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I bought the game when it came out. I found it was more like a board game than a video game. I tried to get onto it. It wouldn't stick. Every 5 to 10 years I would try again ... I just can't get into it. I don't remember much except running around the maze "forever". There's a similar game called Swords and Serpents by Imagic. I bought that one too. I remember running around forever; losing track of what the 'F' I'm supposed to do in the game. :)

I'll watch your games. I can't even comment on your suggestions. You know more than I do.

its an end game grind -- that is to say, from the beginning it plays like a simplified version of diablo end game. it is turn based. you slowly power up with better items and stats, so i can see where the turn based could feel like a board game. even how the board randomly generate is more based on how to make random dungeons with tiles on a table top than how video games tend to do it. it makes sense considering d&d is table top.

theres a few tricks to figuring out the randomly generated mazes as they generate with a set bound of randomness. i can play it without using a map and completely find my way around just fine, but that would take a little while to describe

probably the most important tricks to figure out the maps are
1. the 10x10 is actually 4 5x5s. because of this the middle of the edes of the 5x5s ALWAYS have door to the other 5x5 even if the door is sometimes invisible
2. any spot on a 5x5 can be reached without ever leaving the 5x5 so you can explore each quadrant at a time
3. the 5x5s themselves come from a limited set of tiles, i think someone online found it was either 20 or 30. after enouhg hours you eventually memorize all 30. this isnt needed of course, but it does help in that you start to figure out the fastest way to explore each one. I couldnt tell you what hand they all are, but when i see them i recognize them and know how to explore. someitmes with in the first 3 rooms of the 5x5 i already know what the other 22 rooms are
4. EVERY square is accessible, so if you notice theres a spot you havent gotten to, either you missed a path, or maybe even a secret door.

If you'd like to know the current state of speedrunning this game, last summer I poured a lot of time into it and was able to get my times for this game pretty low with some rather astronomical luck in some of the difficulties. Refer to https://www.speedrun.com/adanddtot/full_game

I know some guy made these 3D renderings of each of the rooms which I used for a while, but they have some viewing limitations with the doors and whatnot. A guy named Koston linked me these 2D renderings a few days ago, which are much easier to view. Hope this helps!

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Originally Posted by TheWinslinator

If you'd like to know the current state of speedrunning this game, last summer I poured a lot of time into it and was able to get my times for this game pretty low with some rather astronomical luck in some of the difficulties. Refer to https://www.speedrun.com/adanddtot/full_game

I know some guy made these 3D renderings of each of the rooms which I used for a while, but they have some viewing limitations with the doors and whatnot. A guy named Koston linked me these 2D renderings a few days ago, which are much easier to view. Hope this helps!

i'm pretty familiar with the rooms. there are alot of things though that should be in the instructions that arent, like just some basic rules of how the games work such as what makes your magic or war hit points improve for example. A few questions for you

1. what determines your hitpoints going up? i noticed you grinding on certain enemies so i know you've figured it out but i didnt exaclty follow what you were doing
2. do you have memorized exactly what you need to be able to just barely defeat walls/minotaur?
3. you dont seem to need the potions, and treasures are either just points, keys (for more treasure), bombs, or potions. without the need of potions would it make more sense to skip any and all treasures?

i did not watch you whole run just skimmed through it so my apologies if my above questions are made obvious by viewing, i'll try to watch the whole thing later, but wanted to compliment a few things
1. i love the use of retreat instead of turning around to save time. i'm not really at that point where that time would make much of a difference, but its a nice touch
2. damn man! i thought for sure when i saw your time your were exploitng some major bug, but no, you just really have the mechanics all down super well. very impressive.

1. So if you use all your arrows and attack an enemy with an empty bow, the game will actually award you war experience for that. This means you can just attack a single (preferrably weak) enemy an inordinate number of times for a bunch of war experience instead of searching for others, saving a bunch of time. Careful though, as I recently figured out that if you begin an encounter then retreat, the game will not give you any experience from that same enemy if you encounter it again.

Spiritual experience, however, is more difficult to level up this fast because there's no empty bow equivalent for spiritual weapons. One thing you can do, however, is level up war strength with the bow and walk through a blue gate. Blue gates distribute some of your war strength to spiritual strength and this has proved to work well in the harder difficulties.

