Games as old as this one (1983) can strike modern gamers as being totally
baffling when no instructions are available. This guide will tell you
absolutely everything you need to know to be able to play and enjoy Fortress of
the Witch King on an Apple II or emulator - and then about four times as much
information again, making it a fairly exhaustive documentation of the game's
workings.
LEGAL
This guide is copyright (c) Wade Clarke 2009. It may not be reproduced for any
commercial purposes. It may not be redistributed with any alterations. If you
wish to host it on your gaming site, please email me for permission.
*** ABOUT THE CONTENTS
To jump to any particular section of the guide, do a text search for the
bracketed number beside that section heading in the contents.
When you are referred to other sections while reading the guide, the number of
the target section will be presented in square brackets. EG: 'See COMBAT [14]'
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CONTENTS OF THIS GUIDE
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(1) INTRODUCTION
(2) GAMEPLAY OVERVIEW
(3) CONTROLS
(4) SAVING YOUR GAME
GAME DETAILS -
(5) YOUR PARTY. GOLD AND WEIGHT
(6) MOVEMENT & THE MAIN MENU COMMANDS
(7) UNIT TYPES
Warriors _ Clerics _ Scouts (SIGHT POWER explained) _ Raiders _
Wizard _ Elves and Dwarves
(8) TOWNS AND HAGGLING -
Secrets of haggling
(9) ITEMS AND SPELLS YOU CAN BUY IN TOWN
Rations _ Teleport Spell _ Spell of Seeing _ Rafts _ Mules
(10) SPECIAL ITEMS (NON-PURCHASEABLE)
Sword (Dragon Slayer) _ Talisman of Speed _ Hammer of Thor
(11) Magic Maps
Reading and following magic maps
(12) SPELL OF SEEKING
(13) BIG FOUR ITEMS
Horn of Opening _ Boots of Stealth _ Armour of Defence _
Sword of Strength
(14) COMBAT
(15) DRAGON DENS
(16) INSIDE THE FORTRESS
(17) FIGHTING THE WITCH KING
(18) SCORING
APPENDICES -
(19) GAME STRATEGY OVERVIEW
(20) STARTING INVENTORY BY DIFFICULTY LEVEL
(21) MULTIPLAYER CONSIDERATIONS
(22) COMBAT SPELLS
(23) THE CHEATINGEST THING YOU CAN DO IN THE GAME (WITHOUT HACKING IT)
(24) COMMODORE 64 VERSION
(25) FM-7 VERSION
Fortress of the Witch King (FOTWK) was released by Avalon Hill's Microcomputer
Games division for the Apple II in 1983, and ported to the Commodore 64 and the
Japanese FM-7 in 1984. FOTWK is an RPG-adventure game in which your goal is to
build up a party of adventurers who are sufficiently numerous, hardy and
well-equipped to gain entry to the Witch King's fortress. Once you've found the
Witch King you have to defeat him in one-on-one combat to win the game. Up to
four players can participate in a game, and there is some scope for fighting
each other along the way, but the winner in any game is always the player who
offs the Witch King.
FOTWK takes its major cues from 'Wilderness Campaign', a game released by
Synergistic Software for the Apple II in 1980. Wilderness had the same party
building and bartering, a world map, random encounters and a master baddie whom
you had to ultimately bash in order to win. In Wilderness's case it was The
Necromancer. FOTWK is prettier than Wilderness, more sophisticated in most
areas and has the multiplayer capability as well, though in broad design terms
it is probably less watertight. What's most important is that FOTWK is a lot of
fun to play, and has a particular mini epic feel to it that is the hallmark of
this genre of early eighties home gaming. You can experience a whole
rags-to-riches adventure campaign in the space of an hour or so, or in less
time than that if you play the game on an overclocking emulator.
Most of FOTWK is programmed in Applesoft BASIC, and in the course of writing
this guide I examined the program listings to verify a lot of the game's
details and mathematical formulae.
The program generates a fresh terrain map of dimensions 40 x 40 when you start
a new game. The Witch King's fortress is situated roughly towards the centre of
the map and the players' start positions are randomised. Each player can choose
their own difficulty level from 1-4. This difficulty level affects nothing but
the size and contents of a player's initial inventory, making it possible to
handicap certain players in a multiplayer game. All players share the one game
map, whose difficulty they will have to agree on. The higher the game map's
difficulty (1-20), the more snakey the terrain will be, with more mountain and
lake spaces.
Players take turns moving around the map on foot or by the occasional teleport
spell, looking for wandering monsters to fight while revealing the map terrain.
Killing monsters gets you gold and other helpful booty. Gold you earn can be
spent in towns on rations, equipment and more members for your party, including
some with special abilities. Warriors are the base unit of this game. Without
them you can't fight anything, and more warriors = more firepower. While other
units add neat powers to your arsenal, fights still rest on your warriors
because they act as your hit points. If you run out of warriors, a fight is
considered to be over and lost to you, no matter who else you have left
standing. It's not possible to die and face 'GAME OVER' in FOTWK, you are just
inconvenienced and forced to start rebuilding your warrior population from
scratch.
Warriors also need to eat every turn, though no other units do, so make sure
you buy enough rations in towns to sustain them, or they (and some other units
that normally don't eat) start dying of starvation. If you run out of food or
warriors, or both, you can visit a monk sanctuary where you can receive free
top ups. If away from a sanctuary you can try praying for divine help, but this
eats up a whole turn each time you try.
The other important basic unit is the scout. The more scouts you have, the
further you can see from your current position on the map, allowing you to
explore and reveal the terrain much more quickly. Scouts will also help you
slip into the Witch King's fortress when it's time to do that.
It is possible to hug the first town you find on the map and build up a party
entirely within the compass of a few spaces, triggering monster encounters
nearby, earning gold, returning to town and spending it, repeating this cycle.
The reason you have for venturing further and exploring the map is that there
are four major magical items to be found out there, henceforth referred to as
the Big Four items, which can tremendously enhance your ability to successfully
invade the Witch King's fortress and clobber him in a one-on-one fight. Each of
these items is found on a particular mountain space on the map, where it is
guarded by a dragon.
You can't see these dragon dens on the screen, they look just like all the
other mountain spaces. So how do you find them? If you can obtain one of the
rare Spells of Seeking, you can cast it, name the item you're looking for and
you'll be shown where it is on the map. The harder but more typical way to
locate an item is by finding the corresponding magic map (there are four you
can collect, one for each item), successfully interpreting it and then
following it.
