phoenix/hints/solutions/Hamil_walkthrough.txt

                              Walkthrough for

                                   Hamil

                           by Jonathan Partington

                           Written by Richard Bos


A few notes, first.

One, make no mistake: this is not the hardest and certainly not the largest of
the Phoenix games, but that doesn't mean it's actually easy or forgiving by
today's standards. You can die easily. You can lose or destroy a necessary tool
just as easily. Save often, and keep _all_ your save files until you've
finished the game. Some of the puzzles are logical; some are not. One of the
meanest tricks of this game is that if you spend more than a certain number of
turns in one location, you are randomly and arbitrarily killed. Remember this
if you want to experiment.
Two, the parser is limited, but good. I have not found any place where using
prepositions or indirect objects ("hit tree with axe") is necessary or even
possible. By contrast, the game is good at giving you less to type. If there is
only one object, simply "get" will take it; if there are several, it will
assume the first one listed. Ditto for "drop", which will drop the first object
in your inventory; and ditto for several other verbs. "Get all" is provided
for, as well. In the Topologika version, so are multiple objects (as in "get
bread, eggs and milk") and "drop all but sword".
Third, I'm not taking you past all the sights and clues. Also, these games
(unfashionably, these days) expect a lot of experimentation and learning-by-
dying to solve them, none of which can easily be done in a walkthrough. Because
of this, before you resort to reading this walkthrough you might want to try
the in-game hints. There is a zip file which contains documentation for all the
Topologika adventures, including Hamil. The main part of these is an index of
hints available in the game. You look up the problem you're stuck at, find a
number, type "help" and that number, and you get a (varyingly subtle) hint. The
ZCode version does not have these, but the hints in the Topologika port are
just as valid for the original.
Finally, this walkthrough (including the above notes) is for the Topologika
MS-DOS game which is available at the IF Archive, for the ZCode version which
was converted from the original Phoenix code, and for the BBC version (which is
not on the Archive but can be found elsewhere on the web). As far as I have
found, there are no real differences between the first two, but the BBC version
has been somewhat curtailed. I do not know whether this walkthrough works for
other versions, as well, or indeed if any exist.
The main differences in the BBC version are that the Monster Maze is missing
(and so, therefore, is the wand); the bottle must be opened in the room where
the tapestry is found (in the other versions, it works its magic anywhere); and
the parser is less good. Only the first four letters of words are significant
(as was usual at the time on home computers). More importantly, "all" and
multiple objects are not supported; where I tell you, below, to "drop all",
you'll have to drop each individual object. There is one spot where this will
run you into trouble with the aforementioned arbitrary killer, and I'll give a
workaround for that. Wherever I need to mention different commands for the BBC,
I'll mark them [B: like this]. (There are also some scenery objects missing
from the BBC version. Where I tell you to "ignore this object", you might find
it isn't there to ignore in the first place.)


So, let's be off, then.

You start in a stone chapel. Going out through the arch would be predictably
lethal. Go east twice, therefore, take everything, go west, lift the slab, and
go down. Turn on your lamp (which is done using simply the command "on"). Note
the legend. This is, obviously, a substitution cypher: each letter in the code
stands for one other letter in the plain text. The first three words stand for
"The password is". What the password _is_ varies each game, but all its letters
are present in the first part, so you should be able to decode it. By the way,
you might want to note down this code; we will need it again.
Go east, and say the password you've found. Now go west twice. Open the coffin.
Without wasting a move, go east three times and take the tapestry. Go back west
three times, take the documents, and go east and south. Go sw, south and west,
take the bottle, [B: go e, n, ne, n, e], open the bottle, [B: go back w, s, sw,
s, w], go east twice and take the cheese, then go west, north, ne and se, and
fill your bottle.
Go nw, w, sw, w, n, w. Take the egg. Go e, s, s, se and drop the egg. Now go
sw, eat the cheese, and go south. You will hear a word; remember this. Go
north, nw and ne, then n four times. Utter the word you heard in your dreams.
Go south and get the "curved piece of wood". Consider what kind of object this
could be...
Go south twice. There may be a jackdaw here. If not, check the east and west
parts of the court. Go to where the jackdaw is and throw the boomerang. Now go
back to the centre of the court and then south before it turns back and hits
you! Then go se and throw water. Go east, get the folio, and go back w, nw, n.
Take everything that's here. Go east, ne, east. Drop all; take lamp. [B:
Instead of the previous two commands: take inventory; drop the first four
objects, skipping the lamp; go west and back east to reset the "arbitrary
killer" counter; take inventory again; and drop all other objects except for
the lamp.]

