Let's Play the First Quest: King's Quest

Go down to Georgia.

Hey, the woodcutter's wife is so thin and weak from starvation that she can't even sit up or speak, but the woodcutter himself is perfectly ambulatory and sensible?

Someone was being a food-bogarting asshole!

It's nearly dinnertime and now all I want is stew... Dinty Moore here I come...

Play the fiddle for the name-guessing elf?

(This is all kinds of awesome. It's been decades since I played KQ1 and I NEVER played the updated version.)

Hurl yourself down the well. Maybe there's goodies, like an untimely death?

This. But first get in the bucket, load gold nut and the diamonds for extra ballast, and then cut the rope with the snazzy dagger.

Because style matters.

i gotta say, this makes me super nostalgic for quest for glory 1. the font!

You wouldn't think it'd have such an effect on you, but it does!

Go find that jerk dwarf that stole from you in your dreams and take your vengeance.

With all the shouting going on in his head it's hard for Graham to think sometimes... But he's pretty sure at least more than one of the voices told him to go to the well and so he heads over:







Why not, right?











Sir Graham gets a little distracted by the chest and stays under water a little too long...



I mean, no such thing happened and Graham quickly moved through the water and moves into the next screen:

]

There's one of the kingdom's treasures! And all that's preventing us from getting our hands on it is that giant pesky dragon... maybe he's a pacifist?



Guess not...

DEATH COUNT: 7

Throw the Trog-sword at him!

- Eddie

Sir Graham rethinks his approach giant fire breathing lizard probably aren't pacifists... What to do, What to do? Well he is lugging around this giant bucket of water, and it's getting heavy. Give it to the dragon? (this is adventure game logic)



"What?!" How is that dragon unable to defend itself?! It's got weight, size, fangs, and claws all on its side. Not to mention armored scales! Nope, none of that matters! Well, the monster is gone and that is what counts! Time to loot!

Graham grabs the mirror and looks into its depths, hoping to catch a glimpse of his future:



Well, that wasn't very helpful... Time to blow this joint:



Oh, so that's where that cave went to. Sir Graham decides to follow through on a couple of the other voices requests before he stands around and waits for them to tell him what to do again.

Kill the dwarf that haunts his dreams:



I don't know guys... I guess the geniuses art Sierra didn't think someone might try and knife the damned little guy

Kill the Ogre (that also haunts his dreams):



Play the fiddle for the spinning gnome:



Guess he doesn't appreciate the fine arts?

What about that Elf we saw earlier? Maybe we can kill him?



The one ring to rule them all is nice, but it's not as satisfying as killing him...

What next voices? Play the gnome game? Wander around? Wake up and realize this was all a dream and try something else?

you mean his dinky knife? But Graham doesn't believe in violence!

That witch was an accident and he can't be held accountable for what wild animals do!

Stop it!

Sir Graham loves all creatures!

Don't forget the cloud of vaporized boiling water! I've never heard steam described as "harmless" since, well, the first time I gave myself sunburn-level injuries messing around with the stove....

I'm with Eddie here. Time paradox things for a bit and show us what'd happen if you tried to kill a huge dragon with your puny knife instead of taking the pacifist cartoon approach.

Simon would do it. If he didn't have the axe or cross.

Of course Bizarro world Sir Graham is a murderous fiend, who oddly enough never steals other people's property or walks around taking everything not nailed down... This is how he handled the bizarro dragon to get the bizarro magic mirror

BIZARRO!



(if you look carefully you can see the dagger about to enter the dragon's neck)



Take that bizarrro dragon!

Now to retrieve his knife:



or not... Well, the dead dragon won't be moving that rock aside, looks like Bizarro Graham leaves the way he came in:



And that's how it could of happened (and did in bizarro world.)

Sir, I accuse you of creating your own convenient 'narrative' for the court. Need I remind you of the goat incident?


- Eddie

p.s. Trog-Sword rules!

That must have been bizarro Sir Graham...

That fake mustache isn't fooling anyone in MY court of law!

- Eddie

I find it hilarious that a huge dragon like that can be taken down with a puny dagger. Bizarro Graham's certainly better at using throwing knives than the Belmonts are. Even if he doesn't get as many points for killing.

Well yes, but then, I'm pretty sure a blind leper with no hands could outdo the Belmonts in a knife-tossing contest.

Sauron's ring will surely come in handy when trying to evade nasty beasties that want to have Graham feasties. I wonder just how far its power extends...

