their bows and arrows and you should have no problem beating these guys. I got 188 XP and 4 Gold from this battle. After that, more guards arrive before you can do anything. ================= Zhentil Guards 2 ================= This battle's a little tougher, there's four Aides like last time but now there's sixteen guards. Fortunately, the guards are one of the easiest enemies in the game and your fighters should be able to 'sweep' them. Making this battle ridiculously easy as well. If the battles goes on long enough, the guards will start surrendering and the Aides will try and escape. I got 428 XP and 20 Gold here. The game notifies you that an alarm starts to ring. Now you need to escape. Don't think the guards are going to be pushovers like they have been recently. The battles become progressively difficult until you finally reach the Commandant and his right hand man Al Hyam Dazid. If you think your party can handle these next series of fights without any rest, then keep walking around until the game says that the guards spot you. ================= Zhentil Guards 3 ================= Here, there are 9 enemies; 3 corporals and 6 guards. The corporals look exactly the same as the guards but are just a bit harder to put out because they have a bit more HP and a little lower armor class level. I got 231 XP and 9 Gold from this. If you still haven't given up, keep walking around to get the same message about the guards finding you. ================= Zhentil Guards 4 ================= Here, there's 15 enemies; 5 corporals. Just hack and slash and use a couple paralysis spells. I got 385 XP and 15 Gold from this one. Not worth it... Again, walk around and you'll eventually get the same message... ================= Zhentil Guards 5 ================= Okay, if you're still here, you've got a darn good party... Now there's 20 enemies; 2 Aides, 6 Corporals, and 12 Guards. Use the same tactics as before. That's all I can tell you. For this one, I got 556 experience and 20 Gold. DEFINITELY not worth it! Rinse and repeat for the next battle... ================= Zhentil Guards 6 ================= Holy crap, you survived the past 5 waves? I had to use cheats to get by this next one... Well here, it's basically the same thing with just some slight differences. There are still 20 enemies, but this time, there's 3 Aides, and there's still 6 Corporals and 11 guards. I got 1820 XP and 20 Gold from this battle, though a few of the guards surrendered. I don't know if that changes anything. I also got banded mail. You know the drill after that... ================= Zhentil Guards 7 ================= Finally, the battle is a little different! This time, there's 10 Aides, but this time, instead of purple, they're grey and orange. Their armor class seems to be a little lower though because they're a little harder to hit. The good thing is that they'll have a little trouble hitting you, too. No matter, this will be a lengthy battle. My archers and fighter did pretty well hitting them. Not so much for my cleric. I got 470 XP and 10 Gold from this battle with three enemies surrendering. Again, not worth it. Right after that, the game tells you that guards led by a dwarf attack you. ================= Zhentil Guards 8 ================= Oh, boy. Not gonna be an fun one. This time, there's 10 aides and a dwarf fighter in the front. Fortunately, the Aides can be easily beaten by casting a sleep spell. Unfortunately, the dwarf fighter is one tough cookie because he has 50 HP, an extremely low armor class and they do some hefty damage. Fortunately, stink cloud and Hold Person can paralyze him. Just use that and you should clear it no problem. Make sure you save your spells though for another battle. The Aides should surrender if you're doing good. I got 3148 experience points and 13 gold. Not a whole lot. I also got gloves, chain mail and a long sword. Now the game says that an army of men led by the commandant attack you. Get ready for the final fight... ================================== BOSS: Zhentil Commandant and Army ================================== In this battle, you will be up against 20 enemies; 10 Aides, 8 4th Level Fighters, Al-Hyam Dazid, and the Zhentil Commandant. Al-Hyam Dazid is credited as a 6th Level MU. All I can suggest here is to use all your paralysis spells that you have left. You should be able to paralyze any of the enemies, but not all of them. The commandant also has a lightning wand, so watch out. I got 11511 XP and 73 Gold. I also got a whole bunch of items from this: A wand, ring, bracers, a potion, shield, plate mail, Jav. (Javelin) and Long Sword. Another time, I got 11693 XP and 75 Gold. After that, the game will tell you that the other guards run away or surrender. If the above battles proved too tough for your party, or you just want to get out of here, here's what you do upon exiting the room you just battled the guards from... Exit the door and go one step forward. Turn left and then go forward four times, then turn left again and head toward the door. You will be greeted by some guards. Alternatively, there is a broken wall on the outer side of the castle and the game should ask you if you want to get over it to escape. To get to it, go to the outer walls of the keep. If you encounter them... ============ Door Guards ============ An unbelievably easy battle. 12 Guards. Just slash through them. I got 180 XP and 12 Gold from this. Now go back to Phlan for your reward. The council clerk says they were afraid you wouldn't return. ================= k. Stojanow Gate ================= MISSION - Take out the patrols and regain control of the gate. REWARD - Reward from council REWARD FROM COUNCIL - 12500 XP and 50 gems. NPC ENCOUNTERS - N/A MONSTERS - Bugbear, Ettin, Aides, 6th LVL MU The Council Clerk will tell you that Cadorna ended up betraying New Phlan and commisions you to kill him as soon as you find him. This won't be until later in the game since we'll find him in Valjevo Castle. The Council Clerk will also tell you to visit Lord Urslingen in the south room of the city hall. He will tell you to go to Stojanow Gate and defeat the guards there. Conveniently enough, he has my character's portrait. Stojanow Gate can be located just north of Podol Plaza. There are two entrances to Stojanow Gate, but it will not matter which entrance you take. When you get there, take a step forward and you'll find a man with a wagon with various things in it. Ask the man if he will sell the wagon. He says he will sell it to you for 250 Gold. If you want it for free, just kill him, but whatever the case, you need that wagon. I'd personally pay the guy. 250 isn't a lot compared to how much gold you should have by now. When you purchase the wagon from the man, he will tell you to use it in good health and then he will warn you about the gate, that the bugbears are mad because they are on guard duty. He will tell you that it's better to bribe them and not offend them. Keep going forward and the game tells you how you are at the gate. Step forward, then go right if you entered through the west entrance or go left if you entered through the east entrance. A bugbear will then ask you for 15 Gold (If you don't have the wagon you can't 'trigger' this event). Pay the bugbear. If you don't and you try to cross to the other side, you will have to fight bugbears and then after that, guards from the two towers will shoot arrows and drop boulders on your party. If for some reason you don't have enough gold, the bugbear will mention you don't have enough money, but will first say, "Hang it!". I'll mention this later in the guide where I talk about typos. We will take care of the bugbears later. When you get to the other side of the gate, you will be able to go to Valjevo Castle (north of here) but we aren't going to go there just yet. There will be two guard towers, one to the west and one to the east. Either one will bring you to the top where you can hear a fighter and magic user conversing. On the west building, the magic user says he wishes Phlan was conquered sooner and the fighter agrees because then they will be lords (or barons in the computer versions). On the east tower, the fighter says if they aren't careful, they'll be tossed to the medusa. After the conversation, if you choose to advance, you can see what the ettins' character portraits look like. You won't get any other opportunity since you only fight these guys twice in the game and the second fight they are in a place where you can't 'Advance'. The game will note that they seem aware of your party. Then the battle will commence. =============== Envious Ettins =============== Ettins have a maximum of 50 HP and you will be facing three of them in this round. The Mage can cast some deadly lightning bolts on you too. Have your clerics cast hold person and other spells on the ettins to stop them. Ettins can hit you for about 20 HP. Have your mages use magic missle and all of that on the Mage and the Aides. The Aides only has 13 HP and the Mage has 23 HP. If you killed all but one ettin, the last one should run away. I got 6837 XP and 3 Gold pieces. I also got a ring. Another time I got 12487 XP, a ring, and composite long bow. Speaking of rings, the alarm will start to ring after this battle. Now rest your characters completely and memorize your spells. Even with the alarm ringing, your party can sleep here uninterrupted. Now, walk out of the patrol tower and the guards from the tower will be waiting for you. This next battle is the same as the last. Use the same tactic and you shouldn't have any trouble. Now that will be the last time you will ever battle ettins. This time I got 9487 XP and 3 Gold. Again, I also got a ring. (Note: After the second battle I got 10187 XP, 3 Gold with a ring and sling.) After clearing those battles, the game tells you that you've successfully defeated the ettin guards, and now you just need to kill the bugbear patrols and then the place is yours. Again, rest your party and rememorize your spells. Now, try to go past the gate back to Podol Plaza. The bugbear patrols are waiting for you here. (Note: You may run across a giant patrol from Valjevo Castle. If you do, just tell them you work for The Boss and they'll send you on your way.) =============== Bugbear Battle =============== I have to say here that I don't know why they call these enemies bugbears, as they look nothing like a bug or a bear... This battle will put you up against ten menacing bugbear guards. You can have your magic users use Stink Cloud (I don't think Sleep will work on them.) Then, have your fighters hack and slash through them. At this point of the game, the bugbears shouldn't be too hard nor easy to kill. If your mages were able to learn Level 3 spells, have them memorize Fireball, Haste, and optionally Lightning Bolt. Fireball will make quick work of them and make this battle ridiculously easy. I got 2000 XP and 10 Gold. After the battle, the game tells you the guards of New Phlan rush in to secure the area. You mean this whole time they could have helped me and decided not to? Wow, some allies they are! And furthermore, why didn't you run across them when you first got here? I guess there's some questions which will be left unanswered... Now Stojanow Gate is yours for the taking and you can rest here peacefully whenever you want. However, in Valjevo Castle if you raise the alarm and come back here, I believe the giant patrols can search in the northern region of this place. My memory could be wrong about that though. If someone can clear this up for me I would appreciate it! Now go back to Phlan for your reward AND your final mission. The clerk said that because of what you did at Stojanow Gate, Phlan now stands a great chance against Tyranthraxus' evil forces. Way to go! Before you can leave city hall, you will meet with Lord High Mayor Ulrich Eberhard (try to say his names a few times fast). This time, you won't have the freedom to walk to his quarters and instead, a guard will escort you to him. Ulrich will tell you to go to Valjevo Castle and end the evil reign of Tyranthraxus. He then gives you words of confidence (I'm sure you'll save Phlan). What ================== l. Valjevo Castle ================== MISSION - Find and kill Cadorna (OPTIONAL), To find Tyranthraxus' place. REWARD - Reward from council, game complete NPC ENCOUNTERS - N/A MONSTERS - Cleric, Fighter, Fire Giant, Guard, Giant Snakes, Hill Giant, Troll, Tyranthraxus (Fake) By the way, if you have trouble pronouncing Valjevo, it's pronounced 'Val-hey-vo'. The castle is broken up into four 16x16 regions; South West, North West, North East and South East. There are many optional battles here but I'll be covering them since you're going to need all of the XP you can get. Before you can battle Tyranthraxus, your whole entire party must be at full level in order to stand a fighting chance. By this point in the game, you should only be one or two levels away from being full level for all of your party members. SOUTH WEST REGION This is where you will start off. In the south east room here, you will find women washing clothes. They will beg you not to kill them and offer you the disguises they made. Accept. You can leave them if you want, but it seems that some of the times I've done it, the sergeant has found me out and I can only conclude it's those women who told the sergeant. There are an infinite amount of sergeants, and they only appear when the alarm is ringing, and there is a lot of stuff that you can do that can trigger the alarm. You can also tie up or even kill the women, too. If you kill them, the alarm rings. I guess they have spells that raise nearby alarms? Regarding the sergeant battles, if you need the XP, it's a good idea to trigger them. They do stop