Next we go visit two areas which look like mazes but, strictu sensu, aren't
(even if one if them is called the Maze of Hamil). They are both perfectly
normally laid-out; the maze-like aspect is that you are expected to take a
twisted path through them. They're rather nice, really.
Go ne and east. You are now (sans lamp, but we'll get it back) in an area in
which you can visit each location only once, because if you leave one, it
collapses. Go east again. There's a coin here. Take it. There are eight coins,
all different, and you'll need them all.
Since all coins are different and the paths don't twist, it is possible to map
this area the normal way. If you do, you'll find that there is only one path
which goes past them all - it wouldn't be much of a puzzle otherwise! From the
first coin, go north, take the coin, east, get, south, get, sw, get, s, get, e,
get, n, get, e. Drop all (and do this in one command, to avoid the random
killer which appears after seven or so moves). [B: and because that doesn't
work on the Beeb, and you can't do the object shuffle we did above in this
room, you'll have them taken off you automatically.]
Take the crown, go south, retrieve your lamp, go west, and sw. Drop the crown.
Get the bottle, go se, and fill the bottle. Go east and northeast.
You are now in the Lost World. This is another interesting area, in many ways
the complement of the Maze of Hamil. Instead of visiting all rooms, you must
(for reasons you can only discover by dying, and I'm not telling...) walk every
path. 
This area, too, is perfectly mappable and perfectly regular. Again, if you do
so, you will find the right path without too much trouble, although the nature
of the problem dictates that in this case there are many equivalent paths. I
suggest taking the following: w, n, e, e, e, s, s, s, w, w, w, n, e, e, e, e,
n, w, w, w, s, s, s, e, n, n, n, n, n, w, s, s. 
You are now (although you aren't told so) back where you started, and can
safely go down, twice. Take the bust. Go west, take the whistle, and go d, w,
nw. Go east, throw the water and drop the bottle. Go east and get the helmet
(and ignore the valkyrie). Next go west twice and south. Blow the whistle and
drop it, get the goblet and go north.
Take the crown, documents, folio and ring. Go west, sw and west three times. Go
north. Notice that both the tapestry and the statue have ended up here - this
is the treasure vault, and we must store the rest of them here, as well. Drop
all, and take back the documents, lamp and also the garlic. Go back south, east
thrice, ne and east.

