Gemstone Warrior(Apple) FAQ
Version 1.0.0
by Andrew Schultz(schultza@earthlink.net)
Disclaimer:
Please do not reproduce this FAQ for profit without my consent. It was
NOT easy to make and is part of my effort to help preserve the memory of
old Apple games. I'm a little surprised this game had no walkthrough
and hope to rectify that here, and if you'd like to add it to your
website, send me a polite e-mail referring to me by name asking for this
FAQ specifically. Thanks!
Gemstone Warrior is copyright 1984 Peter Lount and Trouba Gossen and
SSI. I am not affiliated with them in any way.
I'm pretty sure this FAQ will work for the Commodore and Atari 8-Bit
versions of this game too, but I have very little proof of this.
Gemstone Warrior GIF maps coming soon! Watch the space with
http://members.fortunecity.com/cartographics/gemwar.htm.
**AD SPACE**
Visit my home page...
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Exhibit/2762
Or better yet my maps page for classic game stuff...
http://members.fortunecity.com/cartographics
================================
INTRODUCTION
STARTING OUT
WHAT THE ITEMS DO
CROSS-ROOM MAPPING
COMBAT
WALKTHROUGH--NAVIGATING THE VARIOUS AREAS
ROOMS 0-6
ROOM 7
ROOMS 8-29
THERE IS NO ROOM 30
ROOMS 31-43
ROOM 68
ROOM 69
ROOMS 70-79
ROOMS 59-68
ROOMS 44-58
ROOM 7 AGAIN
ROOMS 0-6 AGAIN
ROOM-SPECIFIC INFORMATION
SCORING
ENDING THOUGHTS
VERSIONS AND CREDITS
================================
INTRODUCTION
Gemstone Warrior is a game that can make you feel very stupid very
fast. It's a simple precept with the same maze every time, but it's not
at all easy to get anywhere in it despite the lack of hidden dead ends.
You basically progress through certain areas, go to a random area where
you pick up pieces of the Gemstone, and get out. Along the way there
are some really annoying monsters, and of course there is a time limit
as well. Although there are beginner, normal and expert levels, I found
beginner to be quite enough, as some of the twists could be considered
arbitrary and unfair. This game is a bit like hot sauce; you're sure
you can handle something a little tougher "this time," but after a small
experience, you may be in over your head. The difficulty to concept
simplicity ratio here is high.
I have to warn you that this FAQ will tell you the way through the
maze, and I also strongly recommend using an emulator if you just want
to win the game. There are a lot of mistakes to be made, and I used one
to write this FAQ--see the very end for places you can find the image.
STARTING OUT
There are a few things to learn that will aid your quest greatly.
Mastering the controls is implied, especially the ability to run, which
will save you time to no end. Combat is heavily tied up in this; once
you learn how best to use diagonal shots or scroll quickly through
enemies to loot their items, you will gain serious advantages. You will
at least need to know how to run away if not to defeat your opponents;
you are faster than your opponents even if they are more numerous.
Mapping is also somewhat important although this document provides a
complete world map. You'll need some rudimentary knowledge of the items
and should not be afraid to experiment as even if an item is bad for
you, you'll probably have gotten killed quickly in any case.
Of course, it's too much to expect that you'll get terribly far at the
beginning, so you'll need a few games to crash around. If you wish to
do rudimentary mapping, run at all times you can't hear ticking noises
that tell you monsters are near, and REMEMBER CTRL-F PAUSES THE GAME.
Otherwise you will wind up dead while six amoebae are bouncing around
you. Being dead is bad because even if you wind up going straight to
heaven you leave the land open to be routed by demons through your sloth
and selfishness, and it will be harder for people to be good and go to
heaven under their rule. Or something.
WHAT THE ITEMS DO
I haven't really played around enough with these to give a full
evaluation. Some you use with the / key, some you (P)ut if only to get
rid of them. They aren't all useful, and they are not necessarily
critical to the game, but you should have a general idea.
