SoftSide Adventure of the Month #14 Robin Hood By Peter Kirsch Published by SoftSide Publications, July 1982 For Atari 400/800/XL/XE (same or very similar for Apple II and TRS-80, except for cheats) Solution by Garry Francis ---------------------------------------- This is a minimal solution. You have to achieve 5 deeds: 1. Give to the poor. 2. Win the archery contest. 3. Rescue Maid Marion. 4. Kill the Sheriff of Nottingham. 5. Meet King Richard. These must be done in order, as each task is dependent on the successful completion of the previous task. Task 1 requires one or more bags of gold. Don't waste your time collecting any more than necessary, as you will lose it all when you give it to Widow Brown. Task 2 is in Nottingham. Before you can travel to Nottingham, you need to gather your band of 4 merry men, then find horses for them, then find a horse for yourself. The tasks in Nottingham will require at least 37 bags of gold as follows: 2 for extra arrows* 10 for entry to the archery contest 25 for a replacement sword * The archery contest requires three arrows. You will have used one to shoot the goose for Friar Tuck. If you've wasted any other arrows, then you'll need to replace them as well. The other extra arrow will be required for task 4. However, Robin's aim is not as good as legend would have us believe, so you should stock up with plenty of spare arrows. About 10 spares should be enough. That takes your total to 47. You get bags of gold by stealing from rich merchants that travel through Sherwood Forest, the clearing and the pastures (see pale red rooms on map). Merchants appear at random at fairly regular intervals. When you hear hoofbeats, it means a merchant will arrive in 3 moves. He will only hang around for 2 moves. Each merchant carries from 0 to 3 bags of gold. You can't steal the gold until you LOOK MERCHANT to see whether he's got any. If he doesn't have any gold, you can steal his horse or his clothes, but you can only do each of these once. Leave the stealing of the clothes until last, as you will need these before travelling to Nottingham, but you can't wear them when robbing merchants. If a merchant sees you, he rides off before you get a chance to rob him. To avoid this, you must surprise him by arriving in the room after he arrives. You can do this by using GO TREE before he arrives, then D when he arrives. You must use this method for the second merchant you rob. For all the others, you can use an exit that returns to the same room. This requires far fewer keystrokes and is the method used in most of the solution. Note that you can't rob a merchant if you're in your underwear or wearing the disguise. The robbing of merchants is a painfully slow process, so I'd suggest cheating. For the Atari version, when you're ready to gather the 47 bags of gold, press BREAK, then enter BG=47:CONT in direct mode. Task 3 requires getting past two guards. Don't waste your arrows on them or your bow will break and you'll have to go and buy a new one. Fight the first one with your sword. This will also break, but Friar Tuck will come to the rescue. You can then go and buy a new sword to take care of the second guard. Task 4 requires killing the Sheriff of Nottingham. His appearance is triggered by successfully rescuing Maid Marion. Things are then controlled by two random factors. Firstly, his appearance is random. Just keep wandering around until he appears. Secondly, his death is random. You have a 50% chance of successfully shooting him. If you're lucky, you can shoot him with the first arrow, but it has taken me up to 7 or 8 arrows in one game. This is very frustrating, especially if you don't have enough arrows and you've used up all your gold. In this case, you have to go back to Sherwood Forest to rob more merchants and go to Ye Olde Arrow Shoppe to buy more arrows while the sheriff keeps popping up to tease you. Task 5 requires finding King Richard. His appearance is triggered by successfully killing the Sheriff of Nottingham. All you have to do is wander around until you find him. Due to the randomness and conditional nature of some actions, I've used a sort of pseudo code in the solution. I hope this is clear. Good luck! You'll need it. while flying geese absent S wend SHOOT GOOSE GET GOOSE repeat while merchant absent S wend LOOK MERCHANT if merchant has gold STEAL GOLD else S endif until gold > 0 N W S (Will Scarlet joins you) GET POLE while hoofbeats absent S wend GO TREE WAIT WAIT D STEAL HORSE (Will Scarlet takes horse) N W GIVE GOOSE (Friar Tuck joins you) E N E SE PUSH BOULDER GET HARP NW W W GO LOG YES E (Little John joins you) GO LOG W W GIVE HARP (Allan A Dale joins you) N GO COTTAGE GIVE GOLD (deed 1 completed) S E GO LOG E E E NE (Little John takes horse) SW SE (Friar Tuck & Allan A Dale take horse) NW W W GO LOG W W W GO HORSE (you take a horse) E E GO LOG E E S S repeat while merchant absent S wend LOOK MERCHANT if merchant has gold STEAL GOLD else S endif until gold > 46 while merchant absent S wend STEAL CLOTHES GET DISGUISE N N READ PAPER (archery contest is now open) N GO ROAD N DROP HORSE W 1 (to buy arrow) L (to leave) N NE GARRY (enter any name except ROBIN) (Keep pressing RETURN, when prompted, until contest is finished. If you're unlucky and lose, for Atari version, press BREAK and enter X5=42:RP=200:GOTO 893 in direct mode.) (deed 2 completed) SW (you get captured) (Keep pressing RETURN until you're rescued and returned to Sherwood Forest.) GO HORSE N GO ROAD N DROP HORSE N N NW FIGHT GUARD (sword breaks, but Friar Tuck comes to the rescue) SE S S W 2 (to buy sword) 1 (repeat as necessary to buy plenty of arrows) L (to leave) N N NW GO STAIRS FIGHT GUARD LOOK GUARD GET KEY OPEN DOOR GO DOOR GET MARION (deed 3 completed) repeat while sheriff absent LOOK wend SHOOT SHERIFF until sheriff dead (deed 4 completed) E D SE S S GO HORSE S S S E (deed 5 completed) ***THE END***