KQ speed runs/ lowest score
 

Greetings all. First post here. I grew up with the old sierra games and every once and a while my brother and I like to break them out and play. We especially like to speed run KQ3 or PQ2 and go for low scores.

One thing that I did first was to beat KQ3 without turning the wizard into a cat. Not only does this add an element of excitement to the game because instead of aiming to defeat your foe you are literally just running from him the whole time. It also allows for faster completion and lower scores than normal.

I guess my question is, does anyone else speed run these games, go for low scores, or try to beat them in ways unintended without going into debug mode?

If so, what cool tricks have you accomplished? Or are there any boards where people record such feats?

Thanks

I didn't know this was possible... I thought that Manannan would always appear and kill you if you tried to board the ship without turning him into a cat.

It is possible. He will chase you all the way to the beach and the screen after that on the island and then give up. You have to hide out in places he can't get you or just run off of every screen as fast as possible.

I always wondered if anyone else had pulled this one off or know of any other tricks or game breakers in KQ/PQ or SQ games.

Never knew that before. Crazy.

Umm... but the pirates don't appear until after he's a cat. I don't understand how you got to Daventry without cheating.

I am pretty sure the pirates are tied into seeing the oracle. I remember as a kid getting killed as I was boarding the ship. I will go back and try to replicate this. I know you can get to the boat, but I have never seen anyone actually finish the game without changing him.

Yep. That is correct. Still though, I'm not sure how you'd avoid him on some of those screens.

Yeah, it's only the remakes that hold the pirates off until after the cat thing, I believe. At least I know KQ3Redux works that way.

Island? There are no islands in KQ3... Do you mean the continent where Daventry is located?

Also 'running away from Manannan'?

Uh, I thought the many times you screw up with him, he appears right next to you (or even across the screen), and the game pauses your character, and he says his thing, before either teleporting you back to the house, or zapping you.

If you mean the 'edge of the screen' trick? That is load and leave screens into another adjacent screen, faster than it takes for Manannan to appear? That might be possible in some places (as long as there are plenty of screen edges to work with)... Although I don't know how that would work on the ship itself... As you literally have to cross most of the screens, to get ahold of the box, climb the ladder, get your stuff, cast the spells etc.

Also I think I was using the teleport cheat one time, and got Manannan to appear on the mountains once, near the Abominable Snowman's cave..., and zap me to death!

Yes by island I mean the continent where Daventry is located. sorry I always call it the island because of the first screen you are on a beach. The oracle does cause the ship to come in the original, not sure how the remakes work, never tried it.

You need to board the ship when he is on a journey. If you do everything right, you can leave during his first journey after making the 3 spells you need to beat the game: Storm/ Flying/ Invisible. On the ship you can hide at the crows nest screen, the screen below it or the balcony off of the captain's room. He can't come in any of these screens. He isn't programmed to because he has no place to stand (Kind of ironic since he is a wizard, you would think he could float). Getting your stuff back is the hardest part. You need to move fast and use the balcony screen to reset the wizard's appear timer in between tasks.

When you hear "Land Ho" fly to the beach and run off of that screen and the next screen as fast as possible. If you have made it 3 screens in he will no longer chase you.

I just wanted to wait a bit and see if anyone has done it before I reveled the process, but there you go have at it.

Yes, sorry I mean the continent where Daventry is located.

In the original game, not sure about remakes talking to the oracle causes the ship to arrive. If you create the 3 spells you need to compete the game: Flying/ Invisible/ Storm during the wizards first journey you can go get on the pirate ship.

On the ship there are 3 screens the wizard will not appear on: Crows nest/ ladder below crows nest/ balcony off the captains room. He is not programmed to go there because he has no place to stand i suppose.

The hardest part is getting your items out of the trunk and requires use of the balcony multiple times between actions.

The wizard will not come on any screens in Daventry except the beach and the screen after, he will never come in the mountains during the yeti fight etc.

I tried taking some screen shots of some of this, but it wasn't working very well, mostly shifted all of the colors when I tried to paste it into anything and removed the header menu with the score/ time.

Anyone know a good way to take a image of these old games without just taking a picture of the screen w/ a camera?

Launch them in Dosbox, play in windowed mode (Alt+Enter). Whenever you're ready to take a screenshot, press the Print Screen key on your keyboard, then Alt+Tab to your drawing software and press CTRL+V. If you try to do it in fullscreen mode, it will result with messed up colors.

Heh...no offense, but that is quite possibly the worst way I can think of to take a screenshot. ;)

What blueskirt said should work. If you're playing them on a newer Mac, you can also take photos of anything on your desktop at any time by pressing Shift+Command+4. This turns the cursor into a camera, and you can click-drag a box around the area you want to photograph. Very handy, especially for getting images of "non-savable" online pics. :)

PrintScreen doesn't work in later versions of Windows either. However, DOSBox has a perfectly functional screenshot shortcut key (Ctrl+F5) which works nicely.

I Completed the game with 118/210 points. I believe this is the lowest possible score. This involves not killing the wizard or Medusa. Here is how I did it.

to avoid getting the points for hiding your items when the game starts do your chore and then gather the cup, knife, spoon, and bowl and wait for the wizard to leave (5:00)

After wizard leaves get the essence, brass key, cat hair, wand, go into the lab, get all the items from the shelves and make flying spell and head down the mountain.

You need the cactus in the desert so you will have to quickly enter and exit the desert screens to avoid Medusa.

You must go into the bandits hideout to get the purse otherwise no boat ride. find the eagle feather and mud, kill spider, talk to oracle (you must to get pirates to come), get ocean water, buy lard and fish oil and return to the lab.

The remaining 2 spells that need to be completed are brewing a storm and becoming invisible. However you need an "empty jar" to put the storm brew in and the only way i could get that into my inventory was the create the "cat spell". after the spells are created walk down the mountain (no map) and get on the pirate ship.

Avoiding the wizard on the ship is not easy, you need to move very fast. immediately get the small box and drop it in the next room, then go back to previous screen to reset the wizards timer and head up the ladder. In order to get your stuff out of the chest in the captains quarters you must use the same reset technique by utilizing the balcony off the back of the ship. Once you have all of your stuff back go up to the crows nest and chill until you get the land ho message.

The wizard can still come after the ship reaches land so turn into and eagle and fly to the island then immediately head into the mountains. Trick the yeti, kill the dragon and win.

If anyone knows a way to get the "empty jar" without making another spell please let me know. If you were able to complete the game with only the flying/invisible/storm spells you could potential have a score of 105/210.

The time was 42:12 standing in front of king Graham. This was done on version 2.14.

Yes it does. =\

http://i.imgur.com/JsIUy.png

Weird. I thought it was a big issue a few years back because PrintScreen didn't work anymore. Maybe that's XP. Either way, Ctrl+F5 is better.

I didn't bother running it in dos box yet. I just know that if you run it off the collectors disk in XP you can't screen shot it w/ print screen. I know it would work in dos box for sure cause of the way it runs in a separate window like an emulator.

I also was thinking. I could just get "X" number of points and then debug and complete the game. So went for the explanation instead. My brother actually wrote that after I watched him do it at my house yesterday. It was fun.

Nothing brings the family together like a couple of 28/31 year old men playing KQ3 and debating ways to get an empty jar ;).

The XP Collector's disc itself uses DOSBox for the first 6 games.

Never knew you could beat game without turning Mannanan into a cat. That sounds like a challenge indeed. It does sorta mess with the KQ story though...