Once you've built your party up a bit and maybe located some or all of the
magic items, then it's time to invade the Witch King's fortress. This means
going there and successfully finding the entrance, at which point you'll run a
gauntlet of tough back-to-back monster battles. Once you find the room in which
the King is hiding, you have to defeat him in a one-on-one final battle over
which you have no direct control. Fail or retreat at any point in the fortress
and you'll be evicted from it, with bruised dignity at the least and maybe most
or all of your party devastated at the most. A game only ends after the Witch
King has been slain, and the slaying player wins.
Turn on your CAPS LOCK or the game will ignore 90% of your keypresses.
The game always lists onscreen what keys you can press to perform available
actions at any particular time. Or it may ask you a clear question requiring a
clear typed answer and a hit of RETURN.
A command and the key that launches it will be presented in this FAQ in the
following manner:
(M)OVE
(E)ND TURN
etc.
The only place in the whole game you are likely to be tricked into feeling you
don't know what to press next is after you have chosen to 'M'OVE, and been
presented with the close up map view and directional options. If you try to
move diagonally at this point (northwest, northeast, southwest or southeast)
and have fewer than 2 Movement Factors remaining, you will not be allowed to
move and the game will not react at all; it is waiting for you to choose a
non-diagonal direction to move in.
FOTWK asks you after every turn if you want to save your game.
The disk image of FOTWK I originally downloaded from the asimov Apple II
archive had a few problems, including a bug that would prevent you from
restoring any of your saved games. The name of the buggy version is:
fortess_of_the_witch_king.dsk.gz (Yes, it is incorrectly titled 'fortess')
After booting the program and answering 'Y'ES to the question asking if you
want to resume a saved game, you are given a prompt where you can type in the
name of the save file, or catalog the disk by typing '?'. If you're using the
bugged version, nothing that you type here will have any effect. In essence,
the program becomes stuck and all you can do is reboot.
I fixed this bug and a couple of others and submitted the fixed version to the
asimov archive in May 2009, where it can be found thus:
In the fixed version, you can save and restore multiple games as was originally
intended.
The important thing to know about saving is that when you are asked to enter a
name for the file, you must give the save file a name with the suffix .SAVE
An example of what to type:
WADE1.SAVE
is a valid save name, but plain old
WADE1
is not.
If I had just typed 'WADE1', the game would have been saved under that name,
but the program would not have been able to find the WADE1 files later to
resume from them. This may seem weird, but these were the old days of
rough'n'tumble file management. The game's original manual would have told you
of the need to append .SAVE to any save file names, and the purpose of this
would probably have been to make sure you didn't erase any of the actual FOTWK
program files, none of which end with .SAVE
You can save as many game positions as you want to, to both the FOTWK game disk
and any other DOS 3.3 floppies, so long as you keep giving the save files
different names and the disks have space left on them. When resuming a game,
enter ? then RETURN at the prompt to see all the files on the current disk if
you need to be reminded of what you might have called your save file(s). If you
run out of room on a disk, use an Apple file maintenance or utility program to
delete some unwanted save games, or do it manually if you know your way around
APPLESOFT. You can also RENAME files to add the .SAVE suffix to them if you
forgot to type it when saving your game.
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GAME DETAILS
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(5) YOUR PARTY. GOLD AND WEIGHT
Your party consists of a collection of living units, your gold and rations,
useful equipment and magic items and spells.
Since gold pays for everything, you'll want to make sure you can carry all that
you find. Gold is the only item that counts towards your numerical weight
allowance.
The number of gold pieces you can carry is:
5 + (No. of scouts in party X 5) + (No. of warriors X 10) + (No. of mules X 50)
with a cap of 30,000.
Whenever you find more more gold than you can carry, you will immediately drop
the excess new gold, which is lost forever. The solution is to start buying
mules early in the adventure. Bulk up on them in town and you will have
developed a buffer so that you'll rarely or never drop any money. Remember that
for every 10 mules you buy, you can carry another 500 gold pieces on top of
what your scouts and warriors can already carry.
When it's your turn, you will be presented with the MAIN MENU of options.
Select with a single keypress.
..............
1 = LOOK AT MAP
You will see a screen sized cumulative lo-res graphic map showing all terrain
you have personally explored and all terrain you have ever seen - and can see
from where you stand now - as determined by your Sight Power (SP) (See UNIT
TYPES [7] - SCOUTS). Each square on the map is represented by a coloured
rectangle. All unexplored portions of the map are black. Movement off the edge
of the map is not possible.
KEY TO MAP:
WHITE = Your party's location.
YELLOW = Town. Buy units and supplies here.
PINK = Sanctuary. The monks will give you free food or warriors if your party
is starving / at death's door.
GREEN = Woods. Most common terrain type, in which the chance of encountering
monsters is average.
BROWN = Mountains. Terrain in which the chance of encountering monsters is
high. Dragon dens are also found in mountains (there are only 4 dragon dens per
game.)
BLUE = Lake. Impassable without a raft. No encounters occur on lakes.
DARK BLUE = The fortress of the Witch King. The fortress covers a 2 x 2 area.
If the halo of squares revealed around your party when you move is annoyingly
tiny (EG you can only see 1 space in each direction), you need more scouts to
increase your SP. See UNIT TYPES [7] - SCOUTS.
.......................
2 = LOOK AT CLOSE UP MAP
In this mode you will see a prettier, Ultima style hi-res graphic of the area
immediately around your party. The potential display area is 10 x 10 squares,
but you will still only see in this mode squares that you have personally
travelled through or ever 'seen' from afar via your scout-determined SP.
The square white cursor is your party location. Everything else should be
easily discernible - woods, mountains, pink sanctuary castles, orange+white
towns, blue lakes, and the 2 x 2 fortress of the Witch King.
............
I = INVENTORY
See a list of all your units, supplies and equipment.
.......
M = MOVE
In each turn of the game you have a base rate of 3 Movement Factors (MF's) to
spend on moving around the world map. You can increase this number by finding
Boots of Stealth or a Talisman of Speed. If your party is starving, your base
rate drops to 1 MF.
All MF requirements when moving are determined by the contents of the target
map square.
Moving north, south, west or east, or staying where you are (which is the
curious method needed to revisit a town you're in, for instance) all cost 1 MF
normally. They cost 2 MF if the target was a mountain space, however you can
move onto or stay on mountains if you only have 1 MF left.
