Dragon Warrior Playthrough, Part 2

En garde!

...If that's even possible for slimes. Combat is the heart and soul of Dragon Warrior, so it's time I tested my mettle against the local fauna.

But before I do, I want to take a minute here to break down the mechanics of this struggle.

Basic battle mechanics

At the start of any battle, I'm given just four options:

1. Fight
2. Cast a spell
3. Run
4. Use an item

After I select an option, I will take my action and then the monster will take their action. This process repeats in rounds until someone is killed (usually the monster) or someone runs away.

The same turn-based system is used in countless RPGs. The outcomes are a result of reasoning and judgement, not reflexes and timing, so this is very much a thinking person's game.

However, there is one major way in which Dragon Warrior differs from most of its descendants: there is only one player character and one monster in any given battle. Most turn-based RPGs, including all subsequent Dragon Warrior/Quest installments, are party-based, with multiple combatants on each side. Having only one-on-one battles greatly limits the strategic possibilities in combat. Indeed, most of the time the choice of action in any given round will be obvious.

Let's say I'm fighting the aforementioned slime, what do you think I chose in each round? Fight, Fight, Fight, Fight...

Why is that? Well, I don't have any spells yet, so option 2 is out. The only item I have that I can use in battle is an herb, but I don't want to use that until my HP is low, so that rules out option 4. I could choose to run (option 3), but then I wouldn't collect any experience or gold from the encounter, both of which I need in spades to make any headway at all in Dragon Warrior.

So fight it is, and fight it will be, for much of the game. As I learn spells, I'll examine the strategic value of them individually, but this is my baseline strategy.

The march of slimes

My first battle goes well, my newly bought club bludgeoning this tear-dropped shaped pile of viscous goo into a less animate pile. Combat lasts just two rounds and I take only one point of damage, but the mental scars will last a lifetime.

More battles, very similar battles, follow. In the early game I stay very near to Tantegel and Breconnary, revealing roughly this area.

The only monsters I encounter in this narrow region are the Slime and Red Slime, both of which fall quite easily to my stroke. In fact, after just seven battles I'm greeted with the following text:

Sweet! I'm stronger now, and I can take more damage. Both are important improvements, since my attacks on slimes will now be more likely to kill them on the first stroke. What's more, I can go longer before having to return to an Inn (or use an Herb).

This is what makes RPGs kind of a funny genre. In an action game, the play gets harder as you progress and the way to advance in the game is to improve your skill. In an RPG, the enemies get tougher, but the way to advance is to improve the skill of your avatar. Repetition is the key to success either way, but in an RPG, you personally don't need to get better at anything to succeed...

But hey, it's entertainment, right? I don't need to get better at anything to finish watching Game of Thrones either.

The Starting Grind

Despite my recent and sudden increase in strength and endurance, I still don't feel comfortable venturing far from the town. I don't have enough gold to upgrade my equipment yet either. In fact, the cost of a stay at the Inn is 6 G, which takes between 3 and 6 battles to accumulate, so I won't be netting much money at this stage.

Both types of slime only give one point of experience each, so I decide to venture a bit further into the countryside to see if I can speed things up a bit.

That cave certainly looks tempting, but after fighting a few of the locals, I'm not convinced I'm strong enough yet.

The Drakee, on the left, is the weakest of the two and it takes three rounds to kill. It does around 6 HP damage in that time, however, so it's no slouch. The Ghost, on the other hand, is an epic battle that costs me most of my HP, and gets me only three experience points. Oof.
Even though I mix in battles with Ghosts and Drakees for variety, it's not clear it's worth the trouble, because the battles take longer than they do against slimes and they drain so much HP that I need to take frequent trips back to the Inn. In experience, a Drakee is the equivalent of just two Slime battles and the Ghost is equivalent to three. What's more, these stronger monsters are more risky because if I underestimate how many HP I will need to beat them (or fail to run away), I'll be dead.

And then nobody would be happy... I mean, except the monsters. Why are they all smiling, anyway?

The Heal spell

When I finally reach level 3, I receive my first magic spell: Heal. This one is a game-changer, both in the literal and figurative sense.

Up to this point, I've only been able to stay out on adventures until my HP gets low, at which point I have to return to an Inn. The Heal spell means I can reset that hit point counter without returning to an Inn. Even one Heal spell effectively doubles the time I can stay out on an adventure.

Initially, I only have enough Magic Points to support one Heal spell, but as my MP grows, I can sustain longer and longer outings. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say the Heal spell (along with its stronger cousin) is the most important spell in the game. In fact, every other spell will have its value held up against Heal because no matter what that spell does, you'll need to decide if it's worth reducing the time you spend out in the world.

My first adventure: Erdrick's Cave

Now that I have my magical ace in the hole, I feel more confident delving into the depths of the mysterious dungeon in the desert that I spied on my last foray from Brecconary. As it turns out, I needn't have worried, because there are no monsters in this dungeon. However, on entering it, this is all I can see:

This is worse than being blind -- once I leave the stairs, there are no visual indicators whatsoever of where I am. For a newbie player it would be very easy to wander away from the stairs and get lost before they knew what was happening.

Fortunately, I'm pretty sure I know what the Torch I found in the King's throne room is used for. Once I light it I'm instead faced with this:

That's a bit better, but still pretty frustrating to navigate. If this seems like a foolish way to design the dungeon mechanics, bear in mind that RPGs were different in the mid-80s. Games like Ultima and Wizardry expected players to map out every dungeon rather than navigate with a god's-eye view. Forcing the player to map added to the sense of role-playing and increased immersion, even if it also resulted in a good bit of tedium along the way.

Truth be told, I still like to map dungeons that I'm exploring for the first time, particularly when they're grid-based. I used to draw them on graph paper, but all the loose pages were getting annoying, so I wrote a program in Python that would let me draw them with the mouse. Here's the layout of Erdrick's Cave I came up with using that program.

In the maps above, SD and SU stand for "stairs up" and "stairs down", while C represents a treasure chest.

Unfortunately, the one treasure chest in this cave is nothing more than a note from my ancestor, Erdrick. In it, he tells me there are three items I need to reach the island of the Dragonlord, but there's nothing in the note about where or even what those items are.

This may be the least satisfying dungeon payoff in the history of RPGs. But hey, at least I now have a map that will guide me to a useless treasure chest!

Next time...

In the absence of any other game hints, I decide to check out the nearest town. We'll explore Kol in the next entry.