[Let's Play] Fighting Fantasy 57 - Magehunter

[Omegonthesane]

Odd how it's checking our "actual" inventory for the CYOA-within-a-CYOA-within-a-CYOA.

Out of the options available, vizier's robe.

[Darth Rabbitt]

I'd opt to give him both the amulet and the robe, but since we can only do one, robe because his clothes are explicitly torn and dirty.

[pragma]

Yeah, agree on the robe.

[JourneymanN00b]

Since Hanif Al-din Hasan is a vizier, I vote to give him the vizier's robe so that he can now have the proper authority to destroy the imposter.

[SGamerz]

Note that if you have the vizier a sword and if you have no other weapon, you will fight with your Attack Strength reduced by 2 points. If you gave the vizier a vizier's robe, turn to 217; otherwise, turn to 326.

Looks like we hit the special option! Is it a good one?

The vizier beams when he takes the robe from you. "Hazah be praised!" he exclaims. "With this robe Good will surely prevail! And now I must repay your kindness." He puts on the robe then claps his hands three times. With a resounding crash the ground splits open; a huge Efreet, with a face that would frighten an army of a thousand men, emerges and bows low before the vizier. "Fetch the sacred mace of Tsui!" shouts the vizier. The Efreet bows once more, then leaps back down the crack from which it emerged. In the blink of an eye, it reappears, bearing in its arms a mighty steel club, intricately decorated with a pattern of writing Dragons. The vizier presents this mace to you and commands his awesome servant to begone. The Efreet jumps down the chasm, which closes above its head. Note the sacred mace on your Adventure Sheet. If you use it in battle you may add 4 to your Attack Strength. Gain up to 4 points of LUCK and turn to 361.

Definitely a good choice! +4 AT is a major power-up meaning we now pretty much fights with a SKILL of 10 in combats. LUCK is now full as well (although we only lost 1...maybe we should have spent a few in the earlier story battles).

Evil lurks inside this tower; you know it in your bones. If you have six or more mirrors and wish to place them in a circle round the tower, cross them off your Adventure Sheet and note down the word 'reflect'.

Restore your STAMINA to its full value (do not recover points lost by travelling through the Magic Portal). You stride up the steps and warily push open the brass-studded door. Within, the opulently furnished Great Hall is empty, so you walk towards the staircase in the opposite wall. You step on something hard and are surprised to see that many tiny bones are scattered over the rich red carpet. Behind you the door slams shut and, from the bones, a horde of living Skeletons arise, wielding bright bronze scimitars. If you have the Book of Craft, turn to 190. Otherwise, if you have the sacred mace, turn to 79. If you do not, turn to 270.

The full STAMINA restore is timely too, since we don't have enough Provisions to get a full restore ourselves.

Before we proceed to batter these skeletons with our shiny new mace, do we want to surround the tower with mirrors? We have double the number needed, and there seems to be no apparent reason not to do so, but it's worded as an option, so I'll leave it up for vote.

Adventure Sheet:

Name: Jaime Van Ginyu
SKILL 5/5
STAMINA 13/13
LUCK 11/11
Money: Nil
Equipment: Rapier, Fine Red Clothes, Silver bullet, Rope of Human Hair,
Provisions: 1
Codewords: kal, missing

Companion (Switched)
SKILL 6/6
STAMINA 12/12
Equipment: Undyed clothes, 12 Mirrors, Dagger, Magic Amulet, Lantern, Flintlock Pistol, box of powder, Lead bullet, Sacred Mace of Tsui (+4 Attack Strength in combat).

Notes: Turn to 312 to go to Rangor Tower, turn to 158 to visit Al-Haddar, 3 crosses gained while in Kallamehr

[Thaluikhain]

Use the mirrors.

[Darth Rabbitt]

Yeah, the mirrors.

[JourneymanN00b]

My vote is to surround the tower with mirrors.

[Omegonthesane]

The method of circling a mage with mirrors is mentioned in the opening paragraph of the book, so let's use it here.

[SGamerz]

The Skeletons close in, blades whirling. From the chamber above comes a mocking laugh: it is Mencius, into whose trap you have fallen. Swinging the sacred mace, you reduce two Skeletons to piles of bones, The next wave are more cautious. If only you can hack your way through them to the staircase.

First SKELETON SKILL 6 STAMINA 5
Second SKELETON SKILL 5 STAMINA 5
Third SKELETON SKILL 6 STAMINA 5

Fight the Skeletons one at a time. If you defeat them in 10 Attack Rounds or less, turn to 392. If you do not, turn to 270.

Al-Haddar actually gave us an alternate route to Mencius's home! It's handy, although he really should have given us some advance warning.

