Swords and potions quests and walkthrough (part I)

Nov 052011

First of all:

Register! 100 free points will be yours. It’s not much but if you don’t want to spend money on the game – those points help a bit.

Get a Alchemist (Sorceress) and then a Smith, because most of your first customers will want mostly their stuff. And also, their goods are the most easy to suggest. Everyone can accept a sword, even if he/she wanted an armor. If anyone wants one potion, he may often also accept other, more expensive potion. And Alchemist can do a lot of potions. At first she does 2 potions per day, but when more experienced she does 4+ potions per day. And this is quite a lot of revenue.

First 2 employees

Swords and potions quests (easy)

All the quests need some luck, because you need someone to do the quest for you. That means adventurer coming to your shop willing to do some random quest as “kill Mushrhum” or some other meaningless name. You counter the offer by clicking “Quest” button and offer him to do your quest instead (for sponsorship of course). This gives you money, items and reputation.

First quest given by City guards is to find a customer that wants to sell you fourleaf clover bag. 5000 gold coins, and expensive item. You can’t complete this quest with your employees, you need to give it to some adventurer instead. When a quester comes, do not give him item to go questing, but instead – click on “Quest” button and make a counter offer.

Quester comes, click quest and counter offer!

This one is the only of the easy quests that need to be done this way. Most of the others involve spending collected points from your workers.

You will get to move shop to City walls around reaching level 7. That means more reputation cap and better customers. You will have Guard and Knight customers and questers now, which will be hard to please but will mostly buy expensive stuff on higher than market price.

It is also about time you get a guild if you are not already. Guilds are a must. You can’t build anything in your shop if you don’t have a guild OR you don’t pay real money for the game (tokens). This is done by your guildmates. They invest “points” from their workers to help you. And when you have free points on your workers – invest them in your guildmate’s building. Always help them when you don’t have quests, because if you pass 1000 points you start to lose them:

Use the points!

The second city guard quest is to repair the fighting arena. This one needs 2000 points from both your smith and carpenter. When any of them is free, click him, then click “More” and then “Improve”. You can invest at most 1000 points at once. Points are collected in the process of making stuff. You need patience. 2000 point can be collected for few work days if you are not helping your own guild community in the same time. The rewards are 10k gold and +2 skill points.

After this, most of the time you will need money, higher shop level or higher employee experience level to trigger quests:

“Vandalism tax” a thug will want 2000 gold. Better let him have them, because your shop will get vandalised. After this quest is over, no matter if you chose to pay or not – you will be able to hire a thug to keep other vandals and human players away from your shop. You will also be able to use him for scouting your neighbors. And rob them, if you have a level 15+ shop.

“Welcome tax” you need to pay 4500 gold to the guy with the monocle. No rewards, but opens lot more quests, that all pay good later.

“Money problems“. Your landlord will demand 5000 gold. If you pay her, she will later give tou 3 more quests, but not until you hire a tailor, so it can take some waiting.

Another money giving quest is “Help the poor“, it is 1000 gold only and opens the quest

“Build shelter for neighbourhood homeless“. 5000k points from your smith and 5000 point from your carpenter. The reward is very good – +3 skill points.

“Repair Royal ceremonial armor.” 3000 points from tailor and 3000 points from smith. The reward is also very good – +25k gold.

“Build bridge” 8k from carpenter, 8k from smith. The reward is additional customers every day for 7 days (+16 famous skill points).

“Scrolls“. Prepare business scrolls for trade guild. 4k from tailor, and your tailor should be at least level 20. Reward is worth it though – 30k gold. 😉

All workshops

You are probably already around level 20 or near and you have the whole shop filled with stuff and all 4 workshops built and inhabited by good employees. Level 25+ smith and level 25+ alchemist. Your carpenter and tailor are about 15+ already. So. Level 20 allows you to move the shop to the Marketplace. Higher rent and higher quality customers. But you need 20k gold just for the transfer and 500 gold rent. So if you don’t feel ready – better wait for better times 😉

The power of suggestion

The power of suggestion.

Always try to have all kinds of items in your store. Never run out of swords and never run out of potions. This is what is most often demanded and you will never have a day without revenue if you are stocked good.

It happens however to NOT Have what the customer wants. Then you need to suggest to the customer – something else.

The easiest to suggest to is the barbarian woman (depicted here). She uses 15 different types of equipment. If you don’t have the hammer she wants, suggest other type of hammer or mace. Or try selling swords in the same price range.

If out of stock for the weapons she uses – you can always try to sell her those potions for 800 gold. And she often buys them.

Have a good look at the price she offers. If the price is better then market price – try to counter offer with suggestion even if you have the item she wants. Suggest something expensive. And you will get real money 😉

Recipes for Swords and Potions

Even if in the beginning you need just one day to develop and research a new recipe, later you will need 70 work hours just for one 2-handed sword, that costs merely 600 gold. And if you need to research a pistol or a rifle, you need to research it with 3 of your 4 workers.

70 hours are almot 6 game days!!!