White potion: leaves you on the edge of death
Green potion: takes away life
Purple potion: heals you fully
Crystal ball: destroys all enemies within the vicinity
Scroll: projects you as a skeleton
Cup: partial healing
Book: Cures poison
Skull staff: protection(?)
Horn: allows resurrection(?)
Flower: I don't know
Bent Dagger: I don't know. (P)ut it to throw at monsters?
Dice: Seems to put a bubble around you--protection?
CROSS-ROOM MAPPING
Rooms stay the same in relation to each other with one exception(see
the walkthrough.) You can't rely on room colors to tell you where you
are, as each room's color is randomly determined the first time you
enter it. Natural cave-style rooms generally have solid or stripe
prints; squarish rooms may have tricky designs like cross-hatching.
Remember that there are a few critical rooms that can be counted as
checkpoints, and passages loop around more than you will think. Also at
each checkpoint the maze may get progressively harder as twists are
added. In general, you can identify rooms by where their exits are, and
you can be confident that no group of rooms between bottlenecks is
larger than twenty. So if you want to draw your own maps, don't make
the rooms small. Treasure is placed randomly in each room, and so are
monsters. However, you can't double back to rid a room of monsters--
tripling back(go through two rooms and return) seems to be okay, though.
COMBAT
Hmm, now this is tricky and important. Conventional weapons seem to
work OK as long as you can keep your distance. In general, that allows
you to knock off monsters before they touch you, and it seems to do more
damage too. Also note that not all monsters come at you straight on, so
diagonal shots are extra effective. In general you never want to run at
a monster, and if you are engaged without being trapped, you may want to
move away, turn around, pause and fire. You can't spin around, fire
quickly and continue to run like in some bad western, though. Also,
don't be scared to run, as there are no experience points, and your
object is to get the Gemstone. Remember too that if you run out of
arrows the only way to find more items is to rummage in a treasure
chest(the fireball bow incinerates enemies and their treasure, and if
you run out of shots for THAT, you better have a crystal ball of
annihilation, which leaves corpses) so even when searching through
enemies seems like a task and you usually have enough arrows, you need
to remember to look for treasure. In the beginning, treasure will be
great, then you'll probably overcompensate for survival. The two work
off each other, though.
You also want to use the natural scenery to protect yourself. If
there is an island blocking your way and you see enemies on one side of
it, you can get in position so that you're looking over it horizontally.
FIREFLIES: They are a bit quicker than their compatriots but require
fewer hits. They're also annoyingly small, so you want to line them up
horizontally.
SPIDERS: you know they've poisoned you if your life bar turns blue.
Pick them off from a distance, and because they're so huge(thickest and
tallest in the game,) shooting diagonally is a bonanza.
AMOEBAE: they should perish with one hit, and you want to nail them
quickly or they will reproduce themselves.
EXPLODING BLOB: this will walk up to you and explode, which is
annoying, and if you try to shoot it at close range it will blow up and
do you damage. However, it can also take out other bad guys close by.
SKELETONS: annoying to deal with from above or below because they're
so thin. Run away to a horizontal passage to make them easier. Two
hits from afar should get them.
GHOSTS: slightly more annoying than skeletons, but easier to hit on a
diagonal because they're thicker.
SMALL EYEBALLS: use the fireball bow on them, but on beginner level
you shouldn't have to face them unless you dawdle or forget what CTRL-F
is for, as they only appear if you wait in one position too long.
DEMONS: run away from them and, if you must satisfy your machismo,
use the fireball bow twice to kill them. The crystal ball of
destruction will also work well.