if you exit the area. (In the computer version, you must exit Valjevo and Stojanow to and go away for a while.) In the south west corner, there is a 2x2 and 4x2 room. The 2x2 room is a room full of coal, which one of your party members states is for the blacksmith. In the 4x2 room, you guessed it. The blacksmith is here. He will be accompanied by three fire giants. You can talk with the blacksmith if you want. If you parley Haughty or Abusive, the smith will ask you to just let him get back to work. Sly and Meek makes one of your party members tell him he's skilled at his work and that he should serve Tyranthraxus. The guard replies that he has worked for Tyranthraxus for a long time and says if you don't know that, you are strangers. Then a battle will follow after that. Nice asks him if he's warm in there. He says yes, but he's used to it. He will then ask you to leave him alone. Let's get that experience though... ===================== The Burly Blacksmith ===================== You're in a bit of a spot here; Three fire giants led by a fourth level fighter. Just try using Stink Cloud on the fire giants and Hold Person on the fighter. If the battle goes on long enough, the giants will surrender and the blacksmith will attempt to run away. I got 26094 XP and 12182 Gold. I also got a bunch of items: Halberd, 2H Sword, Broad Sword, two hammers and chain mail and a banded mail. Another time I got 29294 XP. Then, in the north west corner is a room. Once you go inside, the game will tell you that there's a shrine to Bane in the back. (In the computer versions, it says it used to be a barracks, but has since been converted into a temple of Bane.) An acolyte will then greet you, telling you to accept the blessing of Bane. If you choose to meditate, you will pray to Bane and then suffer a tremendous pain. The cleric will then see you're not worshipers of Bane and he will throw a rhinestone from his necklace at you which will do a HUGE amount of damage to your party. If you choose Talk, he will tell you that Tyranthraxus made the shrine and not to be hesitant. If you choose Talk again, he will tell you to hurry, as he doesn't have much time. He will also attack you with a fireball if you choose to Attack. Choose to Leave and the battle will start without him attacking you. (Note: This does not work in the computer versions; he just ends up using the necklace on you no matter what.) =============== Clerics Galore =============== This battle has two 1st Level Clerics and a 5th Level Cleric. No spells are needed here, just hack and slash through these guys. I got 2021 XP and 3 Gold pieces. I also got Plate Mail, a Mace, and of course, a fireball Necklace from the main cleric. That necklace makes the fight worth it. Also, a wand. (Another time, I got 5521 XP with the 3 GP.) In the back of the shrine are two things; a box with some gold coins in it, and two long swords. Both of the swords are cursed and I believe taking the gold coins does something bad to your party later on down the road so just leave the items. Besides, you only get 3 XP and Gold. You may have also read a note earlier in the game that said that if you steal from this shrine, 'they'll' hunt you mercilessly. NORTH WEST REGION In the middle west of this place is a room where you walk in, a bucket of sand falls on your party and hill giants attack you. The game then notifies you that the bucket was a 'crude alarm'. Not sure why, but I always found that funny. (Note: If you have the Search mode on, your party will notice the bucket. The giants will still hear you and attack though.) ================== Hill Giant Hell 1 ================== Here you are put up against six Hill Giants. Make sure your mages have fireball and most of all, haste. Haste allows your party to attack multiple times and do much more damage. Also use stink cloud. It doesn't work on them all the time but you can sometimes get one or even two hill giants paralyzed. I got 23352 XP and 12000 Gold. Eh, I'd say it's worth the fight. Moving on, there are two 1x1 rooms above the Hill Giant room. These are just bathrooms and should be ignored. But, above those rooms is a 2x2 rooms. Go inside and you will kick the door in to do so, and two hill giants will approach you. They will look at you confused. Talk either Haughty or Abusive and your first party member will ask them about leaving their post. If you talk any other way or just want to kill them... ================== Hill Giant Hell 2 ================== Just like the first battle, but this time there's two. Pretty much, just slash through them while your magic users try and use Stink Cloud on them. I got 7784 XP and 4000 Gold. Definitely worth the battle. If you go into the first room upon entering from the southwest region, search this room for treasure. You'll get 3700 XP and 200 Gold. I got a potion and wand also. There are also five hill giants you may wake up. ================== Hill Giant Hell 3 ================== During this battle, I found out by having your cleric cast 'Cause Blind', it will cause all the giants to run away. There were 3 giants remaining when it happened. I got 19660 XP and 10000 Gold. I also got a long sword. In one of the northwestern rooms, search all over the room and you'll find treasure; 245 XP and 200 Gold. Not much, but it's free. I also got a potion. Now, if you try and walk past the top north section onto the north east region, a guard will ask what you are doing here. For some reason, you can't negotiate with him. This may have been a glitch, but I don't know. Anyway, either way, he will raise the alarm. If you try and attack him, he will run near the door and push a button rapidly and warn you that the patrols are coming. You can attack him if you want. ============== Valjevo Guard ============== Just a 5 on 1 battle; your party versus the guard who is a 6th Level Fighter. Take all 45 of his HP down and he's done. I got 421 XP from this fight. After that, the patrol the guard was warning you about approaches you; the sergeant and his hill giants. The sergeant will ask you what you are doing here. The game will then make one of your characters talk. Anything other than Haughty or Abusive will make the sergeant ask you the password. If you haven't got it yet, your first character will ask 'Hurray for Tyranthraxus?' and the sergeant will tell you you're wrong and a battle begins. Haughty and Abusive make him ask you who you are working for. You have the choice between The Boss, Cadorna, Urslingen, and Diogenes. If you select the Boss, the sergeant will leave. Any other choice begins in a battle... ================ Sergeant Battle ================ This battle will put you up against six hill giants and the sergeant who is again a 6th Level Fighter. Again, use Haste and have your mages try and paralyze the giants and save the sergeant for later. I got 19881 XP and 10001 Gold. Definitely worth it. After this, the game will warn you that the alarm starts ringing. Get out of there and return to Phlan and try to train your characters here, then return back here and go to the north east region. (Note: The guard who raises the alarm will respawn here again so go to the south east region, then go up to the north east region.) NORTH EAST REGION First off, if you pass the 2x2 room, a guard will come out just like the other side, except this one's much more sinister. He's got four fire giants accompanying him. They are not easy... If you run into him, no matter what you do, he will raise the alarm. When you try to go back to where he is, four fire giants will come out of the building and attack. Good luck... Next to it is a giant guard post, in which the game will tell you is a mess! There are four giants, and one will look at you and ask who you are. If you try to flee, it will start the battle. Waiting will just make the fire giants come closer. After their character portrait shows, select parley. Parleying Sly, Nice, and Meek will result in the giant saying, "Run away quickly little ones. Or I'll eat you!" After that, anything but attack and flee (which start the battle) will have the giant say, "You can't get away! Now I'll eat you!" Now you're up against four fire giants. On the other hand, speaking Haughty or Abusive will make your character tell the giants they should know you, along with an insult. The giant will ask you if you think you're so smart, because they (the giants) know they are. Then he'll wave a piece of paper at you asking if you can read it. The paper will give you the password for the maze and the password to avoid getting your butt kicked by the sergeant. Your party should be able to read it. (I believe the word in the computer versions is 'Rhodia'. Or at least, that's the password into the maze.) The northeastern 4x2 room has nothing in it, so ignore it. Under it is a 2x2 room which contains an armory. Take the weapons if you want. In the room south of here (2x4 room), you'll enter a smoke-filled room. There will be two human cooks and a gnoll picking on a smaller man. Here are the choices: A.) Attack them. [Recommended] You attack the gnoll as he tries to escape. Your party surrounds him and kill him. The cook (who for some reason doesn't have a character portrait) will thank you greatly for saving them. He'll then give you the password into the maze. You can also get the password from Cadorna. B.) Leave The alarm starts going off. C.) Talk to the gnoll The gnoll will threaten you throw you in the oil if you don't leave. If you choose to leave, the alarm won't ring. Refusing to leave will have the gnoll ask if you want him to fry you. Then he'll grab a pan and smack one of your party members with it. Sometimes it doesn't do any damage. After that, you kill him. Probably not a good idea to pick a fight with some experienced warriors, huh? Then the cook will thank you and give you the password. There is nothing else in this room, so don't bother searching for anything. South of this room is a 2x2 room, a small library. Go inside it and you'll be greeted by this message: "You find a report indicating that the northern nomads are ready for a strong leader and that the chief of the raven clan is allied to Tyranthraxus." The game will ask you if you want to examine the books. Say yes. I'll tell you what the game will end up telling you in case you don't want to bother. "You now understand what Tyranthraxus has been doing. Tyranthraxus was only a member of a wicked organization originally. But he has become very powerful and plans to conquer not only Phlan but the whole Moonsea region." If you try to examine even more, all you get is: "There are countless records. Destroying Tyranthraxus will be easier than examining all of them." If anyone's interested, here's what the computer versions say. They're a bit more detailed...: You find evidence that the red wizards of Thay are allied to Tyranthraxus. You are finding a pattern to Tyranthraxus' activities. At first Tyranthraxus' followers were an unsophisticated horde of ill organized unhumans. Now they are much more sinister. The web of corruption he has spread is incredible in its scope. His ultimate goal is to conquer all lands south of the Moonsea. To find anything more you will have to spend so much time that you will need to clear the area first. Be careful in this room though... Because this room is not exactly what you'd call safe. There is a scribe who you will encounter occasionally. If he sees you, he will bolt out the door and raise the alarm. Sometimes he doesn't see you and you can bind him or kill him. If you can, kill him. You can also knock him out if you want, but I think he may come back later. Here in the south east corner, you will encounter an officer and two guards who are reporting to him. The officer will ask what you are doing here. If you talk Haughty or Abusive, he will ask you who you serve. You know the drill here. Sly, Nice and Meek will get him to shout "Enemies!" and he'll run out of the room while the giants go for you. Haughty and Abusive will have him ask you who you're working for. Anything but The Boss repeats what's above. Selecting The Boss will make him apologize. Every step you take in that room, the whole scenario repeats. There is also a time where you can enter and right away, he'll say "You don't belong in the castle, do you?". In this situation, any choice starts the fight. If you wish to fight him... =============== Officer Battle =============== Here, there are four hill giants and a 6th Level Fighter. Use the same tactic as before and you should get rid of these guys with ease. I got 16339 XP and 8001 Gold. I also got the officer's chain mail. Another time, it was a Long Bow. If you Look in the corner of this room, you will find a note on the floor. It reads: I am clothed in flame. Believe not what you see...Tyranthraxus You may also find this interesting note: Cadorna is a traitor. He was trying to find the Pool of Radiance, ignoring The Boss. SOUTH EAST REGION First of all, let me start by apologizing, I don't think I ever covered this part! In the room in the northeast, there is a room where you can battle four snakes. They gave me only 1040 XP. There is no secret treasure in the room anyway, so it's basically pointless. Unless you're a completist and have to beat every little part of the game, avoid this one. There is a 2x2 room under it, but there's absolutely nothing in it, so just skip that as well. The room under that one ALSO has nothing of value...or does it? Search in the northeast corner of the room and you'll find a treasure. You'll get 440 experience points, 200 Gold and a scroll. Hey, not a lot, but I'll take it. The room you're currently in should be in the middle east. There should be two 1x1 rooms next to it. Go inside and look who it is...it's our old pal, Cadorna! What's he doing here? I guess the Zhentil Commandant didn't really like whatever he wrote! Cadorna will beg for you to spare him. Let me go over the decisions... A.) Help Cadorna will thank you and give you the password to get into the maze. Then, he'll leave. Where to, I don't know. Let's just hope he's really changed his evil ways! B.) Leave him He'll tell you he can give you the password. Select to leave him again and he'll tell you how to get through the maze; 'Left.. right... right...' and he'll beg you again to spare him. Choosing it again will have him threaten your party by raising the alarm. Finally, choosing to leave him again will have him scream "Intruders! Intruders!" and the alarm will ring. C.) Slay him He'll tell you he can give you the password. Selecting to kill him again will result in the game telling you that one of your party members stabs Cadorna and he drops, slack in his shackles. In the neighboring 1x1 room, you'll see a well, in which the game will warn you that it's icy water and deep. Choose to dive into the well and send your strongest party member down to retrieve two Long Swords, along with 850 experience points. There should be a 2x2 room right across from you. Enter it from the west. Two hill giants will ask you for the password. I'm only listing these decisions as well since some of them are rather interesting... A.) Attack The alarm will ring and you'll fight the two hill giants. B.) Wait The hill giant will demand you give them the password which will lead to D. C.) Flee Same as A. D.) Talk 1.) Parleying Haughty and Abusive The giant will ask who you're working for. Anything but The Boss will result in the battle. Choose anything else and they'll say "Wrong... Now I'll eat you!" (In the computer versions, they say, "Wrong answer, dinner!") 