Swamp Town Walkthrough

Corak's Notes on Swamp Town:

The shadow of doom looms over the once bustling corridors of Swamp Town. VonEmosh, master of the walking dead, came out of his tomb in Phantom Peaks and reduced the town to a graveyard, where Ghosts and Ghouls now abound to guard the burial mounds. The Ninja clan remains undisturbed as they had made an agreement with VonEmosh before he began his onslaught.

Monsters in this area: Ninjas, Ghouls, Ghosts.

Map of Swamp Town:

The arrow indicates your starting position and facing, assuming you enter through the town gates.

The Inn.

The Blacksmith's Shop. This shop sells some excellent Silver equipment. In the Weapons and Armor categories, the ninth item is a random one. In the Miscellaneous category, both the eighth and ninth item are random.

The Training Center. You can train here until your characters reach level 25. After that, you'll have to continue your training at another town.

The Tavern. When you refill your rations here, you'll have enough food for 20 days.

Buzzard's Guild. As always, you'll have to get membership before you can learn spells here.

The Temple.

The Magic Mirror.

Entrance to the Swamp Town Cavern.

A note if you got here on Captain Squib's ship: That was a one-way ticket, so you will not be able to get back to the main continent the same way.

If you entered Swamp Town through the town gates, you will see that, for once, you will not be immediately attacked. In fact, the town seems deserted, and the paths don't seem to lead anywhere. Of course, this is not the case; at the end of every passage is a breakable wall. On the map, you can see the locations of the Inn, Blacksmith, Training Center and Tavern. First, break through the walls that bar access to these places. Ninja's will ambush you, but they should not be a problem if you already managed to clear Wildabar (which I recommend you do before coming here).

Before continuing, be sure to stop by the Blacksmith to upgrade your equipment as needed. Next, bash through the wall at the far end to open a path to the Temple. You'll need to beat two pairs of Ghouls to get to it, though. Here you can see if your armor is good enough to clear this area. If the Ghouls hit you constantly, you may want to consider turning back for now. If your armor is good enough, they should not hit you very often.

Now bash through the wall barring the path leading south, toward the guild. More Ninja's will get in your way. After getting rid of them, you will be able the reach the Buzzard's Guild, but unfortunately you don't have membership yet. For that, you will have to descend into the Swamp Town Cavern. The Statue of Yud that stands in this area will give you a riddle to solve if you approach it. Solving the riddle will give you some important info on the Pyramid complex. If you can't solve it on your own, you will have to resort to the Puzzle Spoilers section, because you cannot find the answer anywhere in the game.

The last thing of interest in the area are two graves. Don't dig them up, though. Digging up the one near the statue will curse the entire party, and digging up the other will release a nasty Ghost. But behind this last grave is a thin wall, so bash it down and you will proceed to the Funerary Grounds, the southeastern aera of the map. Of course, there are lots of graves here as well. Save before digging up any of them. Some of them release ghosts (load the game if that happens), but the other ones are graves which you do want to dig up. You will uncover a Heroism scroll, a Cure Paralysis scroll, three sets of Ancient Jewelry and two Ancient Artifacts of Evil. The statue here tells you a little more about Princess Trueberry's predicament. It is possible to bash through the wall in the northeast of the Funerary Grounds, but don't do so, or you'll release a Ghost.

Reading all this, I think you've noticed by now that you don't want to mess with Ghosts. That's because if their attack hits (and it often does), the character that was hit will age five years. That condition is curable, but not easily; the only way is to raise and visit the fountain of youth. Besides, I don't think what you get for beating them is worth the trouble.

So go back to the entrance area of the town and bash through the only passage left, the one leading further north. After getting rid of the Ghoul that gets in your way, walk straight ahead and bash through another wall. In this room (the northwest area of the map) are a LOT of Ghouls. If you can beat them, search the graves. In one of them is some Ancient Jewelry, the others are empty. If you can solve the riddle posed by the statue of Yad, you will receive another important piece of info concerning the Pyramids. Once again, the answer to this riddle isn't anywhere in the game, so if you can't solve it yourself, look up the answer in the Puzzle Spoilers section.

Now make your way to the Magic Mirror (7 on the map), beating more Ghouls along the way. After clearing that area of enemies(but you'd better not set the Ghost free), check the nearby walls and you'll notice the following message: "Lo, this town lies so entombed, its portal's name was changed to DOOMED." So, if you were to step up to a Magic Mirror and speak the word DOOMED, you'd end up back in Swamp Town. Oh yeah, there's another message on the wall further back which will let you know that the hidden secrets of the Tomb of Terror will not be revealed until all undead therein are destroyed.

As you can see, there's one more unexplored area in the northeast of the map. There's plenty of walls you can bash down to reach it, so take your pick. You will come across more graves. Save before digging any of them up; you may get cursed. But in the graves where this is not the case, you will find 5000 Gold, 200 Gems and a scroll of Holy Bonus. The entrance to the Swamp Town cavern is nearby, but it's unlikely you'll get very far if you already had trouble on the surface. Still, you will at least want to go down at least once to get membership for Buzzard's Guild. There's also a message on the wall here stating that it's easy to lose your way in the Maze from Hell. Well, looks like we have a winner for the "stating the obvious"-award!

Adjacent areas: