Wizard's Crown(Apple IIe RPG) FAQ/Walkthrough Version 2.1.1 Copyright 2000-2006 Andrew Schultz schultz.andrew@sbcglobal.net This walkthrough is copyright 2000-2006 by Andrew Schultz. It is part of my contribution to efforts to preserve classic Apple games. Please do not redistribute for profit without my permission, as this FAQ required an investment of my time. Wizard's Crown copyright 1984 SSI, Inc. My page for miscellaneous info. on this and other classic Apple games is at: http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Exhibit/2762/games/games.htm To see a full map of the city head to: http://members.fortunecity.com/cartographics These maps should also be on GameFAQs as well, annotated in more detail. ================================ OUTLINE 1. INTRODUCTION 2. CONTROLS 2-1. GETTING AROUND TOWN 2-2. GETTING AROUND DUNGEONS 2-3. LOOTING 2-4. COMBAT 3. CREATING A PARTY 3-1. STARTING OUT 3-1-1. EARLY EASY MONEY CHEAT 3-2. WHAT TO IMPROVE, WHEN 3-2-1. SKILLS 3-2-2. ITEMS 3-3. IMPROVING 4. WALKTHROUGH 4-1. IN TOWN 4-1-1. THE INNER SQUARE 4-2. NORTH OF TOWN 4-3. THE RUSTY NAIL(THIEVES' GUILD) 4-4. THE RUINS 4-4-1. OLD THIEVES' GUILD 4-4-1-1. LEVEL 1 4-4-1-2. LEVEL 2 4-4-2. GOZAROTH'S MANSION 4-4-2-1. LEVEL 1 4-4-2-2. LEVEL 2 4-4-2-3. LEVEL 3 4-4-3. THE PALACE 4-4-3-1. LEVEL 1 4-4-3-2. LEVEL 2 4-4-3-3. LEVEL 3 4-4-3-4. LEVEL 4 4-4-3-5. LEVEL 5 4-4-3-6. LEVEL 6 4-5. THE WAY BACK 5. MONSTER PROPERTIES 6. ITEMS 7. GAME SCRIPTS 7-1. THE OLD MAN IN THE PARK 7-2. TAVERN TALK 8. CHEATING 8-1. DISK IMAGE 8-2. SAVE STATE 9. VERSIONS 10. CREDITS ================================ 1. INTRODUCTION Wizard's Crown is an early RPG by Strategic Simulations, Inc.(SSI) that really does a good job of having you use a bunch of different attributes for different players in your party of eight. That's the main focus. While there's a good deal of ground to explore, there's not much in the way of dungeons. But you still have 40+ attributes to choose from and the ability to choose multi-class players. The drawback is that the characters will start with fewer skills. This paradigm, along with different weights for different items, foreshadows the AD&D games SSI would later print out, but unlike the future games you can use a "quick combat" option. As for the object of the game, you must venture into the ruined city south of Arghan and defeat Tarmon, who has terrorized your city with the help of the Wizard's Crown turned to an evil purpose. You'll need to find a few keys, walk through a few mazes and unlock some passwords. Then there's a big gauntlet of fights on the way back. You can continue playing afterwards, resetting dungeons at will for some of the more fun combats. Because there's a sequel, Eternal Dagger, which irons out many of WC's shortcomings, and your characters will need vast improvement for that. One of the main weaknesses/annoyances of Wizard's Crown was that, like so many early games, you couldn't save except in specific areas. With a six- level castle near the end, and the tough puzzles at the top of it, this made for nastiness and the game in retrospect feeling perhaps a bit tougher than it was. Wizard's Crown has a lot of attention to character detail yet it forgot the town name, and the adventures are usually pretty placid. The ruins are called "Arghan" but we don't find out much else. And in fact, there's a lot of detail you don't need to pay attention to, and this FAQ attempts to establish what you do and what you don't, so that you can get through quickly enough. There should even be a cheats section. Given how hard it is to save the game I recommend the AppleWin emulator, which features save states, to go with Wizard's Crown, which you can find at fttp://ftp.apple.asimov.net/pub/apple_ii/games/strategy/ssi. (Yes, it's an RPG, but they lumped all the SSI stuff there.) You can use the save states in a dungeon, and in fact it's easier to reset disks too--just "remove" a disk from drive 2 and copy a backup over it in Windows Explorer. A manual for this game is accessible at http://project64.c64.org/games/m-z, so you can look up the non-critical details there. This FAQ intends to cover ways to get started, move around, improve your characters, and solve the game quickly. 2. CONTROLS First, if you don't save frequently then I am afraid your most frequently asked question will be "why god why." Remember to (T)ell the Minstrel of Your Deeds frequently after fights. As you continue in the game you'll start to feel more powerful and it can go to your head even after you forget to save. Morale loss can bog your party down and result in morale loss for YOU. 2-1. GETTING AROUND TOWN For moving around, the game uses an odd numpad which, sadly, is not at all like the numpad currently used on Windows machines. It works as follows: 812 7 3 654 By the time you get used to it the game will probably be over. Still I always considered 1 as north and worked from there. You will want to (S)earch when you are over something that doesn't look like streets. The buildings are pretty clearly marked in orange. You can (M)ake camp or inspect characters anywhere. 