A Tips Guide for The Shadow Sun by Ossian Studios

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A Tips Guide for The Shadow Sun by Ossian Studios

 by Tobias D. Robison tobyr21@gmail.com 

RavensGift.com 

precision-blogging.blogspot.com

Last updated: January 13, 2014

Do you like to read fantasy novels, or do you have a friend who does? Please visit my website, RavensGift.com, for a good read, a good etext, or a good audio podcast book. My current novel is called: Raven’s Gift.

Are you spending too much time sitting at your computer? You may be delighted to read my new help-yourself book, Quantum Walking to Fitness, available in all eformats at Smashwords.

There are “packs” for each type of character that you can buy for $0.99. Even if you buy them, you can easily play a campaign without them, leaving the pack-gear in the Hideout. Playing without the packs has two benefits: The obvious one is that the game becomes more of a challenge to play. The less obvious benefit is that you are more likely to appreciate the swag you find early in the game, which can gradually upgrade your starting gear.

The Hint Guide is full of useful info. It even includes a walkthrough. But it does not quite fulfill the need for additional game guides. I recommend buying the Hint Guide. Even if you do not want to rely on its walkthrough, it comes in handy. For example, it can help you find your way out of a maze. It can suggest what experience level you should be for various encounters. And if you are stumped about some building or encounter, it can, well, give you a hint.

If you play this game on more than one device, you may be dismayed to see that you apparently have to purchase the optional packs and the hint guide all over again. Fear not. The Apple Store will not make you pay again for what you have already bought.

When you swipe right or left on the screen to change the camera view, be careful to swipe high on the screen. Midscreen swipes tend to be ignored.

The Death Penalty in TSS is small: you are immediately invited to replay from the last save. Save often!

You can save almost anywhere, even during battle. The one situation where you cannot save is when your action triggers a dialog. Whenever I suspected that opening a door, or running ahead, might trigger a dialog, I wore the items that gave me the best charisma. If I stumbled into a fight instead, I could tap my icon, pausing the game to change into battle gear.

When you have gained enough experience to level up, a brief message will appear at the top of the screen telling you your new level. It is easy to miss this message! So watch your XP carefully, by tapping your icon and then tapping the icon at the lower left of the screen. Before leveling up, save the game! There is no “undo” for leveling decisions, but you can – of course – go back to your last save if you decide you made a bad choice. And it is easy to feel, the moment you add or improve a skill, that you made a bad choice.

Each time you level up, you get ONE point to add to your base abilities (Strength, Int, etc.) and three points to add to your skills. When you build your initial character, think about where those additional 9 points will go. Apparently, TSS does not allow you to raise a base ability above ten. (You can raise it higher with artifacts.)

During the game, you will get 27 more skill points, which will probably be more than you need to build up the skills that are a “must” for your character. Plan to add some skills that are outside your character’s main abilities, and consider adding them early, to reap the benefit right away.

The Skills interface is a bit confusing. Each skill has three ability levels, which the game calls “tiers”. You need one point to upgrade to each tier. The skill boxes painted completely in green are the skills you do not have, but might be able to add. Tap any of the boxes to see what ability it provides. Each skill box will tell you what level is required, and what ability level is required: e.g.: Level 7, Charisma 8.
When you tap a box, if the “add” button appears, you can add or improve this skill.

When you level up, you do not have to spend all 3 of your skill points. For example, if you spend 2 at level three, you will have 4 to spend when you reach level four. It is particularly tempting to reserve a point or two at level three, because character level 4 is when you are allowed to reach the second “tier” in skills.

At various times in the game, you will be urged to HURRY to do something. I believe the game has no such sense of time. You can ignore the “hurry up” if you wish to take care of something else first. (And that goes for you, too, Ashe!)

TSS basically has no way to “grind up”. (Yay!) All (or almost all) monsters do not respawn. The activity that feels most like grinding up is: performing the sidequests, many of which require a lot of hunting around. You will find the game’s battles easier if you build up your experience points by doing the sidequests, disabling every trap, finding every secret, and killing every monster. (The Hint Guide is valuable if you want help in doing every sidequest.)

