Deathlord: Starting out

The starting position

So, here we go. To start out with the party is stuck, naked and unarmed, outside the town of Kawa. Here's a map of the town:

Not the whole map--there's a small level below which I won't go to yet

First thing to do is get equipment. Shuten, Yoshinaka, and Shigeko all buy a Masakari (a woodsman's hatchet, not a weapon) and a Haramaki-do. (Haramaki is a type of chest armor, not sure what the do refers to--either it's supposed to be bronze or refers to the chest, which is redundant because a Haramaki without the -do exists) Nobody else gets anything, but that's because I don't have enough, and in the back rows they shouldn't get hit.

I also buy a Holy Symbol for Shigeko. That's useful when fighting undead.

Typical useless NPC "hints"..,

The NPCs in Kawa, like the rest of Deathlord, are almost uniformly useless. Some ask me to "Pay Up!" which means I have to bribe them for their information, but I don't have enough gold at this point to bother. I also gleam from some random folks to "Find Senju" (no mention of who or what this is) and that there are rumored to be caverns under the palace somewhere. Also one townsperson tells me "Yokahama" is no more, but was to the southeast. And a bunch of folks say "Kobito hide gold."

They struck first so the guards won't be coming after me.

Bashing down one door produces an angry group of Kichigai who immediately attack. There are only three of them, but they keep summoning new allies. Fortunately I'm able to kill them. My party now has 8 experience each.

You might be wondering how I know that, since there is no place anywhere in the game to see how much experience a character currently has. It's because I'm looking into the memory of the program using Cheat Engine. (For those curious, it's an array of 12 bytes stored at 01A13296 using VICE)

Shuten, Yoshinaka, and Gio were mostly useless during this fight. Shuten and Yoshinaka can't hit the broadside of a barn yet. And Gio's spells weren't helpful. Actually on that note, let's take a look at the level 1 spells my characters can cast:

Shigeko:
NASU: A basic heal spell
AKARI: A basic light spell
KATAI: A single-target protection spell.

"Nasu" probably derives from "Naosu," "to cure." "Akari" means "Light" (Noun, not verb) and Katai means "Hard."

Gio:
KUSAMOTSU: A "hold" spell, only seems to work outdoors.
HIKAKOMU: To-Hit boost to a character
ICHIHAN: Tells you the level of the dungeon you're on

"Kusamotsu" derives from "Kusa" (grass) and "motsu" (to hold). Of course "motsu" is more like "to be in possession of" so this is a little weird and E-J Dictish. So is "Hikakomu" which derives from "hi" (flame) and "kakomu" (to envelop). This is basically a cut-and paste of AD&D's Faerie Fire spell. Ichihan I'm guessing is a cutoff of "Ichi Handan" which is an E-J "Location Determination".

Tomoe:
TODO: Your basic "Magic Missile" spell.
NERU: A sleep spell
TATE: A single-target protection spell.

I have no idea where "Todo" comes from. "Neru" means "to lie down/sleep" so that's obvious, and "Tate" means "Shield." Like the kind of shield you hold in your hand, though, so it's a little E-Jish.

Frank:
KIRI: Escape from battle
HIBANA: Attack all enemies
SHOTEN: Augment dexterity

"Kiri" and "Hibana" are easy, they mean "Mist" and "Sparks" respectively. "Shoten" I don't know about. My best guess is it derives from the word 昇天 which means "ascend," but in the sense of "ascend into the heavens" or "die." That's a tough one.

The MVPs for this battle were Shigeko, Tomoe, and Frank. Shigeko for curing the wounded, Tomoe for casting Todo and Neru, and Frank's Hibana spell. Actually, at this point I wish I had rolled enough so that Gio would be a better frontliner than Shigeko, because her spells at the moment aren't terribly useful. I'll probably swap her out at some point soon.

Already I'm silently regretting not making a thief--Shuten's HP level is dropping a lot with futile attempts to smash doors open. With a size of 20 he's opening them fairly regularly but I'm already having to rest and heal him more than I'd like. I'll probably buy a lock pick at some point, even though I don't have any characters that are good with them.

If you're not careful, you can literally kill yourself slamming into locked doors or gates

Behind another door I find the Kobito that the townspeople told me about (I presume) and they immediately attack. This is a much tougher battle than the Kichigai as there were 5 of them, but Tomoe put them to sleep and the fighters cut them up. Now I have 15 experience per person.

I should note that I used a somewhat-exploity trick for this fight. Characters only get experience if they directly contribute in a fight. That means landing a blow or casting a spell. If a character just sits and guards they get nothing. Gio's spells are mostly useless so, I "cast" a spell for her, then canceled out when asked which spell I wanted to cast. Apparently this still "counts" as casting a spell, despite not consuming any MP. This trick is really useful for getting your back row experience when they otherwise couldn't do anything. It won't work if a character is completely out of MP though.

I had to smash that grate open. You can't lockpick those.

