2019-02-11 03:39:24 (edited by Benf 2019-02-15 22:23:00)

After finding yourself on another strange path you wander through the wilderness and discover:
The unofficial Rogues guide to The Path of Adventure

Rogue: starting HP: 15 Defense: 1 Attack: 1 Speed: 1

Experience: you will gain 2 exp for killing a monster, but you get no exp if you kill them in one hit. If the monster runs away you will get 1 exp but no treasure, and running away grants you nothing but your life.
 
Elixirs of Growth:
You will get the first elixir at 5 exp, the next elixir at 10 exp, the third elixir at 14 exp, the fourth elixir at 17 exp, the fifth elixir at 19 exp, and after that each new elixir will cost 20 exp. . 

Use the first elixir to increase your health. With a health of 20 you will heal 2 points a day, and this adds up very quickly.
The second elixir is usually best spent on speed. It helps to hit fast enemies, and will give you a dodge chance, especially in the beginning of the game. It’s better to take a hit with a 25% dodge than to block with a rusty dagger, or even a sword. This will save damage on your weapon.

After that focus on Attack, defense, or speed depending on whether you are going up against the Giant, Dragon, or Hydra Respectively, and depending on what artifacts you have by that point in the game. Getting speed over 3 on elixirs alone is near impossible. Unless you neglect attack and defense.

Somewhere along the way you may also want to increase your life total to 25. It wont aid the healing on the path, but it will make the healing potions more effective, and you will gain more life when using elixirs to improve other stats, for this reason I’d say this could be elixir 3 or 4.

Expect to get about 5-6 elixirs throughout the entire game. Putting 2 into your health leaves you with 3-4 for other stats.
 
At least one of those should go to speed, and if you’re lucky you might have 3 left for more speed, attack or defence depending on your artifacts.

Increasing life to 30 may even be a better idea than increasing defense. You will heal 3 points a day, and take more damage in more situations, but this really depends on what you have going on by that point in the game.

Durability:
This is one of the most important aspects of the game. You can only carry 4 weapons, and they wear out.

There are basically 2 points in each category, so a brand new weapon has a total of 10 points of durability. Hitting an enemy lowers the durability by one. Misses don’t lower the durability, and a sharpening stone restores three points of damage.

If you have two of the same weapon beat on one till it is breaking and then start in on the other one. Save the breaking weapon for a wraith, or when you need to use it. Although you may want to spread the damage around a bit, reduce one of the weapons to scratched, then start in on the other one. If you have to use a sharpening stone you will get all three durability points. If you have a weapon at the higher end of good shape it will only increase by 2 points because Brand New 2 is the highest durability rating.


When to use elixirs, and other items

Save your items until you absolutely need them. Although it is tempting to drink that heal potion as soon as your life hits 2, but you really should wait. You may get enough experience for an elixir in the meantime. Then when you need to heal you will get the stat boost, and have your healing potion for later in the game. If you are poisoned but have an elixir in your possession, wait until your life is at 1 or you encounter an enemy before drinking the elixir. If you encounter another snake tunnel you will get through and still have the elixir. If you drink the elixir when you are poisoned but still have 5 life and then encounter a snake tunnel, or poisin trap in the next room, you’d better hope you have an antidote. Even so, if you had saved your elixir, you would have the antidote for later.

I only use elixirs when I absolutely have to, like if my life is low and I’m about to go into a fight. I have had two in my inventory, but never three, although it is now a personal goal, and always use elixirs before healing potions. The reason for this is, not only do you heal fully, but the stat boost will mean that in one way or another you will be needing to heal less.
 
You can access the inventory any time you are not engaged in battle. For instance, when you first notice a kobold on the path, but before you hit the fight button. In this way you can never be fully surprised.

