Darklands: A Game Guide

Sites about the Game:

http://www.darklands.net

Darklands is one of those games that one can play over and over again and always find a new facet of game play or new strategic approach that keeps the game fresh and enjoyable. Decades after it's release, Darklands still enjoys a stalwart group of fans due to the historic value of the RPG and fun game play. My guide includes little known techniques to advance your characters wealth and skills.

How to Win Maidens and Influence Emperors

At character creation, one can create alchemists of high skill over and over again and transfer their potions to other characters in the party, then delete the alchemist and make another one. The potions you get this way will sell for a considerable amount once you start playing. Your party should always include a Friar type character with high virtue and at least some useful saints like St. Weneslaus. Also consider adding someone with high alchemy, healing and or woodswise skill to make your first encounters easy.

When you first start adventuring, if you stole lots of potions you should be able to buy the best armor and weapons immediately. The best city to buy armor and weapons is Nurnberg. If you're not in Nurnberg, get there fast and remember to always deposit your gold coins with the Medici banker before leaving town.

mmediately try to find a church that can teach you one of the following saints: St. Wolfgang, St. Raymond Pf, and St. Wenceslaus. The reason for seeking out these specific Saints, is that they grant the ability to get an audience with the local noble at the town hall.

You can pray to these saints and keep receiving the same job over and over again from the noble. If you do a quest to eliminate a robber knight for a noble, you will get paid 48 gold each time instead of the 10 gold you would get from a merchant and you receive an immense amount of local fame. If you repeatedly pray until you have the quest ten times or so you will make almost 1,000 florins for eliminating one robber knight. This technique will let you quickly gain skills because you can afford to hire teachers at the universities. To make the maximum amount of money, I have each character learn to invoke a saint that grants an audience, then have each character pray 4 times before leaving town.

You can also kill evil villagers or local thieves over and over again to increase your weapon skills. Once you have gained over 80 skill in Edged Weapons, the Sword Smith can train you to the maximum level. You can stay in a slum and train skills. Another tactic you will find useful is to run a macro to find a room to stay in the slum, for example you could highlight "find an abandoned room" then enter, enter, L for leave. I have tried this with my game pad, and it takes about 20 minutes to max out the streetwise skill, which will allow you to stay undisturbed in the slums, completely free of inn fees.

Once you have the best armor, suitable skills and money you will want to increase your character's virtue. The hard way to do this is to escort friars, end plagues, and confront evil lords over and over again. The easy way to gain virtue is to find the village that is sacrificing maidens to the dragon. Once you have found the maiden sacrificing village you can have your characters attempt to rescue the maiden by stealth.

Locating the maiden's village can be a difficult task. When you first start the game pay attention to rumors about a dragon, then check near the appropriate area for a village. When the Dragon event spawns, the village will be created and not disappear even if the dragon is vanquished or even if the event times out and the dragon is no longer in the area. It is possible to have several dragons spawn during the game but the maiden village should be near the first dragon spawn.

Each time you save a maiden the entire party will gain virtue. After about an hour of this or so, your party will be so righteous, that they will have no trouble invoking any saint, which will help you throughout the game on the harder quests. Finally, when you venture into the Monestary near Flensberg be sure to not kill the end demon. Once you kill the demon off, the monestary and it's fabulous treasures will vanish forever. If you do not destroy the demon at the end you can reload the monestary again and again, collecting valuable artifacts.

Now that you are an unstoppable hero of virtue, feel free to venture into the Citadel of the apocalypse, slay the dragon and bring everlasting fame to your name.