WALKTHROUGH--NAVIGATING THE VARIOUS AREAS
In general, I will try to provide compact text maps. Numbers indicate
the rooms as they appear in the disk image. I'll try to give minimal
details about what the rooms look like but hopefully if you get lost you
can find out where you are by poking through the exits. Sometimes I
will use # as filler for a room, and / \ | - are all used for lines
though < and > indicate one-way doors. Occasionally I'll put
parentheses around a room to show that the map doesn't follow a
perfectly logical linear pattern. Rooms also are not really drawn to
scale but rather as they will fit the text area. Exits may also not be
in the same position as you'd expect from the game but they are in the
right direction, and if there are two in the same direction their order
is preserved. Winding links are there just so rooms that should be
connected are. They have no special significance.
ROOMS 0-6
Here is where you start out. It seems you can start out in any of
rooms 0-5, and you will want to remember where you came from so that you
don't panic at the end and die searching for the portal. This is the
only part of the game with dead-end rooms, but it is so small that they
are really trivial and there is only one way to go. Of course, you want
to head for room seven here but are never more than three rooms away.
You'll probably get killed a few times before you get to room seven
anyway, so take the time to familiarize yourself, learn the right way to
enter doors, use the scenery as a potential shield, and dig through
treasure efficiently.
0
|
|
1--4###
| |
| |
2--5--6--7
|
|
3
ROOM 7
8
|
|
6--7??
There's something behind the door that won't open, all right. You
won't have to worry about that for a long time. No item you can find
will open it and frankly this is a bit off-putting("What do I do?")
Still it cleverly makes the game more difficult and less repetitive.
Don't worry about the door and move on to the next sequence.
ROOMS 8-29
LLLLEEEETTTTSSSS get ready to rumble! Your first real choice appears
in room eight, and either way is the best. My personal preference is to
keep low and to the right through this sequence as you'll have to cut
through fewer rooms.
New stuff in this area:
Dungeon rooms, with smooth walls.
Oddly shaped rooms, which are disorienting.
Recommended order of walkthrough:
8, 10, 11, 13, 14, 16, 19, 21, 23, 25, 27, 28, 31.
15#########---17------20
| | | ##
| | 18 ##
| | | ##
12######### 16---19 ##
| | | | | ##
| | | | 21--22--20--24
9#####---11 13---14 | ##
| ##---## | ##
| ## 26---23----25----24
| ## ## |
8---10---11 ## 27
| ## |
| ## 28----31
| ## |
7 26---------29
THERE IS NO ROOM 30
That's how my parser interpreted the rooms, and that's how it'll stay.
But it's how I kept track of the rooms, so that's that.
ROOMS 31-43
This one is a bit frustrating as the map pretzels about itself for a
bit. A west-west-south loop through rooms 31-34 means that judging
distance you've walked to see which room you'll get to is utterly
useless. However, this is shorter than the first area, and once the two
pretzels are discovered and decoded you will approach the gates of the
old temple. You may do it sooner if you are lucky as it's not necessary
to pass through them.
New stuff in this area:
Map warping with "pretzel" rooms.
Recommended order of walkthrough:
31, 34, 36, 37, 40, 43, 68
69 (38) 31--------32-(34)
| | | ##
| 39#### (32)-34 33-32
| | ## ##
68 40####-37-36##-## 38-33
| | | | | ## |
| | | | | ## (39)
| | | | | ##
43#### 42## | | ##
| | | | 34
| | | | |
| | | | |
41####---35######
ROOM 68
We-e-e-ll! Another door locked shut to the left. There's a huge
gate to the north that hides the toughest and most random and annoying
part of the game, and that is your only alternative. Enter in the
center and get crackin, pal!
ROOM 69
Take a close look at this room. Remember its color and the door you
plan to exit from. Also remember the room you exit to(see below for a
list of descriptions) and after you've recovered the gemstone, leave by
the same exit you came in. It's the only sure way to get back to room
69. Once you're back, go to room 68.
ROOMS 70-79
These rooms are randomly slung together. The five parts of the
Gemstone are contained in random chests, so you'll want to ransack each
room you enter. As you'll want to check the identity of the first room
you enter(it is determined randomly, of course.) Even loot seems to
appear randomly. Always loot a room after you enter it.