2-2. GETTING AROUND DUNGEONS Dungeons are a bit tougher--Lord knows why they had such a complex system for moving around. You will just want your Thief active(or someone with mage skills, so he can cast unlock) for 99% of the time. He can move around, open doors, and such. (S)pell casting allows you to see better, and you can (E)xamine things or (O)pen chests. Dungeons have the same 1-8 movements as towns but you also have a direction you are facing. It can be changed by flipping the arrows(left=counterclockwise, right=clockwise.) Fortunately there are ways to make things easier. If you want to search along a south wall/bookcase you can type 25E repeatedly--or 85E if you are going from east to west. You can create similar move combos for a north or west or east walls. Also if you are next to something but not facing it you can back up and return. One thing you need to consider is that if you have a thief using lockpicks and a combat you know about ahead, have the thief re-ready the weapon. Diagonal movement tends to leave you facing 45 degrees clockwise of how you moved. Other dungeon strategies/notes: --Even if you mess up, you can reset a dungeon level. In fact, resetting a level with good treasure is a minor cheat. --Watch what options appear/vanish while you move around in a dungeon. It can be a clue for what to do. For instance, in an invisible maze you still have directions you can go highlighted. --use a sorcerer to open doors and a thief to examine stuff. This gets around futzing with lockpicks. --Mapping is not terribly tough. If there is a spot you cannot seem to map, try to walk on(use the 12345678 movement square) or examine the walls around it. --When looking for items, you should be aware that many chests, when opened, will leave seemingly useless stuff(moth-eaten clothes)--this is just part of the detail the authors try to add to the game. --For dungeons in general I recommend not having any party member following the leader unless you are about to prepare for combat. It's just too cumbersome, and you can flee easily enough in combat. However, changing the leader is often a good idea if your leader is low on power(you need to open stubborn doors somehow!) Remember that you cannot save the game in dungeons. If playing from the original disk, be sure to exit immediately when you find an important item, because if you die, you'll have to re-set and re-solve the dungeon. However, with emulators you can just save states. 2-3. LOOTING Looting is pretty straightforward. You can have a maximum of 2 large items(armor,) 5 large+medium items(armor and weapons) and 10 items all told. Early on you will want to sell whatever you can get. There's a paradox here in that you have to wait until night for a fight, but you have to wait until morning to sell what you win in a fight. Basically if you find a magic weapon it should replace anything non-magic. Even bad armor is better than a good weapon, even a +1 weapon. And if you find any sort of jewels, take them, so you can sell it. That gets the most points. You may wish to rest before haggling at the market, because morale loss affects haggling as a skill. Remember that you can always have one piece of armor, and though scale protects more it is chain that is most valuable. Don't worry about what exact item values might be, but good swords and heavy crossbows tend to fetch the most of non-magic items. Still, the thing that's most valuable is armor. You'll start out just finding Cuirboilli but Veteran Scouts/Guards have Plate Mail and you'll also turn up random magic armor later too. The main thing to remember about looting is that you shouldn't worry about perfect optimization; given the character-building part is about taking 3-4 fights and returning, pretty much take what's there and return. Some days you'll get goblins with Cuirboilli, other days you'll get brigands and scouts. Just sell everything off and go back. Also don't neglect morale loss and its effect on how much you make. It'll also affect what you can search for. Some small items aren't worth taking but you might as well load up on lockpicks and cloaks and, if you can find them, magic daggers. Of course jewels are small too! Stuff like shields isn't worth picking up unless it's the last fight before you leave. 