Use this to full advantage. If you have 6 life left and a monster part in your inventory you can eat it before hitting the fight button, and encounter the kobold with 11 life instead. Use monster parts out of battle and save potions for in battle where possible. Use a heal potion if it is the only thing you have and could save your life, but use up monster parts first. For instance, if you are about to go into a dark passage without a light, and your life is only 2 I would say if you have a monster part eat it before going in. It could save your life, but if all you have is a heal potion then the time has come for the heal potion. No one item in the game is worth your life. You could risk the dark passage and maybe ok, but 2 points of damage could send you to the beginning, and using the heal potion is worth it to survive.

Also, if you are in a passageway with falling rocks, you can access the inventory after you dodge or get hit by the first rock, but if you hit the continue button you won't be able to use any items until you take the hit from the second rock. The same goes for a third rock, if one breaks loose.

Eating monster parts after mushrooms is a good idea, and the grow mushroom, if used on hit points will increase your current hit points by five. So, if you have 7/15 life and you eat a grow mushroom for -1 life you will have 11/20 if you choose to increase hit points. The grow mushroom is a permanent boost.

Torches are best saved for snake tunnels and dark passages. Attacking spider webs is usually the way to go, depending on your weapon situation of course. Also, in early game play, if your treasure is below 30 consider just wading through. 15 treasure is not that much to lose, a torch costs more than that. If you have a high speed weapon and only one torch you might consider fighting your way through the snake tunnel, because you can get just as poisoned in an unlit passageway.

Keys are best saved for Knights. Freed knights appear to be the only source for Sharpening stones, - the most powerful item in the game. They also give out Mana potions and tombs of fungi.

Antidotes are only used for poisin, and do not restore any hit points, for this reason I try to use elixirs to cure poisin, and save antidotes for situations where I don’t have an elixir, and there isn’t enough exp to get one for a while. Also, poisin is not the most common thing in the game, snake tunnels can be burned or fought through, if you have a high speed weapon. Use the torch if you have one, but high speed weapons can also work. Dark passages and poisoned monsters can also poisin you. A good defense can save you from the monsters, and this is why torches are best saved for unlit passageways.

Attack chests if you can deal enough damage to kill them in 3 hits, that’s about all you get. Earlier chests have around 10 life with a defense of 1 or lower. Later chests can have life up to 15 with defense of 3 speed of 2 and I was even attacked by a spiked chest with a 5-7 attack, although I guess I started it.

The only other place for keys are gated passages. If you have a good shield it may be worth going through the passage and saving the key. Or if you have an elixir burning a hole in your inventory, take the damage and heal up on the other side, - although remember what I said about not literally doing that, but rather waiting till you find the troll in the next room.

Sharpening stones are best used when you have an inventory full of damaged weapons. They give 3 points to each weapon. So the weapon improves one or two classes depending on how damaged it was when you used the sharpening stone.

Say you freed a knight with your lock pick reducing it’s durability by one. With the sharpening stone you recover the one point you spent, plus 2 more, and also fix up everything else your are holding onto.

Use mana potions when the casting cost for magic is around 32, unless there is a crazy situation where you have 10 treasure and are about to go into an encounter with a high level monster, and even then only if you have the spells that would help. There are 3 discussed in the magic section. If the item will give you the edge you need in battle, use anything to survive.

Tombs of fungi identify mushrooms you are holding onto, but if you encounter an unidentified mushroom later, you wont be able to identify it. Save the tomb for when you have a lot of mushrooms, or if you are about to enter a difficult battle and your only hope is one of those mushrooms you grabbed. I’ve even eaten unidentified mushrooms before a battle I thought was hopeless only to find it didn’t seem so hopeless when the mushroom was a defense, attack or speed mushroom.

Mushrooms:

There are 7 kinds of mushrooms.
Attack, defense and speed mushrooms give a temporary boost to one atribute.

Grow mushrooms give a permanent boost to the stat of your choice. If used for hit points it will increase your current hip points. So you may lose 1 life for eating the mushroom, but you will gain 5 points if you choose to grow in life, meaning you will end up with 4 additional hit points, that you could use to eat more mushrooms with.

