chapter 7 "Miscellaneous Tips and Secrets" - The portal generator (portal gun) works by making an orange portal in one place, and blue portal somewhere else, and presto, you can now teleport between those two places by entering one of the portals. By default you only find the portal generator with the "ammo" for the blue portal...the blue vial. To make it really useful you need to find the orange vial and install it in the portal generator too. Unfortunately the orange vial is on a rawther nasty and tough cave troll. Good luck. - When you're in combat with multiple opponents, you really really have to use the "target" command. For example, "target orc". Otherwise you will keep shifting your target to the last guy what hit you, and you will not whittle down your oppenents fast enough and you will die. This is why you need to be very careful if you get trapped in a room with a dozen rats. If you don't target one at a time, you're liable to be nibbled to death. - If you're fighting and you can't see, you aren't going to do any damage. - Unless you are a fighter NEVER wield two weapons at once. Double wielding, and for that matter, two handed weapons, are skills that fighters have. If you're not a fighter, double wielding dramatically decreases your combat effectiveness. Also, unless you're a fighter don't bother trying to fight without wielding a weapon of some kind. - Getting drunk and sleeping makes you heal faster. You can also heal a little faster by giving Clepius a healing slip, and he'll rub some healy stuff on you. Healing this way is pretty slow though. For fast healing, either buy potions from Oana in the magic shop (very expensive) or buy yellow or green spices from Brandy in Harry's bar (east and south of the town, by the water). You have to flatter Brandy in the right way for her to be ok with selling you spice. Say what a good wife you would be. - Yellow spice is good for health, blue spice is good for mana, green spice is good for stamina. You have to pay Brandy in gold. Go to Zoe in the bank for exchanging money. - The rocket pack works pretty ok, in fact perhaps too well. If you boost up and fly around carelessly, you are very very likely to wind up somewhere extremely unhelpful, like an ocean with no sense of which way to swim for land. Its best use is for very short hops over dangerous areas or pits. - Do not stargate into space. It will kill you without breathing apparatus, and even with a breather, if you use the rocket pack, you are almost certain to careen out of control and eventually run out of air before you can find your way back to the outer space stargate. - It's probably ok to stargate to the sea bottom location if you have a breathing device, but be sure not to lose your bearings or you'll run out of air there too. - The door in the stargate cave says "Speak, friend, and enter" in the elvish language of Edhellen. If you want access to the very fine sword and the resurrection scroll that are on the other side of that door, you'll need to go to the Bugg, the language teacher, 1n, 2e, 1n of Dirk. And you'll need to spend training points. - The omni is a teleportation device and when you press the button on it it will tend to whisk you away from trouble. However it has a mind of it own and if it is in your direct inventory for too long it'll teleport itself away. Keep it in a rucksack or something. - You definitely want a big bag you wear, like the rucksack. The ruck has greater capacity than other things like the backpacks. It's important to have a bag you can wear. If you "sell all to otik", worn and wielded things are not sold, so this is helpful when getting rid of lots of stuff at once. It's also a handy way to organize your short term versus long term inventory. - Don't activate the turret in a room you plan to be in. It doesn't care what it shoots, it just wants to shoot. - If you want XP, grind in the forest. Plenty of critters. Just watch out for wandering orc soldiers. Only grind there when you are strong enough to take down orcs. - Poleepkwa are very very strong, but that's about it. An insectile race of fairly low intelligence and with their own language, they are doomed to playing with no magic and not understanding any written or spoken material they come across. Poleepkwa is playing on hard difficulty. Not recommended. Having said that, if you play poleepkwa and get your claws on the powered armor in the lab, you can kill pretty much anything you come across. - If you want to play as a fighter class as dwarf or orc, kill the orc shaman as if you were going to become mage but instead of giving the orcslayer sword to Leo in the church, give the helmet to Roshd near the tower in Ylsrim. - When you are a total newbie, you might understand and be able to read languages different than those of your race. As you lose newbie status, this goes away and if a language is important to you, you will need to go learn it at Bugg's. And you better have a high intelligence stat. - A lot of locks are pickable but you need a tool to do it. There is a lockpick in the mansion, in a bag in a room the thief has been using to sleep in. Once you have it, you can try to "pick lock on door with pick" or "pick lock on locker with pick". However, it uses up your stamina, and if you fail you hurt yourself, it doesn't always work, and for it to work predictably you need to be rogue class and have lockpicking skills. If you're a mage you can cast buffer so that it hurts less when you fail a lot. - The second vial for the portal gun is in the posession of a cave troll that lives underneath an orc chieftain. Starting from the orc commander, go 3s, 1e, 1ne, 1s and you are at the chieftain. wear the rocket pack (this is important) and activate it, then kill the chieftain. This may be easier with the pistol (instructions below). Right before he dies, in the throes of furious retribution, the orc chieftan will activate a trap that dumps eveything into a pit below, where the cave troll waits. Ideally he'll be dead and drowned from your solving the well quest. If he's not, you are now hovering (because of the rocket pack) over an angry cave troll that is probably way too tough for you to kill. Drop a live grenade and wait for it to kill him, then boost down and get your loot, then boost back up. Don't dilly dally too long or you'll run out of rocket pack fuel. Still, that chieftain is pretty tough. Do some grinding to get up to level 12 or so, maybe higher. Or tackle this with a party. - If you were observant during your raid on the mansion, there is a 9mm pistol in the safe. If you kept it, you can find an ammunition magazine in the locked locker 1n, 1e, 1s of Jennybot in the Virtual Campus. The key for the locker is in a trash can in University Square, where Wim and Tim are standing near a tree. The trash can is there, but trickily it is hidden in the room description, instead of being part of the inventory listed when you look. If the key is already gone, you may need to pick the lock on the locker with the lockpick. Once you have the clip and the gun: load clip in pistol wield pistol shoot orc with pistol - If you die or otherwise somehow remove the Yautja wrist computer, it will deactivate. To be able to cloak again: wear computer open computer activate computer uninstall module from computer install module in computer close computer - If you're out of money for buying spice from Brandy, you can heal the old fashioned way: eating food, drinking water, and waiting to heal. Having a full belly and not being thirsty speeds up how quickly your health, stamina, and mana regenerate. If you don't have money to buy snacks, go under the the humpbacked bridge in the town (from Dirk: 1n, 4w, 1d), then: cast whip cast buffer cast fireball on troll Pay attention to the battle. If your buffer shield goes away, cast it again. And again. And again. Once the troll is dead: search rocks get pole get can from troll get worm from can bait pole with worm fish with pole Eventually you will catch some fish you can eat, to keep up your strength. Drink some water too: eat herring drink from river drink from river And keep drinking from the river until you can't drink any more. This way of healing is slower, but it is free, and you'll eventually be back to 100%.