Moving diagonally (northwest, northeast, southwest, southeast) costs 2 MF
normally, or 3 MF if the target was a mountain space. If you have fewer than
2MF remaining and try to move diagonally, the game simply ignores your
keypresses until you choose a non-diagonal direction. Again there's an
exception where mountains are concerned. While you will be charged 3 MF to move
diagonally onto mountains if you have 3+ MF, you will still be allowed to make
the move if you only have 2 MF remaining.
Note that you can perform unlimited status checking tasks, like viewing maps or
your inventory, at no cost to your MF during your turn.
When you have expended all MF (zero remain), are finished with status checks
and content to commence the next turn - or to pass control to the next player
in a multiplayer game - or to end your turn immediately for any reason even
though you have MF's remaining - you have to let the program know by pressing
'E' for END TURN at the main menu.
ASIDE - THE TELEPORT EXPLOIT: If you cast a teleport spell while you have any
MF's remaining, it will cost you 1 MF. However if you cast the teleport spell
last thing in your turn, when you are at 0 MF but before you have pressed 'E',
you get to make the teleport and take action in your new location, and your
turn still won't have ended. In fact it's possible to cast multiple teleport
spells while at 0 MF and extend a turn for as long as you are able and willing
to use up teleports.
............
U = USE SPELL
Choose this and the game will go through all of your available spells, asking
you in the case of each one whether you want to cast it now. Keep pressing 'N'
to say NO until it's time to say (Y)ES for the spell you want. See ITEMS AND
SPELLS YOU CAN BUY IN TOWN [9] and SPELL OF SEEKING [12]
...........
E = END TURN
Does just what it says - ends your turn. See the above 'M = MOVE' section to
understand when and how you need to use this command.
....................
L = LOOK AT MAGIC MAP
There are four magic maps pointing you towards the locations of the Big Four
items to be found during the game. Look at any or all magic maps you have found
by using this command. See MAGIC MAPS [11]
Here are the units you can obtain during the game and their uses, strengths and
weaknesses.
*** WARRIORS
The core unit of the game. You cannot fight anyone or anything if you have no
warriors, and if you run out of them during a fight, you lose the fight (fail
to gain any loot from it and are removed from it) no matter what other units of
yours remain standing. Thus warriors function as both your hit points and your
base fighting strength. You'll need a lot of warriors to win fights against
more powerful groups of monsters.
While there is no cap on the number of warriors you can have, it is not
possible to gather so many warriors that you ever become invulnerable to
enemies. This is because the game automatically throws proportionally larger
groups of monsters at you based on the strength of your party at any particular
time. (see COMBAT [14] for details)
You can buy warriors in towns quite cheaply. If you run out of them, your party
is considered to be in a dire way and the game will give you the opportunity on
each turn to pray for 'help.' Praying is not always successful and eats up your
whole turn instantly, but when it does work you will receive some warriors for
free to just reactivate you.
The number of rations consumed by your warriors in one turn is 20% the number
of warriors you have. Note that ration consumption occurs once per turn, not
per MF. If your turn begins and you have no rations, you will enter STARVATION
mode. Some warriors will drop dead each turn, you may lose other units for
various weird or amusing reasons and you will be reduced to 1 MF per turn. This
is a bad place to be, so if you're starving and you see that you can't get to a
town or sanctuary quickly on foot or by teleport, you should certainly pray for
help in hopes of receiving some rations.
While on the road, parley with any groups of warriors or other beings you meet
if given the opportunity. The odds are high that they'll join you rather than
fight you, and you can considerably improve the size of your army for free this
way. Just don't forget that more warriors will need more rations. Don't invite
80 warriors to join you if you're aware that you'll go into starvation mode
next turn as a result.
*** CLERICS
A cleric is part fighting man, part holy man. Clerics aren't cheap but they
have some neato powers that pay off significantly when you buy lots of them for
your party.
--- CLERIC POWERS:
- Clerics will attempt to resurrect some of your slain warriors at the end of
every round of fighting
- One cleric counts as two warriors in a fight
If you have any clerics in your party, the chance of them restoring slain
warriors at the end of a combat round is:
35 + (no. of clerics in party) %
This percentage can equal or exceed 100, so if you have 65+ clerics, they
should restore slain warriors after every round. The actual number of warriors
restored is also proportional to the number of clerics you have, and if your
army is large, the numbers can be spectacular, or almost total. The effect is
most pronounced and important when you are fighting large back-to-back groups
of monsters in the Witch King's fortress, because that's the only time in the
game when you have no chance to restock your party between fights. Huge cleric
numbers (EG 100) can negate nearly all losses.
Clerics can be killed in battle, but tend to die at a far lower rate than your
warriors, unless you have very few warriors. Unfortunately clerics can't
resurrect other clerics, only warriors.
If you visit a town market and have more than 14 clerics in your party already,
you will not be able to buy any more. The way to get around this is to enter
market with 14 or fewer clerics and buy a great stack of them in one big
transaction, which you'll have to save up for first. For the mass resurrection
power and fighting clout you'll gain, it can be worth it.
*** SCOUTS
Scouts are important units with lots of powers to bring to your party. They
don't assist offensively in battles but can be casualties of them. They die at
a low rate.
Note that you can't buy any more scouts if you enter a market and have more
than 9 of them already. The same trick applies here as applied with the
clerics; save your money, enter the market with 9 or fewer scouts, then buy the
huge number of them that you really want in one transaction.
--- SCOUT POWERS:
- Most important: Scouts increase your Sight Power (SP) (details follow)
- Scouts help you carry gold, but not as much as warriors do (see YOUR PARTY.
GOLD AND WEIGHT [5])
- Scouts help you locate the entrance to the Witch King's Fortress (details
follow)
- (MULTIPLAYER ONLY) Scouts can spot nearby players on the map, allowing you to
attempt to raid them, and can help repel raids by other players on your own
camp
- SCOUTS INCREASE YOUR SIGHT POWER (SP) / SIGHT POWER EXPLAINED
The scout's main ability is to let you see further from where your party stands
on the world map.
Your Sight Power (SP) = (No. of scouts in party / 2) + 1
SP extends around your party in all possible directions as far as you could
move in (SP) steps, with diagonal movements permitted. Thus it manifests as a
square field of visibility with your party at the approximate or exact centre,
and whose side length is ( (No. of scouts in party) + 3 )
An example:
You have 8 scouts in your party.
