Sun Serpent - Poor Design

[Norrec]

So I've battled 6 of the seven serpents and not heard, found any clues, or seen the seventh. I didn't even know what it was and I'm lost. So I go and looked it up and apparently I didn't click the single dialog option that activates it. I returned to where it is supposed to be but it is impossible to get back into the area. Not because it's blocked or closed off, but because it has a red dot instead of a blue flag.

I'm not happy. I'd have to rewind through hours of progress and play half the game again in order to defeat that serpent. I feel like the game artifically shafted me because there is no reason I shouldn't be able to go back to that area. I suspected something important was missed there and had tried to return earlier but nope - it just doesn't give me the option.

There should be clues before you get there or else make it clear in the dialog that an invisible wall is going to prevent you ever returning.

To add to the insult when I decided "Well, I guess thats that" and tried to move on the game says "You haven't defeated all the serpents! They're going to warn the Archmage!" Thanks for the tip game, are you going to let me go kill it? No? Then stop whining to me about it.

What a way to sour the adventure.

[Norrec]

Ok, through reading around online I found a way to have the orb stolen for me. Still not happy that I couldn't just go back and ask for it because if I didn't read online I'd probably have never figured out how to meet the thief.

At least the adeventure can continue.

[Xander77]

The Serpent counts as defeated if you never met it in the original book. Have you tried finishing the adventure with six serpents defeated, and seeing what happens?

[Norrec]

No. I read around online and figured out what had to happen to allow me to get it and destroy it. Now I've moved on to the 4th game and am just going to pretend I didn't have to look at a walkthrough to do it.

[Karparus]

It's even worse for me as I also didn't activate the dialogue as per OP. BUT I'd already used my opportunity to steal it (as you can select another item to be stolen)

Super not happy either as I'm now totally locked out of being able to kill all 7 on this playthrough. Im not quite prepared to start again either yet

[Xander77]

1. Just rewind? No need to start over.

2. Try finishing the game with 6 serpents defeated, and let us know whether the Sun Serpent is considered vanquished as well.

[Norrec]

It's not immediantely obvious that the Sun Serpent is there. In hindsight yes, I can see it, but at the time I just thought it was a demon. There hand't been any indication that the serpents were anything other than all-powerful, much less easily captured.

So I, and maybe Karparus, continued playing. You dont' find out until much later when you're at the end of the game and haven't stumbled into it yet "Wait, did I miss one?" You get clues to where all the other Serpents are but, and I think I was fairly explorative, you don't seem to get one for Sun. Maybe it was mentioned in text but none of my clues even mentioned there was a Sun serpent (obvious in hindsight, the opposite of Moon). There was talk of a Hermit and I just figured "Oh, the Hermit is the last Serpent". I must've missed him though because I never ran into a hermit...

Point is, "Rewind" could mean rewinding away hours of play. From the end back to about halfway. If my post helps someone realize they missed the option and rewind with only minimal time loss then great.

[Psyringe]

To be honest, I found that information pretty hard to miss - you can even talk to that serpent while you're still in Fenestra's hut. And I don't really get why you don't just finish your run and then try to do better with the next one. That's how gamebooks - and Sorcery 3 in particular - work: you never get everything right the first time. Sorcery 3 in particular has very high replayability since the same location may offer completely different things depending on time zone and even time of day, so players will always discover new things even after 10 runs or more. Sorcery 3 also encourages players to _not_ spend a lot of game time on backtracking to things they may have missed, because there is a clock ticking and if your character takes too long, then defeating the serpents becomes a futile effort since the archmage will get note from your journey through other means.

I suppose the easy rewind feature may give players the impression that they can (or should) be able to get everything right with their very first character, but I think that approach is detrimental to one's enjoyment.

That said, I _do_ agree that it would be better to keep the sun serpent available to players at any point in the game. There is no logical reason why the player wouldn't be able to re-enter Fenestra's hut as long as it still stands. Arbitratily closing off reasonable options is one of the big problems with gamebook design - Sorcery 3 does a very good job preventing this issue for the most time, but Fenestra could indeed be improved in that regard.

I also believe that the hint system for serpent locations could be improved. It's great that we can ask the serpents about the locations of the others, but all serpents always only told me the location of the water serpent, which I already knew. I think this feature would work better if the clues referred to different serpents - this could be balanced by keeping them vague, e.g. "The sun serpent has been captured by a powerful being in the forest of Snatta".

[Rammur]

it not just a game its a book adventure just gotta pay alot and i mean alot of attanetion to alot of these little games all the hints and gameplay is in the form of simply reading .

[Mandrake42]

Yeah this could really be improved. The Sun Serpent is one of the only serpents you cant find out about from alternate sources, and absolutely the only one that can be completly locked off by the location becoming unavailable.

[Xander77]

Again - the most pertinent bit of info here should be "is the Sun Serpent counted against you if you missed it". Once we know whether or not this is the case, we can opine on how important it is to be able to find it.

[Chimebliss]

I'm not sure what the text is like if you let a Serpent that isn't the Sun Serpent get away, but when I let the Sun Serpent live to test this it said "The Archmage has heard rumours of you" at the end of the first day in part 4, as opposed to "Unaware of you" in my other runs.

[themysterioustraveller008]

Originally posted by Xander77:

The Serpent counts as defeated if you never met it in the original book. Have you tried finishing the adventure with six serpents defeated, and seeing what happens?

What's weird is that the book includes a section for how your stats are effected if every serpent reaches Mampang. Even though that's not possible since the Sun Serpent is always trapped by Fenestra no matter what you do. And you need to fight the Air Serpent and the Serpent of Time (which actually serves as the final boss) to even reach the point when the book asks how many of them you killed. So you've got to kill two and one of them has already been taken out of the picture yet there are still entries for what happens in they survive. Was this something the proof-readers overlooked or what?

[Valendale]

Same thing happened to me. I missed both the initial encounter and the opportunity to steal.

I started on the fourth part and was told "the remaining serpent has certainly informed the archmage by now" however, I could accept that this is just my character not knowing the serpent is imprisoned. Does anyone know if I will actually be penalized?

This really does stick out as a bad spot sonce I feel like the other serpents all had tons of different ways to discover their locations.

EDIT: After testing with save editing before going on to part 4, you are absolutely penalized for not knowing about the sun serpent in the orb. Alert level was 2 vs. 0 with the only change being whether I set the sun serpent to defeated. Completely changed the opening of Part 4.