BELOW THE ROOT FAQ
by Taryn B.
E-mail: terrabranford93@gmail.com
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Introduction
2. Controls
3. Playable Characters
4. Other Characters
5. Items
6. Walkthrough
6.01. The Wise Child
6.02. The Hermit
6.03. D'ol Nesh-om
6.04. Pensing Animals
6.05. Entering the Temple Grunds
6.06. D'ol Falla and the Temple Key
6.07. Raamo's Mother and D'ol Falla's Key
6.08. More Optional Stuff
6.09. Going Below the Root
6.10. Other Characters and Challenges
7. Level Editor
8. Other
9. Legal Garbage
1. INTRODUCTION
Below the Root is an adventure game released in 1984 for the Commodore 64, Apple
II, and IBM PC. It was the sequel to the Green-sky Trilogy by Zilpha Keatley
Snyder, published in the 1970s (really excellent books, if you can find them).
This guide mostly focuses on the Commodore 64 version, because that's the one I
grew up with. I will also give some information linking the game to the books,
giving background for your Green-sky adventure.
Green-sky is a planet covered in very large trees, called grunds. Humans have
been living there for a while after they escaped from Earth long ago because of
war. On Green-sky, they tried to create a society with no war or violence at
all. They called themselves the Kindar and colonized the planet, building 7
cities high in the giant trees. They developed magical psychic powers called
Spirit skills.
Eventually, there was a feud between 2 leaders of Green-sky, D'ol Wissen and
D'ol Nesh-om. D'ol Nesh-om died, so D'ol Wissen locked D'ol Nesh-om's followers
underground and caused the roots of a vine to grow and become indestructable.
These people underground formed their own society, called Erdlings. D'ol Wissen
then tried to keep the Kindar apart from the Erdlings by teaching that they are
monsters called Pash-shan and forbidding Kindar from going to the surface of the
planet. He founded the Ol-zhaan, a society that would keep the Kindar and
Erdlings apart and put criminals below the Root. Over time, people lost their
Spirit skills.
The 2 societies lived apart for a long time until Teera, a young Erdling girl,
escaped through a gap in the Root and reached the surface. She was discovered by
2 rebel Ol-zhaan, D'ol Raamo and D'ol Neric. These 2 Ol-zhaan were some of the
only people left who could still pense (communicate telepathically) and have
discovered that the Ol-zhaan are evil. They took Teera to Raamo's parents' house
to meet her sister, Pomma, and the 2 girls re-learned the Spirit skills! It was
considered a major miracle and the rebels, then joined by D'ol Genaa, got the
approval from D'ol Falla, the leader of the Ol-zhaan, to free the Erdlings.
However, the second in command, D'ol Regle, wanted to be leader and didn't want
to lose his power through the freeing of the Erdlings. He tried to kill everyone
who was opposed to him with a gun that had been brought from Earth, but he
failed because Pomma and Teera were able to "kiniport" the gun away from D'ol
Regle. Then the Erdlings were freed and eventually they decided to take the gun
to a deep cavern underground with a big lake, called the Bottomless Lake. Raamo
tried to let go of it, but he fell in the lake. Now, as one of 5 Green-sky
characters, your mission is to find Raamo.
The game takes place in the city of Orbora and includes 10 grunds, from left to
right:
Sky - Garden L - Garden R - Broad - Grand - Silk - Star - Temple L - Temple C -
Temple R
It wraps around, so Sky is again to the right of Temple R and so on. This
suggests that they may be in a roughly circular formation rather than a
west-east line, and so I will use left and right instead of west and east for
this guide. The books mention a few more grunds: Hallgrund (I think only once)
and Orchardgrund. There is also a Ninegrund mentioned in the books, but it's a
city and not a grund. The Temple Grunds are called the Temple Grove in the
books. It's possible that "Hallgrund" is really Grandgrund, which has the
assembly hall.
The game world consists of 512 screens (that's bigger than the original Zelda!)
in a 32 * 16 matrix.
Note: When I use the word "square", I'm referring to the small tiles that make
up each screen. The platforms in some areas have a ///// pattern, and each / is
1 square. Each screen is 40 by 20 squares (with 5 more squares at the bottom for
the status area).
2. CONTROLS
Below the Root uses a joystick in the Commodore 64's Port 2.