Your SP = (8/2) + 1 = 5
Whenever your party moves, wherever it goes, it will see and reveal 5 map
squares in all directions around it.
In the demo diagram below for a party with an SP of 5 --
= a map square your party can see from where it stands, while
Increase your SP to at least a few squares as soon as you can in the game by
buying some scouts. Being able to see only one or two squares around you makes
finding towns and sanctuaries much harder.
37 scouts will give you an incredible field of vision whose dimensions are
those of the world map. A more ridiculous 76 will instantly reveal the entire
map, even if you happen to be standing in a corner of it at the moment of
purchase.
- SCOUTS HELP YOU LOCATE THE ENTRANCE TO THE WITCH KING'S FORTRESS
When I say 'Help you locate...' I don't mean just finding where it is on the
map. The Witch King's fortress is a 2 x 2 area which is never hard to find,
being located in each new game at a semi-randomised position roughly around the
centre of the map. When you move onto any of the fortress's squares, the game
assumes you want to try to break in and storm the place, and checks to see if
you were canny enough to find a way in.
Your chance of finding a way in and thus progressing to the INSIDE THE FORTRESS
[16] scenario is:
(No. of scouts in your party) %
with a bonus 75% if you possess the Horn of Opening. If your chance by this
formula is 100% or better, you will always find the entrance. Inversely, not
finding the entrance on one particular move has no repercussions for the
future. Each time you move onto a fortress square (or stay on one), the game
rechecks to see if you managed to locate the entrance.
Never walk on a fortress map square if you don't want to try and break in, as
there's a chance you may succeed in entering, and the game doesn't ask you to
see if that's what you really wanted to do.
- (MULTIPLAYER ONLY) SCOUTS CAN SPOT NEARBY PLAYERS ON THE MAP, ALLOWING YOU TO
ATTEMPT TO RAID THEM, AND CAN HELP REPEL RAIDS BY OTHER PLAYERS ON YOUR OWN
CAMP
If another player is within your sight range as determined by your current SP,
you may have the opportunity to try to raid them, which amounts to stealing
gold and items from them. See RAIDERS below.
When someone else attempts to raid you, the more scouts you have, the greater
your chances of inflicting casualties on the attacker's raiders, even if they
do manage to steal stuff from you in the process.
*** RAIDERS
Raiders have no use at all in a single player game of FOTWK, and should not be
purchased if playing one.
In a multiplayer game, raiders can be quite powerful. Having raiders lets you
raid the camp of another player if it was first spotted by your scouts. Both
the chances of a successful raid and the amount of gold and loot you can gain
from that raid increase as your number of raiders increases. Raiders are met by
the target player's warriors, who may kill some raiders during the raid. If
warriors are so numerous as to succeed in outnumbering/killing all raiders, the
raid will fail and no loot will be obtained.
If you have no raiders, don't try raiding, as your chance of success will be
zero and you'll have wasted your MF on the attempt.
Raiders can steal gold and spells, and much more importantly, magic maps and
Big Four items. If someone steals one or more Big Four items from you, you can
either try to steal them back, or go back to the relevant dragon den(s) where
you will be able to get another one of the stolen item. In this way it's
possible for there to be more than one of each of the Big Four items floating
around in a multiplayer game. (See MULTIPLAYER CONSIDERATIONS [21])
A raided player also loses 1 MF for their next turn, but not if this would
reduce them to 0 MF.
*** WIZARD, THE
The wizard appears for sale in towns less frequently than any other unit but
makes for a great addition to your party as soon as you can afford the
approximately 125 Gold price tag. You can only own one wizard at a time and he
can be killed in battle, at which time you can replace him.
--- WIZARD POWERS:
- His mere presence is the equivalent of an extra 20 Warriors in battle
- He will often cast offensive spells in battle
*** ELVES AND DWARVES
You can't buy elves or dwarves in town markets. You have to happen upon groups
of them at random while walking around the world map, and then, when given the
option to parley, say (Y)ES. The odds are that the humanoids in question will
join you.
DWARVES are brawlers. In a fight, each dwarf is as good as two warriors.
ELVES frequently cast offensive spells in battle. The more elves you have, the
stronger the effect of any spells they cast.
Note that a random event that can strike at times during the game is that you
will be told that elves or dwarves have stolen something from your party. Elves
steal the Talisman of Speed. Dwarves steal the Hammer of Thor. Such thefts are
completely unrelated to the presence or absence of elves or dwarves in your
party, they happen regardless, so don't turn down elves or dwarves out of fear
of theft.
When you enter a town map space, or elect to stay where you are while already
on one, you will visit that town's marketplace and can try to make one purchase
during the current MF.
You can bulk buy the following units, items and spells in towns. If you have
more of an item than the number in brackets, that item will definitely not be
listed for sale:
Availability and prices are randomised slightly on each visit to a market. This
randomisation applies even to consecutive visits to the market in the same
town. So if you don't see a particular item you want, or the price of something
you want is too high for you, you don't have to go to another town. Buy
something you do want during this MF, or don't, and then just choose to (M)OVE
and (S)TAY WHERE YOU ARE on your next MF to get a total refresh of the market's
inventory and prices.
Remember however that refreshing the inventory cannot overcome the bracketed
number limitations. You can never own more than 1 wizard, and no wizard will be
for sale if you have one. Ditto with the spell of seeing. The other bracketed
limitations, such as 14 clerics or 9 scouts, can be overcome in terms of your
inventory by making one mass transaction of that unit type (see UNIT TYPES [7]
- CLERICS for the explanation) while you are still below the limit, but no
market will offer to sell you more clerics, scouts or raiders if you already
have more than 14, 9 or 14 of them respectively.
Buying is a haggling process. Each item or unit has a recommended price, but if
you choose to buy it, you will be asked to nominate a price. If you offer less
than the recommended price per unit and the merchant accepts your offer, you
could save a lot of money, especially on a bulk buy. If you're unlucky, you may
just aggravate the merchant and cause the market to close, essentially meaning
you wasted this MF. This isn't too terrible, as the market reopens immediately
and you can try again next MF, if you wish, by choosing to (M)OVE and then
(S)TAY WHERE YOU ARE. But being ignored is definitely annoying, and if you are
playing a game in which you care deeply about your score (I don't recommend
this) you will want to minimise the number of wasted turns.
--- SECRETS OF HAGGLING:
When you make an offer...