2-4. COMBAT The first thing to remember about combat is that magic is set by default. "Magic Yes" means your party is set to use magic. It does not mean that if you push M, you will toggle to magic. This got me confused for a while. Most of the time quick combat should work OK. The one thing to note in big- picture quick combat is that if you are trying to get back to the city and are low on karma, either 1)locate a temple(use zigzagging as above) or 2) make sure you get into very easy fights where you don't use karma. Sometimes it might not be worth saving after WINNING a fight. Fights tend to thin out the more you win them in an area. But if you get stuck in the ruins after dark, then there will be a lot of fights. For quick combat in dungeons, you'll want to make sure that, before a fight, your party is pretty close together. Otherwise your lead guy will get ambushed easily and it will be 7-on-the-rest instead of 8. This is especially useful when you have a bunch of enemies who can cast spells, or if your party is waiting behind a bottleneck. It's one of the many differences between easy and hard fights. This happens even in quick combat; the computer sort of plays it "in its head." In quick or tactical combat, the computer really doesn't seem to be very smart or know who to hit. If you are having trouble with monsters then quick combat should take care of them. You will have the benefit of knowing which monsters are vulnerable to what(especially useful for Ward Pact Demons,) and you can focus there. You'll also have more autonomy over spells and can pick off enemy spellcasters more apparently; quick combat is just melee. If you are fighting in a dungeon then you can position a party strategically before opening a door you know has monsters behind it--even beyond lumping other people together. Have your spellcasters and bowmen in the back; this is pretty self explanatory, but it's worth refreshing. Note that you can change weapons in battle, which is handy if your thief just opened a door to an encounter with lockpicks he'd readied, and for the final fight with Tarmon it's critical. While it is definitely possible to beat Tarmon just readying sharp weapons before quick combat, tactical/detailed combat allows you to switch from them. 2-5. HEALING AFTER COMBAT One thing you should check for is if you have anyone poisoned. If you try to leave, that person may be wiped out after a warning--you'll get the warning and he'll be gone, that is. But generally you can avoid healing light wounds under 1/4 your life force or so. If you've got serious wounds, cure them right away, and that goes double for serious bleeding. Don't restore life force unless you're below 3/4 of your regular total. It's important to keep healthy, but localized perfectionism may come back to trap you later. Note that if you do pray mistakenly, you might as well heal someone--a Raise Dead, for instance, will cure all life force. The only thing it doesn't seem to do is cure poison! If you were poisoned and killed, you're poisoned on resurrection. normal bleeding: 4 normal injuries: 8 serious bleeding: 15 serious injuries: 20 restore life force: 30 raise dead: 45 Also you'll want to have high first aid early because mistreated normal injuries turn serious, requiring more karma. But if you've got 200 First Aid the amount you save in karma will be worth it. 3. CREATING A PARTY 3-1. STARTING OUT I recommend looting the current party and setting up a group that works as follows: 3 Fighter-mages(16 intelligence) use sword, spear, mace 3 Fighter-clerics(12) use sword, spear, mace 1 Ranger(5) uses spear 1 Fighter-thief(8) uses sword I'm not looking at axes or flails because they take too much to build up. I also found a lot more magic swords/maces/spears early on compared to flails/axes, in part probably because there's more variety for swords et al. You should also consider giving someone close combat skills if you find a good dagger. It's best to have a 3-3-2 combination of bash-cut-thrust(2 can be any of these) and if you can improve skill easily, so much the better. Most of your damage will be from the magic side of your weapons by the time you finish anyway, so paying more to get slightly more physical damage just isn't worth it. Give everyone 16 strength(for plate mail) and spend the rest on dexterity. I never had a problem going through the game with 25 life and the main way to winning is being able to strike early. You may wish to drop a fighter-mage for a fighter, or you may wish to change to a fighter-priest. The big problem with fighter-mages is that they have no dexterity to start. While a