2.) Parleying Sly, Nice, and Meek The game will give you the option to give the password or evade the question. If you don't have the password, your party members says the least they can do is try, and says 'Glory to The Boss!'. The giants will then respond like they did above and a battle will start. Evade the question will result in this dialogue between one of your party members and the hill giants: "You are very strong... How did you get all of those muscles? What do you eat?" In which the giant will respond with the alarm ringing and a battle following... "We eat silly humans... like you." (You don't get this option in the computer versions.) The room next door to this one is just a 4x2 room full of cobwebs. Nothing here. There will be a 2x2 room just west of it. Don't go in here because the ceiling will crumble and your party will take some minor damage. There's nothing in here, either. The room next door to this one, DOES have something. Go to the west half of the room and choose 'Look' to find another treasure. You'll get 600 XP, 200 Gold, and Banded Mail. And the southwestern room has absolutely nothing in it, so that pretty much covers this part of the castle. The room west of *that* room *does* have something though. Walk in and you'll see that hill giants are trying to sit up in their beds. You can choose to Flee, but then the alarm will ring. Anything else will result in the battle starting... ================== Hill Giant Hell 3 ================== You should know the tactic by now. If you don't, this is the last time I'm going to tell you; Slice 'n Dice, Stink Cloud, Haste and Fireball. There are five hill giants. When you're down to one giant left, he should run away. I got a whopping 19460 XP and 10000 (count them, ten thousand) Gold! More than worth the effort! But wait! Don't leave the room just yet... search around the room (southeast corner of the left 'block' of the room) and the game will tell you that the party has found a treasure, and will ask you if you want to take it. Say yes, and you'll be rewarded with 300 XP and 200 Gold. I also got a ring. Another time I got 450 XP, 200 GP and a shield. Now it's time to move on to the meat and potatoes of Valjevo Castle; the Labyrinth. Before you even *think* about going here, make sure all your party members are fully trained, or else you won't stand a chance against the enemies ahead... To do this, get in fights with the sergeant (by alerting the guards in either the north west or north east region) Him and his hill giants will yield lots of XP and Gold. Also, you can go to the 'Optional' section of this guide for other fights which yield the same rewards. Anyways, onto the labyrinth... The labyrinth is a huge place and this is what will lead you to Tyranthraxus' place. The maze is in the center of Valjevo Castle. There are two enterances with two doors along each other. One enterance is on the West side (which will lead to Tyranthraxus' Place) and another on the east side (which leads to a fake Tyranthraxus!). Take the west gate. (Note: Again, I'll cover the next-mentioned optional battles in the optional section of this guide. Make sure that if you want to do them that you do them now, because after you finish the game, you can't start the fights anymore.) When inside the maze, you will have the option to move through the hedges. DO NOT DO THIS, because if you do, one of your party members will be caught in the thorns and they'll die. It has been said that the maze is deadly... nobody can ever find their way... That's why I'm here to rip those worries out of your head and make this go as painless as possible. At the end of this maze lies the entrance to Tyranthraxus' place. Take the left gate door inside and take these directions: F is Forward, L is left and R is Right. F(3x), L, F, L, F, R, F, R, F(3x), R, F, L, F, R, F(7x), R, F(2x), L, F, L, F til end of hall, R, F, R, F, L, F, R, F(2x), L, F, L, F(2x), R, F(2x), L, F til end of hall, R, F(2x), L, F 2x L, F 2 until you get to the door at your left. When you enter the room, you'll notice that if you went to the room on the opposite side, you weren't hugging the wall to the right like you are now. At your entry, turn right and press forward and you'll pass through an illusionary wall! I only knew about this after exhausting every possibility in the castle, I thought that there had to be an illusionary wall somewhere and I found this completely by accident. Now proceed through this corridor to Tyranthraxus' Lair. As Billy Mays said, "But wait, there's more!" Well, there is. If you entered the maze from the east side and took these directions, the game will state how you spot a man in fine clothing. His character portrait is Skullcrusher's so I wonder if it's him? Probably not. Anyway, the man claims he is Tyranthraxus, future conqueror of Phlan. But here's the big catch; this isn't really Tyranthraxus, it's just a fake, and you can talk him into confessing that. If you do blow his cover, he'll ask you if he can leave. If you say yes, there's some treasure in store for you, if you decide to kill him, well, all you need to do it just hack and slash him, or if you're that worried about your characters taking damage, simply cast a Stink Cloud spell on him, and hope that he gets held. He has 40 HP and has a barbecue sauce palette swap of a thief. Notice how now the alarm rings. What's so bad about the alarm ringing in the maze? Well, it's full of giant poisonous snakes, and trust me, you don't want to fight them, as any successful hit results in the hit party member being poisoned and killed. Now you need to retrace your steps, just reverse the directions I gave you to find your way out. Anyway, once you take the right way and go through the illusionary wall, you will be in... ======================= m. Tyranthraxus' Place ======================= MISSION - To kill Tyranthraxus and save Phlan REWARD - Reward from council, game complete REWARD FROM COUNCIL - ????? (Don't want to spoil it...) NPC ENCOUNTERS - Genheeris (Genheris in party) MONSTERS - Thief (Lvl 1), Genheeris, Medusa, Fighter (Lvl 8), Tyranthraxus (Real) (Note: If all your characters are not fully trained, DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT enter this place. Instead, kill giant patrols in the Castle to rack up on some experience points and then train your characters at the training hall in New Phlan until they are all full level. Also, there are no random encounters in this place so rest up all you want.) Well, this is it. When you get here, you will be noted how an illusionary wall is to your left. There is also a door in front of you. If you go through it, you will have to confront the medusa. Out of generosity, I decided to make a guide for the medusa. You can also get to the medusa upstairs. In one of the rooms, the game will say you found a trap door. If you decide to open it, the game will tell you how you see a bunch of terrified statues, then one of your characters will be turned to stone (unless you killed the Medusa already). Then the game will give you the option to jump down the trap door, or ignore it and go about your business. If you jump down and the medusa's still in there, you will fight her. ================ Menacing Medusa ================ Since this is the only medusa in the game, why avoid writing a guide about her? She has 30 hit points. If you know anything about the medusa, it's that she can turn anyone to stone. In this battle, even with full level characters, it's not too hard for her to turn one of your party members to stone. The only advice I can give is to hack and slash her and hope that she dies instead of you. You can also paralyze her with a Stink Cloud. Now on to the second level of Tyranthraxus' Place. You can access this at the beginning by simply going up the stairs. If you beat the medusa without her stoning you, good job! Now, go through the illusionary door. Now if you see a door to your left, DO NOT ENTER IT! It is where Tyranthraxus is and we need Genheeris in our party. His magic can hurt Tyranthraxus severely. Once you go up the stairs, take the left passage. You will see two passages; a set of stairs going down, and a door in front of you. DO NOT GO DOWN THE STAIRS! This leads to the battle with Tyranthraxus and we need Genheeris in our party first to get a fighting chance. Instead, go into the door in front of you and you will find a thief. You can kill him but he's just a 1st Level Thief and won't leave any good reward. You can parley with the thief which is what I do. He will tell you to be quiet since he returned from the north and is exhausted. You'll then hear a voice call for their messenger. The thief will then get up and walk into the next door. Later he will return with a document that he packs away. Then you will hear the voice yell for their messenger. Walk in the door. You will meet Genheeris. He will ask what news you bring. If you parley, he will tell you to tell Al-Hyam Dazid to carry out phase two of plan A. Refuse and he will get a disappointed look on his face. He will also do this if you parley rudely. He will then ask if Tyranthraxus sent you to kill him, but before you can answer, he will ask if he can join you, that he will make you generals. I'm not asking you, I'm TELLING you to let him join your party. When you do, you must immediately go to Tyranthraxus now, no turning back. If you walk past the stairs leading to Tyranthraxus, he will leave your party and you won't be able to get him back. At this point I would suggest saving your game right before you go into the room with the thief encounter. So just walk down the stairs to Tyranthraxus. At your entry, you are noted how you're in the audience hall of Tyranthraxus. You will see a opening in the ceiling revealing the sky, but even more surprising, you'll see the legendary Pool of Radiance, as well as a bronze dragon wrapped in flames. As you may have guessed, this is Tyranthraxus. If you think you can take him on right here, right now, you couldn't be more wrong, as Tyranthraxus sends his goons for you. Prepare for the toughest battle(s) in the game... ===================== Tyranthraxus' Guards ===================== This is an extremely tough battle. you will be up against about 12 8th level fighters. Not only do they have an extremely low armor class and do massive damage, but they also have 87 HP. The best strategy I found is to paralyze them by using Hold Person. Also use Lightning Bolt/Fireball spells, wands, necklaces, etc. This should make the battle MUCH easier. If you have clerics, this battle is absolute CAKE! Have your cleric(s) cast Hold Person. When they do they should be able to attempt to paralyze three enemies each spell. Whenever you cast it you are guaranteed to hit at least one. Your cleric(s) should be able to memorize five hold person spells. Do the math and that's 15 attempts to paralyze the guards from each cleric. If you got the paralysis wand from Yarash, you should be able to use that to your advantage, too. As far as I know, this is the easiest possible way to finish this battle. I got 20950 XP and 250 Gold. Then I also got two rings, and three 2H Swords and Plate Mail, but good luck trying to carry all of that unless you want to drop your current weapons and armor and try these on for size. Personally, I haven't tried this yet... After the battle, Tyranthraxus will look at you with great interest, but says you have no chance in defeating him. He will offer you to submit yourselves to him and he will make you commandants in his forces to overtake Phlan. Here are your choices: 1.) Attack Starts the battle listed below. 2.) Join him You'll be asked if you're sure of your decision. You will be given the choice Yes or No. No starts the battle and Yes... 