Hello,
I just started playing this game and I am a pretty excited, because I have been observing this game for a couple of years on abandonware sites. I would like to ask You a few basic questions, if You don't mind. I am in the first dungeon after tutorial and few things appeared on my mind:

- are there any merchants in this game? I am in the middle of first dungeon and my sack is pretty full. I think there will be a lot of "rubbish" stuff in this game and I would like to know, whether it is recommended to keep all those things for latter sale, or if I can throw them away. It seems my armor and weapons don't wear out during using, so I don't want to keep eights swords and four staffs.

- is it possible to sleep in this game? Or is regeneration possible only at altars or with poitions and spells?

- are there any side quests? And is it possible to visit more dungeons at the same time? The game looks pretty straightforward so far.

- do You know any website with maps of all dungeons? I am not cheater, I am just simply curious, what will I miss after completing this game.:-)


To be honest, this game looks little bit more simple than I thought. I have been looking forward to this game for a long time and I am still enjoying it, but other dungeons like f.e. Land of lore, Realms of Arkania or Ultima underworld looked more complex.

Thanks for advices

Regards
Ondra

Kind of. You can only buy, not sell. Throw away, or keep as weights. Just be sure to never drop lots of individual items in a single dungeon, or the game will crash next time you reenter said dungeon. Throw away the weapons you don't use (or keep them in a sack as a weight); except when you're exchanging weapons, don't hurry to throw out the previous one. "Better" weapons are generally heavier and might suck in practice depending on your stats; it'll be quite some time until you find an actually decent weapon for a low-strength character. No. Use potions and herbs, they are always in abundance. Hold on to a couple of gold health runes in case you get poisoned. Not exactly sidequests; there are a couple of distinct non-mandatory things to do. After you leave the first dungeon (you probably did, but hey) the game opens up somewhat. Some dungeons you can travel through while exploring around, some you have to completely "solve" to progress. Every dungeon but one is mandatory to at least visit (but honestly, since there's not much to the game besides exploration, you'll want to explore everything). gog.com =). Beware of spoilers. But it's polished. Ohsopolished. I'll just quote an awesome person:

OK. Thank You very much for Your answers. I am in the middle of the game and I am really enjoying this game.

Question: A lot of times I will step on to a square and lose complete control of my character.

Is this normal?

If it happens at a specific location, it's a spinner trap; you should avoid it / find a switch to disable it / rely on good old luck and sneak through (Dark Lantern dungeon is the worst offender; about half the time I tried a "no deaths" playthrough, I died there). If it happens just about anywhere, something's definitely wrong.

Ah ok, so it is definitely a thing. I thought it was some kind of error. He'll just go wild and start walking forward, flipping the other way, then flipping a different way, and in general be kind of uncontrollable unless I frantically click to try and get out of the area. Is there any way to counter it? Lead boots or something?

I don't remember having specific issues with the spinners most of the time, but maybe I managed to avoid the worst of them. You could try switching them off indeed, but if you're trapped, try to get the "pattern" for them, given that everything in the game is calculated on a block/square basis. So, if you stumble on a 360° spinner for example, just move forward or backward when it pauses for half a second when you're facing the direction you're interested in. As long as you are quick enough to take advantage of this slight "pause" between each spin (everytime the view stops along a side of the square you're in), you should be able to get away quite easily.

As for a trick to counter such a thing, I haven't found any object but the manual mentions a "Dance upon the stones of wind" spell, which allows to bypass "traps, pits and pressure plates". Maybe spinners too then!

Also, I'm not sure but once you've been trapped, the automap should show the spinner. Don't forget to mark them if they're not indicated.

I wasn't able to figure out a way to counter the spinners. There are no items or spells that help, and they aren't shown on either map. The helpfulness of brute force varies from spinner to spinner; sometimes, you're expected to take a well-timed turn to escape the pull, other times it's just a straight-up spikemurderfest until forever and you should really go looking for that switch/plate.

The good news is that things will get better afterwards. The Dark Lantern is the worst offender - those two murderholes to the far east of the entrance and a trial and error spinner maze in the southern part. FWIW, neither is technically mandatory (but the best npc in the game is at the end of the Dark Lantern Dungeons level, and if you don't want to meet the best npc in the game, why are you even playing?).

I hated the spinners in Dark Lantern! They kept making the rolling boulders do the freeze in place bug and blocked my way several times. I ended up having to use Cheat Engine to freeze my hit points and just take boulders to the face like a man to avoid the spinners.

I met the NPC, is there anything more to do with him besides just snagging a sweet justice spell? I'm currently in the underground city (finished the Ship, and got the spell from the Lady).

I love the art style of the game.

No. There isn't much to do with NPCs, sadly. I like to think the hero comes back with a proper weapon after the wrap-up. Nice place, unless you're a completionist, in which case the useless section is a HUGE timesink.

You might want to climb the Elder Tree after the city to get a highly useful item. The maze (Land of Roots) is interesting, but everything in the tree is poison; there's a shield of protection from poison further in the game so you might want to postpone the maze until then. (Or not; this part doesn't presume you must have the shield, so the monsters aren't very tough.) So do I. I was *very* impressed when I first saw it. Five years later, I was similarly impressed with Morrowind. And ten years after that (in 2013), I saw a comparison image of original Morrowind vs. a hi-res mod and thought "wtf is this shit". But Anvil of Dawn? Still holds up great. Style matters.

Call me a completionist because I just finished it, I just need to go down into the mines and rescue the guy for the chest piece.

I'll take the tip about poison. Is poison permanent unless you use a potion/spell/gold rune?

I meant the mines. The mines are evil. You'll see why.
Yes. (There are monsters in the tree trunk, too, but the item is worth it.)

Yah, the mines clearly hate magic, and the jokers just hate everyone in general.
Such is life.

As far as inventory management goes, I've read about these dreaded memory overload crashes. Where is a good place to dump junk? Can I do it in the interim area between dungeons? I've been terrified of dropping more than a handful of items anywhere.

I still love Morrowind, I just pack it to the brim with mods and cross my fingers that it doesn't explosively crash.

Thanks for the tips by the way!

The good place to dump junk is wherever you decide it's junk and not worth carrying. That way, junk gets evenly distributed across dungeons and you don't have to worry about crashes. What you shouldn't do is choose a single dungeon as your easily-accessible junk-dropping hub. No, you can't drop stuff in the wilderness.

Daw, maybe there is a way to delete items from the inventory? A kind of savegame editor type thing. The threat of the crash constantly looms over my head, encouraging me to use my expendable items that I normally keep until the endgame.

Is Gryphon's Keep ever used again after it's looted out? I have quite a trio of junk weapons that I need to get rid of.