2. The attack levels, defense levels, and HP values of the magic doors and the minotaur vary to an insane degree so I just had general thresholds I should meet before facing them. In my PB attempts I would play through the game and hope I would get lucky and have to fight weak doors and minotaurs. Lost a lot of runs from being pummeled by strong ones.

3. Treasures are simply for points, but you should still open all the containers you can. You can find keys, power books which allow you to level up way faster, any potion is valuable (although you might not want to use some of them in special situations), and if you're really lucky you'll find one of those special books that can turn a crappy run into a good one.

The retrace step button is soooooo nice to have in this game. Just one comment on my movement though - I use the glance left/right button a lot but in reality, actually turning left or right and then back again takes pretty much the same amount of time.

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Going with that are weak weapons better? You get more experience based on number of shots?

Also any idea why sometimes they give you no experience or I swear sometimes it seems the game only wants to give you war or spiritual but not the other

You seemed to want an opening map. Is there anyway to know the color of gates ahead of time?

Also it seems to me more powerful weapons break faster have you noticed the same?

oh man! I learnd something new thx to you -- i get to teach you something. (tone check, i say this not taunting but with honor as i'm very impressed by your skills). First though i'm gonna drone on a bit because I am so impressed by what you've done

when i came to TG i played on odyssey2. I was setting 2 "world records" every week. Then i switched over to arcade and it was no longer so easy. I learned pretty quickly TG arcade is a hell of a lot harder than tg console. I hope you're one of the best speed runners, because if you're just average, or even just a little above average, TG players have no chance against you guys. please tell me yu're among the best over there.

So i experimented with your lack of arrows trick. I was also curious what would happen if i swapped between weapons on the same enemy. Thx to two blue gates in a row (not what i wanted), my war was a measly 3 but i had rings so my defense was good. I used a bunch on empty arrows, and then finished the skeleton off with magic. i went from 3 to 30! now that might not surprise you, but my spirit went up 2 as well. so sure, the trick doesnt work AS well for spirit, but point is, as your getting your way with this, as long as you finish them off with spirit, you can get a little spirit as you go too.

i also failed to appreciate how little food heals. using this tactci drains hp muchquicker. i've found myself running out of food, so i'll have to manage that more carefully

even with all this though your time is still very impressive. i've watched your whole video now. you seem to skip some rooms. not quite sure. arent all drops random? have you learned some rooms arent worth exploring?

It appears to me that for every attack you make, there is some random chance that the game will give you experience for it - I have no idea what the likelihood is - but the rule of thumb is that generally, the more attacks you make the better. Having a war or spiritual book activated appears to increase the likelihood of experience gain. That being said, grinding for experience on weak enemies, you would want to use weak weapons to keep them alive as long as possible to attack them for as many turns as possible. Obviously you'd still want to stock up on strong weapons to survive later on.

Gates - so they allow you to cross to an adjacent chamber as seen on the overworld map. Blue gates will NEVER link two war type (light green) mazes, and there will not be any gate if there is no adjacent maze. In the ones I reset on, my guy started at the very edges (adjacent to no mazes so no chance for gates), but on the third one my guy spawned where spiritual and mixed (blue and olive green) type mazes were adjacent, so I knew there was a chance for a blue gate.

I have also definitely noticed more powerful weapons break more frequently. I think the manual might even mention this.

So in reference to the situation you described: the game actually tracks whether or not you gain a strength point after EVERY attack. There's separate RAM addresses for this (for war and spiritual), which I'll call your max potential strength, and is different from the current strength. Your current strength stays the same or decreases as you're damaged, until you heal, and provided you have enough food, only then will you see the experience you gained from all your attacks. It appears from your story that you hadn't rested in a long time and had made a lot of war attacks with a few spiritual attacks here and there in that time. So a 30/2 gain makes perfect sense to me. And yes, finishing with a spiritual weapon is indeed a good strategy in most situations - but if you have a war book activated, sometimes you might want to take advantage of that and finish with a war attack as well.

Each unit of food heals up to 5 war HP and 2 spiritual HP, so it's much better to heal when you're nearly dead than for every time you get attacked. This is another reason why focusing leveling on weak enemies is a good strategy.

