Ravensword 2: a Tip-FAQ by Tobias D. Robison, UPDATED Nov 2013

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This is a Tips File for the iPad game Ravensword 2: Shadowlands,  (Crescent Moon). It  includes some walkthrough and FAQ information. 

I am playing the new IOS 7 version on my iPad2. See my new comments just below...

There’s an excellent Ravensword 2 walkthrough by Jim Gagne (author of many fine FAQs) that takes you all the way through this game.  My “tips” file gives you information that Gagne does not cover. Many of my tips are useful for beginners, and my advice about playing as a ranger adds to Ravensword’s replay value.

Please, please, send comments, questions and corrections to: tobyr21@gmail.com .

Please consider reading my fantasy novel for grownups, which is available as a book, an audio podcast, and in all eText formats. See:  www.ravensGift.com  .

NEW COMMENTS ON THE IOS 7 VERSION OF RAVENSWORD 2:

I have only played about a third of the game, as of Nov 4, 2013.  Here are some early impressions:

+ You can find The new Ancient Realm area by exploring west of Aven (northwards) with the mini map turned on. Get to at least level 20 before you try. When you enter the ancient realm, you do not get a new location on your map, so you will have to revisit the hard way.

+ So far I have found one quest in the Ancient Realm: in the Crypt, you find a farmer who wants you to escort him back to his home. I agreed to do this, but then he did not follow me. That might be a bug. There are lots of monsters to kill in this Realm. I believe that almost all of them do not drop treasure. At the Northernmost end of the Realm there's a big monster guarding a chest.

+ I believe that one old quest has been fixed: when you meet the explorer-farmer north of Aven, he asks you to kill a Snow Yeti and tell him about it. I think that now you really need to find the Snow Yeti to complete the task. The Yeti is guarding a chest, west of Aven behind a wall of stones that you should find before doing the Robert’s Diary quest.

+ I went around town breaking barrels, and there were no coins in them. I think that is an improvement! But barrels elsewhere may be worth breaking, especially while you kill kobolds in the mine.

+ In the previous release, there was no real incentive to steal things. I do not know if that has been changed. Please let me know: tobyr21@gmail.com.

+ The new version sometimes crashes when you try to jump to a location on the map. Getting to North Aven is especially dicey. The previous version of Ravensword had the same problem, but in the new release, I sometimes have to turn my iPad off and restart it in order to avoid this crash. SAVE before you jump to a map location! In Fact, and htis is VERY ANNOYING: by level 20, I must reboot my iPad in order to enter North Aven, almosgt every time.

+ After you start up Ravensword, the first time you request the menus, be prepared to wait a few extra seconds.

+ The game forgets to show the mini-map at the slightest provocation. It should remember when you want to display it!

+ I wish that more bugs had been fixed in this release. I am guessing that the main reason for the release was to be IOS 7 compatible. It is nice that they added a new area. (I will comment more after I finish exploring it.) But a few simple bugs might have been fixed, e.g.:
++ The game should not keep forgetting to show the “quick” slots.
++ We should not be able to “hide” when a monster is charging full speed at us.

The best improvement I suggested for the previous release was this: Cribbons ought to train stealth. I will soon find out if Cribbons is still a worthless trainer.

Okay, the rest of this FAQ/Walkthrough has not been changed recently. It applies to both the old and new versions of the game...

► A useful hint for new players:
You will discover that the hero of this game has a special tattoo on his hand. Remember that tattoo.

► “Selecting” corpses, people, items and targets:
Selecting people and corpses can be frustrating. As you play, it will become second nature to you, but here is some help: There’s a faint compass in the middle of the screen. It has two important uses:

• In order to pick something up or talk to someone, position that compass on (or slightly above) the item. It can be tricky to stand neither too close nor too far away, but positioning that compass is the key to selecting what you want.
• You aim a ranged weapon by positioning this compass. Your character will get better at this as your bow skill improves, but you must learn how to aim. On long shots, if you kick up dust, you may be too far away. When a foe is moving, keep your fingertip on the “fire” button and release when your aim is accurate.

► Saving:
You can save the game almost anywhere. Once you have some stealth skill, I recommend hiding before saving. You are less likely to be ambushed while hidden.
Jim Gagne’s FAQ states that every one of your saves is preserved by the game, so that you can always go far back. I believe there was a change to the iPad software after his FAQ; my iPad 2 game only keeps the last ten saves.