TSS is a fairly “open” game, allowing you to blunder into dangerous places that you may not be ready to face. This openness is a wonderful thing! You should wander everywhere you can, because there’s no telling where you might pick up some XP or something of real value. Save often!

The game’s main quest is more linear, and in search of the main quest, you will often find yourself walking down constrained paths. But there’s a lot of judgment in deciding when to proceed on the main quest, and when to postpone it with sidequests. I like that aspect of TSS.

You may wonder, what happens if you blunder into an area associated with a sidequest, killing everything in sight? Here’s how I believe it works, in TSS: Let’s say that some sidequest requires you to go to the Web of Doom and kill the Mother Spider. You know nothing of this sidequest, but you blunder into the Web of Doom and kill everything in sight. You will not see the Mother Spider, because you have not gotten that sidequest! Later, when you get this quest, you will return to the Web of Doom, and the Mother Spider will be the only monster left there. And it will be waiting for you...

In the course of the game, you will have a choice of four NPC companions to accompany you. You can always exchange them by returning to the hideout. (You actually choose a companion each time you exit from the hideout.) Only two of the four are available most of the time. When you try to exit from the hideout, you can examine each of these NPC’s proclivities. Each NPC will help you more if they approve of your character’s actions. When you choose a companion, you will think about how their abilities match the needs of the current task, and how their strengths complement your character’s abilities. But there are other considerations. For me, these were more important:
(1) Their repetitive chatter can drive you batty. I liked Abbaddas because he was the most nearly silent. How good a fighter is he? Accent his name on the second syllable.
(2) Consider how you are going to play your character. Do you like to be a nice guy? Do you like to kill everything in sight? Choose your companion accordingly.
(3) You can postpone developing a skill if your companion has it. For example, my first rogue character initially had no unlocking skill. I relied on Ashe for unlocking, and put my early skill points to other uses.

Your inventory has many “slots”, but they quickly fill up. Go to the Grand Market regularly to sell stuff you do not seem to need. If you think you might need something in the future, store it at the Hideout. (A few items can be stored but not sold. Items needed to fulfill quests can – generally – not be sold, stored or destroyed, but there are exceptions.) Your inventory might fill up with items you need for sidequests. The way to get these artifacts out of your inventory is to complete the sidequests, so plan ahead. (E.g., sidequests that attempt to cure the plague can not be completed after the plague goes away.)

You will eventually destroy items in your inventory so that you can pick up better swag. Be careful about destroying books, because three of them are needed for a sidequest.

If you manage your inventory carefully, you will be able to carry alternate artifacts. First, you can carry battle gear plus gear for dialoging. Second, you can carry alternate armor and weapons. For example, my Wizard carried three wands. I figured that if it died in battle using the first wand, I could refight the battle using the second.

Do you like to read fantasy novels, or do you have a friend who does? Please visit my website, RavensGift.com, for a good read, a good etext, or a good audio podcast book. My current novel is called: Raven’s Gift.

Are you spending too much time sitting at your computer? You may be delighted to read my new help-yourself book, Quantum Walking to Fitness, available in all eformats at Smashwords.

Battle seems fairly routine in TSS. But you should generally try to refight battles that you lose. It’s amazing how much better you can get at fighting each battle, as you may discover.

When you look at the map of your current area, you may see buttons on the maps. Tap them to see what they are.

Most building interiors have their own maps. Keep an eye on the maps to see what you have not explored. TSS aids your exploration by remembering, and showing you, which doors you have opened. If a map makes you feel lost, consider going to the Hint Guide for guidance.

TSS can lure you into a false sense of security. All you have to do is look for the bubbles rising from an object to know where to search, right? Wrong. Here and there are unmarked “secrets” for you to notice. You have to get close to them (and have enough perception) to find them. Many secrets are worth finding. Some are just amusing, and some only provide historical background.

In my first game I played as a Wizard. As far as I can tell, most of the goodies I found were worthless to wizards, including poison, armor and weapons. I did buy expensive things from the merchants, but I finished the game with 68 Sharecs, 24 healing potions and 17 mana potions. To put it another way, there was not much worth buying. I wished there was some way for my companions to use the weapons, poison, etc., that I found. I think that all you can do is ask a companion to drink potions.