As far as I know, every gridspace has an equal likelihood of having some item or enemy on it. However, I usually avoid opening gates that lead into single rooms, and sometimes even those 2x1 or L-shaped rooms because time is generally better spent searching in places that require less turning/opening of doors. Of course, you always run the risk of missing something.

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ok, with the new knowledge, was probably able to beat the minotaur in 3 hours, but to play it safe didnt get him till 4 hrs in. I peaked out all my stats except spirit hit points. i just couldnt get the potions to go past 49, not that they were needed, but annoying i get every single item except whats normally fairly early items.


i'll try to take some time to see if i can find other patterns about gates. since you found one pattern in the negative it begs if there are other pattern to be found.

for your run, do you think getting the purple spell book was key? i cant see beating the game in under a few hours, and certainly not in 17 minutes without it. if i'm understanding, getting the purple spell book early was key. how many games do you have to play before that? ive had several 5 hr games, and only one of them got the purple spell book. do you just reset a million times? or is there some trick?

some more questions and comments for @TheWinslinator

1. do you think your time on easiest is fastest possible? i noticed you skipped your first door, had the minotaur both been behind that door and you checked it you could've taken off a few more seconds. or did you somehow know its impossible for him tobe there and the closes he could be is where you checked?

2. do you know who founded the speedrun track? it would be nice to get their permission to unlock it here. Its a simple enough ruling i dont think anyone could accuse me of plagiarizing just for tracking the speed of completion of all modes, but even still, speedrun tracked it first might as well give them credit and unlock it in the speedrun section.

3. i was actualy going for the nightstalker score, i made it to the invisible robot and man thats harder than it looked. i played these d&d games as a break, so its kinda interesting you happen to be on top of these as well. i watched your game, the invisible robot seems easy in theory, but one false move and its all thrown to hell. are there any tips? or is it just something i need experience for?

4. even using the weakest weapon in the game i eventualy one shot strong enemies. obviously the attack power listed at the bottom isnt the only thing that determines damage. do you know how actual damage is determined?


comments:
1. first thanks so much for commenting here. One thing that sucks about retro gaming versus when it was new, is when the game was new, everyone in school was playing the same game and you could talk about it with everyone charting your progress. Whenever i'm lukcy enough to find someone whos currently playing the same old game (or close to currently) its a real treat to be able to talk about it. simply the discussion alone is a lot of fun. additinally the fact i've learned alot from you is of course a huge reward as well.

2. i noticed on easy, though color changes and position of enemies and items are random, the map layout itself seems to always be the same. or at least the first quadrant is always the same map. it makes me curious how much more of the game is deterministic

3. i'm still analyzing if i agree with you on not on only opening door with more than two room. there is one set up that i have to rap around 6 steps to check one room and i realize now thats a waste of time. also, because of fear of discovering bombs i used to start every level dropping all my items in the outerhall. now i realize since a death would end my run anyway and i should be good enough to avoid death, thats a waste of time. oh sure, if i'm missing a needed key dropping off items helps on the off chance i find the key cause then i can quickly open them all, but the vast amount of time that uses just isnt worth it. so i now know some tweaks for sure but i'm not 100% convinced to take it to your level. have you analyzed the math thoroughly so you're sure its correct? or is it just a general rule of thumb that works? i've been thinking about it alot and its hard for me to get the math right to prove or disprove it. typically every step shows one more square -- technically since you occasionaly have to open a door and sometimes turn a little more than one action per square. complicated by some turns show your extra stuff. so for now i'm assuming roughtly one action per viewed square. A door you have to turn to see with one room, is 3 actions per square. a door straight in your path when you have to turn to avoid it is only one extra move per square (just open it then proceed normally). i'm thinking door right in front of you anyway even if only one room should be open.

oh man, i got a midas book on level 5 out of a common bag! its not like your level 2 midas book, but come on, even that is insane. makes me hopeful if isaw it once so early i'll see it again so early.

regularly under 1.5 hrs still. current goal is 1:15

Yeah getting that Midas book definitely gave that run an insane edge. I know 17:29 can even be beaten by a few minutes without it but like I said, you would need to get lucky with a pretty weak Minotaur. Not sure if you've seen the TAS for this game yet, but it shows just what kind of luck is possible:

Every time I find the Midas book in a normal container, I found a small pink potion earlier on which makes you "find better things in containers". I'm pretty certain finding this item boosts the likelihood of finding the book significantly.