Consider saving, just before you jump someplace else on the map. The game is more likely to crash when you jump than at any other time, I believe.

►Your First Weapon:
The 250 gold that Perdis gives you, plus gold for selling your guild loot, plus gold from breaking barrels, enables you to buy a starter sword, a shield and at least a hood. Consider buying the jewel that the general store sells. This jewel has only ten charges, so save it to enhance your gear in an emergency.

► First Kills:
Gagne’s Walkthrough suggests that your first task is to kill rats on the Terraces. That enables you to get food and build up your sword and defense skills. But if you are playing above 50% difficulty, you may not be able to kill a single rat. Instead, go out the east gate and chase deer. They will not attack you, and there are a few places where you can trap them against the stone walls and catch them. Use the deer to build up your skills a little, then venture farther east and kill boar. The boar regenerate, and they provide hides to sell as well as food. Kill boar until you feel you’d rather kill those rats.
Then venture far east from South Aven, beyond the broken bridge, and go to work on goblins.  Kill a lot of them, then jump back to South Aven to sell your loot at the marketplace and then jump back to the goblins.

(Gagne points out that you can kill goblins and then jump to the goblin place even while you are already there, and they will respawn. Do that until you are carrying your full pack weight.) You’ll earn about 1000 per goblin respawn. Use your goblin earnings to buy the fine crossbow from Malcom for 4000 (he is at the painted gipsy wagon just outside the west gate). Then start building up your crossbow skill on those goblins. Earn gold (at least 2500, perhaps) to buy a good sword. (You will find a great sword when you kill yetis and find out what happened to Lord Carrowen’s brother Robert.) Earn enough to buy an amulet and a ring. Earn enough to buy a really good shield, like the 3000 gold piece item at “Fine Steel” in North Aven that raises your defense by 100. Now you are more than ready to go adventuring.

When you first approach the goblins, stay away from their stronghold and pick off the regenerating stragglers. You will be able to fight many of them one at a time. After I used the map to “again jump” to the goblin area, it was much harder to fight goblins one at a time. They seemed to be more aware of my presence.

►You are Overburdened:
When you carry too much stuff, you are forced to walk more slowly. I’m not sure, but that might be the only drawback to carrying more than your official maximum weight. Don’t worry about picking up a few too many goblin shields.

► The best gun:
If you want to play the game with guns, you will eventually want the Thunder Gun (14-265 damage). It is in the crags, in a cave that you find by exploring one of the little “beaches” along the water that runs through the crags. It’s in the southwest. (There’s a chest in a cave with the gun and a gem.) You can train your gun skill – it’s called “powder” – upstairs at House Pellemon.

►Item Enhancement:
I played for twelve hours before I figured out what “item enhancement” is. I hope it is more obvious to you. As you adventure, you will collect jewels that offer various stat improvements. When you open the “equip” screen and select a armor or a weapon, it offers several choices including “quick” (select a quick slot) and “enhance” (if the armor or weapon has enhancment slots). If you click enhance, you can select one of your jewels. Be choosy!

Some jewels have a fixed number of charges. That means they fire a charge each time you use the weapon; when the charges are gone, the enhancement disappears. Save those jewels for special battles.

You can enhance at any time, at no cost.
I learned the following from mojobob at the Toucharcade Forums:
“The general store in South Aven sells Spider Venom and rough fire gem that give your weapon a very good dmg boost.”

The general store restocks every time you talk to the proprietor.

► Selling loot and buying lots of food:
When you jump (via the map) into South Aven, turn to your right to face the Marketplace. You can sell your loot there, and then immediately use the map to jump where you are going. (Selling at a store requires you to leave the building before using the map to jump.) You can buy as much food as you want. (If you exhaust the merchant’s supply, just click bye, and trade again; he or she will restock.)

► Daunting battles near the end of Ravensword 2:
Near the end of the game, you must fight some very difficult battles: The Elven leader, Kavanaugh, etc. If you fail and fail again, keep trying. I believe – I’m not sure about this – that the game developers want to help you succeed, eventually.
There’s another way to fight these battles. If you are desperate, temporarily lower the game difficulty.

►What is gold good for?
Early in the game you will be desperate for gold to outfit yourself with good armor and weapons. As you amass gold, you might want to buy the best armor and weapons you can find. Generally, enhancement jewels are not for sale and must be found. The remaining good use of gold is to buy training. I think that training for defense, and for your primary weapon, is important.