Take the jackdaw and boomerang. Go nw. You will see a mural depicting one or
two explorers. Each of these men is famous mainly for travels either to the
north, east, south or west. If there's one, remember just his direction. If
two, you must remember the compass point in between their explorations (e.g.,
for Columbus (west) and Peary (north), remember northwest). Ignore the wheel. I
have no idea why it's there. It is not needed to finish the game. Go nw. Take
heed of that voice: if you save now, you will have to return to the mural room
before solving the puzzle it gives a clue to.
Drop the jackdaw, and take it back. Take inventory, and note its changed
description. We'll make use of that later. For now, go west twice, south, east
twice and down. We have to choose one of these exits, but which? Well, if you
remember your mural, that's the direction to take. Then go down until you reach
the bottom. And hope its the right one - if you take the wrong stairs, the
snark is a boojum, you see.
Take the sapphires, then go back up to the dead end, then west twice, north and
west. Take the talisman. With that, we come to a frankly tedious part of the
game. That's because this talisman has the annoying habit of leaving itself
behind when you move, every now and then. When this happens, go back one move
and pick it back up. At least you will be told about it.
Go east, south three times and southwest. Now we enter a maze. And not just any
maze - it's a maize maze. In this maze, it is important that you carry the
talisman. If you don't, you run the risk of getting killed by the maize
spirits. And the talisman has that annoying habit... and because it's a maze,
you can't just use "back" to go back one location to retrieve it. You have to
know in which direction to go back.
In the following lines, I shall give the route through the maze, with, for each
step, also the direction to take back if you leave the talisman behind on that
move. For example, if I say "east (back south)", then go east, and if you get
the message about leaving the talisman behind, immediately go south, retrieve
the talisman, and try east again. [B: In the Beeb version, this seems to happen
only in the maze, but every turn in the maze. This makes no difference to the
solution, but is _even more_ irritating.]
Here we go, and I wish you patience. From the forest near the field, go west
(back west), then east (back north), se (back ne), sw (back nw), west (back
nw), se (back se), and east (back ne). Take the painting. Leave the maze by
going ne (back e), se (back se), nw (back w), nw (back sw), ne (back se), north
(back east) and finally west. If you dropped the talisman on the last move,
good riddance. If not, you might as well drop it now - or wait for it to drop
itself somewhere along the way.
Go ne, north, west twice and north. Drop the boomerang, sapphires and painting.
Go south, east thrice, northeast and east. Take everything. [B: There's only
one thing here; the wand is missing from this version.]

Go sw, west. Take the hexapod and feed it. Go e, ne, se, s. Drop the hexapod.
It runs off either southwest, south or southeast. Follow it, and remember where
it went. It runs off again; follow again and remember the path. Repeat until
you meet its parent. Take your gift, then go back across the plain. To do so,
simply go back along the path you just took: northwest for southeast, and so on
until you reach the plain by the tunnel.
Go north, nw, sw, w, sw. Eat the garlic and go west. Take the emeralds. Go
east, se, e, e, se. Now we go south into the labyrinth. [B: This whole section
has been cut from the BBC version. Skip to the notice below.] This is the most
normal of the mazes in this game. One false move and you walk into a room with
a monster, who will kill you if you don't go back - but unlike in the maize
maze, here you can just use the "back" command to go back to the previous room,
just as in the rest of the game.
Go nw, n, se, e, n. There is a kobold here. Unlike the other monsters, you
cannot walk around him. Unlike the other monsters, though, you can defeat him.
Wave the wand. Go nw and take the crozier. Leave the labyrinth by going se, s,
se, w, nw, s, n. [B: This is where BBC players need to join us again.] Go east
and throw the jackdaw, go east twice and take the dilithium crystals. [B: On
the Beeb, the crozier is here, and there are no dilithium crystals. This makes
no real further difference.]
Go west three times, nw, west and south. Turn off your lamp. Notice that word?
It is a password, but... it is written in Hamil's code. The one you made a note
of all the way back in the crypt, remember? Translate it, then enter the
translated password - and do not use the encoded one! Turn your lamp back on
and go south.
Take the ruby. Go back to the vault: north three times, ne, west, sw, west
three times, and north. Take no action yet - you only have a single move in the
departure lounge, and it must be the right one.
There are three notices. They are - not surprisingly - in code. Translate them.
They talk about "orders" and "set", but of what, exactly? Well, of the code
itself. You have made a note of the letters in the code - presumably sorted by
code letter. Well, try sorting them the other way, in the order of the decoded
letters, and see what the code letters spell in that ordering. You should have
two words. Enter them, as a command: "nymphs waltz".

Well, after all that, you still have not regained your Kingdom of Hamil... but
you have reached Valhalla, which is arguably even better! There's just one
thing I still want to know... what on Earth (or Hamil) does "O'GRAM" mean!?