It is a side-scrolling game, so move the joystick left or right to go in that
direction.
Move the joystick up and down to climb ladders and vines. If you are not on a
ladder or vine, you can move the joystick down to stoop and then crawl left or
right (useful in the caves in some areas because of low ceilings) and move the
joystick back up to stand again.
Press the joystick button to enter a door. To jump, press the joystick button
and hold the joystick in the appropriate direction. If you keep moving, you will
be running instead of walking. If you want to return to walking, stop for a bit
and then move again. (The C64 used only one button per joystick, so unlike on
the NES and some other systems, they couldn't easily have a separate run
button.)
If you have at least one shuba, you can glide. To glide, after you fall or jump
off a ledge (while you're actually falling or before you start to fall), push
the joystick button and move the joystick left or right. You may keep using
left/right to change the diagonal gliding direction. Many areas can only be
reached by gliding and it also helps you land on branches better than just
falling.
You may notice after a while that if you fall without gliding, or if you bump
into a wall, you'll get hurt. You'll rub your head for a bit and then get up,
but you might also lose a shuba this way. Spiders and snakes will also hurt you.
To access the menu, hold the joystick button and move the joystick down. You
will have 19 commands to choose from.
PAUSE - This doesn't really pause the game, it just leaves the menu. When the
menu is displayed, that's when the game is actually paused. Yeah, it's
confusing.
SPEAK - Talk to a character. You have to be within 2 squares (but not right on
top of the character) and be facing the character. Usually, each character only
ever says one thing, so don't bother speaking over and over again to the same
person.
PENSE - The most basic spirit skill. This will cost you 1 point of "LEVEL OF
SPIRIT" (hereafter referred to as spirit energy) to get a character's emotional
state. This will be something like "HOPE AND JOY", "APPROVAL", "GREED",
"AVARICE", etc. If a character has a negative emotion, you may want to stay away
from them. You can pense emotions from anywhere on the screen. Your SPIRIT LIMIT
must be at least 5 to pense. Every character except Genaa starts with this
ability.
You can also spend 2 points of spirit energy to pense a message. To do this, you
have to be within 2 squares of the character and facing her or him. The messages
are often useful hints for progressing through the game, so if you're stuck, try
pensing some people to get hints. You need a SPIRIT LIMIT of 10 or greater, so
only Pomma starts the game with this ability. (If it doesn't work and you just
get the emotion, you don't have enough SPIRIT LIMIT or you only had 1 point of
spirit energy.)
OFFER - A few characters in the game want something from you. Use this to give
an item to a character. If they don't want it, they won't take it. Only 3
characters in the whole game want anything from you, and you can find out what
it is by speaking or pensing a message.
TAKE - Used this to pick up an item. The game will tell you what the name if the
item is. Your inventory space is quite limited and if you run out of room, you
get "YOU CAN CARRY NO MORE". You can only pick up items if they're outside (not
in a building), in your house, or were offered to you by a character (possibly
by using BUY or just by asking the character).
BUY - This is used in the stores. Everything costs only 1 token (the currency of
Green-sky), whether it be a meal, a new shuba, a lamp, etc. However, you don't
actually get your item when you BUY, you just lose your token. Use TAKE after
using BUY to actually get the item from the store.
USE - Some items may be used in specific ways. For instance, you can light a
lamp or cut bramble with a trencher beak or wand-of-Befal. These will be
discussed in depth in section 5 (Items). Don't try to USE food here, as it has a
special command...
EAT - Eats food. Usually this will restore 5 units of food energy ("LEVEL OF
FOOD"). Some food items have different effects, as detailed in section 5
(Items).
DROP - This drops an item. Unlike in some games, the item will still be there on
the screen and you can pick it up again. You'll probably use this a lot to
circumvent the inventory limit. However, you can't drop anything inside
buildings except your house, so if you found something really cool in a building
and have no room in your inventory, you have to go back out, drop something, and
then head back in...
SELL - You can sell some items at stores for 1 token each. You actually get the
token automatically this time. You can sell items in other stores, like pan
bread in a shuba store, but you can only sell items that you can buy somewhere.
These are shuba, vine rope, pan, honeylamp, fruit and nuts, trencher beak,
wissenberries, and roast lapan. Unique items like the spirit bell can't be sold.