►Leveling up in stats and skills:
As Gagne’s walkthrough suggests, strength is most important early in the game, and it may be the most important skill to build up. But later in the game you will need good stealth skills to pick off enemies one by one. Good skill with a distance weapon makes it easier to isolate your enemies. I’ve played this game as a ranger (see below), and as a ranger, I never increased my strength with skill points.

►Barging in:
There are many places in the game where you go through a scene change. Many of these allow you to enter the next area stealthy. It’s always worth trying, because there are often monsters on the far side of a scene change.

► Grinding up:
When you play at higher levels of difficulty (over 50%, say), you will sometimes need to grind up. The “old reliable” way is to kill more goblins. But there are fun alternatives. Gagne mentions killing bears. If you have good fighting skills, consider entering the Grim Pass (repeatedly) and killing the first two or four orcs. At around level 23, this is a rapid way to level up. Once you have reached the wastelands, killing Gorgons and Carnosaurs is a fun alternative to killing those goblins.

► What about Thieving?
You can invest points in thieving. I advise against it, unless being a thief really appeals to you.

First, you do not need any thief skills to open all the locks in the quests.

Second, the rewards of thieving are small. For example, after you kill Zepp, you can steal everything in his home for a lousy 80 gold. Or you can try to steal everything in Pellemon, for a mere 250 gold. (Maybe there’s a big reward somewhere for thieving, but I got bored pickpocketing 30 gold pieces at a time and stopped looking for it.)

Third, the punishment for thieving is a drag. If you are caught, policemen will take you to jail. After a delay you are released; you have to take all your stuff out of a trunk and equip it again. And the police keep your lock picks and stolen goods. And your reputation goes down.

Thieving is simply an unfinished part of this game, I think.

► Trainers:
Each trainer can train two skills. There will be a pair of big buttons that allow you to choose. Trainers will always have a maximum limit that they are willing to train to, but that limit increases as you level up. In Ravensword, training is an alternative to “grinding.” You can reach the same skill levels by using the skill more and more and more, but training is faster when it is available, and when you can afford it.

House Carrowen: To reach this house, jump to North Aven. Go right (counterclockwise) around the mage tower and take the first right turn. Go straight until you reach a wall. Turn right. When you see stairs on your left, go up them, then turn sharp left to face Carrowen’s door.

• Olivia trains bow and crossbow
• Edrin trains blade and axe.

Pellemon: To reach this house, jump to North Aven. Go left (clockwise) around the mage tower and take the first left turn (up some stairs). Keep going straight. A wall will show up on your right, and then Pellemon will show up on your left.

• Ravin trains blunt and defend
• Lady Cara trains powder (for using the guns) and magic.

By the way, it’s not hard to walk from Carrowen to Pellemon and back. They are directly east and west of each other, just far enough apart that you can’t see them both on the micro map. And of course there’s no direct path between them, in medievally confusing North Aven.

Elsewhere:

• Cribbons trains bow and powder. I think that is pointless. (It would be fun if he trained lock-picking and stealth.)

►How do I dismount?
During the game you will get the ability to ride a steed, a falcon and a pterosaur. You dismount by flying down against the ground, or by tapping the eye in the upper right corner of the screen.

►SPOILER ALERT! Here’s how to get the falcon, courtesy of Floyvegas at the toucharcade forums, quoting:
"You can get a flying mount from the lady in the waterfall. In the area south of the city. After you get the quest from the guy in the cabin by the lake, to help the woman in the castle, complete that and to back to him, he gives you a golden scroll with a short poem on it. Go to the waterfall near him, swim to it in the water and the lady will emerge and ask you a question. When you answer based on the poem in the scroll, she will give you a horn to summon a falcon you can ride."

Read the golden scroll before you go to the lake.

please consider reading my fantasy novel for grownups, which is available as a book, an audio podcast, and in eText form. See:  www.ravensGift.com  .

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.

►Replayability and specialization:
You can win this game as a ranger with magic. (I played at about 60% difficulty.) Here's my advice:

The first general goal is to earn 4000 gold and buy the best crossbow from the gipsy near the west gate. You will have to invest about 7 stat points before you get that bow, and meanwhile you may be fighting with a puny starter sword. Invest all your stat points in Agility, even though you cannot make use of Agility until you get your crossbow. Invest talent points in Eagle Eye, and invest points to improve stealth. Practice hiding (to raise your hiding skill), although you will kill a lot of boars and goblins before you make a stealth kill with your starter sword.