Our mace gives as a fairly big advantage in AT, so on their own, they're not much of a threat, but the time limit can be risky. Unless we use LUCK, we'd need at least 9 rounds to beat them one by one, which is very close to the max limit. I will start using LUCK if we were to lose any Attack Rounds.

COMBAT LOG:

Skeleton#1 10, JVG 15. S1 is at 3.
S1 12, JVG 20. S1 is at 1.
S1 16, JVG 18. S1 is destroyed.
S2 11, JVG 15. S2 is at 3.
S2 9, JVG 14. S2 is at 1.
S2 13, JVG 18. S2 is destroyed.
S3 13, JVG 19. S3 is at 3.
S3 13, JVG 19. S3 is at 1.
S3 9, JVG 18. S3 is destroyed.

Plenty of mediocre rolls on both sides, but JVG was never in real danger, and finishes this without getting hit or having to spend any LUCK.

You hurry up the flight of stone steps to the chamber above. Here Mencius is waiting for you. Once again you are facing an enemy, pitting your wills and determination against his black arts, But this time his power is greater than that of any mage you have ever faced. As if to flaunt this, he is hovering a metre of so above the floor of the chamber, waiting for you to make the first move. What will you do? If you have the word 'narcolepsism' and wish to use it, turn to 70. If you have a pistol and wish to shoot Mencius, turn to 185. If you have a gold hex and wish to throw it, turn to 222. If you have a ruby ring, you may use its secret unless you have the word 'genie' written down, in which case nothing happens. If you can perform none of this actions, turn to 91.

A few options listed, but only one available to us....

What kind of bullet are you loading into your pistol? Take the letters that spell out the type of bullet, and substitute the numbers from the following chart. Then add all the numbers together and turn to the paragraph with that number.

A D E I L M N O R S V
5 7 4 27 3 42 20 33 13 10 9

Unfortunately, we only have 1 kind of bullet...

3 (L) + 4 (E) +5 (A) + 7 (D) = 19

You ram the bullet home, take aim and shoot. Your aim is true, but Mencius' magic is stronger. The bullet ricochets off his body as if it had struck the finest steel, and embeds itself in the wall. Mencius doesn't even flinch.

I don't think any player would have expected this to work, in any case, but there wasn't any option to just give up on the pistol in that last section anyway (not that we have any better options, so that's a moot point).

You have lost your chance. Mencius completes his spell. No devastating magical blast leaps from his hands to strike you down; instead, he starts to grow. Then as you look around, you realize that actually it is you who are shrinking. At the same time, hair starts to sprout all over your body. A tail grows from the base of your spine. Within seconds the transformation is complete. Mencius laughs and picks you up. "My pet rat," he laughs. "Somehow it seems such an apt fate..."

Getting turned into rodent/toad/other small critters by evil wizard or witch is a classic fairytale trope, but this occurs surprisingly rarely in FF bad endings. In fact, of the few others in FF that I can think of, it's usually the GOOD wizards (Yaztromo, Nicodemus, etc) that may do it to the PC.

Ok, anyway...this is a bad ending, but really...I'm not entirely certain we should have failed here.

So, here's the deal: despite the difficulty of this book, we surprisingly managed to take what is pretty much the optimal path on our very first playthrough! We avoided pretty much all unnecessary encounters and hit all the mandatory points to get the good ending, except for that 1 thing we were missing, the silver bullet which we actually found at the beginning of the book. The only 'bad' option we might have made is approaching the authority in Kallamehr.

But going strictly by what happens in the text, I'm not sure there's a way to ensure that we are carrying that bullet on the right body when we confront Mencius, because there's no way we could have switched bodies with Reinhardt before we retrieve that bullet from his body, so it was always going to be carried on Reinhardt's body, not Mencius.

And the Omnipresent Tower is absolutely the 'good' route to the endgame encounter with Mencius (because the Rangor Tower can't be surrounded by mirrors), and since Reinhardt wasn't 'in' Al-Haddar's story with us, even if we hadn't lost him outside the palace, we still shouldn't have access to what he's carrying.

So with all that ambiguity, it seems like the only way to really reach the best endings are:

1) Rule that we can grab all the items Reinhardt was carrying right after we switch bodies, so we can move the silver bullet to Mencius's body right after the body switch. But in that case there's really no point in keeping track of separate inventories like the book instructed. If this is the case, we should just pretend that we already did that, since there's no point in playing the book all over again just for that silly mechanism.