fighter-thief-mage could do it all in dungeons it wouldn't be very useful early. But you might be able to use just a plain fighter. This won't be great for your strength early on, but you can improve everyone quickly. I suggest giving everyone 50 life and 16 strength and giving the rest to dexterity. Note that once you've gotten your character classes there is no need to improve intelligence further. Dexterity is the best to improve because it makes you attack quicker. Wizard's Crown frequently allows enemies critical hits for either side for dubious reasons in combat, and this takes advantage of things. Remember to take the items off the original players. In fact, you could create gofer characters early on with 16 strength--you could take their armor, etc., and sell it for a while. Just be sure that you get rid of people's gold before you ditch them! It's maybe not a foolproof way to do things, and your main expense down the road will be 50 GP to build up magic items, so you need several trips to get started, but it is not a bad idea to get started. 3-1-1. EARLY EASY MONEY CHEAT About taking items off original players--it's also possible to make lots of money off them early. It won't do you much good early on, but you can save the cash for when you start getting magic weapons and armor, and that will help you. So here's what to do: 1. create a thief. Give him all the experience you can. Don't worry about anything else. 2. use the experience for haggling. 3. create a bunch of guys and have them fill up all slots in the inn with brigandine and greatswords. Yes...later on you can just reach in and grab some when you need a bit of extra cash for that +1 boost. 4. sell off any items your other players have remaining. You'll get a good deal, since the thief will have 120 experience. Assuming he starts at 10, 3*(90/4.5)=60 experience will get him to 100. Another 60 should get him to 20*(4+1/2)=50. So you will start with 150 haggling, which is pretty good. You will want to create fighters with greatswords. Those get the most money, along with brigandine(shields+1-handed weapons don't really match up.) Each player gets 2000 gold for what he sells, so if you work about 15 times(not too hard) you will get a whopping 210 gold. That's really a lot, because it can improve +1 plate to +5, or a magic weapon to storm. 5. Yeah, the party you cheat with stinks, so be sure to save after each run, and be sure your frontloader has all the money before removing the other guys. Remember the limit on gold(250) too, so you can only do so much of this. 3-2. WHAT TO IMPROVE, WHEN In the long term you can improve anything, but I wrote this FAQ so that winning the game wouldn't be long-term. So what's most effective soonest? 3-2-1. SKILLS Some skills, only one person needs to improve. Others, you all will. Some are just useless. Also it's too hard to be a jack-of-all-trades so don't try to wrench your characters into that. Also, don't worry if you're not improving fast enough. The game has no time limits. Remember too that morale loss affects all but karma, turn undead, luck and spell power. Skills(besides karma--1XP/point and power--3XP/point) improve as follows: for 1-100, you get a random boost of 1-8. 101-150, 1-4. 151-200, 1-2. 201-250, 1. Beware that if you improve something at 250, the computer will suck the experience will disappear. The following skills need 3 XP for improvement: Close combat, mace, crossbow, combat awareness Swimming, hunt, first aid, haggling, evaluate magic 4 XP: sword, spear, shield, scan, track, picklock, treat poison, treat disease, turn undead, read ancient 5 XP: bow, stealth, disarm trap, alchemy 6 XP: axe, flail, luck, cast spell WEAPON SKILLS, COMBAT AWARENESS, SCAN I generally try to go with 2-handed weapons for maximum damage. So shield isn't valuable. I also don't care about intangible skills. I doubt they programmed too much into the game about using them in quick combat anyway. My recommendation is to increase your initial weapon's skill to 100. Wait until you start getting "real" magic items(not +1/+5 but magic or doom) and then distribute items according to who gets them. If you get a very good magic item it's worthwhile to give up on any character improvement to switch over. You can get back up to 100 easily enough.) SHIELD I didn't really worry about this. Even if you can use the shield for offense as well as defense, they break against axes, so you can get a nice fancy shield and it breaks and why bother? SWIMMING Kind of useful in one dungeon if everybody is moving around, which won't be the case if you want to stay sane. STEALTH You should be able to beat up every enemy, so no need to hide. HUNT