Magic mushrooms appear to be the most common. They grant 1 point of experience.
I’ve only eaten then when very close to the amount needed for an elixir. If you see a high level monster and you are low in life, no elixirs but 2-3 points from that elixir, and you can eat enough mushrooms to get the elixir go for it, even if you need a monster part to eat them all.

Antidote mushrooms cure poisin. I’d rather drink an antidote. You can buy the antidote from a merchant, although it’s the last item you should buy. You can mostly avoid poisin, and the elixirs can save you from poisin as well.

Detox mushrooms are the most rare. I’ve only found one, and the witch destroyed it. It resets the amount of life it costs to eat mushrooms.

Identifying Mushrooms:
There are three ways to identify a new mushroom. You can use the Tomb of Fungi discussed above. This will identify every mushroom in your possession.
You can eat an unidentified mushroom. You will gain the effect of the mushroom, and it will cost you some health to do it. It will also increase the amount of health required to eat future mushrooms.
There is also someone you may meet on the path who will help to identify mushrooms. You will have to give her one of your mushrooms, and it will be taken away in an interesting scenario, but after that you will be able to identify all mushrooms of that type.
So, if you have 6 unidentified mushrooms and you give the witch one, she will help you to identify it. Say it is a magic mushroom, and it turns out you have another 3 in your inventory. You now have 3 magic mushrooms, and 2 unidentified mushrooms. If you give her another mushroom, it will also be destroyed, and you again gain the ability to identify mushrooms of that type. So if the second mushroom you give the witch is a speed mushroom, you will know how to identify speed mushrooms, and will either have an identified speed mushroom in your inventory, or you will still have 1 unidentified mushroom.

Magic:

There are five spells in the game.
Fire burns webs, snake tunnels, and lights up passageways.
Sesame opens any lock, used for gated passages, treasure chests, and freeing knights from dungeons or other situations like being chained to a tree.
Love spell lowers enemy attacks by two.
Slime lowers speed by 2
And
Jellify lowers defense by 2.

There are no magic spells to damage the enemy, heal yourself, or increase your stats. You will need weapons, items and mushrooms for all of that.

The wizard staff will freeze the cost of casting magic. It’s great when you can use a mana potion right after getting this item. Also keep a close eye on it. A sharpening stone here can really do a lot to tip the balance.


Going shopping:

Lastly, what to do with that greedy merchant. Always buy a heal potion, if he has one, and he usually does. Next focus on your weapons, if your doing ok for weapons then get a key, torch and antidote in that order, but the antidote last.

If you need better weapons to get through these are more important than any of those three items. Nothing is more important than the heal potion, unless you are completely unarmed.

If you have all of the merchants items, and you still have money to burn, then consider selling damaged weapons and purchasing new ones.

Sell your ring of life on day 49, it wont help you in the castle anyway, unless of course you have 2 or more hitpoints to heal, then the small boost from the ring might keep you alive. Seriously, when unlocking wizard I had 1 hp at the end of the game, it can be that close.

Cheats:
Other than selling the ring of life for a higher score, or one more magic spell in the castle.
You can also sell ½ of the crown for about 60 gold. In one adventure I used this to purchase a round shield I had till the tower shield from the merchant before the castle.

With ½ of the crown the queen will restore a random weapon, which you can use, or sell to the Merchant for about 100.

As a thief you should also sell your ring of wealth. You would only get 1 day of treasure creating, and the merchant will pay you a lot more than that.

Also, if you have a sharpening stone in your inventory. You can use it before hitting the shop button. This will improve the quality of weapons, before selling them, and the merchant will pay you more money. I would only do this in the rare situation where I had 4 weapons. One time I did have  a lock pick, wizard staff, a scimitar and an oak shield, I needed to improve the quality of everything, and I wanted to upgrade to the round shield. I was able to use the sharpening stone. Sell the Oak shield for more cash, then buy a round shield.