HEAL - This is another spirit skill. It will restore 2 units of rest energy and
2 units of food energy at the cost of 5 units of spirit energy. Mostly this is
useful underground if you get lost, because it's hard to rest underground, but
the game can easily be completed without it. You need at least a SPIRIT LIMIT of
15.
REST - Use this item at a nid (basically a hammock made of living vines) to rest
and restore rest energy and spirit energy. You can rest in your house and
sometimes in other houses, but a lot of people will kidnap you or steal
something from you, so pense the person first if you're not sure. When resting,
every few seconds you will restore 3 units of rest energy and 5 units of spirit
energy, but will lose 1 unit of food energy, so if you're hungry AND tired, eat
first. If you're just tired and not hungry, rest and then eat afterward if
necessary. Move the joystick to wake up (it isn't automatic).
EXAMINE - This just tells you what an item is if you're standing over it. It
might be useful if you find an item you don't recognize and your inventory is
full, I guess.
INVENTORY - Lists all the items you have. The annoying part is that if you have,
say, 5 tokens, instead of saying "YOU HAVE 5 TOKENS" it will repeat "YOU HAVE A
TOKEN" 5 times. Similarly with other items, so you'll have to count instead of
the game telling you.
GRUNSPREKE - This is another spirit skill, and it grows branches. Stand at the
end of a branch and face outward (away from the branch). Use GRUNSPREKE and it
will grow a little bit. You can then stand on the part that just grew and
grunspreke again for more growth, and so on, until you run out of spirit energy
or reach the edge of the screen. Each square of growth costs 2 units of spirit
energy, and you need a SPIRIT LIMIT of 20 or greater to grunspreke.
KINIPORT - This is what most games and people would call "teleport". First
select the object to kiniport, which must either be a collectible item or
yourself, with the yellow cursor and press the joystick button. Then, move the
cursor to where you want it/you to go. Press the joystick button again and the
thing will move. To kiniport an object, you spend 5 units of spirit energy and
need a SPIRIT LIMIT of 25; to kiniport yourself, you spend 10 units of spirit
energy and need a SPIRIT LIMIT of 30. You must be able to kiniport yourself to
finish the game.
STATUS - This gives some information about the current state of the game:
Day and Time - This counts up over time (faster when you rest). When you reach
day 51, you lose (that's the only way to lose in the game, as your character
can't die). Really, you're given plenty of time and I can usually beat the game
by day 4 or so.
Spirit Limit - This is both the maximum spirit energy you can have and an
indication of what spirit skills you know. Raise your spirit limit by talking to
certain characters (for 5 points) or pensing animals (for 1 point), but you have
to already have at least a spirit limit of 10 before pensing animals will help.
The theoretical maximum here is 43 (45 if you cheat ^_~), only attainable with
Pomma, but you stop getting new skills after 30.
Stamina - This is an indication of how strong you are. At stamina levels of 20
and 30, your jump is improved, and stamina also allows you to carry more items.
Eating a strange elixer (yes, that's how the game spells it) is the only way to
raise stamina, and it increases it by 5 points. The theoretical maximum is 45,
attainable with Neric, Genaa, or Herd.
Character Name - I think you can figure this one out ^_^
Level of Rest - I call this rest energy. It drops over time and is restored by
resting (3 points every few seconds) or healing (2 points). The maximum is half
your stamina rounded down, and can be increased with a strange elixer. When it
reaches zero, you are "renewed" (see RENEW). The theoretical maximum is 22.
Level of Food - I call this food energy. It also drops over time, and is
restored by eating (5 points) or healing (2 points). When you rest, it drops by
1 point every few seconds. The maximum is half of your stamina rounded down and
that can be raised with a strange elixir. When it reaches zero, you are
"renewed" (see RENEW). The theoretical maximum is 22.
Level of Spirit - I call this spirit energy. It actually increases over time,
but it decreases when you use spirit skills. It also increases when you rest at
the rate of 5 points every few seconds. Its maximum is equal to your spirit
limit, so see that section for details on how to raise the maximum. It can reach
zero with no problems.
RENEW - If you get stuck somewhere, this will take you back home with full life
and food, but you will have lost a day. The message is "YOU WERE FOUND
UNCONSCIOUS. TIME HAS PASSED." when you use the command. What do you do exactly?
