Dragon Warrior III: It's almost time for Lia the heroine to rescue the daughter of a spice dealer as well as said daughter's fiancé/husband. With almost it means she wants to explore a bit first. That or she simple missed the tower where the kidnappers are holed up and happened to find something else first.
Anyway, she enters the shrine of Dharma, the shrine of making broken characters. Unfortunately, that doesn't include her since the cleric there forbids her from changing her class. She wonders if she should bother changing her companions' classes at all, there's a danger that they become more powerful than she is. Maybe she can compensate by hogging all stat seeds and making sure they give the maximum benefit, but that will probably not be enough. Fortunately, her current party setup works just fine.
Nearby is a tower, not the one where kidnappers are. Talking to people who for some reason seems to live there reveals that the book of Zen, which allows you to change class to Sage, is there. Sounds good, but Lia never felt that the cleric needs to be able to cast mage spells or that the mage needs to cast cleric spells. The book could make the mage less fragile though, but again she fears she may end up with a companion more powerful than she is and instead stresses the importance of quickly rescuing the victims from the kidnappers.
Back to town and this time the party locates the tower of kidnappers. The tower is easy to get trough and so are the kidnappers. It turns out to be Kandar who this time has more hitpoints, but doesn't seem to do much more damage since last. Once he's throughoutly beaten he again asks for mercy and pulls a "but thou must" to ensure he gets the answer he wants. One day Lia will find a way to outsmart the system!
She free the what's-their-faces and returns to town. There she gets the spice as reward. She gives the spice the spice addicted king who sniffs eats it and then grants her the possession of a ship. Score!
A large part of the world now opened up to her, so it's time to travel to random locations and see if she finds something useful. Unfortunately, the first place she encounters is the castle of snobs. The guard there won't even let her in and calls the party "bumpkins". Maybe she could get the kings she already visited to get her a fancy sounding title. Even better, she could take advantage of the fact that she can temporarily become a queen and prepare all the royal documents she will ever need. Or maybe there’s a specific “get past the guard” item.
Well, she locates the needed item very quickly. The next village she hits has it. It's an invisible herb and the villagers even tells her to go to snob castle after purchasing some. Other than that, the village also has a temple which requires her to get the Final Key to access.
West of the village is a mountain pass. The village is however blocking said pass and there's no way to enter the pass without first entering the village. Lia does so and then exits the village westwards. This is in vain as every exit lands her south of the village. There's apparently no way to enter the pass right now. To the snob castle then.
The party becomes invisible right in front of the guard and then enters the castle. Other than useless snobs, there's also a block puzzle, or boulder puzzle to be precise, in the castle basement. Solving it yields the vase of drought. Lia doesn't know where to use it yet, but figures she will when she sees it.
Next the party locates a village in a very poor shape. The villagers are concerned that they are to close to the demonking and that something bad may happen to them. Sleeping in the run down inn reveals that their concerns were perfectly justified, at morning there's no villagers, there's only bones. At nighttime the villagers will be back again. Anyway, Lia decides to explore the currently desolate village and locates it's puzzle. A pile of bones has a letter stating that the owner of the bones wants to give a certain item to someone while still alive. The item is not with the bones, so it indeed has to be obtained while the owner is alive, or at least sort of alive. The owner happens to be a prisoner and while there's a one tile big hole in the prison, a guard is blocking it during nighttime. The jail can be opened with the Final Key, an item Lia doesn't have.
Lia also finds the Dark Lamp while exploring the village. This lets her change from day to night which coupled with the inn means she has full control over whether the villagers will be dead or alive. Awesome! Unfortunately, using it teleports the party to the village entrance, so the Final Key is still needed.
Next time she maybe finds the Key.