If you get stuck, simply make a chart of all the rooms you've
visited and the exits you've taken. Take a different one each time you
enter a room and eventually you'll get back to the room adjacent to room
69 in your version of the walkthrough.
You know you have the gemstone when all five parts are there in the
middle right of your display; the white center and the green, orange,
purple and blue quarter-circles.
New stuff in this area:
Almost total room randomization, although you can return to your old
room the way you came.
Chart/descriptions of rooms--check passages you've taken and circle
the one that will get you back. Print the chart out below for
scratchwork as you may need it.
| N| S| E| W|
--+--+--+--+--+
69| | | | |
70| | | | |
71| | | | |
72| | | | |
73| | | | |
74| | | | |
75| | | | |
76| | | | |
77| | | | |
78| | | | |
79| | | | |
You can even fill in the room that each passage goes to, but that
information seems to get overwritten.
ROOMS 59-68
Wouldn't it be nice if you could go back the way you came? Well,
actually, the door you went through is locked, but guess what? The door
that was locked is now open! This part of the map doesn't actually seem
to bad, but if you're playing on beginner level, some ugly ol' Demons
are chasing you, and you'll need to outrun them or use your fireball as
the damage you take is hardly incidental. Also after smooth sailing
there are some unexpected hiccups.
New stuff in this area:
Doors that direct you to the same room
One-way doors
Nasty ugly monsters
Recommended order of walkthrough:
68, 67, 66, 65, 64, 63, 61, 58
68
|
|
67
|
| 58--59--60
##66 ## | |
/---\ | 58 62--60
| / | | |
\-64<-##65 61--63->63
\ ##
-------------63
We're not showing all of 58's exits as the ones needed for progress
will be explained below.
ROOMS 44-58
This is not really so bad. Again, it's relatively short, and there's
nothing new except a quasi-teleport that may spin you around a bit.
New stuff in this area: quasi-teleporter. The doors in 56a move you
between each other.
Recommended order of walkthrough: 58, 56, 54, 52, 49, 47, 45, 44, 7
50------48--46--44
## ##
## ##
51--50--49--47--45--44
## | ##
## | ##
## | 7--44
## |
## |
## | a56--58
## | ## ##
## | ## ##
51------52--54--56a ##
| ##
| ##
53--55--57--58
ROOM 7 AGAIN
Oh look, that's what that door was for. Go left. If you want, test
the door going up to see that it is now locked.
ROOMS 0-6 AGAIN
Even if you've forgotten where the portal was, it should not be too
hard to find. All you have to do to enter it is to step on it. Enjoy
the end screen but don't ask to continue unless you are very brave.
You'll have to do things over again, but they'll be a bit tougher.
ROOM-SPECIFIC INFORMATION INCLUDING ICON DIMENSION
This noncritical information will come in a very possible later
version of the FAQ.
SCORING
On beginner level, you get points for treasure you pick up, and you
get that doubled plus 40000 points if you return with the Gemstone in a
reasonable amount of time. I scored 166000 when I solved it first, but
you have the option to play on. I think each piece of the gemstone gets
you 10000 points.
ENDING THOUGHTS
Duhh, none yet, but they're somewhere in my brain.
End of FAQ proper
================================
Versions/credits:
1.0.0 11/3/2001 sent to GameFAQs.com with a beginner walkthrough and
some information on fighting. I suspect the expert walkthrough requires
more accurate command of the controls as the map is still the same.
Parts are incomplete, but there's enough to solve the game.
asimov.net for having this game. Incidentally Peter Lount has a copy of
the disk image on his own website so you can probably feel extra un-
guilty about copying this.
DJGPP.com and kahei.com, the usual suspects, who allowed me to analyze
bytes and write/compile C programs to process information, respectively.
The Village People, whose songs "Macho Man" and "In the Navy" kept my
spirits up through various frustrations with this game. There's another
song I can't quite remember too...
