Part 10: Gwydion the Mountain Man

Hello everyone and welcome back to King's Quest III. Last time, we left off on this most welcome sight. Let's get the hell out of this boat, what do you say?

Looking around, I'd say this cargo hold qualifies as "a dark, dank place." So...

>pour sleeping powder on floor
>slumber henceforth

: As Gwydion's sleep spell takes effect, a silence suddenly descends over the ship.



Looks like the captain was lucky enough to make it to his bed before succumbing to the sleeping powder. Good for him!



We briefly saw this screen in the bamf-fest from last time, but this is half of the upper level of the ship. The galley is directly behind where we are now. But never mind that, freedom awaits!



So do you see that gray depressed area just behind Gwydion? That's an open hatch into the cargo area. In my test run for the game, I got to this point and fell into it. Falling from a screen up is a death sentence, and I hadn't saved since before starting the waiting game.

I was not happy at having to wait twice.



Like last time, we're left in the ocean. But thankfully we're very close to land.



Very, very close. All we gotta do is swim to shore...



Yeah, that's a dick move from the game. The shark is faster than Gwydion, so if you don't change screens to reset its position...



: Gosh! You barely made a mouthful for that hungry shark!

A PC Speaker rendition of the Jaws theme plays while you're on the screen with the shark. It's pretty neat.



So looking at the screen, there's a lone palm tree with mountains in the background. The pirates were heading here anyway, so...



: Gwydion has uncovered a small chest. He removes it from the hole and opens it. Inside he finds precious gems and ingots of gold and silver. He closes the chest and takes it with him.

If I'm not mistaken, this treasure makes up some of the few optional points you can collect. I think it's just this chest and the two optional spells, teleporting and understanding animals. I suppose you could also consider the sleeping powder optional. But if you sneak off the ship without putting the pirates to bed, there's a chance one will appear on the beach to harass you.



So now that we're on land again, we're in the endgame of King's Quest III. The vast majority of this end sequence is teacherous platforming. We can skip some of it by using the teleport stone, but why not show it off?



The landscape is still pretty, at least.



So are you ready for some more bullshit? It looks like the path just ends there, with no way to continue. Do you know what the game expects you to do?



At no point does the game ever mention that Gwydion can scale sheer cliff faces. You can only ever do it on these last few screens, too.



Well, up and around...



Heh. Blue mountains. I guess Daventry is in the eastern united states.



Another dead end. While it looks like the path continues to the right, that's actually the edge of a cliff. So let's stop for a break.

>drink water

: Your arms are not that long.
: Uh, what?

No, really. The game says that.



I have no idea what the heck. Anyway, in spite of what you might think is safe and doable, the path forward is to climb up the waterfall.



I'm serious.

Anyway, this screen is one of the last of its kind in the King's Quest series. This and the following two are danger screens.





: What is this thing? OH, NO! It's the abominable snowman.



: The abominable snowman seems quite confused by this! He stares in amazement, then heads back to his cave.



Well, shit.

Four random teleports later...



And we're back here, this time without the snowman to harass us.



: The terrible, hairy creature grabs Gwydion with bone-crushing force! He reists, but it is no use. The creature carries him away to its cave, where Gwydion meets an early (and unspeakable) demise.



So the abominable snowman is programmed to always show up on the third screen.



>dip fly in essence



You may have missed that last message, so let me repeat it here.

: Gwydion's magic essence is all gone.

The essence is one of those things that I'm pretty sure can't run out until this point. Admittedly, I haven't tried using it all the time, but it's one of only two ways to defeat the abominable snowman. The other being randomly teleporting to the screen and leaving off the bottom before it appears.

Speaking of leaving off the bottom, when we do so...

: Bravely, Gwydion grasps the ice laden rocks, and attempts to scale the nearby vertical wall. Be careful!



: Gwydion congratulates himself on successfully eluding the abominable snowman.

Now that we're past the abominable snowman, there's only four more random death screens left in the entire series. All four are in the next title and are sequential.

So this screen... this screen is a bastard and a half. You remember the beanstalk segment from the first game? This is that, but even worse with the random falling. If you clip the edge of anything, you're gonna die.



: Boy, are these caves dark!



The first bit was just a taste of the dickishness of this next segment. We have to climb onto the wall to the left, and very carefully navigate our way down and around to the ledge below. Do you see how narrow the wall gets? Yeah, you're going to die here. You're going to die here a lot.



Oh by the way, we just passed an hour. Just think, an hour ago we were being ordered to sweep the floor and now here we are climbing across mountains that nobody has ever crossed and lived.



First try.

I died somewhere between 8 and 13 times on this section alone in my test run.



Alright, across the bottom now.



The worst of the screen has passed. All that's left is this one, admittedly still dangerous, segment.



And the screen was going so well, too. Oh well.



So once at this point, we're home free.





After that last screen, this is a piece of cake.





This is the final area in the game, and this is where we're going to pause for now.

NEXT TIME: The end of King's Quest III.

List of Points

+5 - Escaped the pirates
+7 - Money in the ground
+4 - Confused a yeti

Total: 196/210

Register of Deaths

Shark bait ooh haa haa
Fell off the dick cliffs