(Your offer) divided by (recommended price) = Barter Factor
Chance of the market immediately closing in disgust at your offer = ((1-BARTER
FACTOR) X 100) %
Chance of the merchant accepting your reduced offer = (BARTER FACTOR X 100) %
Meeting the merchant halfway on an offer does what it says. If the price
difference is only 1 gold, it will mean you get the item for the lower price.
If you don't meet the merchant halfway, the market might close, or you might
get to make a new offer.
Needed to sustain your warriors on a turn-by-turn basis. (See UNIT TYPES [7] -
WARRIORS) They don't weigh anything, and running out tends to be bad, so stock
up.
TELEPORT SPELL
Teleport lets you instantly move to any space on the world map when you cast
it. You will be presented with your cumulative world map and asked to move the
cursor to select your destination. You can teleport deep into unexplored
territory if you want, which, when you land there, can be a great way to
suddenly reveal a lot of it via the halo of your SP. But don't risk teleporting
into the unknown unless you have a raft or at least one more teleport spell -
see LAKE DANGER! below.
Teleporting when you have 0 MF remaining in a turn does not cause your turn to
end, so that's usually the best time to cast the spell for maximum efficiency.
You can also cast consecutive teleports while at 0 MF in this way without
ending your turn.
*** LAKE DANGER!
DON'T teleport onto a lake space without a raft. A bunch of your guys will
drown for starters, but the real danger is that you can hang your game. If you
find yourself stuck on a lake space surrounded by nothing but other lake
spaces, and you don't have a raft or a teleport spell, it is physically
impossible to escape. Your first attempt to (M)OVE at this point will result in
the game entering an infinite loop of asking you where you want to move to, and
not accepting any response.
SPELL OF SEEING
You can only hold 1 spell of seeing at a time. Cast it and you will be able to
take a look at the entire world map, regardless of how much of it you have
personally seen or explored. Note however that seeing the whole map in this way
does not add any detail to your personal world map. After you press a key, or a
lot of time has passed, the map goes away, so note whatever it was you hoped to
note beforehand. (EG - The location of the Witch King's fortress, of the
nearest town or where a particular land formation might be relative to your
party.) Be aware that if you're playing the game on an emulator and
overclocking it, the map might disappear from the screen before you've had a
good chance to study it.
RAFTS
Once you have a raft you can move across lake spaces, which makes it a lot
easier to explore the map. Lakes are also encounter free, which is good to know
if you want to move around in peace for any particular reason.
There exists seemingly redundant code in the FOTWK program that forces you to
start dropping rafts unless you have a mule for every four rafts owned. I
haven't been able to find a reason to ever buy more than one raft.
MULES
Fantastic animals which help you carry all that gold. You can own an unlimited
number of mules, and each mule lets you carry another 50 gold, so get a bunch
of them early in the game. If lots of your warriors die during one battle, you
may end up dropping all gold found at the end of it unless you've got mules to
take up the weight.
Here are the items you can obtain only through fighting and exploration. You'll
most often find these items amongst the spoils of a fight, but sometimes you'll
find them at the end of your turn while just walking around the world map.
(In the case of all special items, you can only possess one of each at a time.)
SWORD (DRAGON SLAYER)
This sword gives you a big attack boost when fighting a dragon, but doesn't
actually help in day-to-day combat.
TALISMAN OF SPEED
Grants you 1 extra MF each turn. Great to have, but nothing you can count on,
as these talismans come and go. They're not too hard to find but they're also
stolen with reasonable frequency by wandering elves.
HAMMER OF THOR
Owning one of these is as good as having another 15 warriors in your party for
fighting purposes. Like the talisman, the hammer will come and go. You'll find
it at random, then have it stolen by wandering dwarves, then find it again,
etc.
(11) MAGIC MAPS
These maps reveal the locations of the four dragon dens in which you can find
the Big Four items. You will usually find these maps amongst the spoils of a
fight with monsters, but occasionally you may just find a map lying on the
ground. Another way to get maps is by stealing them off other players in
multiplayer.
There are four maps a player can collect, one for each dragon den. You have a
chance of finding any maps you currently don't have whenever you defeat some
monsters. If another player steals your map(s) in multiplayer, you can replace
them by any of the above described means - winning them off monsters, finding
them on the ground or stealing them (back) off other players. In other words,
there is not only one copy of each map in existence.
The maps will be numbered 1-4 in your inventory, and you can use the (L)OOK AT
MAGIC MAP command to examine them. Note that due to programming quirks, the map
numbers may change around whenever you find new maps or have maps stolen by
other players. For instance, if you have only one map, it will be called Map 1.
If you then find a second map, it will be called Map 2. However, looking at Map
1 again at this point may show a new, different location, while Map 2 may now
show the view previously depicted by Map 1.
The only time you are guaranteed to see absolute map numbers rather than
relative ones is when you are in possession of all 4 maps at once.
If this seems confusing, remember the basics: There are only 4 dragon dens in
each game. They never move during a game and the item found in each particular
den does not change. A total of four magic maps will depict the locations of
these dens, but the map numbers may seem to change over time. Because of this,
it is better to keep track of which Big Four item is found in which den by
remembering what each particular map-depicted location looks like, and where it
is on the world map, rather than by which map number goes with which item,
because the map numbers may change during the game.
READING AND FOLLOWING MAGIC MAPS
When you look at a magic map, you will see a screen-filling close up hi-res
view of the area around the corresponding dragon den, centred as much as
possible on the den itself. The den location is marked by a white 'X'. If your
party's location happens to be within that screen's worth of terrain, it will
be indicated by the usual square white cursor.
If you aren't so crazily lucky as to find yourself within walking distance of
the den, you'll need to try to sleuth out where the scenery you're looking at
is in terms of the world map.
To do so, you need to choose 2 - LOOK AT WORLD MAP from the main menu, and try
to visually match the land formations seen on the magic map with something you
see on the world one.
For instance, on the magic map you might observe that the dragon's den is on a
mountain space at the top of a distinctive L-shape trail of mountains. That
L-shape should be reasonably easy to spot on your world map if you have
previously revealed it through exploration.
In short, use anything and everything distinctive you see on the magic map to
try to find the position of those land formations on your world map. Note the
relative locations of towns, sanctuaries, bodies of water, etc., as all of
these can help.
