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Title : Game 280: The Legend of Blacksilver (1988)
link : Game 280: The Legend of Blacksilver (1988)

Game 280: The Legend of Blacksilver (1988)

         

The Legend of Blacksilver

United States

Quest Software (developer); Epyx (publisher)

Released in 1988 for Commodore 64 and Apple II

Date Started: 7 February 2018

        

The Legend of Blacksilver is the fourth and last of the Charles Dougherty games, which began with Questron (1984) and progressed through Legacy of the Ancients (1987) and Questron II (1988). You may recall that Questron was the first CRPG I ever played--was, in fact, the game responsible for my addiction. I remain fond of it, particularly for the ending, but with 34 years of hindsight, I recognize its weaknesses.

As the last game, Blacksilver is the largest and most polished of the series, but unfortunately it still adheres to some of the odder and less satisfying conventions that Dougherty developed for Questron, some of them based on Ultima (possibly the only CRPG that Dougherty played), and some developed out of a desire to compensate for Ultima's weaknesses. (For a full discussion, see my interview with Chuck Dougherty.) These include:

• Leveling via plot progression and not by killing monsters.

• A highly original but equally unmemorable monster list, most using two seemingly random words. Entries in the bestiary this time include fetid wheezes, stench creeps, mammoth gulps, and screaming nugs.

     

Chester battles a "spine quiver."

      

• The overall pointlessness of combat, given that monsters deliver no experience and generally cost you more in hit points than you earn in gold.

• Extremely limited character creation and an unchanging character backstory.

• A plot that progresses like a treasure hunt: go to one place, find a key, open a door in another place, find a gem, access a third place, and so forth.

• A magic system that features a limited selection of spells that must be purchased individually.

• Weapon and armor upgrades that appear based on time spent in the game rather than material progress.

• Eminently-cheatable gambling minigames.

• A game world featuring two continents, one of which (the "evil" one) must be discovered during gameplay, this discovery altering many of the fundamental rules established to that point. 

         

One of what I assume will be several promotions during the game.

        

I find the approach to experience and leveling, and thus combat, particularly unsatisfying, but it doesn't seem to have occurred to Dougherty to do it differently. While Ultima innovated and compensated for its early weaknesses throughout the 1980s, Dougherty stuck repeatedly to the same formula. I can't help but lament what might have been if he had achieved the slightest awareness of the conventions being established around him.

Blacksilver takes place in the land of Thalen on the planet Bantross, its history well-told in about 14 pages of narrative, letters, and other documents, showing an Origin-esque dedication to world-building. A couple centuries ago, the peaceful people of Thalen would banish criminals to the evil island of Maelbane, sentencing them to hard labor in the mines. Such a fate befell an evil mage named Minon. But while working in the mines, he discovered deposits of Blacksilver, "the source of all magic on Bantross." Using this power, he took over the mining operation, raised Maelbane from the sea until it had grown from a small island to an actual continent, and raised an army to conquer Thalen.
        

The Prince explains the current threat.

          

Thalen fell before his onslaught and its rulers were killed. Minon ruled for a century, but soon infighting among his lieutenants caused his kingdom to collapse and his supply of Blacksilver to run out. Maelbane sank back into the ocean, presumably with Minon on it.

Peace returned to Thalen for a couple of decades. A man named Durek became king and fathered a prince, Arovyn, and princess, Aylea. But a reclusive baron named Taragas discovered Blacksilver beneath his own lands and has enslaved the local populace to mine it. When word of his atrocities reached Durek, the king raised an army and marched on Taragas's lands, but during the campaign Durek was kidnapped and Taragas's castle simply disappeared. Princess Aylea was told by her mystical advisor that only a hero, not an army, would defeat Taragas. She shows up in the dreams of a young peasant one night and says "I choose you."
           

Like Luke Skywalker, this PC will take any excuse to avoid working an honest day job.

        
Character creation consists only of a name. Every character starts with 15 each in strength, dexterity, charisma, endurance, and intelligence, and maximum of 200 hit points. He has 60 food and 20 gold. He is a serf by trade, a theme as common to the Dougherty titles as starting in handcuffs is for The Elder Scrolls series.
         

"Character creation."

