phoenix/hints/solutions/Sangraal_walkthrough.txt

                              Walkthrough for

                                  Sangraal

                           by Jonathan Partington

                           Written by Richard Bos


A few notes, first.

One, make no mistake: Sangraal was written as an introductory Phoenix game, 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. One wayin
which Sangraal is less intimidating than most Phoenix games is that it is very
open, with many puzzles accessible from the start. If you get stuck on one, it
is easy to try another.
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. Multiple objects (as in "get bread, cheese, and butter") are not,
though.
Three, this is an old-fashioned game. There are a lot of puzzles which you can
only realistically be expected to solve by dying first, sometimes more than
once. Also, there are vague hints to other problems spread across the game.
Since this is a single walkthrough, such hints will not be found here. I'll
just present you with the correct solutions, omitting the process you could
have used to discover them. If this spoils the game for you, well, such is the
risk of reading walkthroughs. By the way, if you don't want to be spoiled quite
so drastically, you should find a ZCode file with hints for individual puzzles
in the same place where you found this document.
Finally, these notes are for the ZCode version generated from the original
Phoenix source, which is available at the IF Archive. I do not know whether it
works for other versions, as well, or even if any exist.


So, knight very noble, let's be off on our quest!

Go north twice and ne. Note the building nearby. This is where we will deposit
all of our treasure - as a knight errant, you wouldn't be so selfish as to keep
it all, would you - but for now, let's leave it. Go east, sw and south. Pull
the mandrake. This was always a dangerous undertaking! Note the word you hear.
Enter it as your command. Remember it, as well - we'll need it again later in
the game.
Go sw and south, and take the now innocuous mandrake. Go north, ne and east,
take the sword, go east twice, take the wig, and go east twice again. Give the
mandrake to the Belle Dame. Get the crystals and go west five times, back to
the junction. This time go nw.
The sign on the wall here is an anagram. Solve this - it always starts with
"The password is", and the password is a four-letter animal name. Go north,
giving the password you've just found, and take the gem. Go south and west.
Wail. Note the pattern you see. Drop the wig, then go east, se and sw. Wait
until the pattern on the curtain matches that on the Wailing Wall, then go west
and take the scroll.
Go east, ne, east thrice and se. Give the gem to the hags. We get nothing in
return, except the satisfaction of being a good, noble knight, but isn't that
what chivalry is all about? Oh, and we get some points... Go back nw, then
north and east. Give the scroll to the woman. At least this time we got a
scroll back!
Go back west, then south thrice. Read the scroll. Take the child, then go all
the way back north twice, west four times, and nw to the Association. Well, it
_is_ an orphanage, isn't it? Therefore, give the child to the friar. Also give
him the crystals.

Go se and east. Drop the sword here; we won't need it for a while. Take the
cockerel. Go se and south twice. Drop the cockerel, then get all. Go back north
twice and nw, then east thrice and north. Knock.
Go north. Take the pie. Another exit will open; go down it twice. Go north and
east, and get the tortoise. Go west, south and north, and play the violin.
South, east and west; take the grease. Go east, north and south. You're now in
a logic maze. You could try and solve this maze logically, but the simple
solution is to take the exits whose sign ends in "TRUE" until you arrive back
in the banqueting hall. (To be honest, I'm not entirely sure that the logical
solution to this maze is always strictly correct, but the above shortcut always
works.)
Once outside, go south, east twice, se and east. Noah has taken your tortoise,
and we're going to bring him some more animals as our next good work. Go nw.
Enter "never more". Take the raven and take it se. Go north, untie the emu, get
it, and go south. Go ne, drop the cockerel and take the sloth. Noah doesn't
need the cockerel and neither do we any more, so leave it. Instead, go sw with
the sloth.
Go se, give the pie, take the wolf, go nw. Go south, dig, get the wombat,
north. Go sw. Note what is said about the ewes calling, and note what the lamb
bleats. Call to it, as its mother would, replacing the 'M' in its call with a
'B'; so, for example, if it says "Mehhh", enter "Behhh". Then take the lamb,
and go ne.

