Message from me (Dave Makin - programmer of Crystal Dragon) I don't know who wrote the following instructions for Crystal Dragon, but I have slightly modified them (without altering his opinions about the game or the programmers). I should say he omitted to mention: 1. If you start a new game with difficulty set to easiest then you will start the game with magic map permenantly available. 2. To activate your magic map just left-click on the spell-light on the right middle of the screen and right-click to exit map mode. (see the .bmp file in this zip for a general screen layout) 3. I would definately recommend installing Crystal Dragon to a "hard drive" if running on WinUAE or Fellow since I don't think save game will work to .adf files (for the save game floppy). If you are using a "real" amiga and have a hard drive then install to hard drive otherwise use the floppy version. You must run from WB anyway. 4. The install to hard drive program is on Crystal Dragon disk III and must be run from WB. (The program for making a fresh save game floppy if you are using a real Amiga is also on Crystal Dragon Disk III, but this is irrelevant for an emulated Amiga) Game Name : Crystal Dragon Number of Disks : 4 Rom Type : 2.0 Status under UAE : Run from WB or install to HD Re-edited on 11/10/99 Crystal Dragon - very nearly the perfect DM clone, but by the time they got round to releasing it, the (old) Amiga market was in terminal decline, so it got overlooked. Crystal Dragon is huge. Bigger and harder than Black Crypt, but suspiciously similar. As with Black Crypt, the puzzles aren't as good as DM/CSB, but the interface, monsters, graphics and spells are damn near perfect. The programmers, on the other hand, wrote the world's worst trackloader, and made themselves even more unpopular by providing the traditional cheesy anim intro which YOU CANNOT SKIP! Unless you're loading a previously saved game, you have to sit through the whole bloody thing. Anyway, that aside, if you like DM/CSB, Crystal Dragon is great. If you don't like DM, go and play Doom or Zool or something. Go on, p**s off. Essential Information Dispensing with the 17 page background story (yes, 17 pages!), most of CD is standard stuff, right click to swing your weapon, DEX controls the recovery time before you can swing again, that sort of thing, but there are several wrinkles you need to know. SPELLS Spells are scribed into your spell book as and when you find them - there are 4 elemental flavours of spell. Select the right one and holding the scroll in the cursor, click on the spellbook to scribe it. You cannot scribe it if the spell level is higher than your own (this does not apply to magic-users). BEWARE! You cannot delete spells from the books, and each book only holds a certain number. Make sure you leave room for the Ancient Magic spells found later on in the game. To cast the spells, select the book, select the level at which you wish to cast, then double click the spell name. Spells cast on characters (e.g. SHIELD), click once on the spell and once on the character. If you fail to cast - keep trying. You can cast a spell from a scroll by right- clicking it. SPELL LIST EARTH FIRE AIR WATER Strength Magic Missile Read Runes Heal Party Magic Map Identify Item Compass Party Shield Shield Heal Lightning Light Cure Wounds Fireball Cure Poison Remove Curse Dispel True Sight Cure Disease Water Bolt Detect Trap Resist Heat Confusion Resurrect ANCIENT SPELL LIST EARTH FIRE AIR WATER Rock Wall Fire Bolt Sanctify Water Ball Recharge Regenerate God Strike Ice Bolt Hold Evil Teleport Poison Ball Satiate EARTH Strength +1 STR per level. Duration 4 mins Magic map Duration 3 mins + 90s per level Shield +1 AC per level. Duration 2 mins +60s per level Cure Wounds Cures 1 wound per level Dispel Dispels magical forcefields equal to level cast or below FIRE Magic missile 4-154HP damage based on level Identify item succeeds if level cast is greater than or equal to dungeon level/3 Heal 6-150HP based on level Fireball 15-194HP damage based on level (oh yes..) True Sight detects illusions. Duration 3mins +30s per level Resist heat Duration 3mins, heat spell damage -2% per level AIR Read runes Duration 2mins. Read runes equal to level cast or below Compass Duration 2mins +2mins per level Lightning 10-150HP damage based on level Cure poison Will cure 2*level of spell %poison Cure disease Will cure 2*level of spell %disease Confusion Confuses target for 2s +1s per level WATER Heal party Heals 6-150HP damage to the party Party shield +1 AC per level. Duration 2mins +60s per level Light Duration 4mins +60s per level Remove cursed Removes one cursed item per level of spell cast Water bolt 10-200HP damage based on level Resurrect resurrect a character equal to level cast or below ANCIENT MAGIC Rockwall Duraion 20s per level Recharge Recharges magic items with level cast charges Hold evil Duration 8s per level Fire bolt 11-250HP damage based on level Regenerate regenerate 10% per level HPs and stamina Teleport range = level*2 radius Sanctify Sanctifies a fixed area, 30s per level God strike 274-490HP damage based on level (oh