1. So the Easiest run - what I did for that is in an emulator, I would start the game as soon as I could from the title screen, and was only looking for starting frames where the ladder would be in the closest possible space in the first dungeon. By buffering inputs, I would be able to exit to dungeon 2 in the exact same manner every time, which would theoretically yield the same layout in dungeon 2 every time. And so, I would take notes on many resulting layouts for a bunch of starting frames. Well, when I tested this on console it was way harder. RNG didn't seem to be as deterministic as it was in the emulator, and I would get all kinds of dungeon 2 layouts I hadn't seen on emulator - I don't know what that was about. However in the run you're referencing, I immediately noticed that layout WAS one of the ones I had witnessed in emulator, and so I knew exactly where the Minotaur was, and that I needed to pick up that bronze dart to kill him. So basically, I knew beforehand he was behind that door and not the first one.

I will say though that there is a faster pattern that makes you walk two less spaces, and has a blue spear lying on the ground along the way, which could one-shot the Minotaur. 22 seconds is likely possible with that pattern, but I've only seen it once on console. It is an incredibly rare layout.

2. I was the one who requested Treasure of Tarmin be added to speedrun.com, and definitely encourage having those tracks unlocked here!

3. I never made any real serious attempts to make it far past the invisible robot. He acts exactly the same as the black robot, so having a good understanding of the black robot's AI and ways to slip shots past his beam definitely make fighting the invisible one a bit less cumbersome.

4. The damage you deal is a function of the weapon's attack level AND your strength score (and of course, what kind of defense value the game randomly assigns to the guy you're fighting). So basically having more HP also makes you more powerful.

2. Yeah on Easiest the first dungeons always have that same maze layout for whatever reason. I find it strange because I'm pretty sure this isn't the case with any of the other difficulties.

3. No math could possibly prove which is better because you'll never know what's behind any given door. I just go with my gut as to what I deem to be "efficient" at that moment.

And congrats on finding a random Midas book for the first time, looks like it served you well! It's a shame I missed your stream though, I just now saw the notification from your other wall post. What is the link to your Twitch channel?

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well i hope me following up on every answer and looking for detail is fun and not annoying but here goes...
also, i'll just combine all numbers together now
(these numbers dont necessary match above numbers due to skipping some questions and merging)

1. you're answer seems to imply the position of the minotaur can be determine just by knowing where the ladder is. did i interpert you correctly? you also seemed to imply the item drops are as well are connected. is there anything else, that is tied in together? excuse my wording since "random, but determined by another random thing" is awkward semantics, but i think you know what i mean. i mean sure i knew there was some bounds on the randomness -- ladders alwaws on north/south lines between eye murals, each quadrant comes from a set of predefined tiles.. but i didnt realize that one random thing will in turn fix other things

2. i need clarification on the speed run thing. you say you requested it, does that mean you wrote the rules? I believe the TG rule is the author of the speed run rules has to give permission to unlock here. considering how simple the rules are, i'm gonna preemptivly jump the gun an assume the answer is yes, and ask @admin staff to unlock the speed run tracks for intellivision, Advanced Dungeons and Dragons: treasure of tarmin

3a. when you say your hit points affect your damage, are you talking about your maximum hit points or your current hit points?

3b.going with this, i did seem to notice when grinding on an enemy once my current hp drops, they tend to start doing more damage. maybe just a string of bad luck, small sample size. but it sure seemed to me like defense is also in part based on current hit points any idea on that?