        
The player starts in the middle of a swamp and must navigate to civilization. Fortunately, the accompanying game map is relatively detailed. Town names include Iron Forge, Clissold Creek, Crystal Summit, and Bad Axe, and each has a different variety of services: weapon shops, armor shops, magic shops, food shops, jails, banks, and casinos.

A player of previous Dougherty titles will be familiar with the conventions. Banks offer interest and protect your gold from character death. Magic shops sell one spell at a time, although some are unavailable until the character later passes some kind of magical test. Weapon and armor shops start by selling very basic gear--daggers and whips for weapons, leather and studded armor--but slowly add more advanced items as both time and levels progress. This game adds a quality rating to each item, from "shoddy" to "superb," slightly affecting its value.
           

Weapons for sale late in this session. Giving each store its own name is a nice touch.

          
In jails, you can bribe guards to talk to prisoners, then bribe the prisoners for hints and clues. These are the only NPCs of that sort in the game.
         

This turned out to be a key piece of intelligence.

        
Finally, most towns have some kind of trade location where you can work an odd job for a day or get a mini-quest to deliver a package to another town. I believe these were also options in Legacy of the Ancients.
       

Sure, that seems like a good use of time.

       
In addition to the venerable blackjack, there are two new casino games here. "Dragon Wheel" is just a slot machine variant with poor odds. But "heigh-loagh" is devilishly clever. You get dealt a card from a standard deck and then have to guess whether the next card is going to be higher or lower. If you get four guesses right in a row, you win four times your bet (including the original bet amount). I spent longer than I spent playing the game trying to calculate the odds. I knew how to do it, but I couldn't come up with an easy formula to do it. I might actually give this to the students in my statistics class and see how they solve it.

Naturally, you're going to guess "high" on a 7 or lower and "low" on a 9 or higher (aces are always high). An 8 could go either way. You lose on a tie. Thus, in the first round, the best you can hope for is a 2 or an Ace. The only way you can lose is if you get one of the other three cards of the same value, which will naturally happen 3/51 times, or 5.88% of the time, giving you a 94.12% chance of getting it right. An 8 has the worst odds: no matter which way you guess, you only have a 47.06% chance of guessing correctly. Add up all the odds for the individual cards, and you get a 72.40% chance of correctly passing the first round.
          

A pretty easy game so far.

        
It's the other rounds that are difficult to calculate, because the odds change based on what card you get the first round. [Here I digressed into a long analysis of the odds that was both unclear and ultimately incorrect, and the reply comments just pissed me off, so I'm deleting it to try to stave off any more replies.]

The odds are somewhat important because currency is the lifeblood of the Dougherty titles. Among other things, it's the only reason to engage in combat, since you get no experience, and gaining money by killing enemies (while paying to restore hit points at the same time) is slow. Combat-related payoffs are a bit better here than previous titles, but a lucky trip to the casino can save several hours of grinding.

Despite taking all the time to calculate these odds, I spent most of my time playing blackjack, which also has nearly-even odds. Any game that approaches 50/50 is vulnerable to the martingale betting strategy as long as you're using fictional money. (I'd use it more often at Foxwoods if I could just go outside and kill someone for $120 every time I went broke.) Using my usual rules and strategy, I kept my gold pieces between 300 and 3000 for most of the session.
      

When this happens in real life, it is among the best feelings in the world.

       
Meanwhile, outside, there are new combat rules. In previous games, you could only attack or try to flee by moving away. In Blacksilver, you have four initial options when you encounter an enemy: approach, stalk, wait, or flee. During combat, you now have two attack options: a cautious "battle" and a more reckless "charge." These are still relatively primitive tactics, but better than the previous titles in the series.
      

The new encounter options.

      

The plot picked up when I visited the castle. In my dream, the Princess had given me a feather, and I still had it when I awoke. This feather got me through a door in the castle and allowed me to approach the Prince. He acknowledged my role as "champion" and gave me the first quest on the main quest path: find a way into the castle's inner chambers, which are currently blocked by debris from an earthquake. If I could get past the debris, I would find the wizard Seravol inside, menaced by orcs.

        

This is a conundrum.

         

Then, in a stunning development for a Dougherty title, the Prince said: "My gold is yours--provided you use it for the good." Sure enough, when I opened the chests in the castle, the guards didn't attack! This is the first game in this lineage where the hero doesn't have to massacre dozens of castle guards to progress. 