'You become Tyranthraxus' men. You join in the attack that destroys Phlan.' Then you're rewarded with a Game Over. Sorry. (In the computer versions, each character gets to select whether they want to join or fight Tyranthraxus. Whoever decides to join him will be a computer player and fight against your party.) ========================================== FINAL BOSS: Tyranthraxus (AKA - The Boss) ========================================== Tyranthraxus takes up 4 spaces and has 80 HP. He is resistant to pretty much any spells and wands you use on him. What makes this battle even more difficult is that you just had to put up with 12 hard-to-kill fighters that may have severly damaged or killed one or more of your party members. That's where Genheeris comes in. His magic missles can hurt about 1/5 or 1/4 of damage. Tyranthraxus will hurt you severely and even worse - he can do... well how do I put this... Bonus Damage. He can hit you with his fire too. Fortunately, it doesn't do much damage. If you have archers, have them run away from him and use your bow and arrows. Those will do some damage on him. I actually found this to work pretty effectively. For your fighters, just hack and slash at him and hope for the best. Don't reset the game if he slains one of your characters. Once you beat the game, an old friend will help you with that matter. Also, enjoy the final boss music, because you won't get to hear it anymore after this fight. (In the computer versions, Tyranthraxus can also paralyze your party with fear, but that was removed in the NES port.) If you want to know what happens after this, go to the Game Ending section. I just don't want to spoil it for anyone reading this. After the ending, the game tells you that your party returns to Phlan victorious! The guards will approach you as soon as the credits are over and tell you that your reward waits with the city council. It's a HUGE reward. Though since you've beaten the game, it's basically worthless. The council clerk will tell you that if you want, you can kill off the remaining monsters. This is if you want to beat the game 100%, you can go to places like Kuto's Well, Podol Plaza, the Textile House and maybe some other places I'm forgetting. Now your goal is to get them to stop spawning in said locations. To do that, you have to fight around 10-25 random encounters in that area. I'm not sure exactly how many random encounters you must fight, but it's somewhere around that range. It shouldn't be a problem for your party now, since they should be fully trained. The council clerk will also ask you if you want to leave what's called a Character Sheet, and says you can transfer your party members into other games. Don't bother with this feature, because there are no games that will take these codes. It's been said that there was going to be an NES version of the game's sequel, Curse of the Azure Bonds, but it never got either finished or released. Remember how I mentioned not to fear if one or more of your party members died? Remember Braccio? He will resurrect any dead party members for free. If you were planning on taking over Phlan and killing the guards, that will not be possible, as there's now no possible way to anger the city guards. You can now rest on the streets without the guards interrupting, you can go into any rooms in the city hall, and whenever you go into the taverns, all you'll hear when you choose to listen to gossip is, "Who on earth knocked down the Boss?" No more brawls will start. (In the DOS version, you can go into a tavern and get in a fight, and after the fight, the guards will be alerted so if you select to stay after the fight, you will be able to fight them, but be careful, if you do, the city won't help you anymore and since there's no more missions to do, there's no way to get them back on your side again, at least no way that I'm aware of.) Anyway, there is absolutely no way to provoke the guards in the NES version now. ================ 11. Game Ending ================ WARNING: This part is only for anyone who likes spoilers. This is what the game says when you kill Tyranthraxus. Enjoy! The dragon is mortally wounded... As he expires, something rises from the body. TYRANTHRAXUS: You fools! You can't destroy me, even if you destroy this shell. I can live by entering into your bodies. I will live forever! The pool flares and begins to shine brightly! BANE (Game calls him "Voice"): No Tyranthraxus! You will not dishonor me. You have failed... TYRANTHRAXUS: Oh, my lord Bane! How can you call me back now? Stop, please! I'm not yet... Aaaaauuugh! Tyranthraxus is dragged into the pool by an invisible force. The pool's water stops glowing as the spirit as the spirit recedes. Tyranthraxus is destroyed! You return to Phlan victorious. Now the game will show your character's portraits and a few other pictures from the game. Then watch the credits roll. Congratulations! You have beaten Pool of Radiance! Now go treat yourself to a cold one or an ice cream, or a milkshake, or whatever you do to celebrate. I hope you had a fun time reading this guide, and I hoped I helped you! ============= 12. Optional ============= It may take a while to complete this part, because there's so much optional stuff to do. But there are some optional battles you can do in the game. Note that some of these aren't easy so at least make sure you're leveled up before you take on these quests. Why don't we start with New Phlan? ========== New Phlan ========== Before I start this, I just want to say you're going to want your party fully trained/leveled up, so I'd recommend doing this part at the end of the game. There are many ways to anger your superior officer...or guard...or whatever you want to call them; Sleeping on the street, getting into fights at taverns, and trying to enter certain doors in the city hall that you're not allowed in. They'll yell at you and make you feel miserable, and will even take away your map. Aren't you tired of them pushing you around telling you what to do? Why aren't they helping your party fight off evil? Enough is enough! You're gonna finish off these guys once and for all! (Note: Not sure if anyone's interested, but in the computer versions, they say 'Due to your vicious attack on those who protect us, we refuse you all service.' In the NES version, they say We cannot help you wicked ones.) ================= New Phlan Guards ================= (Note: Make sure your party is fully trained before you take on this fight. It will NOT be an easy one...) Here's the setup: 10 Aides, 4 6th Level Fighters, 4 8th Level Fighters, and two mages; Lord Urslingen and Lord High Mayor Ulrich Eberhard (credited as 6th Level MU). The only advice I can give here is just use Hold Person, Sleep, and any other paralysis spells you may have. Fireball and Lightning Bolt also work wonders. I got 10400 XP and 116 Gold. After you have done this, the remaining guards decide to leave you alone. Congratulations, you've just angered New Phlan. Now nobody will help you. You go into the inns, shops, wherever... they'll tell you that because of what you've done, they refuse to serve you. Anyway, it's not over yet. Go into the southwestern shrine. A scary-looking priest will tell you that you'll pay for attacking the city guards... ======================= Revenge of the Clerics ======================= This battle contains 20 enemies; Three 7th Level Clerics, Seven 5th Level Clerics, Three 8th Level Fighters, and Seven 4th Level Fighters. The clerics are pretty much cannon fodder. They block your path while the 4th level fighters shoot volleys of arrows at you. But that's not all... What's worse is that they're full level and can do some nasty damage. Also, as you may have guessed, they're extremely tough to kill. Hold Person should work wonders though. Fortunately, the clerics are no big deal. But as I said before, they're there to stop you from getting to the fighters. Some good news is that Sleep will work on the 4th Level Fighters, and you should be able to carry four Level 1 Magic User spells. Don't use any paralysis spells on the clerics. You'll need them for the fighters and besides, the clerics aren't too much of a threat. I got 211670 XP, 100142 Gold and 400 Gems. Again, pretty much the whole town hates your guts...except for the training hall. After I killed the clerics, I was still able to train there. If I remember right, you can come back here in the USA version and fight this battle again, but in the Japanese version, you only get to do this battle once. Again, I'm just going by memory. ======= Slums ======= ================ Ohlo Onslaught ================ This (as far as I know) is the only optional battle in the slums. If you don't talk to Ohlo the right way, he'll attack you. You will be put up against 10 enemies; 5 hobgoblins, 2 hobgoblin leaders, 2 ogres, and Ohlo. I would normally say to wait until you are leveled up to take on this fight, but to do that you must have enough gold, and by the time you have enough gold, you will have already cleared out the Slums. After you finish all the main battles, you will not be able to access this battle. I have not been able to finish this battle yet, so I do not know what reward you get. =========== Sokal Keep =========== =============== Scorpion Sting =============== To get to this battle, simply follow these directions upon going through the northern doors at the beginning: N1, W2, S1, W2, and then go north. Upon your entry, insects will fall on the floor, as they're all over the room; on the floor, walls, ceiling... There are three Large Scorpions. The scorpions can poison your characters which will instantly kill them on the spot. Then you'll have to go to the temples in New Phlan and buy a highly expensive Neutralize Poison spell. To beat this, have your magic users cast Sleep on the scorpions. I only got 195 XP. Not worth it... ============ Kuto's Well ============ First off, let's cover the random encounters: ============= Kobold Chaos ============= Here, there's 13 kobolds. Not sure why such a random number, but whatever... There's 10 regulars and 3 leaders. I got 141 XP and 13 Gold. It's to be expected... I did this battle two times. =============== Lazy Lizardmen =============== 10 lizardmen attempt to defeat your party. I only got 980 XP. I did this battle three times. ============= Nasty Gnolls ============= Here there are 10 gnolls. Don't let their size fool you; They're easy opponents. Almost as easy as kobolds. I got 620 XP and 140 GP. There's a 2x2 room in the middle north at the top of the area map. Go in there and bump into the southeast corner. You'll then see some limping kobolds. The game tells you that they try to sneak away from you. If you select Flee, you'll run away. If you select Wait, the game tells you that they got away. Attack and Talk do the same thing; the leader of the kobold pack will beg you not to kill them, that the king sent them to look for the Pool of Radiance, and that they're not built for fighting. The leader says so far, they've got nothing. He will then beg you again to spare their lives. If you still want to kill them, there's just 12 regulars. All you'll get is 108 XP and 12 Gold. Choosing to question them will make them start sobbing and beg you even more to spare them. If you let them go, they'll run away with one turning around and waving to you, thanking you for letting them go. ================== Mendor's Library ================== ==================== Kobold Catastrophe ==================== There is a room you can go in which you will find five kobolds begging you not to attack them. If you do, you will be put up against five regular kobolds and no leaders. ================ Mad Man Mayhem ================ You can attack the Mad Man you find. He's just a level 1 fighter with 7 hit points, so it should be easy to dispatch him. ================= Braccio's Quest ================= ================= The Dark Shrine ================= After you either complete Kovel Mansion, or recover the shrine from Braccio's Quest, you can go east of the temple to find what the council clerk calls the Dark Shrine. Like Norris the Gray, you will get a secret reward from the council clerk for completing this. I say it's secret since she doesn't mention your party having to do it. To get here, board a boat north and choose the north part of Phlan when you get to the wilderness. You'll be back at Kovel Mansion. Now go south of Kovel Mansion and you will be where you need to. Go into the middle 2x3 room. You'll be greeted by Orcs that smile and then attack you, but you'll be getting the last laugh here. Since this is a simple orc battle against 8 orcs (7 regular, 1 leader) I will not walk you through this fight. Simply hack and slash. No magic needed here. If you need to rest, you can go north of here into Kovel Mansion and rest. Now, once again, there is a 3x2 room above the current 2x3 block you're currently in on the area map. Go into the 3x2 room now. You are in the main hall, surrounded by trash and broken furniture. Go right and then straight into the next room. The game will tell you the room is full of bodies which were victims of the orcs. Now go in the room south of the room you are currently in. You will encounter goblin slaves. They beg you not to harm them. Release them if you want and they will give you useless information, telling you that you need the Bane symbol to enter the shrine. We just cleared that out... Now go back to the main hall. This time, take the left passage. But before you do, search the room. You will find treasure. I got 1320 XP with a scroll, potion, and a ring. be in a kitchen that has been ruined from a fire. Go straight into the next room to find a room full of junk and broken furniture. Now go to the room south of you to find six orcs and a ogre. The ogre will laugh at you, saying that you fell into his trap. ================ Ogre Onslaught ================ Again, all you need to do