You will eventually get enhancements that add to your strength, but your carrying will be severely limited. That’s what the light armor is for! (Consider wearing the crafted bronze armor that Lady Catalina give you.) And consider buying lots of cherries from Ninah (in the market), for the long adventures that require you to carry lots of food.

Stealth is extremely important in a ranger game. You can’t train it, but if you walk stealthy a lot, your stealth will go way up. Invest a few talent points in speeding up your stealth walk, so that you can bear to stay stealthy.

In addition to practicing stealth, I killed many goblins so that I could train up my defense and crossbow skills. Defense means that your crossbow shots drive your foes back and briefly stun them, I think.

The giant Yetis guarding Sir Robert’s diary and sword are immune to the crossbow. Why? If you wish to finish this Carrowen sidequest, you will have to find a good weapon to attack the Yetis with. Be patient, and you can eventually kill all the enemies that are immune to the crossbow.

I entered the castle of Ror-Dan at skill level 29, and I was successful on my fourth try. I came in hidden. There’s barely a second before I’m no longer hidden, and in that second, I killed one skeleton. It's best to drink a potion befre the third skeleton arrives.

When you get the Rune of Force in Ror-dan (or perhaps before you enter the castle), invest in magic talent points. With magical skill, this rune will toss your enemies far from you, giving you time to shoot them with the crossbow without being attacked. Magic enables this rune to toss enemies farther, and does damage as well.

I was afraid that the Elven Prince would be very hard to kill, since I could not use my crossbow. I did a lot of grinding up and faced him at level 36. (I had a blade skill of 45 from my early sword fights, before I bought the crossbow.) The Prince was surprisingly easy to kill. (Note that the game's description of “blade skill” does not say it affects knives; but the knife that the prince gives you is a “blade skill” knife.)

Either from killing the prince, or – more likely – from getting the Ravensword, my blade skill jumped to the max. (The max seems to be your level times five, plus ten; so at level 36 my blade skill at the game’s end was 190.)

When playing as a ranger, before you bring the Ravensword to the archmage, plan ahead. Your last battle must use the ravensword, and you can buy enhancements for it at the general store. You can also buy a ring and an amulet that will go better with the blade than with your crossbow. You can switch to these gewgaws before climbing up, up, up to face the demon.

Here’s another SPOILER that I discovered while playing ranger: As Gagne notes, you enter the Grim Pass and in a short time you seem to come to a dead end. You have to climb through rocks on your left to continue. The cleft in the rock that allows you to continue leaves you facing three orcs, and you cannot hide. But there is a nearer rock cleft that does not allow you to get through; it does however let you see enough to kill one or two of these orcs before you go through the real cleft.

► Additional help in selecting people and corpses:

I shall illustrate with a joke. A rich man is desperate for his horse to win a certain race, so he hires all sorts of scientists to help him. This is an extended joke, making fun of each type of scientific discipline, but it is the astrophysicist who concerns us. The rich man gets an excited call from the astrophysicist at two a.m. on the day of the race.

“I have a proof, a proof that your horse will win,” he says.

The rich man’s heart beats faster. “Tell me the proof,” he says.

The astrophysicist begins, “Assume that a horse is a perfect sphere...”

Now the point of this joke, for the game of Ravensword, is that the game’s software does not know the correct shape of any of the creatures. It does not assume that spiders, dinocows and goblins are perfect spheres, but it does have its own idealized shape for every critter. You will have less trouble selecting people and corpses, and targeting them with your bow, after you get a feel for these idealized shapes. The “body” of most corpses, for example, is massed near their back, just above the butt. There is only moderate consistency here. For example, most of a spider’s idealized body is above its head.

In order to select a corpse or a person, you must be close, but not too close. Some very large animals can only be selected when you think you are too close. Be aware of these issues, and give your mind time to adjust to them.

The Carnosaur (in the Wastelands) is worth despoiling, but its corpse is very hard to select. Jump on its back and climb over its body, while trying to select it along the neck or at the base of the tail.

Please email me with corrections and suggestions: tobyr21@gmail.com . Good hunting!

I AM ALSO CRITICAL OF RAVENSWORD 2:

I have many criticisms of this game, but bear in mind: they are criticisms from a player who really enjoys Ravensword. First, to be fair: Rescuing Lamil from a bottle is very funny; the dancing elf in the mining camp is a stroke of genius; and the dramatic moment when the archmage opens the portal is very fine.