Unfortunately, what the merchant carries can not always be predicted. A few things seem constant though. On day 16 or 17 before you encounter the first mini boss. The merchant seems to carry a leather shield defense 3, a pick axe attack +4-6 speed -1, a short sword attack 3-4 defense 1, and a bull whip attack +2-3 Speed+2, and on day 49 It appears to be a tower shield defence 8, a Monster Slayer Attack6-8 Defence 3
, a Battle axe attack +8-12 Speed -3, and a scimitar attack +6-7 Speed +3. 

The reason using the sharpening stone worked out for me was that even if the merchant didn't have the round shield the improvement to the oak shield would have given me more defense points.

Weapons purchased from the merchant are always brand new. Weapons for finishing quests or killing wraiths may be damaged.

You can kill wraiths with your bare hands. This is one reason you might want to up your attack to a 2 or 3, but a lot does depend on what artifacts you can find.

Hacking your way through Spiderwebs: Don’t bother unless you can deal damage equal to half the life of the webs in one strike. If you have a small web life 6 and deal 3 damage it will gain life +1 as the spiders reknit the webs. So the life of the web will be 4. Hitting it a second time will reduce it to a 1, but now there will be more spiders for a life gain of +2, and the web life total will be 3. One more hit reduces the webs to zero and you can dash through. If you could only deal 2 damage to the webs the life will be above zero and the life gain will be more than what you can deal. For a larger web of 12 life the life gain is also increased so if you can only do 4 damage reducing the web to an 8 the spiders start at life +2 and the web will be life 10 after your first attack. You can start to attack the web to check out it’s life total without reducing the durability of your weapon. Dealing 6 damage to a life 12 web should get you through in 3 hits. 7 or more should get you through in 2.

Going back the way you came can be interesting. If you burned a snake tunnel it will still be burned, but unlit passageways will still be dark , so if they had poisoned scorpions inside they will still be there.

If the room was empty or you grabbed the treasure, then it will still be empty, gain 1 free exp for stumbling through.

webs will stay burnt, but are rewoven if you hacked them apart. Hacking them apart a second time yields another EXP.

Gated passageways will still be opened.

Slain monsters are still slain, but sometimes attract other monsters that will attack you.
Unslain monsters are still there, but if you dealt them damage thankfully they will not regenerate. So, if you hacked at a Troll until it's life was 4/24 their life total will still be 4/24, although I'm guessing they will lose the effects of any magic spells that were cast.

Holes in the wall will sometimes yield more treasure, as will random coffins, and wells.

Mushroom rooms are still there, but may cause an allergic reaction. It doesn't cost any life, but I think it reduces the amount of mushrooms you grab. Then again it only takes 1 detox to change the game.

Most importantly are the freed knights. They always get themselves back in the same situation. Freeing a knight is the most rewarding part of the game. It is your only chance for a sharpening stone, and they also give out mana potions, and tombs of fungi. Although I have picked up those latter items from chests and drops from the sorcerer.

Summery:
Do anything to survive. If an item will help out in a battle or other situation use whatever it takes. A torch is best for a dark passage, but if all you have is a monster part it’s better to go through with 7 life than 2. A swinging rock can kill you if you have less than 4 life but not if you have 7.

Save mushrooms for times of dire need, but going up against a werewolf without a shield definitely counts as dire need.

If you meet a knight on the way in, and you can take the same route back, you should definitely do that. Assuming you have something to free the knight with. Knight encounters are the most beneficial event. Take the extra chance to free the knight if you possibly can. It might even be worth sacking the treasure at the end of the dungeon, if the treasure isn’t that special.

Be creative and adaptable. The game is pretty random, and never plays the same way twice, the strategy working well for one game could get you killed in another, and remember there’s a bit of luck here so don’t be upset when you die, it happens to the best of us. I didn't finish any of these quests on my first attempt, but with some perseverance, I was able to finish Thief mode, so it is possible. You can do it!.

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