Realms of Quest V FAQ/hints/walkthrough?

[JavaJack]

Is there a Realms of Quest V FAQ/hints/walkthrough somewhere? Google didn't turn up anything.

I want to try and get my nickel's worth of fun out of it, but I'm kind of tired of booting it up and dying of poison in 12 moves

[orion70]

https://rubygolem.wordpress.com/

[Ghislain]

Is there a Realms of Quest V FAQ/hints/walkthrough somewhere? Google didn't turn up anything.

I want to try and get my nickel's worth of fun out of it, but I'm kind of tired of booting it up and dying of poison in 12 moves

Well it certainly it would help if you had the programmer’s notes to help you along

However, based on your description of getting poisoned all the time—it sounds like you are walking over poisoned marshes. Take note of what they look like when you walk over them and then make sure to avoid them.

Another major tip that I like to pass along: use your priest spell casters to cast « Protection from evil » during combat—this will collectively raise everyone’s armor for the duration of the battle and you will get hit less often.

In version 1.1 of the game, the village leaders will give you playing tips—which are basically my own playing tips on how to succeed in the game.

I hope this helps.

[JavaJack]

it sounds like you are walking over poisoned marshes.

Ah, I suspected something like that but couldn't prove it.

[JavaJack]

Are random encounters scaled to your party?

[Ghislain]

Are random encounters scaled to your party?

Yes. The game is non-linear, so as your party grows stronger, the monsters that you fight will be more powerful. You start off fighting kobolds and skeletons and as you level up, dragons and immortal-types will be encountered.

[JavaJack]

Does the tablet chart on page 34 of manual line up positionally with what you see in the in-game Search display?

i.e. If I only possess a single shard and that piece came from Bighy Woods (which is the upper left square in the manual) would the in-game Search display only illuminate the upper left square?

[Ghislain]

Does the tablet chart on page 34 of manual line up positionally with what you see in the in-game Search display?

i.e. If I only possess a single shard and that piece came from Bighy Woods (which is the upper left square in the manual) would the in-game Search display only illuminate the upper left square?

Yes, that is correct. It basically serves as a checklist of all of the steps you have to accomplish in order to complete the game

The revised edition of the game (1.1 and onwards) does reposition the location of Lady Carmilla Bane's shard to the middle, and the updated manual reflects that. It just made more sense to do that from an aesthetic sense.

[JavaJack]

Should the dungeons be done in any particular order? You need not say which order specifically, to avoid major spoilers, but are some dungeons easier than others?

[Ghislain]

Should the dungeons be done in any particular order? You need not say which order specifically, to avoid major spoilers, but are some dungeons easier than others?

Well, the random encounters will "scale" according to the level of your party and the floor of the dungeon that you are in. Every dungeon floor has a boss monster who will be fairly difficult to beat.

The dungeons that are closer to the starting castle tend to have boss monsters that are easier to beat. The hardest dungeon is the one that is located within the field of molten lava.

Many of the boss monsters are immortal types with a lot of hit points. You can't use death magic against them. I'd recommend having a few monk characters in the later stages of the game who can use their CONDEMN special ability that can kill these types.

[ral-clan]

I find I have to switch a lot between movement mode and the menu mode (i.e. to cast, inspect characters, etc.). Although, it's pretty easy to switch from movement mode to menu mode using the ESC key or SPACE keys, I haven't found an easy single keystroke that will allow me to switch back to movement more.

The only way I'm aware of getting back to movement mode is by selecting MOVE from the menu. Is there another (quicker) way. I find this the one of the most bothersome parts of the UI, so it would be nice if there was a single keystroke instead of having to move to the right or left menu, down three or four menu selections and pressing enter (about five or six keystrokes).

[Ghislain]

I find I have to switch a lot between movement mode and the menu mode (i.e. to cast, inspect characters, etc.). Although, it's pretty easy to switch from movement mode to menu mode using the ESC key or SPACE keys, I haven't found an easy single keystroke that will allow me to switch back to movement more.

The only way I'm aware of getting back to movement mode is by selecting MOVE from the menu. Is there another (quicker) way. I find this the one of the most bothersome parts of the UI, so it would be nice if there was a single keystroke instead of having to move to the right or left menu, down three or four menu selections and pressing enter (about five or six keystrokes).

Unforunately, there is currently no quick way to switch back from MENU mode to MOVEMENT mode.

However, I thought about what you said, and I think the best way to implement such a feature would be to allow the player to press ESC or SPACE in menu mode to let them go back to movement mode.

I really appreciate feedback like this. Now that I've put a lot of the content creation and the actual publishing of the game behind me, I think it's much easier to implement quality-of-life changes such as this.

[Ghislain]

That was simple enough to do--it only took me about an hour to implement. This feature will be available in version 1.2. I describe this feature as follows on page 23 of the manual now:

"You can also alternate back and forth between “movement mode” and the menu by pressing the SPACE bar, RUN/STOP, ← (left arrow) or ESC key."

[ral-clan]

Great to hear this has been implemented. I probably will continue with the original version, though, as I am far invested into the game, and am playing from floppies, so would not want to lose my spot.

Another UI feature that would have been nice would have been an indicator beside the party members icon to show if he/she had an ally or not. Sometimes I forget which players have allies during combat and it's slightly cumbersome to have to go into the Allies screen to check each time.

[Ghislain]

Great to hear this has been implemented. I probably will continue with the original version, though, as I am far invested into the game, and am playing from floppies, so would not want to lose my spot.

I'm curious--how do you find the experience of playing the game on floppy disk overall? Are you using 1 or 2 disk drives? I originally wrote the game to be an SD card-based game, but with intending to support the floppy disk drive.

Just make a backup of the files SAVEG1 through SAVEG4 on side 1 and then copy them to the new Side A disk to take advantage of the new version of the game while still being able to continue your old game.

Another UI feature that would have been nice would have been an indicator beside the party members icon to show if he/she had an ally or not. Sometimes I forget which players have allies during combat and it's slightly cumbersome to have to go into the Allies screen to check each time.

I did recently implement a feature that allows the player to view other players quite easily--instead of exiting the player character sheet and then selecting View-->Player, you can just press the keys 1 through 0 (where 0=10) directly from the character sheet. This allows you to quickly see what allies each player has. This feature is available to you in combat and non-combat mode.

As for being able to know which players have allies with them during combat by way of a marker or symbol next to the character name, that would be difficult to do because there is no screen real estate left to allow this. I suppose I could do this: when you're selecting a command for a player to perform during combat, I can place a small plus sign (+) to the "Ally" command to let you know if that player actually has one. However, if I do that, then players would expect checkmarks to appear right next to other commands to let them know if they can perform them or not (such as Sing, which is only available to Bards and Courtesans, for example).

The thing is, to implement what I just described for all of the fight commands would require that a lot of code be re-written, and I only something like 45 bytes of free memory for the combat module. So I think this quality-of-life feature will only be done for the Ally command.