OR

2) Rule that we would have access to Reinhardt's equipment so long as he was with us when we accepted Al-Haddar's hospitality. It still doesn't seem to make much sense, but then it didn't make sense for us to be able to use our actual equipment when making choices in the story. But really, even in this case, all we really had to do is pretend that we never approached the authority and skip that option so that Reinhardt doesn't go missing.

So, either way it doesn't look like there's much more point to doing any rewinds here, just a bit of minor retconning.

So, what do you think? Do we just proceed and pretend that we have the Silver Bullet (either because we took it off Reinhardt earlier or because we didn't lose him outside the palace)?

Adventure Sheet:

Name: Jaime Van Ginyu
SKILL 5/5
STAMINA 13/13
LUCK 11/11
Money: Nil
Equipment: Rapier, Fine Red Clothes, Silver bullet, Rope of Human Hair,
Provisions: 1
Codewords: kal, missing, reflect

Companion (Switched)
SKILL 6/6
STAMINA 12/12
Equipment: Undyed clothes, 6 Mirrors, Dagger, Magic Amulet, Lantern, Flintlock Pistol, box of powder, Lead bullet, Sacred Mace of Tsui (+4 Attack Strength in combat).

Notes: Turn to 312 to go to Rangor Tower, turn to 158 to visit Al-Haddar, 3 crosses gained while in Kallamehr

No. of failures: 1??

[Omegonthesane]

We're the mage hunter trained in the use of flintlock pistols, so it's not unreasonable to suggest Reinhardt just handed us the silver bullet at the first opportunity when we switched bodies.

So yes, proceed because we absolutely still have the silver bullet because we'd have kept it with the body that currently knows how to shoot mages with silver bullet/

[Darth Rabbitt]

We're the mage hunter trained in the use of flintlock pistols, so it's not unreasonable to suggest Reinhardt just handed us the silver bullet at the first opportunity when we switched bodies.

So yes, proceed because we absolutely still have the silver bullet because we'd have kept it with the body that currently knows how to shoot mages with silver bullet/

This.

[pragma]

Agree

[JourneymanN00b]

Arrrgh. The storytelling part is really poorly written and confusing as hell FYI.

My vote is to end the adventure and start another gamebook. My reasoning is that DVS is brown bread as a rat now. I think we need to apply reality here. There are no second chances or rewinds at life in the real world, as much as we all wish for that.

Or, we could go with option #2 by never meeting the authorities and getting the silver bullet from Reinhardt when we got our pistol back, as I believe that this is something we would have done if Reinhardt was still with us.

[SGamerz]

Loading the silver bullet...

10(S) + 27(I) + 3(L) + 9(V) + 4(E) + 13(R) = 66.

Ramming the silver bullet home, you aim carefully and shoot. The bullet hits Mencius full in the forehead. He stares back at you, the gleaming bullet embedded in his head like a third eye. His features contort with rage - or is it agony? - and the bullet shoots back out of his head, leaving a hole, then the edges of the hole reknit themselves. Mencius stands quite still. His eyes are staring madly at you, but you avoid his gaze. "Enough! I had thought to make your death interesting, but now I will deny you even that privilege!" says Mencius. He raises his hands above his head and shrieks like a wolf. Then he dashes them down, releasing a fizzling blast of magical power at you. If you have a Magic Amulet, turn to 289. If you haven't, turn to 186.

Good thing we didn't give this away to that vizier...

The blast strikes you head on, flinging you backwards. Lose 1 point from your STAMINA. Khasim's magic amulet has protected you from the full force of the blast. Seizing the opportunity, you dash forward, colouring your weapon with the splash of blood which fell from Mencius' brow. Mencius shrieks once more and prepares to release another blast. But you are on him first. If you have the Book of Craft, turn to 29; otherwise, turn to 331.

Mencius can still protect himself, but he is vulnerable to your weapon. His SKILL is 2 points less than your Initial SKILL (since he is not using a weapon); his STAMIAN is your Initial STAMINA. Fight him as normal. However, he is not using a sword - instead he will attack you with magic. If your Attack Strength is greater than his, it means you have managed to strike him and may inflict damage as normal. If your Attack Strength is less than or equal to his, it means that you were unable to find an opening. His magical blast will hit you every round even if your Attack Strength is greater. In the first round you must lose 1 point from your STAMINA; then as the power of the magic amulet is overcome, in every subsequent round you must lose 2 points of STAMINA. If you reduce Mencius to 2 or fewer points of STAMINA, turn to 124 if you have the word 'reflect' on your Adventure Sheet or to 174 if you don't.