...And here's the dwarves'--I mean "kobito"--treasure trove. I save-stated before this just to be safe, but I looted the whole trove with no repercussions. This was actually pretty surprising as I could have sworn that stealing can get the entire town guard breathing down your neck. And in Deathlord, once you piss off the guards, they never forget, even if you leave the town and come back, so it's an extreme risk. I guess these treasures don't count. Also when it comes to the guards, if you attack someone in town that's also a no-no. It's OK to kill people if you get attacked first, but no making the first blow, even to characters that are hostile.

The "diamyo's residence" is here. The diamyo (don't you mean DAImyo?) is the boss of the town, and he'll also attack and quite possibly kill us if I go in. So I won't for the time being.

Don't go in here until you have a level or two

Next stop--the palace. I'm just going to talk to folks there; there's not much else to do at this point, though there will be shortly. The palace is very close to Kawa and on the way to our next major destination, so getting there is easy.

Kodan, the first and largest continent. The world map is divided into 56 x 56 tile regions--Most areas take one, a few take two, only Kodan takes three. Kawa and the palace are in the northwest quadrant, very near to each other.

The palace is pretty big, but remarkably empty. One grocer and one healer, and that's pretty much it:

Might as well start by greeting the emperor.

Lord BritishEmperor Nakamoto doesn't do much in Deathlord.

The Emperor has nothing useful at all to say. Interesting fact--if your party is tough enough you can actually kill the emperor. Behind him is a secret door, and beyond that, treasure. Of course this will also prevent you from winning the game, so this is generally a bad idea.

There's nothing at the palace we need particularly right now. Most townspeople are just as useless here as they are elsewhere, but we do get one useful tip:

This will come in handy later. Also townspeople know about the caverns we learned about in Kawa; if we ask about them they tell us they're in the southeast tower. I'm not going there yet as I'll need some levels under my belt first.



Next stop is Tokugawa in the northwest corner of Kodan, the continent we're on. On the way I get ambushed by some skeletons, and Shigeko gets to show how useful her Holy Symbol is.

Holy symbols have limited charges, but a single use killed 4 out of 5 of the skeletons I was facing in one shot.

After this fight, Shuten and Yoshinaka have 19 XP while everyone else has 18. To this day I'm not quite sure how XP works in this game. My one guess is that the party got 20 experience total for this fight (4 per Skeleton) and it got divided equally amongst those who contributed, with those in the back getting cut off.

I might as well briefly explain how combat works in Deathlord. Combat works in an I-go-you-go fashion, with the entire party acting in order, then the enemy party responding in kind. Only the first three characters can attack the enemy directly; this holds true regardless of whether or not they're wielding missile or melee weapons (and thus bringing into question why missile weapons even exist). The characters in the back row can only C)ast spells, N)egotiate with enemies, or attempt to F)lee. Any character can also R)etreat to the back of the party, but that doesn't take effect until the next round. It's extremely simple, yet fairly deadly.

Tokugawa is the town you'll probably spend the most time in on the first continent.

Tokugawa is the real hub of Kodan. Its stores have some nice equipment, though I can't afford some of it yet, namely the better armor.

The missile weapon dealer here is the real point of interest now. With the money I've accumulated from fights, robbing the Kobito in Kawa, and leftover from my initial expenditure, I can buy a Great Bow for Shuten and Yoshinaka. The Great Bow is one of the best weapons in the game for these guys, so it's a good purchase, despite being 300 gold each. Until I find a Berzerk Sword for Shuten and a Katana for Yoshinaka, they'll stick with this.

Information-wise there's not much hear. A Mahotsukai tells us the Deathlord is moving south (kind of worthless information) and a Toshi mentions that "The Yakuza of Kawa are famous." There's also this place:

Ignoring the warning, for the time being I'm going in. Past the flaming skull on the floor there's a door; smashing it down I get attacked by two zombies. Shigeko makes short work of them with her holy symbol, and they're good experience. The area beyond them looks empty except for some locked doors that hide coffins (which nasty undead can be in)

The necromancer himself is behind a secret door:

Occurances like this are all too common in Deathlord...

This is why I keep save states, just in case. Immediately upon finding that secret door, the necromancer popped out, initiated battle and cast a spell which wiped out my entire party without so much as a chance to act. I knew this was going to happen because I'm familiar with the game, but for players going in blind they're likely to run into instant-death situations like this all the time. Deathlord does not fool around.

..Oh, and did I mention that on a real Apple/C64 there's no restarting the computer and reloading? In an extra bit of obnoxiousness, Deathlord features permadeath.  Other games of the time might penalize you for hard rebooting--The Bard's Tale made you lose all your gold if you don't save at an inn, for example--but as soon as a character runs out of HP, Deathlord instantly saves the game to disk, even in the middle of a battle. So if you reboot and reload, you'll find that whoever died is still dead. Standard procedure when I played as a kid was to pop the disks out of the drive every time I got in battle so if someone got killed I could restart the computer without the death being saved. I'm not a fan of this permadeath feature, especially given the unforgiving nature of the game. I'm guessing neither are most players.

Again, Deathlord does not fool around.

Next, I'll head out to the newbie dungeon and try to gain some levels. I'll detail that in a later post.