If a dragon den is very near one of the four edges of the world map, this will
be obvious on the magic map because the view will not be able to be centred on
the den. For instance, if the white 'X' of the den is near the top of the magic
map, that tells you that the den must be within a few spaces of the north/top
edge of the world map. A den near the left edge of a magic map must be within a
few spaces of the left edge of the world map, near the right must be near the
right edge, etc.
Of course there will be many times when a magic map is showing you a place
that's out in terrain you haven't seen or explored yet, so you won't be able to
find that location on the world map. That's obviously the cue for you to
continue exploring until you do find it. Make sure to keep checking back with
any magic maps whose world map positions you haven't yet verified as you keep
playing.
This is the only spell you can't buy. You can find it amongst combat loot or
occasionally just lying on the ground. It's probably also the most
success-hastening spell you can get, as it instantly reveals the location of
any one Big Four item that you nominate. More accurately, it reveals the
location of the dragon den you should visit to obtain that item. It does so by
flashing the target square on your world map. Study the map carefully before
dismissing it to memorise the location. Even if the square is out on its own in
a black void of unexplored territory, you can get some kind of coordinate
reference point for it by noting that it's roughly or exactly X squares above
or below something else that you can see, or N squares from a corner of the
map, etc. Also note that on the Apple II, the width of a character in the text
window beneath the map is exactly the width of one of the map squares, so
counting text characters in from either side of the screen can serve as a good
reference.
It's a good idea to immediately follow up the spell of seeking with a teleport
spell to zap yourself right onto the target space before you forget where it is
- assuming your party isn't so weak that it won't be able to bash up the dragon
it finds there.
1. HORN OF OPENING - Lets you find the entrance to the Witch King's fortress
very easily. Possessing the horn gives you a base chance of success in doing so
of 75% (instead of the regular base chance of 0%) which is then improved by 1%
for each scout in your party. See UNIT TYPES [7] - SCOUTS - SCOUTS HELP YOU
LOCATE THE ENTRANCE TO THE WITCH KING'S FORTRESS
2. BOOTS OF STEALTH - These give you an extra MF each turn, help protect you
from monsters in the Witch King's fortress and help you in the final fight with
the Witch King.
3. ARMOUR OF DEFENCE - The armour helps protect you from monsters in the Witch
King's fortress and helps you in the final fight with the Witch King.
4. SWORD OF STRENGTH - Helps you fight monsters in the Witch King's fortress
and helps you in the final fight with the Witch King.
Alone, the boots are probably the best item to have, as they make you more
efficient in every turn of the game as well as helping you in the fortress. The
horn certainly helps a lot to find the way in, but you can get by without it if
you just buy a lot of scouts. 50 scouts will find the way in in one in two
moves on average, which is very practical. 33 scouts will find the way in in
one in three moves on average, etc. Trying to find the way in with just 20
scouts (1 in 5 moves) or fewer may start to feel like a drag, and possibly take
a lot of turns.
Items 2-4 collectively can be viewed as thirds of a success factor for your
travails in the Witch King's fortress. See INSIDE THE FORTRESS [16] and
FIGHTING THE WITCH KING [17]
When your turn ends on a woods or mountains space, you may encounter monsters.
Chances of an encounter are average in the woods, high in the mountains and
100% in a mountain dragon den (see DRAGON DENS [15])
Monsters usually appear in groups whose size is calculated relative to the size
of your own forces, so while you can become very powerful by buying hundreds of
warriors, doing so will generate proportionally bigger groups of baddies.
Damage inflicted and casualties in battle are also proportional, as are
monetary rewards. You will reap lots of gold by winning a string of big fights
with a huge army, but the monsters encountered will tend to hack your numbers
back down towards a more moderate range, at which point your casualty rate will
also decrease. You'll certainly want to be in the 100+ warriors range before
you storm the Witch King's home.
Also, don't forget the power afforded by having other units and magic weapons
in your party. If you have lots of clerics, you can sustain much higher numbers
of warriors over time, well into the 100's, with your clerics undoing most of
the damage inflicted on you after each round of battle.
Elves and dwarves die at a far lower rate than warriors, so if you manage to
parley large groups of either into joining you, that can make you very
powerful.
When you enter battle mode, game options are simple. You may be surprised by
the monsters, forcing you into combat. If you aren't surprised, you will be
told the number and kind of monsters you face, and asked whether you want to
run away. If (Y)ES, you might escape and be called a coward (sticks and
stones...) Or you may be pulled into the fight anyway.
The broad generalisation about enemy strength is this: More numerous monsters
hurt you more than less numerous but 'bigger' monsters. So if you have a huge
fighting force, you will lose fewer warriors in taking on a dragon or a few
ogres than you will if you fight a swarm of 1292 hobgoblins. Monsters who are
on their own may sometimes not even take 1 warrior off you in a fight. This is
why ripping off dragons is the best loot-making strategy in the game (see
DRAGON DENS [15]). Dragons are also the only monsters who display extra
vulnerability to a particular weapon you can obtain, the SWORD (DRAGON SLAYER).
Once a fight begins, status messages will start to crawl down the screen. Note
the instruction at the top of the screen: 'PRESS 'R' TO RETREAT!!'
While the status messages continue to appear, tap 'R' once at any time if you
don't like the way the fight's going and want to try to run away at the next
opportunity. The program will give no indication that it heard you, but before
the next combat round begins, you will be asked if you want to retreat. If
(Y)ES, you may succeed in escaping, or you may not.
If you don't tap 'R', the game assumes you want to fight on, and will simply
tell you to press RETURN at the end of the round to begin the next one.
Note also that if you're playing this game on an emulator and are overclocking
the virtual Apple II, the status messages may appear too fast for you to be
able to hit (R)ETREAT in time, at least during the initial round of combat.
Battle continues until you run out of warriors, the monsters are dead or you
run/retreat successfuly. Some battles may seem to enter a holding pattern in
which the numbers on each side don't change for many consecutive rounds,
especially when you have few warriors fighting a single monster. Don't worry
about this, just keep pressing RETURN and the deadlock will eventually break.
If you win, you will receive a complete list of all gold, items and spells you
found. If you're too encumbered to carry your newfound money you will
immediately drop some or all of it. (See YOUR PARTY. GOLD AND WEIGHT [5])
As described in the GAMEPLAY OVERVIEW [2], dragon dens are not visible to the
eye. They look the same as mountain spaces. You might accidentally stumble into
them while exploring, but usually you will be visiting them by choice, having
first discovered their location by studying magic maps or casting spells of
seeking.