Go west, nw, and ne. Get all. You are again in a logic maze, a Boolean logic
maze this time. This one is quite correct, but... you can't solve it in one go.
You need to go through it, observing its effect on your gems, and working out
from that how to get to the end with both gems. This means that you can't solve
this maze without saving and restoring. This is, these days, thoroughly
unfashionable. However, using a 1980s approach, and with some knowledge of
Boolean logic, it _is_ quite solvable: go ne, ne, nw, nw.
Retrieve your violin, then go se, sw, and up twice. Take the tablet. You can
read it now, but only for a giggle. Go back down twice, then west and south.
You hear a voice chanting mashed up proverbs. Wait until it chants a whole,
correct one, rather than two mismatched halves; then get the pearl. Go north
and se. Read the tablet here. That's us told!
Go nw, east, up and south. You're now in another, small maze. Unfortunately, I
can't give you fixed directions through it, because it's randomised each game;
and what's more, you can't see where you're going. You can hear the way,
though! Shout something. It doesn't matter what; "shout booh" or whatever you
like. You will hear two echos. Don't go in those directions; take one of the
others.
You will either end up back on the mountain-side, or deeper into the fog. If
you're out of the fog, go back in and choose the other direction. Repeat the
procedure: shout something, move in a direction without echo, shout again, and
so on, until you meet a guru. Give him the pearl. Shout again. This time there
will be only one safe direction, so go there. Repeat the procedure again,
shouting things and moving in non-echoing directions, until you emerge out of
the fog again.
Go up, where your tablet will be exchanged for something else. Then go all the
way back: down twice, west twice, north, and west thrice. Then go se, south,
east and down. Take the corpse, go up and east, and drop it. This opens up a
path we will take later. Go west and up, and take the tapestry.
You're back in the Land of Madness, but we already know how to get out of here:
say the word you heard when you first took the mandrake. Get all, including the
sword. Go west and nw. Give the ruby, sapphire, violin, tapestry and calf to
the priest.

Go se, east and ne. We're in a maze again - well, the layout of the land is
quite regular, but the various paths take different lengths of time, and we
must minimise our total travel time, which makes it a maze in practice. The
correct route is: east twice, north twice, east and ne, and then north back to
the junction.
From there go se and east twice, get the stone, and go back west twice and nw,
then south. Climb the horse. Pull the green lever, then the yellow one, then
red. The blue one does nothing. Take the idol, then leg it out of here, east,
then north thrice. Drink. Go north again. Throw the idol into the fire - and
yes, there's a hint to this in the game, but you don't expect walkthroughs to
show you everything, do you? - and then the sword. The latter will be returned,
but leave it here for now.
Go ne. This is the desert, where a wind is blowing to stop us going places. It
will blow either east-southeast or east-northeast, meaning that you can go
neither east nor se, or east nor ne, respectively. But we do want to go east.
We'll have to get there circuitously. If the wind blows southeast, go ne, then
south. If, instead, it blows northeast, go se then north. Repeat this once
(note that the wind changes every move), to arrive at a statue. Note the words
on the pedestal, and that on your stone. Enter "ozone". Take the figurine.
Once more go ne and south, or se and north.
We're now near the end of the desert, and we need to vary our routine. Go ne or
se, as necessary, but then _don't_ go back south or north. Instead, if
possible, go se if you just went ne, or ne if you just went se. If that's not
possible, _then_ go, respectively, south and back north, or north and back
south, until you can go in the desired direction.
Go east into the folly. Get the paper. Go down. Read a book. It will ask you
which. Choose C. If you try any other, it will refuse to open. Next, read L.
Read the other books in this order: KFJN HBID OMEGA. (No, I don't know what the
reasoning is behind that order, but it's the only one that works.) Do as the
final book says: enter "omega".
Go east, and accept Klingsor's challenge by entering "yes". For the first game,
pick a random choice; for the second, play what Klingsor played in the first
game; and for the third, play what would have defeated that choice (so if
Klingsor's first choice, and your second, was "stone", now choose "paper", and
so on). Go up. Enter "sway", "peace" and "turn".
Go up again. Answer with the letter Klingsor gives, and with the digit he does
_not_ give (so if "B has a 1 on the back", answer B and TWO). Next, note that O
and T stand for One and Two, and the answer to the question can only be "OTBA"
or "TOAB", depending on whether A is 1 and B is 2 (in which case 1 must be B
and 2 is A, turning ABOT into OTBA), or A is 2 and B is 1 (when 1 is A and 2 is
B, so ABOT becomes TOAB).
Go up. You are asked to make a word from at most six letters. Given that you
can only use each tile once, the solution always has five letters: it's either
"faced", "plonk" or "spurt". Up once more. Take one counter, then three, and
finally the last three, leaving you with seven. Go up one last time. The
solution to the riddle was hinted at earlier by Kunrie: enter "court" and
"ship".