Oh, and incidentally, steam can actually do quite a bit of damage. Large quantities of superheated pretty-much-anything sports a much larger contact area when in vapor/gas form. If anything, a steam-breathing dragon would be far more dangerous than a fire-breathing one.

Unless otherwise directed Sir Graham will be harassing that gnome on the island in the next episode.

Adventures of Bizarro Graham might also be shared

Harass the gnome. Harass all the gnomes.

So if you chuck your knife at the dragon, is that one of those Sierra-type innocentlyscrewyououtofvictoryforever things? Or is that actually a legitimate way of getting past?

Its completely legit, you just don't get as many points. You don't need the knife for anything else and you can simply backtrrack to get out of the well/cave.

I think clearly what the example of the dragon shows is that you've been using your knife all wrong. Graham is obviously poor at stabbing, but excellent a chucking.

Throw Knife at Troll, Ogre, and Gnome.

- Eddie

I already tried that Eddie (please see below) the game says the ogre's skin is too tough and they ignore any such command in regards to the dwarf... I haven't run into the Sorcerer yet but when I do I'll give it a try...

I must have missed the screenshot. I can only find ones where you try 'kill' and 'stab', not 'toss trog-sword at.'

- Eddie

Yeah I tried to kill them those aren't in quote typed commands. Seeing as as soon as they get close to you they kill/steal from you. The command I was typing in was:

Sorry for not being as clear as I could have been on that.

Dutifully following orders Graham makes his way to the only gnome he can think of and attempts to kill him (the voices they demand it!)



Do we need a reason to kill filthy non-humans?! Oh, he has something to say:



Oh, that's right last time we were here he wen't blathering on about something? Well, this can't be too hard I mean he's a gnome and he has a spinning wheel with a pile of straw and a pile of gold in front of it... and Graham's mom wasn't neglectful and made to fill his head with all sorts of nonsense when he was a child:



"BwaaahhhaaTTT?" How can it not be Rumplestiltkin? Wait a minute what was the thing that note said?



Ah, yes Roberta Williams surely little boys will connect this random note found in the witch's house with this gnome and act accordingly... No, no they won't.



Sweet! I got some beans! I know just what to do with them! Thanks Mom! Maybe I can stop hating you for naming Graham... maybe.



pushy little bastard



What do these beans look like?



Not much it turns out. Now that the gnome is gone Graham can swipe all that gold:



Okay, what about that wheel?



Crap... Well nothing to do here then... Graham then spends far too much time looking for a place to plant these beans (Jack being a hero of his, he knows just what to do with them) except, he can't seem to find the right spot:



I'm sure he'll figure it out eventually.

MECHANICS TALK: So, that name guessing thing I just did? Probably the hardest puzzle in the game. Because I guessed Rumplestiltskin the first time, we won't be getting a perfect score (lame I know.) There is nothing in the game world to help the player connect the note to the gnome, so it's helpfulness is dubious at best. In the original version though it was even more difficult! You got the same note but the gnome's name wasn't Nikstiltselpmur it was Ifnokvhgroghprm (this name works in the remake too, but no one ever guessed that name without calling Sierra's Hint-Line.) Can you guess where that name comes from? If so then you're as bad a puzzle designer as Roberta Williams is! Congratulations! Those capitalized first letters are important too if you type in 'nikstiltselpmur' you'll lose a guess! I grew up thinking you couldn't guess the guy's name thinking the bizarro way of getting the chest was the only way (you'll see in a minute.) The problem being the bizarro way of getting the chest really, really sucks (again you'll see why soon enough.)

Eventually Graham finds a location to plant the beans:





Thank goodness for the mouse! Climbing this beanstalk is a terrible ordeal wherein you guess where the climbable route is and hope you can successfully navigate it using the arrow keys. With the mouse you just click a little in front of Graham and he successfully navigates the stalk... unlike using the keyboards where you would often be moving a pixel at a time and had to tap each key twice, once to get Graham moving and another to stop him... Oh, man the time spent and the loss of life this damn stalk has taken...

If you did manage to miss:



Successfully navigating the stalk though results in this:



Looks like I missed a screen somewhere... From the shot above I went east and then south and ended up here:



In the next post:

Graham continues exploring the land of clouds.

DEATH COUNT: 8

Yeah, I thought the bizarro way was the only way as well.

That was the day I learned about savescumming!