Whenever you move onto or stay on a dragon den, you will always encounter at
least one dragon. It's possible to assemble a party large enough that you will
start to encounter groups of more than one dragon, by which time you probably
will have no trouble dealing with however many dragons are thrown at you.
The important thing to know is that you will always fight a dragon when on a
dragon den. And you can stay there and fight a dragon every single turn if you
want. This is an excellent idea if you party proved tough enough to kill the
first dragon with few or no scratches, because you get the highest gold returns
in the game from slain dragons.
For a small party, and if you haven't got yourself a SWORD (DRAGON SLAYER) yet,
dragons may take a few rounds to wallop, and will cast spells at you in the
meantime. They might also breathe fire (happens rarely) which, in a manner so
loyal to Dungeons & Dragons rules that it brings a tear to my eye, does damage
proportional to the number of hit points the dragon has left.
If you beat the dragon and don't already have the Big Four item to be found in
its den, you will always succeed in finding that item amongst your loot.
When you move onto the Witch King's fortress on the map, that's you saying 'I
want to invade the fortress now!' If you successfully locate the entrance,
thanks to the Horn of Opening and/or your scout units (see UNIT TYPES [7] -
SCOUTS - SCOUTS HELP YOU LOCATE THE ENTRANCE TO THE WITCH KING'S FORTRESS) you
will progress to the 'Inside The Fortress' scenario.
This is something you DON'T want to do until you've built your party and
inventory up enough that you feel pretty confident of victory, because if you
fail inside the fortress, it is guaranteed that most or all of your party will
be destroyed before you get kicked out.
Monsters met inside the fortress inflict huge damage compared to their cousins
outside it. (They're drawing on the Witch King's evil aura or something.) This
is where the Big Four items come in. For each of Big Four items 2-4 you have,
you negate roughly a third of the monsters' special advantage. If you don't
bring any of the items with you, fortress monsters are likely to tear through
even 2000+ warriors in a few rounds. Thus, conventional wisdom says, 'Bring as
many Big Four items with you as possible.' However, there is one effective
workaround: If you bring huge numbers of clerics with you, it's possible to
resurrect nearly all slain warriors after every round of combat. 100 clerics
definitely works.
.. The Witch King's fortress contains 16 chambers. Their arrangement is
semi-randomised in each new game, but they always present as a square grid of 4
x 4 dimensions. An invading player enters the fortress via the court room,
which is always on the north edge of the fortress at grid coordinate 3,1
The Witch King can be found in one randomly chosen room in the fortress, from
which he never moves during the game. There is also a randomly placed
teleporter in one room which will throw your party outside.
You can move around the fortress one room at a time using any of the cardinal
compass directions. All rooms contain exits in all available directions, so
there's no maze-like quality to it. You just want to keep exploring until you
find the Witch King. The catch is that in almost every room you move through
you have to fight a big group of tough monsters, and there's no chance of
respite until you win the game or are thrown out of the fortress for any
reason, the most common one being that all your warriors were killed.
Make a simple map of the fortress as you go, noting down which rooms you've
already cleared. If you find the telporter, note where it is, because it won't
move. Ditto with the Witch King.
While inside the fortress, you are able to make unlimited moves until one of
three things happens:
1. You find and slay the Witch King, and win the game.
2. You find the Witch King but lose the fight with him.
3. You lose all your warriors while fighting monsters.
4. You tread on a teleporter and are unceremoniously evicted.
In cases 3-4, the result is that your turn will end and your party (or what is
left of it) will be randomly deposited on a map square not too far from the
fortress.
Once you've found the Witch King, your party temporarily vanishes while you and
he jump into a swordfight.
There are no commands you can issue during the fight; all you can do is cross
your fingers as you read the blow by blow account and keep pressing RETURN.
The chance of you winning the fight is broadly determined by how many of three
of the Big Four items you have obtained: the Boots of Stealth, the Armour of
Defence and the Sword of Strength. Each one subtly helps in the way you would
expect; the boots make you harder to hit, the armour absorbs damage, the sword
helps you inflict more damage.
Having said that, my own experience is that you can still win the fight about
two thirds of the time if you bring none of these items with you. If you bring
all of them you are helping to assure your win, though you actually can still
lose if you're extraordinarily unlucky.
'Two thirds of the time' may seem to be quite good starting odds against the
Witch King, but the price of failure is extremely high. If the Witch King beats
you, you lose everything you own except for your scouts, warriors and your
wizard if you have one, before being evicted from the fortress. So that's all
your money, spells, Big Four items, etc. With no rations you will begin to
starve immediately on your next turn outside the fortress, too.
If you beat the Witch King, you win the game and the glory, and will then
receive your score - which you should probably ignore.
(100 - No. of turns you took to win) divided by
(1 + (No. Big Four items 2-4 you possess) )
with a minimum possible score of 0. Game difficulty has no bearing on the
score.
Thus the highest scores are likely to be achieved by playing on Easy (1)
difficulty, and not collecting any of Big Four items 2-4 (IE everything but the
Horn) before offing the Witch King as quickly as possible.
The score formula for the game is ill-conceived and not very indicative of how
well you played, so I choose to ignore it most of the time. However, if you do
want to try to rack up a great score, the secret is to aggressively use the
teleport exploit. See THE CHEATINGEST THING YOU CAN DO IN THE GAME (WITHOUT
HACKING IT) [23]
- When you start a new game your first priority should be to locate a town. If
you're lucky, one may already be visible on your close up map. If not and
you're playing on Easy, you will have one spell of seeing in your inventory, so
cast it now and scope out the nearest / most readily accessible town. If you're
not playing on Easy, it's time to start wandering at random, but do so
efficiently.
- It's not uncommon to start starving and losing warriors before finding your
first town, because you don't start the game with many rations. So also keep an
eye out for a sanctuary where you may be able to grab some life-saving food.
Visiting a sanctuary is a more efficient way to save yourself than by praying
(which is random and turn-devouring) except when the distance to the nearest
sanctuary is great.
- Once you've staked out one town, you're in business. Get some rations then
wander the nearby terrain looking for monsters to fight for loot. If you see a
mountain range nearby, that's good as you can trigger an encounter in mountains
on almost every move.
- Balance fighting and loot gathering with returning to town to replenish your
forces and supplies, and with some exploration of the map. With your early
spoils, buy mules so you can carry all gold you find, and buy some scouts so
you can start to uncover the world map quickly. You only have to buy a raft
once in the game, so do it as soon as is practical so that you can move
anywhere on the map.