And this is the reason why it's better...or I should say, necessary, for the player to roll low for his Initial SKILL and STAMINA in order to beat this book! Even with what we've given him, this is still going to be a tough one, because he still has above-average STAMINA. Since he automatically damages us every round, he WILL kill us in 6 rounds, and we can only hope to beat him before that if we successfully test our LUCK almost every round to increase our damage output! We still have some decent chance, since we have a +5 advantage in Attack Strength and a pretty high LUCK, but the risk is obviously still there....

COMBAT LOG:

Mencius 11, JVG 18. Luck Test roll = 7 (Lucky). Mencius is at 15. JVG is at 10.
Mencius 13, JVG 20. Luck Test roll = 9 (Lucky). Mencius is at 11. JVG is at 8.
Mencius 14, JVG 19. Luck Test roll = 5 (Lucky). Mencius is at 7. JVG is at 6.
Mencius 7, JVG 17. Luck Test roll = 8 (Lucky). Mencius is at 3. JVG is at 4.
Mencius 11, JVG 21. Mencius is at 1. JVG is at 2.

We made it! Just! We barely passed the LUCK test in round 4 by the skin of our teeth, and even now, our health condition is almost as bad as Mencius'. If he were to risk fighting for another round he would have killed us (although he would also risk getting killed at the same time).

Fortunately for us, this particular villain is not someone who would choose to go down with his enemy, so we survive, for now...

With a look of desperation in his eyes, Mencius takes to the air, flapping his arms frantically. You are reminded of the way he looked the first time you captured him, though the circumstances now are rather different. Again he casts about, trying to escape, but he cannot penetrate the circle of mirrors so quickly. Like a bird of prey, he settles on one of the rafters. "I still have enough power to blast you, you hell-cursed worm." So saying, he raises his arms once again. His shriek, like the wailing of a thousand damned souls, makes your scalp prickle. The will be his most powerful blast yet, and your amulet has no more power.

The choice may seem obvious, but I still need to ask: do we take this opportunity to initiate a body switch?

Adventure Sheet:

Name: Jaime Van Ginyu
SKILL 5/5
STAMINA 13/13
LUCK 7/11
Money: Nil
Equipment: Rapier, Fine Red Clothes, Silver bullet, Rope of Human Hair,
Provisions: 1
Codewords: kal, missing, reflect

Companion (Switched)
SKILL 6/6
STAMINA 2/12
Equipment: Undyed clothes, 6 Mirrors, Dagger, Magic Amulet, Lantern, Flintlock Pistol, box of powder, Lead bullet, Sacred Mace of Tsui (+4 Attack Strength in combat).

Notes: Turn to 312 to go to Rangor Tower, turn to 158 to visit Al-Haddar, 3 crosses gained while in Kallamehr

No. of failures: 1??

[Thaluikhain]

Swap into the guy who's just about dying, preferably just as the spell goes off.

(Never got this far when I was playing.)

[Darth Rabbitt]

Switch bodies.

[Omegonthesane]

The guide to hunting mages from earlier says a mage cannot protect himself from his own sorcery. Body hop, preferably after Mencius has committed to shooting at our current body.

[JourneymanN00b]

Change now!

[SGamerz]

Mencius is concentrating so hard on his spell that he doesn't realize what you are doing. No sooner has the magical bolt left his hands than the dizzying sensation of a body switch hits you. In the next split second you have time to notice the look of absolute helplessness in Mencius's eyes as he realizes that he has no time to reverse the switch. The spell erupts in a cascades of scintillating colours and Mencius' body is blown into a thousand and on pieces. Then the scene before you is swallowed up in darkness. Check your Adventure Sheet. If you have a shackles key or the word 'lost' written down, turn to 260. If you haven't, and the box marked 'Switch' is ticked, turn to 400; otherwise, turn to 309.

The design of this book may have its flaws, it's far from being the best gamebook, but when it comes to the moment of the villain's defeat, this is one of my personal favourites in FF. IMO, the only other one that I know of that may be better is Globus' defeat in Spectral Stalker.

All feeling disappears, first from your limbs, then from your body. Is this death? A memory is nagging at you, but you cannot place it...until light bursts upon your eyes - torchlight. You are in a cell. A crack sunders the floor. Reinhardt is standing at one side.

Somehow you have returned to the Margrave's castle. You and Reinhardt make your way through its passages while you explain how you killed Mencius, until you come to the Great Hall. Here, it looks as if a battle is about to be waged. The chamberlain, backed by a contingent of the castle guards, is shouting at the captain, who has a squad of soldiers, weapons at the ready. As you and Reinhardt walk the length of the hall, however, they fall silent. Reinhardt seats himself on the great chair, and one by one the guards and soldiers knee. Finally only the chamberlain and the captain are left. Then they too kneel.