Not used here. See Eternal Dagger. TRACK Also not used here. FIRST AID Very useful, but only your ranger, who probably has nothing else to improve, really needs it. He needs bandages, which appear randomly after fights and get used up. You can't buy them at an armory. Just pick them up when you can. SEARCH Good search helps you find secret doors easier. It's hard to tell what a good minimum is to get through the game. But a high search apparently lets you find more loot after beating monsters. Very highly recommended, after haggling. DISARM TRAP You should be able to withstand most traps, so don't worry about this. Since "traps" is barely plural in this game, anyway. PICKLOCK Somewhat useful early so you don't have to be casting spells. But eventually you'll have great spellcasters and this won't matter. HAGGLE Very very very useful. Have your thief maximize this before all others. TREAT POISON Critical because characters can die and get rubbed out by its effects, even after an otherwise easy win. Improve this as quickly as you can. In fact it's worth improving for one of your priests at the temporary expense of karma until it gets to 100! 100 should be enough to cure most anything at first, but morale loss will drag it down. This is the ultimate insurance policy. TREAT DISEASE Diseased players don't regain morale with rest. This isn't used at all in WC. TURN UNDEAD Very useful for your clerics, but not the main stat. ALCHEMY I found this useless. LUCK Prevents magic damage, so I think it's worth it. Note that it and turn undead are bounded in practice by karma. READ ANCIENT One person needs this skill, and not much of it(to 100?) EVALUATE MAGIC The better this is for one player, the more magic items you will find/understand. Therefore it's in your interest to get someone to max this out, but only one person. CAST SPELL Affects if you cast a spell successfully. Very important for mages. One character(fighter-thief-spells) will want to improve haggling immediately. You always get the benefit of the best haggler in your party, and the gold you get is worth it. Don't worry about anything else until your thief gets rather good at it. Because once you have haggling, you'll have to work a lot less to make money by looting and such. It'll take a while to get into dungeons, so stuff like search and picklock, while important, can wait. Eventually you'll want to improve your life force once the dexterity gets off the charts, but for now it's a good idea to concentrate on the fighter- clerics building up karma. Here's a chart of what to improve: F-S 1: evaluate magic to 200, then see F-S 2/3 F-S 2/3: weapon to 100, cast spell to 100, power to 100 Then go to 200, then 250 F-P 1: cure poison to 100, then see F-P 2/3 F-P 2/3: karma to 100, weapon to 100, karma to 250, Turn Undead to 150, Luck to 150, then 200's, then weapon to 250 Don't put undead/luck to 250 as your karma won't stay there for long. R: weapon to 100, first aid to 100, then 150 for both, 200, 250 Improve dexterity after that, then life when dexterity hits 30 F-T: haggle to 200, search to 150, haggle to 250, search to 250 Whenever you get a magic item, get that to 100. With thief skills maximized, improve weapon skills. When you've got nothing left to do, improve dexterity. 3-2-2. ITEMS There are several places where you can improve items for 50 gold--in the NE of the inside wall and beyond the ruins at the bottom(password: "breakfast.") That figure sounds like a lot, but if you poke around in the ruins you can find what you need. Magic bonuses range from 1 to 5. While you can have many items with skill bonuses, we are only focusing on items you can improve here. The most important items to improve are weapons. Basically there are three types of magic weapons. If an item doesn't start out as magical, you can't make it. The first type is the straight-plus weapon. For each extra plus, you get an extra 3 points of magic damage. But it pales in comparison to the other types. The second type is the elemental. The progression here is: Magic = 10 magic damage Frost = 20 Flaming = 30 Lightning = 40 Storm = 50 Then there are life drain items. Dark = 12 Doom = 25 Soul = 38 Demon = 50 Death = 60 Obviously the life drain items are a bit better bargain, but whatever you can find, improve. It's worthwhile enough to get an item that doesn't do the most physical damage, either. You can't control when you find magic items. Just take what you can get, and if something better comes along later, accept the luck of the draw. Protection is CUMULATIVE(unlike Eternal Dagger,) so if you have nothing else to spend your gold on, start improving your rings. Then stuff like armor--it