Infocom Sorcerer

This is the second part of the Enchanter trilogy.

Note: this game involves a device known as an infotater, which is described as "the best way to store data ever discovered".

If you bought the original packaged version of the game from Infocom, an infotater was included in the packaging. If you bought the game as part of the Infocom Masterpieces CD, it's useful to know that the information from the infotater is included in the Sorcerer documentation on the CD.

You are very unlikely to be able to solve the game without this information.

The story continues in the third part of the trilogy, Spellbreaker.

You are in a strange location, but you cannot remember how you got here. Everything is hazy, as though viewed through a gauze…

A hellhound is racing straight toward you, its open jaws displaying rows of razor-sharp teeth.

I have so far found 148 different locations in Sorcerer, 5 of which will "kill" you, and 10 others will "kill" you, but not quite immediately. I put "kill" in inverted commas because you die, but then wake up and realise you were dreaming. Later on you can find plenty more locations which will kill you (without inverted commas).

The following may help once you get to a specific point in the game. It almost certainly won't be the first time you get there, but it's useful to have a route prepared for your second visit:

n.e.s.s.w.d.e.e.n.n.u.u.s.e

Getting through the maze is non-trivial but in my opinion readily achievable. Getting back out again requires some rather devious forward thinking (and, like several things in Sorcerer, once you find this out, it's too late to do anything about it, and you have to Restore or Restart and repeat your actions).

The next useful prepared route (not quite so directly copy-and-paste as the one above) is:

w.w.s.e.d.d.w.w.u.u.n.n.d.e.s.e. * .n.d.w.s.w. * .u.w

You'll probably work out what you have to do at the * stages…

One thing I rather like about Sorcerer is that you start in a fairly standard-seeming environment (for an adventure game) and soon get transferred to another, which you then assume is the place you really need to investigate. However, sooner or later you discover that in fact the original environment is (a) much bigger than you first thought, and (b) accessible again (albeit one-way). It feels like quite a nice twist on the standard expectation of "here I am, let's explore and see what there is".

Sooner or later you should find out how to get into the Coal Mine. There is just one item you need to get from this area of the game, but it's a multi-step process to obtain it.

The Coal Mine puzzle is far too time-sensitive. There is no way of working out what you should do at each step (never mind mapping the mine itself) without running out of air and dying before you can get out.

Here are some clues to help you (not a walkthrough; those exist elsewhere on the Internet if that's what you want):

• Don't drink the potion too soon, or it will wear off too soon
• Once you've met someone in this location for the first time, and found out what it is they want, don't delay in giving it to them when you come back for a second try at the puzzle
• There's no way to complete the puzzle if you keep all your belongings with you
  • You can't leave them anywhere in the coal mine without them just disappearing amongst the lumps of coal lying around
  • You can't get back out of the coal mine the way you came, so there's no point in leaving things behind before you enter the mine
  • The only thing you can do is to get rid of (almost) everything somewhere inside the mine which means they immediately go elsewhere
    • It shouldn't take you too long to find out where they went once you get out of the mine
• This seems to be the only place in the entire game where you should use a spell as soon as you find the scroll
  • The scroll disappears once you've used the spell, but only briefly, simply because of what the spell does…
    • Don't try to take the scroll again, or you'll cause a nasty paradox.

Summary: drink the potion in the CBR, then perform fourteen actions and make no more than eight moves (or thirteen actions and nine moves, depending on how you get to the Slanted Room) before ending up on the sand. If you take longer, you may die before making it out of the mine.

This game, as with Enchanter, has a maximum score of 400 points.

The first 5 points are trivial.

85 points make you a Parlour Magician.
120 points make you a Novice Enchanter (which is odd, given that completing Enchanter made you a Member of the Circle of Enchanters). I would have expected to be a Novice Sorcerer by now…
160 points are enough to be an Intermediate Enchanter. This is looking extremely similar to Enchanter's scoring system.
Things vary later on, though, as 235 points make you a Senior Enchanter (whereas in the previous story this would merely have been an Enchanter).
310 points make you a Member of the Circle of Enchanters, which seems most strange, given that you started as that at the beginning of the story.

Getting the trunk open is not in itself difficult, but the game is extremely picky about the command you use in order to find out how to do it.

The Spell Book contains the following:

You can find more spells around the place:

Spells labelled with an asterisk above "seem very long and extremely complicated", which means they cannot be transcribed into the spell book, which in turn means that they can only be used once. Several of the other spells need to be used on multiple occasions.

Sorcerer make almost as much use of vials containing potions as it does of scrolls bearing spells.

So far I have found:

Potions can, since you need to drink them (or get someone/something else to drink them), each only be used once.

So far, I have found the following things (some of which can be picked up, some cannot):

The points shown are sometimes just for finding the thing, or picking it up, and sometimes for doing something with it.

Don't go to sleep in the Guild Hall. Anywhere else seems okay.

It's unfortunate that one of the scrolls in the game (nearly all of which get their own identifying adjective, although what that is is totally immaterial) is mouldy, which the American authors therefore write as "moldy". You cannot refer to it as a "mouldy scroll".

It's similarly unfortunate that of the 5 coloured buttons (which really could be any colours at all) on the large trunk, the authors designated one of them as grey, which therefore appears in the game as "gray". Nicely, though, the game does understand "grey" when you want to refer to the button.

An example of Very Bad Coding:

>examine journal
It's closed and sealed with a lock.

>open journal
You can't unlock it with your hand.

>get key
Taken.

>unlock journal
(with the small key)
No spell would help with that!

>open journal
(with the key)
The journal springs open.

The River Bank is a dangerous place, and becomes more dangerous either as time goes on, or as you visit it more (or maybe both, I'm not sure). It's a good idea to work out the minimum number of times you need to go via this location, and especially on the last occasion, save the game just before visiting, so that if you fall into the river and die, you can have another go and see if you get past this time.

Overall comments

This is not a game where you can expect to start, find your way around, understand and deal with the puzzles, and get to the end, without dying and either Restarting or Restoring, multiple times.

Okay, the Restart and Restore functions are a standard part of adventure games, but in my opinion Sorcerer requires far too much use of these, even in comparison to most of the Zork genre.

Also, there are a few things in Sorcerer which you have to have done earlier in the game in order to stand any chance at all of achieving things later in the game, and these (earlier) things exist in locations you simply cannot get back to once you have left them. The biggest example of this in my opinion is the Orange vial, which you do not simply find, as with several of the other vials, but have to actively cause to appear, and then only becomes needed once you have passed two major one-way barriers in the game.

You might easily achieve something like 80% of the game, only to find that you need to return to a point around 10% into it and do something different, then have to repeat all the actions and visit all the locations in between again, in order to get back to where you now find out you need the potion in the Orange vial. I don't regard this sort of thing as good game design.

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