here is hack and slash your way through the orcs and finish off the ogre. At this point in the game, your party should be seasoned enough that the ogres are no match for them. What I did was have my fighters on the front line attack the orcs and my archers attack the ogre since he can't get to you. This proved to be very effective. I won 296 XP and 11 Gold from this battle. After the battle, you'll find a piece of paper on the floor that says Mace is great and strong, Tyranthraxus is greater and stronger, and Bane is above all others. Yikes! Now, you should be able to rest here without any interruptions, though there are still monsters here that you can kill. Like in the 3x1 room in the south of the are map. In that area, it's just some regular orc battles, so no walkthrough is needed here. Kill them if you want and head back to New Phlan to claim your treasure from the city council. You can also go in the nearby 2x2 room where you have the option to search the beds. If you do, kill the orcs that attack you, only to find bugs and debris in the beds. For clearing out the monsters, the council clerk will give you 1500 XP, 750 Gold and 3 gems. ============ Wilderness ============ Here I will show you how much of an enemy you will face when you battle them in the wilderness. There are usually different numbers for each battle but I will list how many I've found while working on this guide. Ankheg - 2, 3 Bandit - 20 (19 Bandits, 1 Sub-Captain) Centaur - 5 Displacer Beast - 3, 5 Drider - 4 Giant Lizard - 6 Giant Mantis - 1 Gnoll - 8, 10 Guard - 12 (Note: These are not New Phlan guards, they are Zhentil guards.) Hippogriff - 4, 5 Kobold - 14 (12 Regulars, 2 Leaders), 18 (15 Regulars, 3 Leaders) Lizardman - 10 Merchant - 20 (19 Merchants, 1 Sub-Captain) Minotaur - 6 Phase Spider - 8 Quickling - 10, 12 Stirge - 10 Tiger - 3, 4 Thri-Kreen - 3, 5 Troll - 3 Wild Boar - 5 Wyvern - 1 ================== Yarash's Pyramid ================== ============== Blue Bonanza ============== Here I will take you through some of the optional parts of the pyramid which take place in the blue section. =============== Lizard Lament =============== Upon teleporting to the second blue section, take these directions; N2, go into the east illusionary wall. You will be in a recently-used laboratory. You will see another illusionary wall in front of you and to the right. Go through it. Then turn right facing south and keep going south to find five lizardmen. Choose to Advance. The game says they are wary of you, but look as if they won't attack. Advance again. Then parley Sly, Nice or Meek. Any other choices will make the lizardmen think you work for Yarash and they will attack you. If you leave the room and go east until you see the illusionary wall and go through it, you will be in a room with some weird tools and a table with manacles. You'll also see flasks and bottles on the wall as well as alchemist stuff on the tables. However, there is nothing in this room. Upon leaving this room, take these directions: W6, N4, E3, S2, E6, S1 and enter the illusionary wall to the east. You will be in a room with many tubs filled with dirty water which were used to contaminate the Stojanow River. Take one step forward to find an insane lizardman jump out of one of the tubs, along with two more of his friends! Now you're put up with three Mutant Lizardmen. ...and if you already cleared out the red section of the pyramid, that's it! There's nothing left here. =============== Valjevo Castle =============== Here are some optional battles you can get into in the maze: NORTH WEST REGION ==================== The Middle-Aged Man ==================== To get here, follow these steps after entering the east left door into the maze: E3, N1, W1, N2 and go into the door on your left. This isn't really a battle per se, but more of an encounter. You'll find a middle-aged man near the beginning of the maze. He'll beg you to let him go, as he was forced by Tyranthraxus to work for him. No matter what you choose, the game won't let you hurt him, as he runs away. The second time you select attack, he will again beg for mercy and says he'll give you some important information. The note reads: 'Note: No one can oppose Tyranthraxus. All who come before him fall in obedience!' 'The power and charisma of Tyranthraxus must come from the Pool of Radiance.' Either way, you'll end up getting 5600 XP. I also got Bracers, a ring, and a wand. Well, that about covers it for this section... SOUTH WEST REGION ================ Giant "Gubilee" ================ To get here, enter the east right door to the maze and: E5, S5, W3, S1, W2, S2, E1, S3, W1, S2, E2, N2, E2, S4, W3, S2, E2, S1, W2 As soon as you enter this 2x2 room on the west side, the game will tell you that three giant guards see you and go to you. Sometimes, they don't see you. Parleying Sly, Nice, and Meek will make the guards ask you for the password. This time, you actually have to answer, answer between Pool, Phlan, Bane, and Valjevo. However, none of these answers are correct. If you chose that one and chose an answer, the giant will tell you that you have one more chance. Screw that one up (and you will), the giant will laugh and tell you you're wrong again. Then he'll tell you to get out of here and the battle will start. Haughty or Abusive will make them ask who you work for. You know the answer... If you do the latter and pick Cadorna, Urslingen or Diogenes, the giant will say, "I don't know that name!" If you choose The Boss, he'll say, "I'm sorry sir! We were on duty. We are not lazy." Let's fight for that XP and Gold! The only thing I'm going to tell you for this battle is Haste, Fireball, Swords, and Stink Cloud. I won 11676 XP and 6000 Gold! Woo hoo! SOUTH EAST REGION =============================== Frogs and Toads Are Different? =============================== There is a 2x4 room here, but you can only access it by entering through the east side. That is unless you want to push through the thorns and kill one of your party members, and I don't. Let's do that; enter from the east gates. Now the room should be just south of where you're standing. After you enter the room, you'll see four fire giants arguing over whether frogs and toads are different. One will turn to you and the argument will continue...: 'Giant: Frogs and toads are different. Anyway, they are not the same 'I'm right, aren't I?' Here are your choices: A.) Yes The first giant will say, "See. I was right!" The second one will say, "What!?! You can not trust those little ones!" He will then say, "Hurt them!" Then, the first one will say, "No. Leave 'em alone!" The giants will then fight one another until one points at your party stating why THEY'RE fighting when YOUR party started it. Then the battle starts. B.) No The other three giants laugh. The first one gets mad and says he'll teach you. The other giants restrain him and warn you to get out of here. Leave will do the obvious. Stay here will make the second giant question why you didn't escape when you had the chance, and he assumes you want to fight them. C.) Attack Starts the battle with your party up against four fire giants. D.) Flee Leave the room. This event can still be triggered, however. Fire Giants are tougher than Hill Giants, as they can do massive damage and they are resistant to any fire-related spells, though you probably already knew that. Just have your fights slash them and your archers shoot arrows at them. If you have Haste, that will also help a great deal. I ended up getting 30816 XP and 16240 Gold with the last two giants surrendering. Wow... Of course, I mentioned before the fake Tyranthraxus that you can run into, in the big 4x4 room in the northwest region. ===================== TYRANTHRAXUS TYPHOON ===================== You'll enter a nice-looking room with a strong-looking man. He will then ask you what you are doing here in front of the almighty Tyranthraxus, King of Phlan. Here's your options: A.) Attack You fight him and the alarm rings, spawning poisonous snakes in the maze. B.) Wait Same as A. C.) Flee Leave the room. The alarm will sound. D.) Parley 1.) Haughty/Abusive The man will admit he's not really Tyranthraxus and ask if you'll let him go. There will be a lot of treasure he'll leave behind if you let him go. Attack will go to A. 2.) Sly He will warn you to leave if you don't want to die. If you select Attack, he'll say, "Then perish!" 3.) Nice/Meek He'll tell you that being a fake isn't so bad, but the crown's too heavy for him. One of your characters will shout in question that he's a double. Then the man will reply, "What? Aren't you on our side? Guards! Don't let them go!" Imaginary guards... If you fight him, cast Hold Person on him. I got 603 XP and 4 Gold. If you don't fight him and let him go, you'll get 8200 XP, plus some items; Long Sword, Gloves, a ring, a cloack and bracers. NORTH EAST REGION ======== TROLL'D ======== Go into the northeastern room to enter a ruined tower. Then the game addresses that there are trolls. More specifically, there's eight of them! Yeah...not an easy battle. Again, use the same tactics that you used against the fire giants, except this time, make sure you also use fireball and maybe a rhinestone or two off any fireball necklaces you might have. I got 6504 XP and once got a dagger. That's it for the northeastern region. But I'm not done here. Here's something interesting you can do... (This works only on an emulator such as FCEUX) Set address 600 to 03 and 601 to 0F. Now you'll be in the 4x4 block in the south- western corner. You can go through a couple spaces, including one that shows a hole. This is actually a glitch, as the hole's supposed to be the Pool of Radiance, but after you step forward, it disappears! Funny, huh? ======================= 13. Errors In the Game ======================= Since the NES version of the game was developed by a Japanese company, you can expect a few spelling/grammar errors in the game: Tavern Rumor: "We need to be careful or it will decl are waron phlan." Decl are waron phlan - Declare war on Phlan. Podol Plaza: This is a naban doned house. Only mice scurry about. A naban doned - An abandoned Stojanow Gate: If you start the game with one guy, go to Stojanow Gate, kill the man with the wagon and try to cross the gate, a bugbear will approach you and demand 15 GP. Select Pay and you will get this text: Character 1: Hang it! I don't have enough money! In the Japanese version it says, "Shimatta! Okanega tarinai." (Damn it! Not enough money.) I believe they intended for your character to say Dang it, but this was either a typo or Nintendo of America found the word Dang offensive. When you make a character and you are given the list of characters to choose from, notice how the game says 'Chose the CHARACTER to make.' Oh well, close enough. Remember, a Japanese company developed the NES port of PoR. What if you had to port a game in Japanese? Wouldn't be too easy, would it? I also have a sixth sense that these were things that would've been censored by Nintendo had there been no grammar issues. Just me though. ======== 14. FAQ ======== Here are a bunch of questions and answers. A couple of them were sent to me by viewers. Q - Who is "The Boss"? A - "The Boss" is just an alias for Tyranthraxus. Q - kcksldnfl sdhflsdhflihsdfhs A - Umm okay, that I will not reply to. Especially if its in another language. I only know English. So please e-mail me something in English, rather than a foreign language. Don't worry, I can usually understand those who speak little English. Q - I can't find the nomad camp/buccaneer base. Why can't I find it!? A - Either because the council hasn't commisioned you to go there or you just haven't looked hard enough. Q - The Zhentil Keep guards won't let me inside the keep! Why? A - Because you haven't been comissioned to go there yet. You should have visited the south door in the council clerk's office to talk with Cadorna about the mission. Q - Where do you find Nymphs/Wardogs in this game? A - I think these are enemies they were originally planning to put into the game but never ended up doing it. Q - How long did it take to make this guide? A - Honestly, it's been so long that I don't remember. I believe it was a few months, but I played through the game also while making this guide (to ensure that I was writing things correctly.) Q - I have suggestions for you. How do I tell them to you? A - My e-mail is located at the top, since I always check it daily, it should work so if you send me an e-mail it should go through. If it doesn't, you can check out my other online accounts such as YouTube, Steam, Skype, AIM. My username for all of them is Doommaster1994. (This question was sent to me by a viewer of this guide) Q - I found an item called Manual of B Health. What does it do? A - I wasn't sure at first but after researching it, it's a Manual of Bodily Health, which is supposed to raise the user of the manual's constitution one point. I heard you are supposed to wait 30 days before it takes effect. Q - Hey! The Bless spell from the computer versions is missing in this game! A - No it's not, because Nintendo was censor-crazy, they had to rename the spell to 'Empower'. Since Nintendo of Japan didn't have a censorship policy, the spell may be the same in that one. Q - I found a really neat item that sells really expensive at the stores in Phlan, should I sell them? A - It depends. If it's a weapon and it proves useful, then no, do not sell the weapons, because who knows, it could be very useful against Tyranthraxus. On the other hand, if it's just a piece of Jewelry like a Dragon Figure or Fine Tapestries, then sell them, as they serve no purpose or use rather than to get money. However, there are a couple items that you will need