yes, indeedy) Poison ball 2-50HP damage for 3 + level rounds Water ball 11-210HP damage based on level Ice bolt 27-279HP damage based on level Satiate replenishes 10% per level food and water Detect Trap The light in the centre of the movement icons will glow, and be at its brightest when the characters are standing right next to the trap Identify Item A party leader with high Wisdom will identify items quite often anyway, but if this fails, hold it in your hand and cast this spell. Sanctify Creatures cannot enter the area of effect unless they were already inside it when cast - these will be trapped but active. Hold evil All creatures on the current level will be paralyzed SPECIAL KEYS SHIFT-Z - display level, depth and XY coords P - pause. Click on the six runes for level hints! MISCELLANEOUS Right click magic items to cast spells from them. Double click magic weapons or shields to use their magic effects. To climb down a rope (cool, eh?) hold the rope in your hand, stand in front of a pit and right click on the rope. Ropes vary in length, and you can descend several levels in one action. Obviously, if the rope is too short.... Missile weapons - two slots in the bottom left of the screen for quivers and knifebelts to auto- load missile weapons. Slings and stones - stones can be placed in a bag, used like a quiver to auto-load the weapon. Knives can be placed in a knifebelt to auto-load for throwing. Parchments - characters with low Wisdom won't understand them. Wounds - appear in red on the body inventory. If left to fester, they will eventually become diseased. Disease - the yellow bar on the far right of the body inventory next to the right gauntlet. Poison - the green bar next to the left gauntlet. Sleep will not cure wounded, diseased or poisoned characters. Resurrection - hold the skull in one hand and cast the spell or use an item with the other hand. You need to match the level of the resurrection spell to the level of the dead character. Pick Locks - Thieves can hold a lockpick in the cursor and click on a lock to try and pick it. Stealing - Thieves can left-click on a target monster to try and steal an item from it. Disarm Traps - Thieves and Assassins can disarm non-magical traps by left-clicking on it. HINTS AND TIPS - WARNING! SPOILERS FOLLOW!! General notes: Make sure you leave space in the spellbooks for the 12 ancient magic spells. To be honest, I really only found HOLD EVIL and TELEPORT to be massively useful. By the time you can use ancient magic, you're doing 2000+ HP damage each combat round, so the ability to wang in 2 or 300 hp damage from a spell is wee buns, really. (Holy Avenger/Dragons Bane blades + Mace+7 and Hell- hammer weapons add up to well over 2000 hp damage). Having both characters able to CURE POISON/HEAL/CONFUSION is seriously useful. TRUESIGHT/SHIELD/STRENGTH/FIREBALL probably worth duplicating as well. Hang onto the figurines and the pearl keys!!! ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Levels 1-3 Oh, come on. If you're having real trouble staying alive, try starting a new game. Do NOT generate any characters, simply press DONE on the character generation screen to start the game (in best "Commander Jamieson" tradition, Elite fans) with a couple of well 'ard boys who can kill pretty much anything on the first level with a single blow. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Level 4: Zombies The blowpipe is well handy for later if you can find it. Turens skull is a well-charged teleporter which is also pretty damn useful later on. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Level 5: West Tower Make sure you check the grates in the long corridor with the confusion spell. You need that bronze coin! -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Level 7: Wishing Well To enter the well, you must have all 4 coins: copper, bronze, gold and silver Place them on the switches in the positions indicated by the scroll to drop down through the levels. Keep truesight on, and check out the rooms halfway to pick up Fury/Sentinel and the Bone Wand of Teleportation (from the shelf with Edriks bones. Mage armour is very good and light for weak characters.... ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Level 8: Fury/Sentinel Fury/Sentinel exposes a Bag of Holding, which is useful. Getting downstairs: The pillar at the N end of the room N of the confusing area has 4 bricks. Pressed in the right order they will remove a pillar in that room which blocks a niche with a key. Also in the square with the key is a switch which will remove a wall exposing the door to the stairs down. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Level 9: Eyes of Ariath Straightforward, as long as you keep CONFUSING the eyes and then bash the shit out of them. The rusty key opens one of the doors downstairs. The treasury puzzle: the 4 coins are numbered, place them in their corresponding niches as you count round the room from the door. The coins serve no useful function thereafter, so ditch the lot. