Thursday, December 23, 2010

Faery Tale Adventure: Back on the Quest

Yes, with the entire kingdom at stake, this is a good time to be cryptic
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Many more breaks like that, and I'll have to re-title my blog "The Occasional CRPG Enthusiast." It took me a while to get back into the swing of Faery Tale Adventure, but I fought the urge to move on to First Expedition and got back on the trail of the elusive main quest, with the help of maps offered by Acrin1 and Andy, and with a clue offered by Jason Dyer. Even before Jason spoke, the crypt had been nagging me. The first steps on the main quest are probably near the beginning town of Tambry, the graveyard is near Tambry, so what are the odds that nothing happens in the crypt? I figured I should visit at night, and sure enough I encountered a spectre who tasked me with retrieving the bones of the Ancient King in exchange for his help destroying the evil necromancer.
Although the pronoun is confusing, I assume he means he'll help me destroy the necromancer, not the Ancient King.
I had no idea where to find these bones, so I decided to adopt a plan of just following the road network using the "always choose the right path" system and seeing where it took me. The path from Tambry bent from the south to the west to the north, across a river, past the beggar mentioned in my previous posting, and to an inn where I found food and rest but no help. Back on the road, this time heading west for a long while. There is simply no excuse for the size of the game world. It takes a good 20 minutes of real time to walk between towns, and there's nothing interesting in between except the occasional battle or bit of treasure. It would be one thing if the enormous world was peppered with caves and ruins and such, like Morrowind, but Faery Tale Adventure is big just to be big. I encountered an old man on the side of the road who said, "Kind deeds could gain thee a friend from the sea." At length, I came across another inn, which I would have sworn was the same one I just left except I had been walking west for a quarter of an hour. I backtracked to the last branch in the path and, after another long trek, came to the Tombs of Hemsath. That sounded promising for my quest to retrieve a set of bones. This gave me my first look at a Faery Tale Adventure dungeon, and I'm sure I will surprise no one to report that it is huge and boring and empty, except for the same types of creatures I found outside. After almost half an hour in the tomb's interminable, featureless hallways, I began to reflect that Weevil and Logan have a lot more similarities than differences. This is because I was watching Veronica Mars on my other monitor. Friends, it's generally a bad sign when you feel compelled to watch TV in order to break the monotony of your game, although I'm not particularly disappointed because it turns out that Veronica Mars is a very cool show. After a maze of endless doors, in which I used most of my accumulated keys... ...I found a tomb containing my prize: a single bone. Returning it to the crypt, I was rewarded with a crystal shard. I assume this will help me win the game in some way, although it still leaves me a bit clueless as to how to continue the main quest. But with the maps provided by my commenters, I can see the location of some other towns to explore. Part of the adventure in this game is figuring out the uses for the various objects that you find. I have quite a few of them. The game is similar to Ultima II in which slaying various creatures rewarded you with skeleton keys and blue tassels and such. In this game, the various objects, with their associated uses, from left to right in the screenshot, are:
  • Four types of weapons: daggers, maces, swords, and bows
  • Arrows for the bow
  • Blue stones. I have no idea what they do; the game won't let me use them.
  • Green jewels. They create light when it's dark.
  • Glass vials. Restore hit points.
  • Crystal orbs. Not sure.
  • Bird totems. They give you a map of the surrounding area and usually create a video corruption so bad I have to quit DOSBox and restart.
  • Gold rings. Unknown.
  • Jade skulls. They kill every enemy on the visible screen--sort of like the skull of Mondain but without losing eighths. Very handy.
  • Keys of various colors. They open corresponding doors.
I got a hint about how to use the totems from a guy on the side of the road, so I suspect the orbs, blue stones, and gold rings will be subjects of similar hints. Aside from lacking much direction, my main problem now is a certain lack of challenge. My "bravery" is almost 350 and my vitality about a third of that, and it's been ages since I died. The game keeps throwing hosts of easily-defeated foes at me. Here's hoping I find some more clues and challenges in Marheim, my next stop. A lot of you seem to want me to finish this one, so I'll stick with it as long as I can. Thanks for your patience during my absence. As I said in my last post, I'm off from work until January 10, so I hope to provide a posting a day until then (excepting Christmas, perhaps). Video to come tomorrow.