to use only once, twice or only a few times in the game before they're useless, such as the brass key in the textile house, you only need it to free Skullcrusher (which isn't even necessary and besides, the key won't sell for anything so dropping the item's worth just as much). Then, in the Kobold cave, there is an Efreeti that you can get and you only need him once to be a great help for the Vampire Battle (Though I've had little trouble defeating the vampires with my own enemies but he helps a great deal and reduces the risk of your party members getting drained.) He'll sell for an amount of Gold in the thousands (I forgot exactly how much). Q - What is it about the NES version in your opinion that puts it above all other versions? A - First off, I couldn't even get past the slums on the computer versions. Second, the difficulty in this game is just right. There are some hard battles, but a few tries should overcome them. I've heard people say they hate this port of the game because 'the characters look too Japanese'. Well, it was developed by a Japanese company, what do you expect? Also, people say they don't like this one because it's censored. Don't blame the developers, blame Nintendo. I've also heard people say the NES version was too easy. Well, I say the exact opposite for the computer versions! Q - Why do you like this game better than all the other RPGs out there? A - I'm not at liberty to say. Q - What other consoles was this game released on? A - Commodore 64 and Amiga, Apple II, Macintosh and MS-DOS. There's also a PC-98 version. Q - Why do you like this game? A - Mainly, it was because it was the first game I ever played in my life. I don't know, whatever it was about it, I got addicted the moment I started playing. Q - Have you ever been fortunate enough to talk to the staff of this game? A - I got a hold of four of its staff members; Kunihiko Kagawa (developer), Seiji Toda (composer), Yoshiaki Sakaguchi (senior programmer), and Hironari Tadokoro (music programmer). They were all very nice people to talk to, though unfortunately, Hironari is a very secretive person. Q - What inspired you to make this guide? A - After I completed it, I decided I wanted to help people out with this game. Q - Hey! You're that Doommaster1994 guy on YouTube! A - Yes. It's a small, small world... (This next question was sent to me by a reader) Q - When should I train my characters? A - I have updated this guide with an XP table that tells you how many XP points are required to level up a character. Note that training costs 1000GP. Also, you should level up each time you clear a certain part of the game. When you're at Valjevo Castle, try to train your characters after every few battles with giants, as they leave huge XP points. Q - Can I add you on Facebook? A - Yes, but on one condition; I want you to tell me who you are and why you're adding me as a friend. If you don't do this, I will decline your request. Thanks for your understanding. Q - I just can't follow this guide. Do you have a video version of it? A - I do! On YouTube is a video walkthrough of this game. Look for Doommaster1994 on there and Pool of Radiance Walkthrough. There are a total of 45 10-minute videos, so make sure you got a lot of time to burn before watching. Q - Who are you? How old are you? Where do you live? A - My name's Nick, I live in the USA, and I'm an adult. Q - May I upload your guide to my website? A - Please read the Copyright section for that answer. Q - Who really developed this game? Pony Canyon or Marionette? A - For a while, I thought Pony Canyon was the developer... until I got in touch with one of the game's programmers (Yoshiaki Sakaguchi) who told me Marionette really developed the NES port of Pool of Radiance. The game even says: 'GAME DEVELOPED BY STRATEGIC SIMULATIONS INC.' though I think they're referring to the original computer ports. Q - Why isn't Marionette's name on the game then? A - I think it was due to some sort of contract, and SSI wanted to take credit for developing the NES version. Many early game developers did this back then including WestOne and Atlus. Q - Which other versions of Pool of Radiance do you own? A - I own physical copies of the MS-DOS and Macintosh version. I have two copies of the NES version; My dad's copy and one CIB. I also have a CIB copy of the Famicom version. Q - What's the difference between the computer ports? A - Just graphics and sound as far as I'm aware. Plus the fact that they run under different operating systems/computers. Q - Even the #1 game of all time to you MUST have some problems. What are they? A - What? Problems? Heheh, I don't know what you're talking about! ...Okay fine...as much as I hate to admit it, there are SOME things that I could've lived without in this game. For starters, they screwed up the resting system. In the computer versions, your characters gained 1 HP each hour they rested. In the NES version, you have to rest 24 HOURS before your characters gain a hit point. This is very, VERY time consuming, especially later in the game when your characters have a huge amount of HP. I also would have liked to customize my character portrait and battle icon like in the computer versions. Can I go now? Thank you. Q - Is there any replay value? A - Yes, much. There are different ways you can do stuff in the game so you can do stuff differently each time you play. For example, while in the buccaneer base, you can either take the kid and get out of dodge, or, you can kill off all the buccaneers. Q - I can't beat this part! I think my party is too weak! A - If that's the case move on to the next part. You can always come back to a part later. If you haven't already, train your characters. Paralysis spells also work well. If you're still not having any luck, shoot me an e-mail and I'll help you as best I can. Q - One of my characters was defeated in combat and the game says they were 'Slain'. What does this mean? A - That means the character has literally died and cannot wake up. The only way to revive a 'slain' party member is to go to the temples in Phlan or the one in Podol Plaza and buy the raise dead spell for 55000 Gold. I know one of the D&D rules is that elves that have been killed can't be revived. I'm not sure how it works in this game though. Q - What do I do if an enemy has drained a level from my characters? A - I just reset the game and that usually works. Otherwise, there are some Restoration scrolls you can get in the game (mainly in the graveyard) which will restore any drained experience points. Q - Are there any differences between the Famicom and NES version? If so, will you be making a walkthrough for those too? A - From what I can remember, the kobold cave battles were a little harder. Q - Where can I download this game? A - Google Q - I can't hit (enemy name here). What do I do? A - Some enemies (especially later in the game) require magical weapons in order to be hit. You should get these items while in your quest for fame and fortune. There's also a silver shop in New Phlan, but the items are expensive. Q - Which emulator do you use for NES games? A - I used to use VirtuaNES, but then I took an arrow to the... Okay, I'm sorry... Anyway, I use FCEUX (2.2.2) now. *Much* better... Q - Which enemies do you think are the easiest/hardest in the game? A - For the easiest enemies, I'm going to have to go with the frogs. For the hardest enemies, I'm definitely going to go with the trolls. Q - Where can I listen to the game's music? A - Download the NSF file and get an NSF player. Q - Will you cover the other versions of the game? A - No. Q - Any other RPGs you can recommend? A - No. Q - Have you heard of/played Final Fantasy? A - Wasn't that a racing game for the NES or something? Q - I hear you keep bringing up this thing called Famicom. What is it? A - The Famicom is essentially the Japanese version of the NES, except it's much better. It had a better library of games and some of the games contained expansion sound that would enhance the console's sound quality. Unfortunately, Pool of Radiance (or any of the other AD&D games Q - Can I have your copy of the NES/Famicom version? A - I will take it to the grave with me! Please do not take it out of my grave though. I would be really angry and would haunt you for life. Q - Will you add an item guide? A - I am planning on doing it soon. The only problem is, I haven't used a whole lot of items/weapons in the game besides long swords, bows, and shields, so a lot of the items' descriptions would be left out. If you'd like to contribute the descriptions of some of these items, then I'll be more than happy to give you credit for it. Q - What about a spell guide? A - Same deal, I haven't used them all. However, I think the manual lists all the spells, which if it does, I'll list them in this guide. Q - Speaking of spells, which spells should I choose while being trained at the hall? A - The most helpful ones are Stink Cloud (L2), Fireball/Lightning Bolt, and Haste (L3). Q - I'm having trouble resting (here). Is there a way I can rest here uninterrupted? A - Some areas of the game will let you fight off enough random encounters and then no monsters will spawn there, making the area a safe place to rest. Some of these areas include Kuto's Well, Podol Plaza, and the Textile House. Also, if you beat all of the main battles in a certain area, it will stop the enemies from spawning. This applies to areas such as Valjevo Castle, Valhingen Graveyard, and Yarash's Pyramid. Q - Is there an infinite amount of monsters in the wilderness? A - I'm not sure but I would think so. It would be too bad if there wasn't because I like battling the enemies at full level. Q - Come on! Tell me what your reward is for killing Tyranthraxus please?! A - Well, I posted a video of the game's ending... I got 31575 XP, 10455 GP and 67 Gems. I also got 6 potions and 2 broad swords, but my inventory was so full I couldn't take any of them. That's just for beating Tyranthraxus. The council clerk rewards you with 51250 XP and 205 Gems. Q - Can you use the Pool of Radiance after you've beaten the game? A - I don't think so. I heard if you meditate in it, it's supposed to give you power, but I had my cleric cast the spell while I was in the pool and nothing seemed to happen. Maybe there's a way to properly use it. It also may have had an effect on my party without the game telling me. =========================== 15. Comments and Responses =========================== C - Hey, I really liked your guide. Keep up the great work! R - Thanks a lot! I really appreciate it! C - This guide was awful. Totally unhelpful, etc. R - I don't mind people sending me suggestions to improve my guide, but if you're going to send me an e-mail about it, please be kind and courteous. There's no need for being rude. ====================== 16. Cheats ====================== *UPDATE 5/31/13* A viewer by the name of Kobold Bard sent me a long list of GameGenie codes. Please note that I have not tested these and cannot confirm whether these work or not. He has given me permission to use them in my guide. Here you go: VVUANYVG High Stats ETEOYOXV Max Stats OPXOGOZX Have the maximum Str. Modifier OZUOLPSX Have a 00 Str. Modifier KAVOTGXA Start with 999999 gold AAUPSPZA Always be able to level up NNEPSLLE + NNKPULZE Max Hit Dice on level up OGXUYOVI Manual of B Health takes only 2 days to use SPUUIPOX Manual of B Health increases Strength POKLPIIO Girdle of Giant Strength gives 25 Strength POUUTIZO Ogre Power Gloves give 25 Strength PENLGXSP + PNNLIZAY Strength effects are permanent YENLPZUZ + PNNLZZAY Strength modifier effects are permanent OTXEPYXI Items are free if you have enough AAXATYEP Buy items even if you don't have enough OEEEVOSP Duplicate traded items GNKAUULN More experience after battle ATOAVAZT More gold after battle SZSEXXVK + KISENXNA Infinite items won after battle Arms & Armor shop sells: AASLNGTA Nothing PASLNGTA Battle Axe ZASLNGTA Battle Axe +1 LASLNGTA Battle Axe +2 GASLNGTA Battle Axe +3 IASLNGTA Silver Battle Axe TASLNGTA Dagger YASLNGTA Dagger +1 AASLNGTE Dagger +2 PASLNGTE Dagger +3 ZASLNGTE Silver Dagger LASLNGTE Dart GASLNGTE Dart +1 IASLNGTE Dart +2 TASLNGTE Dart +3 YASLNGTE Flail APSLNGTA Flail +1 PPSLNGTA Flail +2 ZPSLNGTA Flail +3 LPSLNGTA Halberd GPSLNGTA Halberd +1 IPSLNGTA Halberd +2 TPSLNGTA Halberd +3 YPSLNGTA Hammer APSLNGTE Hammer +1 PPSLNGTE Hammer +2 ZPSLNGTE Hammer +3 LPSLNGTE Javelin GPSLNGTE Javelin +1 IPSLNGTE Javelin +2 TPSLNGTE Javelin +3 YPSLNGTE Jav. of Lightning AZSLNGTA Mace PZSLNGTA Mace +1 ZZSLNGTA Mace +2 LZSLNGTA Mace +3 GZSLNGTA Silver Mace IZSLNGTA Spear TZSLNGTA Spear +1 YZSLNGTA Spear +2 AZSLNGTE Spear +3 PZSLNGTE Quarter Staff ZZSLNGTE Quarter Staff +1 LZSLNGTE Quarter Staff +2 GZSLNGTE Quarter Staff +3 IZSLNGTE Broad Sword TZSLNGTE Broad Sword +1 YZSLNGTE Broad Sword +2 ALSLNGTA Broad Sword +3 PLSLNGTA Broad Sword +4 ZLSLNGTA Broad Sword +5 LLSLNGTA Broad Sword (C) GLSLNGTA Silver Broad Sword ILSLNGTA Bst Swrd +1,+3 vs Undead TLSLNGTA Flame Bst Swrd +1 YLSLNGTA Frost Bst Swrd +3 ALSLNGTE L.Sword PLSLNGTE L.Sword +1 ZLSLNGTE L.Sword +2 LLSLNGTE L.Sword +3 GLSLNGTE L.Sword +4 ILSLNGTE L.Sword +5 TLSLNGTE Silver L.Sword YLSLNGTE L.Sword +1,+3 vs Undead AGSLNGTA Flame L.Sword +1 PGSLNGTA Frost L.Sword +3 ZGSLNGTA LawfulGoodL.Sword +3 LGSLNGTA LawfulEvilL.Sword +3 GGSLNGTA L.Sword -2 (C) IGSLNGTA S.Sword TGSLNGTA S.Sword +1 YGSLNGTA S.Sword +2 AGSLNGTE S.Sword +3 PGSLNGTE S.Sword +4 ZGSLNGTE Silver S.Sword LGSLNGTE 2H Sword GGSLNGTE 2H Sword +1 IGSLNGTE 2H Sword +2 TGSLNGTE 2H Sword +3 YGSLNGTE 2H Sword +4 AISLNGTA 2H Sword +5 PISLNGTA 2H Sword +1,+3 vs Undead ZISLNGTA Flame 2H Sword +1 LISLNGTA Frost 2H Sword +2 GISLNGTA 2H Sword -2 (C) IISLNGTA Silver 2H Sword TISLNGTA Trident