       

You sure you don't want me to kill your entire garrison just to prove my worth?

         

With no clue about how to get past the debris, I continued exploring the land. I visited the Great Eagle Temple in the northeast, where I could pay the priest to restore my hit points. He also offered that this temple "has no archives," so I should visit the Owl Temple across the lake for that.

The temple also offered a skeet-shooting minigame, just like the original Questron, which allowed me to increase my dexterity if I did well. I did okay and got it from 15 to 23. If Blacksilver is like other Dougherty games, some plot development will cause it to increase well beyond what I can accomplish with the minigame, but in the meantime that helps for combat.

         

The Dougherty titles have always been strong on minigames.

         

The Owl Temple gave me the option to "tour the archives" for a 100-gold piece donation. I paid and the priest opened a stairway. When I entered, the game shifted to a 3D view, and I found myself in a small area similar to the Museum of the Ancients in Legacy of the Ancients. Scattered along the archives' walls were a number of exhibits with titles like "Game of Honor," "Etherium," "Vase of Souls," "An Island Retreat," and "Storming Gear." Each exhibit asked for a different type of crystal or gem to view it. (The ones in Legacy had used coins.)

         

The priest explains how things work.

        

I knew I found what I was looking for when I came upon "Singing Crystal." A prisoner in one of the towns had given me a hint that "there's a vibrating crystal that eats away rock." The exhibit wanted a blue gem, which fortunately I had found in one of the castle treasure chests. After giving me a rundown of singing crystals, the exhibit gave me a "small 'singing crystal' for [my] own use."

        

Chester thought he had found a valuable artifact, but it turns out that it just bellows, "She'll Be Comin' 'Round the Mountain" incessantly.

       

Both temples had some mysteries, including a temple wizard who said he'd train me if I "drank the Etherium," a guy who said he was waiting for a holy relic to be returned (but didn't tell me what), and an "Empath" at the end of a hallway who shouted at me not to approach and killed me when I ignored him.

      

It truly was.

       

I returned to the castle and used the crystal to blast away the debris. There were about 20 orcs on the other side, and I had to take a break in the middle of combat to leave and get healing, but otherwise they weren't too hard. I was disappointed to see that the new outdoor combat options don't apply to indoor combat; you just attack and specify a direction. On the other hand, indoors there are more considerations of terrain and leading enemies to you one-by-one and ensuring that you get the first blow.

     

Beating up blue orcs.

    

Once I cleared them out, I spoke to Seravol, who promoted me to "apprentice" and increased my charisma by 5 points. He then gave me the next step in the quest: find his Orb of Vision. But he recommended that I "visit the Island Caverns" before that.

       

"Such as, ironically, where to find the Orb."

       

From the game map, I knew where the Island Caverns were, but not how to get there, since they're on an island. The few towns with marinas said they weren't selling boats at this time. After a futile circuit around the map, I remembered the "Island Retreat" exhibit in the archives. I visited, spent another gem that I'd found somewhere, and got teleported to the island in question.

          

I suspect this isn't going to be the vacation that the title suggests.

       

I leave off now amidst another 3D dungeon, which seems identical to those in the previous games. There are enemies to kill only because they're in your way (and, as in the castle, the new combat options don't apply), chests to open for gold, and urns to open for hit points. You have to remember to hit (X)amine when facing down each new hallway to avoid traps.

       

The dungeon offers better monster graphics than previous titles in the series.

       

So far, I've explored four levels and found two silver coins, a red garnet, another blue gem, a grail with an owl on it (which I'm guessing is the artifact wanted at the Owl Temple), and a chest that released a vapor and increased my intelligence by 2 points. 

       

The who-ly grail.

       

Like its predecessors, The Legend of Blacksilver is a briskly-paced game with a moderate difficulty level. It is likely destined for the high-30s or low 40s on the GIMLET, and will probably be the highest-rated of the Dougherty titles. At the same time, it's a bit disappointing at how little progress has been made since Questron in the areas of NPCs, character development, equipment, and combat tactics, and it thus has the effect of recalling something pleasantly familiar rather than offering something pleasantly new.

Time so far: 5 hours

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