8 comments:

  1. It is exciting to have you back! Don't worry about the absences, this isn't high school.

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  2. Great to see you back.

    I've been playing the Amiga version of FTA which looks nice (much better than the PC) and has some good music which changes depending on location and time of day. The Amiga version uses a split screen trick to get a higher resolution panel at the bottom of the screen which is much more readable than the PC version. Character animation is pretty ropey though.

    I got the quest from the crypt and with the help of a map made my way to the tombs of Hemsath after several attempts - I kept missing the tomb because of the map size.

    At this point I looked at a map for the tomb and saw how massive it was and that the large upper section of the tomb map was almost totally empty.

    I've not managed to retrieve the bone yet because you need about 10 gold keys to get through the doors and I only had about 5 so I'll have to keep fighting more monsters to get more keys - 10 locked doors seems a bit excessive!

    Unlike yourself I'm still struggling with the fights as I often find myself overrun by monsters on every side. My bravery is up to about 100 and I have all the standard weapons.

    I really want to like this game but the map size (supposedly about 17,000 screens worth) makes it very difficult to get around, especially when travelling through the long grass or marshland which slows you down further. It amazes me anybody managed to finish it as it's so easy to miss buildings or items which are lying around.

    You mentioned the stone circles in a previous post. Apparently they can be used in conjunction with one of the objects you've picked up but I've not come across a circle to test this on yet.

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  3. @Acrin1 - I'm playing FTA with UAE and the bird totems don't seem to display the map correctly for me. I only get the pointer, but no map. Can you tell me what your config/rom is? It's maddening!

    CRPGAddict - hfr gur oyhr fgbarf juvyr jvguva n fgbar pvepyr gb gryrcbeg npebff gur znc.

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  4. Acrin1, It was the map size that did me in. Andrew, I had the same probably with the graphics going wonky when using the totems.

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  5. "You mentioned the stone circles in a previous post. Apparently they can be used in conjunction with one of the objects you've picked up but I've not come across a circle to test this on yet."

    Use the blue stones to travel via stonecircles.

    To travel quickier is to get the golden lasso from the witch located in the northeast (Grimwood). Kill her with arrows.
    Assuming you have the turtle stone (located on the map S/E), use it from there to get across sea to find the Swan Isle. It is hard to find...
    There you can tame the swan with the lasso.

    I've played this game many times since 1988.

    Cheers,
    Dirk

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  6. where can i buy this game? i played as a kid and want to finish as an "adult". do i have to download it? where? im not tech savy so any help would be great.

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  7. Search google for the latest WinUAE Amiga-Emulator(PC), install it.
    Then download the kickstart 1.3 rom here:
    http://amigamania.free.fr/roms.htm
    Copy the unzipped rom-file into the WinUAE/roms-Folder. (Or just WinUAE-Folder)
    Here you can get the Amiga-Version of Faerytale: http://www.thegamearchives.com
    Make a folder ADF in the Winuae-Folder and copy the unzipped file there.
    Now the configuration in WinUAE:
    - ROM: Point to Kick-Rom 1.3-file
    - RAM: Memory to 512 KB
    - Choose Diskfile Df0, point to Faerytale-File.
    - Type in a name for the config and save it.

    Playing around with the settings is a good thing, check for WinUAE-related forums to get help.

    Around the internet you can find the manual and complete maps for Faerytale.

    The emulation itself is very good, if you miss the old digital joysticks in gameplay you may use an adaptor for the gameport to use Competition Pro, Quickshot II etc.

    If you need further help, ask here.

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  8. I watch all my tv via netflix, seasons at a time. When people ask me about some of the best shows to watch this way they're always surprised when I mention Veronica Mars. That was a great show, so sad it only lasted three seasons.

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