You may need relatively few health potions. (If you need potions to win a battle, that’s a good reason to save the result and refight the battle, to see if you can do better.) Health potions are expensive, but you you will find many during the game, and you may never need to buy them. If you do buy them: well, that’s a good way to spend your sharecs, because you will earn a lot of them.

I found a few comments on the web about how hard it is to find the map. I disagree. Tap your icon and the LOCAL map is the third icon from the right, at the bottom of the screen. There is NO real global map. However, whenever you pass through an area’s generic “Exit”, you will see the locations you are allowed to jump to. Just remember: this becomes a two-screen display, and after a while, you will find more locations by swiping left to right. This display of global locations looks a bit like a map, but it is really just a location list.

In one house of the Macha Farmlands, you will see a young boy in a cut scene who runs away. He is hard to find. See the end of this file for a spoiler about where he is.

Here’s a tip about playing Wizard. Sometimes you can finish one battle and rush right into the next one. Beware! You might start that second battle with less than full health and full mana. And worse, some of your spells may still be recharging. If the last fight was a challenge, wait after a battle before plunging ahead.

Sometimes, after a battle, the first thing you should do is bring up your quick slots and cast “Health.” Remember that the health spell also heals your companion. You should sometimes cast Health when you don’t need it, but you suspect your companion does.

Here’s a tip about character building: No matter which companions you prefer, you will be happy if you develop your skill in picking locks. I believe you do not need the skill of disabling traps at all. You can always try to walk around traps, and patiently heal each time you spring a trap. The benefit of disabling traps lies mostly in the XP you get (a measly 10) per trap.

TSS advises you that you can often solve a problem without killing, and the game text says that you often get more XP by talking your way out of a jam. Believe it!

One sidequest requires you to collect ten pieces of Meteorium, to exchange them for a great weapon of your choice. If you are a wand-wielding wizard, this sidequest will produce nothing of value for you. You might be better off selling your meteorium to buy healing potions.

Almost every item in the museum has a sign explaining it and providing historic background. Enjoy.

I WISH:

I wish the Stealth skill worked differently. There are monsters in this game that you cannot fight until you talk to them. If you are stealthy, I wish we could surprise-attack such monsters, but we are not allowed to battle until we talk; and after we talk, we are no longer stealthy.



SERIOUS SPOILERS BELOW: Don’t peek! Unless you want to.

Rogues carry dice and can play a gambling game with a few NPCs. There is an obvious sidequest here, but once you have that squared away, consider that there’s a way to win as much coin from the gamblers as you wish. To speed up the process, always tap “double”, not “roll”.

After you have destroyed two sources of the “Taint”, you may be puzzled that Zehira is not ready to congratulate you and move the plot along. Here’s the problem: you must first uncover and destroy a third source of the Taint. Don’t worry, it will happen.

Macha Farmlands, abandoned boy: You must notice a toy box. It is near the lower left of the map for the farmhouse.

Either you, or Davorn, must attack Maljiin from behind.

SECRETS:

I would like to collect a complete list of the secrets that are really worth something: XP, access, or swag. Please email me to help with this list. For starters:

Abandoned Fish House in the back room: a silver ring.

Corona, Diamond Quarter, in the back room: To benefit from the secret, you need Tier 3 unlock, and there is a fierce trap.

Bloody Sewers, just after you enter: a secret door on your right.

Natural Cave (reached via the smuggler’s hideout) at a dead end: a valuable ring.

Do you like to read fantasy novels, or do you have a friend who does? Please visit my website, RavensGift.com, for a good read, a good etext, or a good audio podcast book. My current novel is called: Raven’s Gift.

Are you spending too much time sitting at your computer? You may be delighted to read my new help-yourself book, Quantum Walking to Fitness, available in all eformats at Smashwords.

- Tobias D. Robison tobyr21@gmail.com

https://ravensGift.com

https://precision-blogging.blogspot.com

Get my new book, Quantum Walking to Fitness at Smashwords