"I, Reinhardt, Margrave of the land, have returned. There will be no more bickering among my retainers. From now on, you will devote your energies to the proper upkeep of this realm...and to the assistance of the Magehunter, to whom I pledge my full and undying support."

Reinhardt has indeed learnt from his experience. From this day forward, he will be true to his word. Not only does he throw his full weight behind your pursuit of evil, but he rewards you with great wealth and privilege. Now and again, you wonder about Khasim, Al-Bakbuk and his brother, and the fantastical land of Kallamehr. As Reinhardt matures into a stern but fair lord, from time to time he reminisces with you in the language that you two, uniquely, share. He even offers you a permanent position as his chief retainer. You, of course, respectfully decline: you have better things to do. Let all mages and servants of evil quake in their boots - the Magehunter is on your trail!

And that's it! Congratulations, we made it to the ideal ending sooner than I'd expected. As mentioned, we somehow took what is close to being the optimal path on our very first playthrough.

You can probably tell that there's a lot of content we didn't get through. Yes, this is one of those books with lots of short branches leading to different paths of varying success rather than one long linear route, so a lot of stuff can only be found on "bad" or less successful endings. There are a number of ways to defeat Mencius, but only one that allows us to bring Reinhardt back safely...and with everybody in the right bodies.

If the 'Switch' box wasn't tick at that last checkpoint, btw, we return to the Margrave's castle, but Reinhardt is stuck in Mencius' body and gets executed by his own chamberlain for an evil mage (the ambitious chamberlain probably deliberately refuse to listen to the Magehunter's explanation).

Anyway, I would be busy for a few days. I'd come back to post some of the stuff we miss (which is a lot, as I mentioned), but it'd probably have to wait till 3-4 days later. As usual, any specific questions you may have about this, do ask (it'll probably help me narrow down on which stuff to cover, since I doubt I'd be able to go through them all).

[Thaluikhain]

Ok, got to ask, we failed once in this book, and I died loads of times before giving up when I was playing this myself. This is not at all the only play through where people successfully finish it with significantly less deaths before I give up. Am I just really bad at FF?

Anyhoo, despite never finishing it myself, this book has loads of cool stuff in it (much of it we missed in this play through), I fondly remember it for being different from a lot of the other FFs around.

Thanks to SGamerz for running it.

[JourneymanN00b]

Thaluikhain: I think that many players were drawing on previous experiences from FF books to make the so called optimal decisions. Maybe that is why our failure rate is so low.

Thank you SGamerz for running the book.

[pragma]

Yeah, thanks SGamerz.

I have only played CYOA books before this one, so I was quite impressed with the variety of mechanics running in the background of this one: crosses for time keeping, body swapping page numbers and the different kinds of bullets were all really cool.

An assortment of questions:
How do we get a Shauca claw/scar? I guess wandering the wrong way in the wilderness.
What's the secret of the ruby ring? (Even though losing it turned out to be a good trade for the Vizier's robe.)
The book of craft sounds fun, where is that?
Why were there no consequences for Reinhardt going missing after our imprisonment?

[Thaluikhain]

I have only played CYOA books before this one, so I was quite impressed with the variety of mechanics running in the background of this one: crosses for time keeping, body swapping page numbers and the different kinds of bullets were all really cool.

I've always found it interesting to look at the progression of FF and how those sorts of mechanics developed over time, and how people tried to get the same results with clunkier methods before.

[Mr Shine]

Yeah, thanks SGamerz.

I have only played CYOA books before this one, so I was quite impressed with the variety of mechanics running in the background of this one: crosses for time keeping, body swapping page numbers and the different kinds of bullets were all really cool.

An assortment of questions:
How do we get a Shauca claw/scar? I guess wandering the wrong way in the wilderness.
What's the secret of the ruby ring? (Even though losing it turned out to be a good trade for the Vizier's robe.)
The book of craft sounds fun, where is that?
Why were there no consequences for Reinhardt going missing after our imprisonment?

iI can answer these:

The Shauca scar is from an encounter you can get. If it happens Reinhardt will run off and you can reencounter him at the friendlly mage.

The book, you get when you decide not to follow Mencius. You find his book and have to use it to reach Titan. Reinhardt, in Mencius's body, will already be dead.

The ring you get only if Reinhardt dies in the initial encounter, (by yours or Mencius's hands). If you meet the right person he'll show you how to summon a genie. Since you will never learn to switch this is how you defeat Mencius.

I guess that Reinhardt survives on his own and the magic brings him back from wherever he is. He can die, and you'll get the code "lost" but being imprisoned only lists him as "missing"