YISLNGTA Trident +1 AISLNGTE Trident +2 PISLNGTE Trident +3 ZISLNGTE Composite L.Bow LISLNGTE Composite L.Bow +1 GISLNGTE Composite L.Bow +2 IISLNGTE Composite L.Bow +3 TISLNGTE L.Bow YISLNGTE L.Bow +1 ATSLNGTA L.Bow +2 PTSLNGTA L.Bow +3 ZTSLNGTA S.Bow LTSLNGTA S.Bow +1 GTSLNGTA S.Bow +2 ITSLNGTA S.Bow +3 TTSLNGTA Sling YTSLNGTA Sling of Seeking +1 ATSLNGTE Sling of Seeking +2 PTSLNGTE Sling of Seeking +3 ZTSLNGTE Staff Sling LTSLNGTE Staff Sling +1 GTSLNGTE Staff Sling +2 ITSLNGTE Staff Sling +3 TTSLNGTE Leather Armor YTSLNGTE Leather Armor +1 AYSLNGTA Leather Armor +2 PYSLNGTA Leather Armor +3 ZYSLNGTA Leather Armor +4 LYSLNGTA Ring Mail GYSLNGTA Ring Mail +1 IYSLNGTA Ring Mail +2 TYSLNGTA Ring Mail +3 YYSLNGTA Silver Ring Mail AYSLNGTE Scale Mail PYSLNGTE Scale Mail +1 ZYSLNGTE Scale Mail +2 LYSLNGTE Scale Mail +3 GYSLNGTE Chain Mail IYSLNGTE Chain Mail +1 TYSLNGTE Chain Mail +2 YYSLNGTE Chain Mail +3 EASLNGTA Silver Chain Mail OASLNGTA Splinted Mail XASLNGTA Splinted Mail +1 UASLNGTA Splinted Mail +2 KASLNGTA Splinted Mail +3 SASLNGTA Banded Mail VASLNGTA Banded Mail +1 NASLNGTA Banded Mail +2 EASLNGTE Banded Mail +3 OASLNGTE Plate Mail XASLNGTE Plate Mail +1 UASLNGTE Plate Mail +2 KASLNGTE Plate Mail +3 SASLNGTE Silver Plate Mail VASLNGTE Shield NASLNGTE Shield +1 EPSLNGTA Shield +2 OPSLNGTA Shield +3 XPSLNGTA Scroll With 1 Cl. Spells UPSLNGTA Scroll With 2 Cl. Spells KPSLNGTA Scroll With 3 Cl. Spells SPSLNGTA Protective Cloak +4 VPSLNGTA Protective Cloak +5 NPSLNGTA Ring of Warmth EPSLNGTE Ring of Weakness OPSLNGTE Bracers AC 7 XPSLNGTE Potion of Poison UPSLNGTE Scroll With 1 MU. Spells KPSLNGTE Scroll With 2 MU. Spells SPSLNGTE Scroll With 3 MU. Spells VPSLNGTE Bracers AC 5 NPSLNGTE Bracers AC 3 EZSLNGTA Bracers (C) OZSLNGTA Gauntlets of Dex. XZSLNGTA Girdle of Giant Strength UZSLNGTA Fine Tapestry KZSLNGTA Ogre Power Gloves SZSLNGTA Displacer Cloak VZSLNGTA Ring of Fire Resistance NZSLNGTA Ring of Protection +1 EZSLNGTE Ring of Protection +2 OZSLNGTE Ring of Protection +3 XZSLNGTE Ring of Protection +4 UZSLNGTE Ring of Protection +5 KZSLNGTE Ring of Invisibility SZSLNGTE Potion of Healing VZSLNGTE Potion of Extra Healing NZSLNGTE Potion of Speed ELSLNGTA Potion of Giant Strength OLSLNGTA Potion of Fire Resistance XLSLNGTA Potion of Invisibility ULSLNGTA Magic Missile Wand KLSLNGTA Lightning Wand SLSLNGTA Paralysis Wand VLSLNGTA Fireball Wand NLSLNGTA Manual of B Health ELSLNGTE Nothing OLSLNGTE Protective Cloak +1 XLSLNGTE Protective Cloak +2 ULSLNGTE Protective Cloak +3 KLSLNGTE Disappearance Dust SLSLNGTE Necklace of Missile VLSLNGTE Necklace (C) NLSLNGTE Silver Scarab EGSLNGTA Bracers AC 8 OGSLNGTA Bracers AC 6 XGSLNGTA Bracers AC 4 UGSLNGTA Bracers AC 2 KGSLNGTA Brass Mirror SGSLNGTA Silver Mirror VGSLNGTA Flask of Oil NGSLNGTA Magic Water Vial EGSLNGTE Wooden Symbol of Tyr OGSLNGTE Iron Symbol of Tempus XGSLNGTE Silver Symbol of Sune UGSLNGTE Leather Symbol of Bane KGSLNGTE Diamond Necklace SGSLNGTE Fine Opal Pendant VGSLNGTE Platinum Sphere NGSLNGTE Emerald Broach EISLNGTA Gold Scarab OISLNGTA Silver Dragon figure. XISLNGTA Jewelled Silver Wings UISLNGTA Gold Sculpted Fig. KISLNGTA Pearl Necklace SISLNGTA Gold Chain VISLNGTA Dragon Figurine NISLNGTA Efreet Bottle EISLNGTE Pass OISLNGTE Gold TwistedWand XISLNGTE Rotting Tapestry UISLNGTE Brass Key KISLNGTE Scarab of Pro. SISLNGTE Scarab of Expiration VISLNGTE Dagger (C) NISLNGTE S.Sword (C) ETSLNGTA S.Sword +5 OTSLNGTA MagicalHammer Arms & Armor shop sells a MU Scroll that contains: UPSLNGTE + OZVPIPIE + AEVPKPYL Nothing UPSLNGTE + OZVPIPIE + PEVPKPYL Empower UPSLNGTE + OZVPIPIE + ZEVPKPYL Curse UPSLNGTE + OZVPIPIE + LEVPKPYL Cure Lt Wounds UPSLNGTE + OZVPIPIE + GEVPKPYL Cause Lt Wounds UPSLNGTE + OZVPIPIE + IEVPKPYL Detect Magic UPSLNGTE + OZVPIPIE + TEVPKPYL Prot/Evil UPSLNGTE + OZVPIPIE + YEVPKPYL Prot/Good UPSLNGTE + OZVPIPIE + AEVPKPYU Resist Cold UPSLNGTE + OZVPIPIE + PEVPKPYU Burn Hands UPSLNGTE + OZVPIPIE + ZEVPKPYU Charm Person UPSLNGTE + OZVPIPIE + LEVPKPYU Detect Magic UPSLNGTE + OZVPIPIE + GEVPKPYU Enlarge UPSLNGTE + OZVPIPIE + IEVPKPYU Reduce UPSLNGTE + OZVPIPIE + TEVPKPYU Friends UPSLNGTE + OZVPIPIE + YEVPKPYU Magic Missile UPSLNGTE + OZVPIPIE + AOVPKPYL Prot/Evil UPSLNGTE + OZVPIPIE + POVPKPYL Prot/Good UPSLNGTE + OZVPIPIE + ZOVPKPYL Read Magic UPSLNGTE + OZVPIPIE + LOVPKPYL Shield UPSLNGTE + OZVPIPIE + GOVPKPYL Shock Grasp UPSLNGTE + OZVPIPIE + IOVPKPYL Sleep UPSLNGTE + OZVPIPIE + TOVPKPYL Find Traps UPSLNGTE + OZVPIPIE + YOVPKPYL Hold Person UPSLNGTE + OZVPIPIE + AOVPKPYU Resist Fire UPSLNGTE + OZVPIPIE + POVPKPYU Silence 15'R UPSLNGTE + OZVPIPIE + ZOVPKPYU Slow Poison UPSLNGTE + OZVPIPIE + LOVPKPYU Snake Charm UPSLNGTE + OZVPIPIE + GOVPKPYU Spirit Hammer UPSLNGTE + OZVPIPIE + IOVPKPYU Det Invisibility UPSLNGTE + OZVPIPIE + TOVPKPYU Ivisibility UPSLNGTE + OZVPIPIE + YOVPKPYU Knock UPSLNGTE + OZVPIPIE + AXVPKPYL Mirror Image UPSLNGTE + OZVPIPIE + PXVPKPYL Enfeeblement UPSLNGTE + OZVPIPIE + ZXVPKPYL Stink Cloud UPSLNGTE + OZVPIPIE + LXVPKPYL Strength UPSLNGTE + OZVPIPIE + GXVPKPYL Animate Dead UPSLNGTE + OZVPIPIE + IXVPKPYL Cure Blind UPSLNGTE + OZVPIPIE + TXVPKPYL Cause Blind UPSLNGTE + OZVPIPIE + YXVPKPYL Cure Disease UPSLNGTE + OZVPIPIE + AXVPKPYU Cause Disease UPSLNGTE + OZVPIPIE + PXVPKPYU Dispel Magic UPSLNGTE + OZVPIPIE + ZXVPKPYU Meditation UPSLNGTE + OZVPIPIE + LXVPKPYU Remove Curse UPSLNGTE + OZVPIPIE + GXVPKPYU Bestow Curse UPSLNGTE + OZVPIPIE + IXVPKPYU Blink UPSLNGTE + OZVPIPIE + TXVPKPYU Dispel Magic UPSLNGTE + OZVPIPIE + YXVPKPYU Fireball UPSLNGTE + OZVPIPIE + AUVPKPYL Haste UPSLNGTE + OZVPIPIE + PUVPKPYL Hold Person UPSLNGTE + OZVPIPIE + ZUVPKPYL Invis 10'R UPSLNGTE + OZVPIPIE + LUVPKPYL Lightning Bolt UPSLNGTE + OZVPIPIE + GUVPKPYL Prot/Evl 10'R UPSLNGTE + OZVPIPIE + IUVPKPYL Prot/Gd 10'R UPSLNGTE + OZVPIPIE + TUVPKPYL Prot/Missiles UPSLNGTE + OZVPIPIE + YUVPKPYL Slow UPSLNGTE + OZVPIPIE + AUVPKPYU Restoration UPSLNGTE + OZVPIPIE + PUVPKPYU Neutralize UPSLNGTE + OZVPIPIE + ZUVPKPYU Strength UPSLNGTE + OZVPIPIE + LUVPKPYU Strength UPSLNGTE + OZVPIPIE + GUVPKPYU Resist Cold UPSLNGTE + OZVPIPIE + IUVPKPYU Resist Fire UPSLNGTE + OZVPIPIE + TUVPKPYU Haste UPSLNGTE + OZVPIPIE + YUVPKPYU Mirror Image UPSLNGTE + OZVPIPIE + AKVPKPYL Invisibility For the NES version, here's an interesting one. Now, before I tell you this, let me tell you a story. I remember getting a plastic binder and recreating all the maps on graph paper. Anyways, there's a cheat to always have the Area map on (since in some places, it's disabled). In the hex editor in your emulator, go to address 760D and change 01 to 00 and freeze the address. Now, the map will always be available whenever you need it! Big props to AdamL for finding that code. If you're really that desperate to use this code on an actual NES, I believe the GameGenie code would be AAENITAA, AAENITPA, or PAENITAA. I am not guaranteeing these GameGenie codes to work, so don't get mad at me if they don't work for you, because I just warned you that they may not work to begin with. Here's some hex editor codes for FCEUX. Special thanks to drgonzo7 for these first three codes: 6D67/6D68 - First Character's Status/HP 6D7D/6D7E - Second Character's Status/HP 6D93/6D94 - Third Character's Status/HP I also found these codes myself: 6CCD/6CCE - Third Character's Status/HP 6CE3/6CE4 - Fourth Character's Status/HP 6CF9/6CFA - Fifth Character's Status/HP 6DEC 6DD6 6E02 Also, 600 and 601 seem to be your position modifier, so in case there's any battles you REALLY don't want to have to go through (besides Tyranthraxus) or if you just want to explore. Probably the grooviest code around. I'm thinking maybe someone found this code before me, but I couldn't find anything over at gshi.org, so I think I'm the first to have published them. Here's some cheats for the MS-DOS version: If the DOS version of Pool of Radiance proves too tough for you (it certainly did for me, I used the same party as the NES version plus 2 thieves so maybe it's just that my party just sucks on the DOS version), fortunately for you, there's a cheat code. When you're about to run the game, type the following in (Capitalization is REQUIRED!): start STING When the game starts, you should be taken past the Copy Protection screen. Here's what you can do now: During a battle if you holt Alt and press X, the game will say 'The Gods Intervene'. This will clear out all the enemies on the screen, instantly having your party win the battle. Go to the training hall, then when a trainer asks if you would like to be trained, say yes and at the menu, press J and the game will say, "I Understand, Master". This will allow you to train your characters for free, you don't have to pay. Even with my characters fully trained, the first part of the game was nearly impossible for me to beat (Again, it's probably because I have a sucky party.) If you hold Ctrl and press C, the game will instantly close, so if you're game's glitching up or something, you won't have to do the infamous Ctrl+ Alt+Delete procedure to bring up the Task Manager just to close out the game. Also, this really isn't a cheat, but if you're wondering what the elf scroll in Sokol Keep says in the computer versions, this is what it translates to: LUX SAMOSUD SHESTNI Now, if you read the beginning of this walkthrough, I promised that I would show people how to play through the game immediately and beat it within only a few minutes. I will, but before you do anything, read this WHOLE section first. That ways when you get to the final part, you won't have to start the whole game over. Note that you can only do this with an emulator like FCEUX. By the way, I believe I'm the first person to ever write a guide about how to beat an RPG-game very fast without having to play through the whole game. First, start the game with your characters. Then go to the silver shop and buy magic weapons, as they are the only way to do damage to good ol' Ty. If you're using an emulator, use the gold modifier to get enough gold. Then, go to the Slums, which is the 'map' west of New Phlan (where you start off the game.) Go west to the next 'map' again to end up at Kuto's Well. Then go west to the next 'map' one more time to go to Podol Plaza. This time go north to the next 'map' and you will be at Stojanow Gate. Keep going north and you will run into a man. Kill him and get his wagon. Now keep going north. In your attempt to do so, a bugbear will ask for 15GP (really, he's talking about the wagon since it triggers this event). Select Pay and he'll let you through the gate. Alternatively, you can kill the bugbears, but the easiest way is to just pay. Now go north into the next 'map' and you're in Valjevo Castle. From there, take these directions. I will list the direction and the number will represent how many times you go said direction: North 3, East 24, North 4 and enter the door on your left. Upon going through the door... West 3, South 1, East 1, South 1, West 3, North 1, West 1, North 8, East 2, North 1, West 3, North 1, East 2, North 1, East 2, North 1, West 2, North 2, West 9, North 2, West 2, South 5 and enter the door. Upon entering the door, turn right and go forward to pass through a fake wall. Follow the corridor to Tyranthraxus' Place. Face north and pass through another fake wall and go up the stairs. Now follow the corridor left. There will be a door ahead and a set of stairs to the left. Take the stairs and you're at the final boss! Before you can beat him, he will send his guards after you. You must have one cleric in your party and he must memorize 'Hold Person' in order to hold the guards. The problem is, your party must be at least level 6 to 8 in order to hit them. At this point I would check out gamehacking.org and see if there are codes for the party's experience or Level modifiers. If there aren't, let me know and I'll see what I can do. I also want to look for an enemy health modifier. What are these modifiers you ask? They are RAM addresses which can only be accessed in emulators such as FCEUX. If you have FCEUX, run it, load the Pool of Radiance ROM and go to Debug > Hex Editor. You will see a bunch of numbers. These are all RAM addresses. Anyway, do not be intimidated by the RAM editor, it is actually less confusing than it looks. Let's say you have Gwydion in your party and you want him to have infinite health. You'd scroll down to 6D68 by scrolling down until the left of the hex editor says "006D60". Now you want to go to the 9th address. Wait a minute, 9th? It says 6D68, not 6D69. Video games use hexidecimal numbers which start at 00 and end in 0F (15). Anyway, once you've found the address, you want to right-click it and click 'Freeze'. This will tell the game whenever you take damage that you still have that amount of points. If you're having trouble finding hexidecimal values, you can use Windows Calculator (assuming you're using Windows, I'm sure Mac has it as well) and click View > Scientific. Now there will be four bubbles; Hex, Dec, Oct and Bin. You want to click Hex. Let's say you want to set your character's health to 50. You'd click on the Dec bubble and enter 50. Now click on Hex and it will say 32. That is the value you'll enter. Now when your character gets damaged, he won't take damage but instead retain the amount of health you gave him. ================== 17. Contacting Me ================== My e-mail is Doommaster1994@yahoo.com and if you are going to e-mail me, please title the subject Pool of Radiance or else my spamfilter may put you in the bulk or spam folder. I always check my spam folder though, so if my e-mail rejects yours, then don't worry, but still title it Pool of Radiance, that way I know you're trying to contact me about the guide and not spam me. I also have YouTube, Steam, and Skype accounts under the name Doommaster1994. Note that I do not do video chat for personal reasons. Please do not ask. Please make sure your question is not in the Q and A section or else your question will be ignored. Repeated questions that are already in the Q and A section will result in getting blocked by me. ========================= 18. Glitches/Easter Eggs ========================= In ANY game, it's pretty much impossible for a game to avoid glitches, especially NES games as complex as this. Obviously, this one's no stranger. Some of them are cool, or just interesting, or awful. You can see them below: 1.) If an NPC is unconscious, you can trade/take items from them when originally, they wouldn't let you if they were conscious. Glad to see a little bit more realism in this game! 2.) To keep Skullcrusher, make sure he is unconscious when you're near the city hall. 3.) In Valjevo Castle, in the south west region, there is a 2x2 room in the south side. You walk in and the game says a lump of meat hangs here. Then, while the game is scrolling up from the text box back to the game, one of your party members will mention it's a meat storeroom. In the Japanese version, everything is explained in the first box of text. It also says in the Japanese version that the meat hanging is human flesh. I guess this was too graphic to keep in the USA version. 