doesn't strictly matter which goes first, but if you wait you're more likely to find magic plate mail, which is the best. You may occasionally find a rare Dwarven, Elven or Reenforcing item. These are always good and equate to something roughly +4. Note there's a small benefit to improving +3/+4 to +4/+5 over +1/+2 to +2/+3. Also I find that I like to improve my very best items as I'm much more likely to find a lower-charged item which could replace what I improved anyway. I generally allot 2 small spots for my items--any more and it gets in the way of treasure. Protection by type B C T PM M Wizard's 10 10 10 10 10 +1 2 2 2 2 1 +2 4 4 4 4 2 +3 6 6 6 6 3 +4 8 8 8 8 5 +5 10 10 10 10 7 Dwarven 5 20 5 5 3 Elven 5 5 20 5 3 Reenforc 20 5 5 5 3 Note that if you can't find magic plate mail, magic scale and chain will do. There's not much difference at the +5 level. Don't spend too much time waiting for the perfect items; in fact if you find +5 chain then you will probably just want to have someone wear that and improve other items rather than sell that and wait for +5 plate. I find +1 jars to be better protection than shields, if you wind up finding 1-handed weapons early on, and you'll probably find a random +3 one opr dwarven/elven/reenforcing eventually. But don't waste time improving it and don't wait for 1-handed weapons at the expense of 2-handed. Take whatever comes. I would like to note that Lordbub mentioned in a topic that +5 stuff is better than a +5 shield. A magic item defends you from 10 bash and other stuff. A shield just defends vs bash. 3-3. IMPROVING There are many ways to get better in Wizard's Crown for the two goals to achieve: great stats and great items. You'll find potentially great items throughout the game. Great stats come with the territory. At first you won't be able to go into the ruins much and you'll need to beat up folks in-town. Once town is cleared out there are slim pickings. You can run the road north of the town and continually sell the goodies you find. But you may have to wait for your first break--a magic weapon. It'll probably take a while, by which time you can make it a Death or Storm weapon off the bat. Try to give it to a high-dexterity guy. Then protect him as much as possible. Whatever magic necklaces, armor, etc., you have, throw it on him. Let your fighter-sorcerers languish until everyone else has got something. Remember that you can pick up scale/chain armor in the ruins as well. You start with brigantine and finding these is cheaper than getting plate. In fact since plate costs a bit of money you may never want to buy it from the armory. +1 scale is better than plate anyway, and something like that will eventually turn up. Don't waste the money. Meanwhile your priests will be improving their turn undead, etc. This makes many parts of the ruins easier; you can beat up undeads pretty quickly. Also, once you get a few magic items you can afford to stay out at night in the top parts. You'll mostly fight wolves and large spiders in the grass, but if you keep to the roads you can beat up some brigands for nice treasure. The pickings aren't great, though. If you are really lost for what to do you can reset the Rusty Nail a few times, but that will probably get old. You can also sell the Emerald Key for a quick boost for an item, but be sure to have rope handy. Eventually you'll need to go into the ruins. The rule of thumb here is: win 3 fights, then retreat--this gives you an added 10-experience bonus when you get back to the inn, and it prevents you from having to leave behind too much good treasure. Learn who's tough and who's not. Enemies generally come in recognizable lumps. Use magic whenever you need to and avoid it on weaker opponents. Watch your morale loss; when you get below 30(for starters) you want to go to the taverns. Make sure your money is spread around--10 copper cures one morale loss point--and then if you want to get back to playing right away, rest in the inn. Often it will be immediately profitable just to visit a tavern before selling stuff off, because your haggling is affected by morale loss. Also, there's no reason to delay doing stuff. While I've won the game in 100 days(most of that due to improving items at the magic user's) there's no limit, and really trying to save a few game-days will lose you a few real-life-hours. Note that you may want to have fine/sharp weapons at the inn for the final fight with Tarmon. When you find one that is particularly good, don't sell it. Of course, you'll want to make sure there is one item for each of your players depending on his weapon skill. Remember that you'll find a very sharp spear at Tarmon's, and fine