Leaving the desert is a lot easier than entering: go west five times, then sw.
Take the sword, then wait two turns. Go nw and take inventory. There should now
be a word on the paper. If not, go back to the fire, wait until it appears, and
come back here. Say this word and drop the paper.
Go ne. Listen to the monk. If you map the palace, you'll see that it consists
of a ring of month-themed rooms connected to season-themed rooms, and that the
simplest (or at least, the most methodical and least likely to confuse) way of
lighting the rooms is to reserve one word for the seasons (which aren't
connected to one another), and the two others, in turns, for the monthly rooms.
Like this:
north, ruzam, nw, malu, ne, sodre, se, malu; se, sodre, se, malu, west, ruzam,
se, sodre; sw, malu, sw, sodre, north, ruzam, sw, malu; nw, sodre, nw, malu,
ne, sodre, se, ruzam. Then go east to the monk. We get no reward and are kicked
out, but we've done another chivalric deed.
Go west, get the salt, then go eouth, se, south twice, west and nw to the
orphanage, and give the figurine. Go se, east four times, and ne. Throw the
salt. Go sw and west.

We're almost there! Only two more areas to clear of loot, ahem, gifts for the
orphanage. Go south twice. You must commit all seven deadly sins in here. Not
very knightly, but whatever it takes... Get all. Go nw. First sin: acedia.
Sleep, and sleep again. Go west. Answer "no" when asked to give alms - we're
committing avaritia. Go nw, answer no again, go sw, and this time answer yes to
the banker. Go back ne, se and east.
Go sw. Now for some well-deserved ira: hit the page boy. Take his ball. Go ne
and south. Wipe the board for some invidia. Go north, then se. We will commit
luxuria here - at least, as much of it as can be shown in a before-watershed
game - but the problem here is how to get it. Throw the ball. It will bounce in
a certain direction. Go in that direction, and retrieve the ball. Repeat this:
throw the ball, and follow it. That's your (disappointingly undescribed)
luxuria done. Don't forget to take the ball again.
Now for superbia. Go east, conduct the choir, and when asked whom they should
extol, answer "me". Go back west, then ne for our final sin of gula. Eat the
cheese. Go east, take the bone, and eat it as well. Now leave Nastil-Xarn by
going west, sw and north. Take all your rewards.
Go north twice and down. We're now in the final maze of the game. It is in
essence a normal maze, which could be mapped normally... except that, as
explained, the entire area is rotating, so that all directions change one
compass point counter-clockwise each turn. Note that this also means that one
false step means that the walkthrough becomes hopelessly unusable, so beware of
typos here!
Go south, se, south and nw. Take the paten. Go sw, west, sw and south. Take the
coins. Finally, go north, sw, east and down. Whew! Our map is back to normal
now. Back to the orphanage to deposit our last load of treasure; south, west
thrice and nw. Give the paten, coins, stole, orb and sceptre to the priest.

We are now worthy to enter the end game. You should be carrying only the mighty
sword Wren. If not, go and find it. If you still have other objects with you
(such as the paper), that's no problem, but you need the sword.
Go se and sw to the fork near the start. You _are_ now second to none, so go
nw, then north - note those instructions - and north again. Apollyon asks you
for your name; you may enter any you like. When he asks whence you come, enter
"Moan" - the name of the castle at the start of the game - and you seek, of
course, the "Sangraal".
You'll defeat Apollyon and enter the castle, where (per instructions) you need
to free six knights. The problem is, in which order? Freeing each takes a
different amount of time, and each takes more or less time to get ready once
freed. Free, in this order, Agravain, Caradoc, Ector, Harry, Dagonet and Bors.
Those six will accompany you to the Sangraal. You may now, if you wish to be
particularly chivalric, free Feirefiz, but you get no extra points for this.
You must free Gareth, however, in order to pass the rest of the time.

Well done, you're a true noble knight of the Chaise Longue, and may go into
history as the one who reached the Sangraal.