Always, and I really mean ALWAYS buy recipes if someone comes to sell them, they are costy but time is more important! Time is money:

Always Buy Recipes

This is almost everything you can do in the beginning. All the quest written above are easy to do. There are more quests, but you need to move your shop to the marketplace, have a lot of spare money and have higher level workers. So keep training for now, until you have at least 25-th level workers, 20-th level shop and 30k spare gold to make the actual move to the marketplace.

The right hand rule

Gam3s Comments Off

Nov 042011

The right hand rule

Also called “Rule of the right hand” is a simple logic used for walking labyrinths in games.

Imagine you are in a labyrinth, you are blindfolded and you don’t have a map. Not on a paper, not in your mind.

Don’t panic 😀 Even if it is not a computer game, there must be an exit.

What can you do in this case?

Touch the wall with your right hand.
Walk. Without removing your hand from the wall.
If the wall ends, take right turn.
Keep walking, while keeping those 3 rules. (Right hand on the wall, and always taking right turns when possible)

Eventually you will exit the labyrinth from the entrance you have entered, or you will find another (or the other) entrance or exit.

There is a popular screen saver in Linux, that does exactly this and can be configured to search in 4 different ways. It is called Maze. A computer can find the exit and the shortest path in a 100×100 grid for less than a minute. It does show the most short way when finished.

We are not computers though. And if we don’t have a map, as some of the games do. The right hand rule can be the only working method to go out of trouble, heal and then come back ;). Have a look:

Maze explored with right hand rule.

Advantages of the right hand rule.

Easy to follow.
Always finds an exit. Even if that means, getting back to the entrance (it is still an exit)
Does not need a map of the maze.

Disadvantages of the right hand rule.

Not efficient in large dungeons. (Compare grey and blue way in the picture)
Will make you go sideway all the time and fight lesser monsters.
Will never lead you to Exits 2 and 3 in the Maze seen above.
Some treasure rooms are designed to be elusive for right-hand rule users.
Not fully suitable for multifloor dungeons.

What can be done to avoid those disadvantages if you want to explore the dungeon fully?

Try left-hand rule 🙂 It is basically the same. Just use left hand.
Try reverse pac-man rule. Drop stuff on the ground if the game allows it. Don’t go on places where you already dropped stuff 😉
Draw a map 😉 I often do 😀

Lamia, the demon.

General Comments Off

Nov 012011

Lamia Demon

I did some research about Lamia, because I was curious about Her from a game I’ve recently played and a movie I recently watched, named “Drag me to hell”.

It turned quite interesting 😉 In Gailardia the demon is shown as a female mermaid. It is not “exact” as all fiction/fantasy games but is quite near. The demon itself is present in Greek and Bulgarian mythologies. In forgotten Bulgarian myths, the Lamya is a three-headed dragon/hydra like monster that comes to the village to steal the children. And the Naga in Hinduism are even more like the one, depicted in the games and the movies.

The Greeks, have more deep mythology and claim Lamia is a granddaughter of Poseidon and Lybie (the scaled mermaid tail seen in few manga/anime movies and one Android game is probably from this myth) and was a concubine to Zeus. Hera was so furious that she made Lamia devour her own children. This made her go insane and seeking vengeance, Lamia started kidnapping and swallowing people’s children whole (Lamia – laimios – Greek word for gullet/esophagus). There is much more written in Wikipedia article about Lamia. All in all, she is not a mermaid, but has snake skin around her waist. The devouring of children make her look so corrupted and hideous, that her face is very similar to a medusa.

In present Bulgarian family, often the Lamia is used to scare uncooperative children “The Lamya will come and steal you”. “Baba Yaga” is often used with the same goal too 😉 and … often … is not working at all after the age of 5 😀

In “Drag me to hell”, an old gipsy woman stole an item from the main character and speaking to the item invoked Lamia to make a 3 day curse. The demon in the movie is more likely greater demon called Baphomet (Bahumat), not The Lamia that’s stealing and eating kids. Don’t know if the director knew something more or simply “invented” other Lamia, than the one we know. The movie is fine OTOH. Won 3 times it’s original budget on the box office. Quite a success. Not that scary though. It involved tons of body liquids and was quite gross in moments.

Fey Lamia

Lamia is also shown as a seductive vampire living in the sewers in Realms of Arkania. It is quite hard to kill. Especially for male chars. They go berserk against one another. In the manga Shin Megami Tensei, Lamia is also depicted as a seductive mermaid.

Also, similar demon is present in Jewish mythology, but they call her Lilith. Lilith was the first wife of Adam, before Eve was made from his rib. Lilith refused to obey her husband and was banished. Either for this or because She mated with archangel Samael and probably gave progeny to lesser demons. Lilith is often depicted naked holding a huge snake over her shoulders (Satan?).

Lilith is found in lots of games as fully developed female demon, such as Requiem: Avenging angel. I really enjoyed this game in the past.

… anyway, both Lilith and Lamia are seductress demons (succubi) that are hard to resist by males. This is what you have to be aware when playing games, especially if your main character is male.