I suspect the developers had bigger plans for Ravensword 2, but there came a time when it was good enough to release, and it was urgent to make the game earn money. Thank goodness we are able to enjoy this game.

Critiques on the web tend to describe this game as very open, the sort of RPG where you can go anywhere as you wish. That is primarily true at the beginning. After a while, the steps to the main goal are pretty linear, although you are still allowed to take detours to grind up.

I’m sure the variety of side tasks impressed the reviewers, but in the full game there are not so many of them. Side tasks are what makes it true fun to go exploring. If there were enough side tasks, and if we got good rewards for them (in xp and gold), then we wouldn’t have to kill so many goblins. I believe that in Ravensword, the developers tried to rectify a weakness of Aralon: in Aralon, the xp rewards for side tasks are too great. In Ravensword 2, the rewards for completing quests are microscopic. After I rescue the miner at the mining camp, the manager says he will “mention me in his report.” My feeling is, “Screw you buddy, I want half a level of experience and 2,000 gold!”

When you start a new game, you can’t skip anything in the tutorial and the early cut scenes. You have to spend time going all the way through them: again. Booorrring.

There is skill in fighting, but fighting is too simple. At the very least, jumping should be a skillful aspect of combat.

If you invest in magic talent points, the Rune of strength is still pretty weak. Worse, it can’t be used with a ranged weapon. Why not?

When you load the game on an iPad 2, there are about 6 seconds during which the loading screen is entirely black. The screen should not go black for such a long time. It’s possible for the software to hang while that screen is black, so for those few seconds, I always worry. Put a progress bar on the screen!

How much can you specialize? Strength seems too important. I did try to specialize as a magical ranger, with pretty good results (see above).

There are not enough jewels to enhance one’s gear. How about a wider selection?

If you ever lose your interest in paying for training, gold becomes meaningless. You can furnish the big house with expensive furniture; but the furniture and the house are too expensive. There ought to be a side quest you can trigger by furnishing a home. (Maybe there is? Or perhaps you can boost your reputation that way? But there is no incentive to try to find out.)

The Crags are very, very beautiful but there is little to do there.

The last scene – approaching the demon – is poorly motivated. The demon should be rushing to use the open portal, not waiting for me to approach it.

Another poor motivation: I, the highly respected adventurer, wander all over town breaking barrels to acquire a few hundred gold. The NPCs just let me do it, and it doesn’t hurt my reputation. Who thought that up?

The knife fight with the elven ruler is dumb, in my opinion, because you can’t prepare for it with any choice of gear. (Here’s an idea: the game can figure out what is my best weapon, and the elven ruler can fight me with that. I can just see him offering me an Elven Blunderbuss.)

There are many lost opportunities for improving the game’s dialog. All that’s needed is to let a good comedy writer play the game for awhile and suggest improvements that could be easy to implement and test. For example, the first time that you return to the marketplace in South Aven to sell Gorgon hides and Carnosaur bones, Ninah buys them without batting an eye. She doesn’t complain that she’ll have to figure out what they are worth, and she doesn’t say, “Oh my Gosh, where have you been?” There are many similar opportunities for good dialog: by the trainers, by Perdis, and so on.

Without more specialization, the game lacks sufficient replay value. I wish there were no monsters that were immune to ranged weapons (except Ul Thok of course), and I wish one could actually solve quests and kill monsters with thieving skills.

One game bug – for me at least – was really annoying: almost every time I reloaded the game, I had to remind the software to display the four “quick” slots at the bottom of the screen.

Another bug (maybe it’s not a bug) is just amusing. The game lets you hide even though a monster (most likely an orc) is charging at you, knows where you are, and will attack you while you are hidden.

The game is supposed to work – I think – on the most recent iPod. On my iPod 5, it shared a frustrating bug with Aralon: rarely, the game changed the display format, causing the iPod itself and all of its other apps to display on a bitmap that was much larger than the physical screen. On this super-large bitmap (with everything of interest inaccessibly offscreen), it was very hard to shut the iPod down, to make it reboot with a correct display.

Well, that’s it for now. Enjoy the game, and please consider reading my fantasy novel for grownups, which is available as a book, an audio podcast, and in eText form. See:  www.ravensGift.com  .

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.

Please send comments, questions and corrections to: tobyr21@gmail.com .

Get my new book, Quantum Walking to Fitness at Smashwords