4.) There's a way to go into the city hall at night. If you time it right and you're at the door at one step before 19:00, you can walk into the city hall but it will be night! You can't go back in after you leave though until it is 5:00 again. I believe this will also work in all the other ports of the game. 5.) Once in the Kobold Cave during the third wave, I defeated the wild boar. The game said it got back up, but right after it said it was slain. 6.) Sometimes when you're battling undead, the game will play the hit sound effect when really, your character missed. 7.) As I stated above, if you use the position modifier cheat in the Slums, you'll see that Ohlo's character portrait is the same as Genheeris! Note that this cheat can only be done in an emulator such as FCEUX. 8.) In the wilderness, the Search mode does not show up in the options. However, if you enter one of the places in the wilderness, turn the Search mode on and leave, the Search mode will be turned on in the wilderness. The wilderness' search mode in the computer version I heard was used to locate secret caves. These were removed out of the NES version, so this glitch is ultimately useless. All the search mode will do here is raise the chances of your party encountering enemies. 9.) Not sure if this really counts as a glitch/easter egg or not, but I couldn't find any other place to put it; The spell Knock is ultimately useless in the game since all of the doors that were locked in the computer versions are unlocked in the NES version. 10.) This one has to do with one of the characters shown on the back of the box. One of the characters on the back of the box is named 'Margot'. This is a reference to Margot Blattmenn, a producer for FCI, the company which published the game in the USA. There's also an 'Eiko' which I can only assume was one of the Japanese game testers or one of the programmers' girlfriends or wives. In the Japanese version, the other two characters' names on the back of the box are named Dunant and Briareos. 11.) Not sure if this is a glitch either, but once I was in the wilderness. I encountered an enemy but avoided it, but right after that, I encountered another enemy without having to move. 12.) In the options, there is an option to turn off the sound. Once you do this and move the cursor, the second sound channel will be disabled. This can be useful if you're wanting to learn the game's songs, but then again, you could just get the NSF file for it along with NSFPlay. 13.) Another audio glitch/easter egg; In the wilderness, you can go to the docks, but do not board the boat. Now keep resting until you come across an enemy. If you can avoid the battle, the option to board the boat will come up again, but the encounter music will still be playing. This is also an ultimately useless glitch, but it makes you think twice about taking a boat back to Phlan! 14.) I'm actually not sure if this is a glitch or not, but if you are actually lucky enough to battle phase spiders, sometimes you can use arrows and spells on them, but on some turns, you can't. Maybe this is a part of the game, but I can't be sure. If you know, please shoot me an e-mail. I'd really appreciate it! 15.) The 'poisonous' frogs can't poison you in this game, or at least, the millions of times I've been hit by them, I haven't been affected in any way. Maybe they didn't get the chance to program it. 16.) When I was playing through the Japanese version, the scribe in Valjevo Castle found me and raised the alarm. The patrol found me. After I told the leader I was working for Diogenes, it was supposed to trigger an attack. Instead it glitched up the game; the hill giant's portrait was out of the black box and was still animating and it let me back into the game without starting a fight. 17.) In the textile house, go to the area map. There will be two 1x2 room at the top-right corner of the map. I went east through the lower 1x2 room and I passed through the wall at the end into Mendor's Library but I couldn't go back. Thanks, Sam for 1 and 2! =========================== 19. Credits/Special Thanks =========================== Credits: Me for doing this strategy guide Special Thanks: TrueOverdrive for inspiring me to make this strategy guide Me for making this guide You, the viewer, for taking the time to read through this guide. GameFAQs/GameSpot: For putting this guide onto their site Marionette Co., Ltd. for developing the NES port. Strategic Simulations for making the original game. Seiji Toda for the best music he supplied in the NES version. David Warhol for the Commodore 64 version's great title music. Wally Beben for doing the fantastic music for the Amiga version. My parents for... well, you know... And to every single person involved with the development of the NES version of Pool of Radiance... Kunihiko Kagawa, Hitoshi Yasuda, Miyuki Kiyomatsu, Seishi Yokota, Seiji Toda, Yoshiaki Sakaguchi, Hiromi Sato, Takatsugu Watanabe, Motoki Himi, Masayuki Hirashima, Masato Kobayashi, Yukihiro Goto, Hideyuki Furuhashi, Hironari Tadokoro, Yoshiyuki Ishii, Dan Cermak and Nick Beliaeff If any of you people listed above are reading this, no matter how major or minor your role was, thank you for developing my favorite game of all time. ========== 20. Other ========== ====================== Regional Differences ====================== In the NES version, due to NOA's censorship policy, the spell 'Bless' has been changed to 'Empower'. However, the Famicom version calls it 'Blessing'. This is because NOJ didn't have as strict of a policy as NOA did. When you alienate the people in Phlan in the Famicom version, they will say, "Okuninniha nanimo shiteyarenaiyo!" I'm not sure what this means, but in the USA version, they say, "We cannot help you wicked ones." Anyone notice something weird with the Shrine of Tyr? That its name is the first three letters in Tyranthraxus? ============= Unused Text ============= I looked in the USA version ROM and found some text that I don't believe is ever used in the game. If anyone sees this text in the game let me know! I won't list them all since there's too much text, but here are most of them: A skeletal force spots you and attacks. All of a sudden, it is quiet... You keep moving nervously. This building is damp. It stinks. What's the smell? It's already broken. A tapestry hangs on the wall. But it's mildewed and rotted to pieces. Eek! Baby hobgoblins scatter with a cry. The room is messy. Mmmm...looks like a hobgoblin nursery. The word SKULLCRUSHER is carved in the north wall. There is an expired hobgoblin on the ground. Skullcrusher: Ha, ha, ha! He cracks his finger joints. Here is choice text that I found: Examine the body, Kick the body, Do nothing You don't find anything. You touch the body. It doesn't move. Some dishes are scattered on the floor. From the Nomad Camp: As you are about to fight, the nomads notice you... Hassad: You traitors! Slay those men! The kobolds see an opportunity and join the attack. (There's probably a way to trigger this event, but I'm not sure how.) ================== 21. Tavern Rumors ================== The taverns in New Phlan can give you helpful advice if you choose to Listen to Gossip, but you also risk getting into a fight. Sometimes one of your party members' items will be stolen as well. Additionally, sometimes you will feel a hand groping you. You can either ignore it or fight the person who groped you, in which you fight a 1st Level Thief. To save you the trouble, I will list them here. I will also leave a note at the end of each rumor to give you more insight on what they are talking about. In the computer versions the game would just tell you that your party writes the rumor down as Journal Entry ## without actually telling you what the rumor was. To see it, you would have to look in the Adventurer's Journal which came packaged with the computer versions of the game. They did this for copy protection. Of course, back then it was hard to copy a cartridge so none of that's in the NES game. * A dragon in the northern mountains? It is a silver dragon... They say it's supposed to be a good dragon. (Note: A reference to Diogenes. There is also a rumor in the taverns that say the opposite.) * A dreadful monster is living in the Slums... It is too much for a beginner hero. (Note: The troll in the Rope Guild.) * I hear there is a golden castle in the marsh to the east. It glitters, and you can take treasure, as much as you like. (Note: The East March, where you will go later in the game.) * I'm a member of the Kovel Family. They have stashed a large treasure in the keep... But there are many traps. (Note: I haven't yet discovered this. I have found several treasures there, all of them armed with traps, but not a single huge one.) * Nomads are living in the north land. Sometimes they make camp up there. (Note: The Nomad Camp which you will go to later in the game.) * of the Arms Shop works 24 hours a day, but if you enter through the back door, he will deal with you. (Note: The arms shop in southern New Phlan. It is a 3x1 room) * Not only the monsters, but the great thieves also have bases in the underground. (Note: Not that I know of. In the computer versions there were secret bases in the wilderness, but they were removed in the NES version. Similar to the Goblin Room being removed from the NES Shadowgate.) * Some monsters can never be slain without silver or magic arms. Well, I know some monsters silver weapons can't harm... They can only be slain by magical weapons. (Note: A bit of Engrish on the second part. I think they probably meant, "Well, I know for some monsters, silver weapons can't harm them." Also worth noting this is the hardest rumor to get in the tavern. As you heard, some monsters (mainly and namely undead) are only vulnerable to silver/magic weapons and immune to everything else.) * Some swords have spirits... Ones who don't match their alignments can't use the weapons. (Note: I haven't come across this even once for each time I've played through this game. There are two cursed long swords in the game though, in which if you equip them, you can't remove them.) * The Barren River was clean long ago... Well, Barren means dirty. We called it the Stojanow River when it was clean. (Note: You will decontaminate the water later in the game.) * The buccaneers are dealing in slaves. Sometimes they pitch a camp on the seashore in the west. (Note: The Buccaneer Base. You will go here later in the game.) * The master of the graveyard is a powerful undead creature. (Note: Sorry if I spoil anything... but it's a vampire.) * The monsters in Old Phlan are led by a Big Boss who never sleeps. (Note: Either Tyranthraxus or the troll in the slums.) * There is a bad dragon in the north mountains. It kidnaps and eats travelers. (Note: The only dragon in the mountains is Diogenes, and he is a good silver dragon, rendering this rumor false.) * Wells throughout the city often offer access to hidden dens and passages-- it's common knowledge. (Note: This is not true. There are no wells in New Phlan. Maybe it was something they intended to put in but didn't. The only well in this game is Kuto's Well, and that's not in the city.) * Who on earth knocked down The Boss? (Note: Only seen after you complete the game.) * Zhentil Keep is like a sovereign nation... Unless we are careful it will decl are waron Phlan. (Note: No, the bottom line was not a typo made by me, it was made by the developers. To the foreigners, the correct writing is 'declare war on'. You will also go to Zhentil Keep much later in the game.) ============ 22. Updates ============ 12/30/12 - Hope you all had a Merry Christmas and have a prosperous 2013! I've corrected many spelling errors, updated some battles specifically, including how many monsters there are in a battle, how many leaders and regulars, etc. Though this is still a work in progress and I'm not sure when I'll get done with it all. I've decided to update my guide at the end of the month so that way if there's anything I've missed, I can still go back and correct it. I've updated my Q and A and numerous other things. 5/10/13 - It's 1:38 here as I write this, but I do plan on adding an items guide sometime in the near future. 6/8/14 - For my birthday, I thought I'd give YOU all something. An update with tavern rumors and some other good stuff. Pool of Radiance (NES) Walkthrough Guide © 2014 Doommaster1994 All Rights Reserved. End of Guide...