- Haggle prices down in markets. It can be more efficient to spend a few MF's
trying to successfully haggle a lower price for an item you wish to buy in bulk
than to accept higher prices and have to mount bigger gold-finding expeditions.
Also remember that if rations are being sold for 2 gold each, you'll be able to
get them for 1 if you offer 1 and are then able to meet the merchant halfway.
- Spells of seeking are worth casting immediately once obtained if you can
follow them up with a teleport to the revealed dragon den. Remember that you
can stock up on teleport spells at the market, and will also find them with
reasonable frequency on slain monsters.
- Study magic maps as soon as you find any. You may recognise the land
formations on them and know where to go straight away, or be able to guess at
where the place they depict is if it's near the edge of the world map. You may
even discover you're within a screen of a dragon den but didn't know it.
- Dragons are the best targets in the game. If you've found one, stay on the
space and attack it for turn after turn. This becomes especially true as your
army grows larger. 2000 orcs met whilst wandering the countryside will dent
you, but 5 dragons probably still won't. Teleport onto a dragon repeatedly
after you've run out of MF in your turn if you want to make large amounts of
money in the shortest possible time.
- For some extravagant map-revealing power or warrior-resurrecting power, hoard
your money then buy up hugely on scouts or clerics respectively in single
transactions.
- How do you know you're ready to tackle the Witch King's fortress? Make sure
you can get into the fortress in the first place by bringing either the Horn of
Opening or lots of scouts. To be able to survive the gauntlet of fortress
monsters, bring some or all of the combat-oriented Big Four items (Sword of
Strength, Armour of Defence, Boots of Stealth). And/or, buy a huge stack of
clerics. 100 clerics will resurrect nearly all lost warriors every round, no
matter how great the casualties. Note that with or without clerics, your
chances of losing to the Witch King himself are increased if you don't possess
any of the Big Four items. Losing to the Witch King personally is a real game
wrecker, far more serious than losing to any of his monster friends.
1. The difficulty level chosen by each player affects nothing but their
starting inventory. You can handicap experienced players by starting them on a
higher difficulty.
2. The option to save the game is offered after each full round of player
turns.
3. Logically speaking, a player should only be able to benefit from knowledge
of the world map (and other matters) that they have gained themselves during
their own turn. But to enforce this in reality, you'd have to make players face
away from the screen whenever it isn't their turn, otherwise they can study
each other's world maps, magic maps, locations and inventories, which obviously
affects gameplay. I wonder if the original FOTWK manual recommended the facing
away solution?
4. In multiplayer, there can be multiple incidences of all of the Big Four
items, and ultimately it's possible for all players to have all four items at
once.
For instance, if Player A obtains the Horn of Opening from the relevant dragon
den, and is then raided by Player B, who steals the horn, Player A could now
get a new horn by revisiting the dragon den. If that horn were stolen too, by
Player C, Player A could get yet another horn from the dragon den. In this way,
if players raid each other and revisit the dragon dens enough, lots of Big Four
items will come into the game. As many of each one as there are players.
(23) THE CHEATINGEST THING YOU CAN DO IN THE GAME (WITHOUT HACKING IT)
With the teleport exploit you can make as many moves in a turn as you want
without it ever ending, so long as you are able to keep on teleporting.
This tip is most helpful in a multiplayer game, where it holds up other players
from doing anything, but it can also help you maximise your effectiveness in a
single player game in which you have decided to care about your final score, or
to simply try and take as few turns as possible.
Described below is the best way I have discovered to prolong a turn almost
indefinitely via the teleport exploit. You must make some preparations before
you can do this, but it may prove to be the last turn you ever take in the
game, because you can cap it off by teleporting to the Witch King's fortress.
First, your party needs to be big enough that it draws large amounts of gold
from slain monsters. 150+ warriors is a good number. You should also bring at
least 60 mules, the more the better. Second, you need to know where one dragon
den is. Bringing rations is theoretically unimportant because if the turn
rarely or never never ends, few or no rations are consumed.
Now, buy up on teleport spells in town. Spend all your money on as many as you
can. Teleport to the dragon and wallop it. Continue to (S)TAY WHERE YOU ARE and
wallop the dragon until you're out of MF's. Now, teleport onto the dragon
repeatedly until you're down to your last few teleports. Note that you have
done all this in one turn. When laden with gold and down to your last few
teleport spells, teleport back to a town. If you can, immediately buy another
big stack of teleport spells. It's important to try to get them at first
opportunity because they aren't always available for sale, and you don't want
to have to (E)ND your turn because you ran out. If you need to buy more of
anything else, use teleport spells to stay on the town and revisit the market.
You should have made so much money from the dragons that you can afford a huge
stack of teleport spells and new forces, at which point you can teleport back
to the dragon and continue the loop. Essentially your goal is to teleport
endlessly so that your turn never ends, killing dragons, acquiring gold at an
ever-increasing rate, teleporting on the town to buy more teleports and units
as needed, revisiting the dragon den, etc.
If this works out, you may be able to go on to complete the whole game in this
one turn.
The game was ported to the Commodore 64 in 1984, and the port appears to be
verbatim in almost every way. The musical cues and sound effects are exactly
the same as on the Apple. The title screen has a few more colours available to
it, and the hi-res maps are also slightly prettier, though they draw more
slowly than on the Apple. It's funny that the lo-res maps are verbatim, because
on the Apple they're generated by a native lo-res mode, whereas in the
Commodore 64 version they would have had to emulate that to make it look
exactly the same. Finally, a too-dark blue font is used for the text on the
Commodore.
I haven't been able to find an FM-7 copy of the game to try on an emulator, and
even if I could, I can't read Japanese. But I have seen some screenshots from
this version and the game itself looks to be basically the same. One cool
addition is a moody loading screen featuring a digitised photo of an old castle
by a lake.
Thanks to M E Mehlich who designed and programmed FOTWK, and Jim Talbot of
Avalon Hill who painted the game's highly memorable box cover art.
Thanks to ASchultz for his friendship and Apple II power, to Zigfried for a
spot of help with Japanese, and to all folks who host this guide. And let's not
forget about me, I wrote this thing.
This FAQ is Copyright 2009 Wade Clarke, all rights reserved.
All copyrights and trademarks are acknowledged.
Fortress of the Witch King is (C) 1983 by Avalon Hill