4. to clarify my math statement, i'm talking more of course about probabilty. use math to determine which way gives highest probability of success. obviously, as is always true with probabilty, highest probability is always necessarily the best method and low probability things sometimes come true. my assumption is every square has equal chance for drops, so my math is trying to determine maximum squares viewed per second. perhaps squares viewed per second, isnt the same as most probably path? but for now im assuming it is, since opening a door, walking, retracing, looking, turning all take different times, not to mention over head of needing to go around the outer hall on occasion and this is more complicated than i'm willing to do. for now i'm just treating every action as taking equally long. i realize the more assumptions the more dangerous, but i'm hoping this approximation is close enough. and my paths have seemed to take a lot of time off (1:10 now) so it seems to be working

5. i hope this doesnt sound sore loserish so i want to clarify when i say "lucky" i'm in no way being jealous, just stating what i noticed. obvioulsy the midas book is quite rare, and amazing helpful. this combo is crazy from a probability point of view. because not only is it very rare (a lot of luck to find) its also extremely signficant when you do find it. Now fine, that alone is sore loserish, if that was the only issue, i just need to keep playing till i get the luck. but additioally theres some skill in knowing exactly when its safe to drop down a ladder and no longer search a level. the midas book largely removes that skill as you get items so fast you can drop pretty damn first. I'm wondering how you'd feel about me creating a series of "challenges". the first challenge would of course be "cannot use the midas book" after that i'm open to suggestions on other interesting items to remove. i mean all 3 spells books are pretty amazing in that they remove alot of the guess work and management of probability and allow you to just do things quickly without study. my only concern is me creating such tracks comes off as "oh look at this, he couldnt beat me the real way so he needed this joke track to be on top". so i just wanna make sure creating such tracks dont cause offense

6. my twitch name is "snowflaketg" someone else got the "snowflake" name before me. so whoever snowflake is, its not me.

thx again for all your responses. the answers are extermely helpful, and its just plain a fun game to talk about

oh, one more question as the tas raised a question for me

7. I thought the minotaur always attacked your weaker stat. it seemed here though war was far stronger than spirit, yet he went after the war anyway. why was that?

60 minutes! i just look at the clock, not super precise, so 59-61 minutes really. but yes! got the 60 minutes! I told myself that was the final goal, but i think without asking for too much ridiculous luck I can get it down to 50 minutes (still not your sub 20, i'm not even trying for that)

1. Not necessarily knowing where the ladder is, but after I descended it, and immediately saw those three doors ahead of me along with the bronze dart on the floor, I immediately knew which pattern it was. The thing is, if you get to the second chamber pretty much the same way every time from a console reset, there's only a handful of patterns the game can really give you since resetting means you start from the same RNG seed.

2. Yes, the rules for Treasure of Tarmin were written by me.

3a. Current hit points

3b. Now that you mention it, I think you're right, because I have noticed the same thing. An enemy would start by delivering 1 damage, and then by the end starts delivering 5. So yeah I think it would be safe to say that both your attack and defense is tied to your current strength score, which also serves as an HP system. Wow, what a complex system.

4. I think someone who knows how would need to disassemble the game's code to see if all squares have an equal chance of containing an object. I have no way of knowing currently, so the best we can assume is all squares have equal chance. If the time gets low enough, there might not be any time to check side rooms at all, just running into items along the main corridors might be all there's time for!

5. Hmmm I'm not sure I like that limitation on the Midas book because while it gives an insane advantage, one could argue the Teleport and Vision books also give, while not AS much an advantage, a sizeable one nonetheless. A different idea would be to have a challenge which requires the player grab the Tarmin Treasure on floor 256 on Hard difficulty. By this time, it is reasonable to assume that any player will have found all the books, and even if one player finds the Midas book a lot sooner than another, there'll still be like 200 freaking floors to make some of that time up hahaha! At the same time, the absolute maximum content of the game is shown, as there's some items you only find beyond floor 12. Such a run doesn't take as long as you might think because once all your stats are maxed out you can just fly through a bunch of floors without worrying about much.

Another thing to think about is making a board based on the game's Treasure Score system. Although, this has problems in that essentially whoever has the most time on their hands will win. The maximum treasure score possible is 327, 670. I was able to get 102,380 but only after 6+ hours of play. Plus, I'm not sure how TG's point leeching policy would apply to such a track. I have the video where I performed both of these challenges, among others:

6. Great, I just followed you. I'll check out some of your past VODs after I'm done writing this, including that 60-minute run you just pulled off! Congrats!

7. Aha! This is an important thing to understand. When comparing your war stats to your spiritual stats (strength, defense, or weapon power), you must multiply the spiritual value by two to see how it relates to the war value. This is because for whatever reason, 1 spiritual point = 2 war points! So that being said, war and spiritual strengths are essentially equal in the TAS. If that's the case, the Minotaur will always attack with a war weapon.