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Elitia the Sorceress A lot of people have had trouble killing Elitia. All I can say is make sure your characters are tooled up and STRENGTHED to the max and just pile damage into her whilst skipping around avoiding her spells. She regenerates and heals herself at a ferocious rate, so you need to be able to inflict combat damage at an equally large rate. Perhaps a thief could just steal the needed key from her? Level 13: Seek the Stones The red room floorpads run thusly: 5 3 RED GEM 8 7 2 1 DOOR 6 4 7 gives you access to the gem and running through the sequence 1-8 omitting 7 opens the door. The 4 stones go in their slots from top to bottom (IN THIS ORDER!) amber, red, green, blue. This moves the boulder at the bottom onto the button and opens the level exit. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Level 14: Morag the Sorceress "Mirror Image hides a key" - not if you've got TRUESIGHT on it doesn't. The mirror image of that pillar is an illusion which you won't even notice with truesight. There are _vast_ numbers of beholders lurking in the central areas of the two lower levels and Morag's temple. Crank up those CONFUSION spells. Otherwise straightforward. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Level 15: Zelda The Sorceress One of the pentagrams in "The Vault" is a switch which opens a wall in the study which hides the key to the Apothecary. Also note that the Poison Ball scroll and Fireball staff both control switches which open doors in the upper level - this gives you access to Zelda herself. The wall switch immediately inside the Apothecary door opens the Library. The area sealed off by the pit: Look behind you on the wall - press the switch and toss something into the teleport to transport it onto a floor switch which will close the pit. You need to toss the object into the correct side of the teleport, but I forget which one that is. The peculiar red lock at the far east could be a red herring - the red cauldron key looks like it should open it, but doesn't. Something the programmers forgot to finish, or something more devious? This could be linked to the "Teleports point the way forward" clue, which probably refers to the key-shaped area below the main temple which has two teleports in it. Since these simply toss you back upstairs, I couldn't get any further with this. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Level 16: Hell's Heroes The very heavy key at the end of the long corridor goes in the niche that asks for "VILE ET ALM" (evil metal) to get a piece of chaos armour. Then the key opens two locks - one upstairs and one downstairs. The pearl keys finally get used on this level. The guardroom has a long and complex series of buttons to open a niche to a key. If you kept the pearl keys, you can acquire two full sets of chaos armour (I think I was missing one piece) and two chaos swords. These are cursed, but excellent - wear them. There's a room to the west of the upper level that I never got into: I can hear a guard stomping around through the wall, and there's a hole in the ceiling of the room below. There are also three footpads near the level entrance, coupled with two flanking footpads which disappear walls near the three central pads after a 25s delay. There's also a teleport which pops you out by the central footpad. Some cunning combination of pads and teleports probably opens the western room, but I couldn't suss it. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Level 17: Dragonlord Just drink the invisibility potion and kick the shit out of him. If you have all four figurines, you can get the Dragons Bane sword - well worth having! The Hell-Hammer also transforms your meek, mild-mannered cleric into a total killing machine. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Level 18: Green Dragons Really, really hard. Dragons can't go through doors, so run to the egg- laying chamber to the west of the entrance chamber. Use that as a base to jump out and bash the dragons, then run back in and cure poison on yourself ASAP. Repeat ad nauseam. Dragonslayer arrows actually do a lot of damage, but so does green dragon breath. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Levels 19-21: Lava, Blue and Red Dragons Straight-forward compared to green dragons, especially once you get HOLD EVIL on level 21. Don't waste your time carrying the treasure - As far as I can see, it's there to satisfy tradition, rather than serving any useful function. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Level 22: Labyrinth Straight-forward - confuse the red Beholders and bash them in. There don't appear to be any secret buttons, so just explore the whole level and boogie on down to the final level. The second crystal key is on level 23, so you can't get the dragon until you've been down there. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Level 23: Ariath Piece of piss. Use HOLD EVIL to freeze the purple dudes and kick their heads in (two at a time) while they're frozen. They don't appear to go through certain doors, so you can do this with impunity. Make sure you've cleared the whole level before you take the power gems. Ariath dies easily with repeated blasts from the crystal dragon.