This is an important thing to note for your future runs because if you're almost ready to face the Minotaur, you gotta see how your stats compare to each other. It's always better to have your lowest strength score and highest defense score together as the same type, because this is what the Minotaur will attack. Say your lowest strength and highest defense is spiritual. By the time you face the Minotaur, you should try to level up that spiritual strength to as close to, but not equal to or greater than the war strength (don't forget that 1 spiritual = 2 war points), because here we're assuming your war defense is low and the Minotaur will attack with war weapons then and have a better chance of killing you.

cool, i think i can start giving shorter answers now :)

really impressed how complicated this game is, i mean for its time sure i alreayd knew it had a lot, but to try to speed run, nt just the rules, but figuring out best way to take advantage of those rules. anyway a few points

1. sorry i'm not a super avid streamer. i try once a month to do a stream which either my feelings and stuff show or a marathon, or a pseudo marathon where is stream for 12 hours, but theres resets or different games. the 1 hr games i'm talking i do have recorded locally but not streamed

2. i agree about the other books, which is why i mentioned "challenges". no midas could be one challenge, no books of any game another.... kind of like how donkey kong players sometimes play no hammer, thats different and not perfectly analagous but you get the idea. thats fine though, i appreciate the direct speed running as is, if you dont think challenge tracks like that serve a purpose i wont make 'em. incidentally i use to think blue book was better, cause hey you can go through walls which of course means you can go through and see. then i realized no pink book is better cause you can see safely and you can just straight down a corridor looking around very quickly so theres no need to go to every square. now i'm back to thinking blue book is best cause you can get to every square with one action per square -- faster than even hall travel with the occasional turn and door

3. as for tracking score a few points on that, and i considered MANY variations i laid itout in a much earlier long post, and even with all i learned since i think that post still applies so
3a. dont worry about TG global rules, track specific rules are allowed to over rule global rules. if a track creator specifically says "glitches are allowed" then they're allowed. the only trick is, it doesnt matter what the track creator meant it matters what he/she wrote, so any concern about tg rules can be handled by explicilty allowing/disallowing things in the specific rules
3b oh man i thought of so many variations. yeah score is problem because then its basically a marathon and not a very challenging one. does the score cap or roll? either way, it could be a speed run to max cap/roll. i'm not sure how fun that would be, but i might try it once. speed run to level 255 is another option. speed run to maximum stats (midas book would help with that one a lot too, you'd just need rings and grinding). maybe max stats should instead be "full completion" and require level 255 plus max stats plus all 3 special spell books, blue key, platinum bow, purple spiritual book, possibly even through in max s core with that?

i'm just about fed up with hard. its now getting to the point where i'm hating the game, but playing it out of obsession and just getting angry i'm not getting the rng i need. i'll likley switch to the other difficulties in the next few days.

@Dave Hawksett @admin staff @TheWinslinator has confirmed he created the speed run at speedrun.com for intellivision Advanced Dungeons of Dragons Treasure of Tarmin. Can you please unlock those tracks here?

also i taggedboth dave and admin cause unlocking speedrun tracks is rare enough i forget the proper procedure. please advise if theres preferre method than just tagging you in comments

just got 55 minutes. i hated to do it, but i just couldnt fight it anymore so i had to take a bathroom break meaning this could've been 53 minutes. if you're not counting on crazy luck -- like the tas where you just have to hope to hit no enemy, then i figure 45-55 is about the max. obvioulsy with rng, and whats considered "lucky its impossible to say for sure but i'll explainw hat i meant

if you figure you're bound to face a few enemies, then you should build yourself strong enough to take on average enemies before descending a level. so my assumption is, you always build roughly the strength thats needed for each level before going there. that is my play style. granted, with that play style you could still get very luck and that would increase the time somewhat, but i'll believe normal luck, even under perfect play really couldnt beat 45 minutes, and honestly i'm damn proud of my 55 minutes. even 1:10 i'd say is pushing it under normal situations

I cant believe i was still learning thing. even this last game i feel i found one more thing to analzye. i dont know how many times i've said "thats gotta be the last thing to learn" but at this point it really must be.