Knock yourself out? Whack your head hard against the ground/branch and hope for
someone to find you? Hmmm...
MENU - This lets you save or load games. You will be returned to the title
screen.
Select DISK STORAGE, then SAVE GAME to save a game. You may only save 5 games
and you will need a blank disk. Select a game number 1 through 5. Insert your
saved game disk and press the joystick button, then wait and reinsert the BTR
disk (side 2) and press the joystick button.
Use LOAD GAME to load a saved game. You can do this right when you start BTR if
you want, as long as you have at least one saved game. Make sure you select the
same game number and have the same disk inserted.
To return to the game, use CONTINUE and you will be where you left off, or where
the game was saved. START GAME will start the game over again which probably
isn't what you want at this point.
If you're using an emulator, you can probably just save a snapshot or save-state
instead, which is much easier. However, when loading the snapshot you must also
re-attach the disk image, at least in VICE, or the game will crash when you try
to leave the screen.
BLANK OPTION - The lower right option doesn't say anything, but the game still
allows you to move the cursor there and make that dinging noise over and over
again. This was a mystery to me for years until I tried the IBM PC version,
which has a SOUND option there for turning sound on and off. (Commodore
computers have no internal speaker and sound is output through the monitor, so
it can be muted by adjusting the monitor's volume knob. IBM PCs had nothing like
that and the sound was always on, so many programs had an option to turn it
off.)
3. PLAYABLE CHARACTERS
You may select one of 5 characters to complete the quest.
Neric D'akt (Kindar)
Spirit Limit: 5
Stamina: 20
Home: Stargrund
Food in house: fruit & nuts
Both of D'ol Neric's parents wasted away eating wissenberries rather than being
productive. He was one of the only Ol-zhaan who could still pense and send
messages. He was the first to discover the Geets-kel, a sub-group of the
Ol-zhaan who guarded the secret about the Erdlings. He communicated this to
Raamo and they joined together to discover the secret and they found Teera on
the forest floor. Later, as one of the original witnesses of uniforce when Pomma
and Teera kiniported the gun away from D'ol Regle, Neric became a member of the
Joined Council. At the end of the books, he is 20 years old and lives in the
Stargrund Youth Hall, but in the game he starts in a house in Stargrund (the
game doesn't have youth halls).
In the game, Neric is one of the easiest characters to play. He is strong and
has a decent starting spirit skill (although less than his skill in the books,
oddly enough, as in the books he can pense messages). He can pense emotions from
the start of the game. He is near the Stargrund shops, but his location is
somewhat inconvenient because in the early game, most of the stuff you need to
reach is way across the map.
Genaa D'anhk (Kindar)
Spirit Limit: 0
Stamina: 20
Home: Grandgrund
Food in house: fruit & nuts
D'ol Genaa was one of the last two Ol-zhaan along with D'ol Raamo. Her father,
Hiro D'anhk, was an academic type who tried to find out the secret of the
Pash-shan and was imprisoned in the process. Even after she learned of Teera and
the Erdlings, she wanted to kill them because she thought they killed her
father. However, when Teera remarks that she knew Hiro alive underground, they
go to meet and talk to him through the Root. Later, Genaa is a member of the
Joined Council. At the end of the books, she is 15 years old and lives in the
Stargrund Youth Hall with Neric, but the game places her in Grandgrund.
Genaa is one of the hardest characters to play because, true to the books, she
has no spirit skill at all at the beginning. Unless you're familiar with which
characters are to be trusted, Genaa is very vulnerable to nasty types because
she can't detect them by pensing emotions, at least until she meets one of the
five spirit characters to raise her spirit limit. She is physically strong
though. Her home is conveniently located for most phases of the game, roughly in
the centre of the initially accessible area.
Herd Eld (Erdling)
Spirit Limit: 5
Stamina: 20
Home: Broadgrund
Food in house: roast lapan
Herd lived below the Root until the Erdlings were freed and has one child, a
girl named Teera. He was Health Councilor in Erda and tried to get the Erdlings
to stop having so many children because they couldn't feed them all! There was
no farming or anything underground so they had to hunt animals and harvest
mushrooms from the ground. Eventually, they ate most of their pet lapans (like
rabbits) and Teera didn't want her lapan, Haba, to be eaten, so she ran away to
save Haba and ended up above the Root. Later, when Neric and Genaa went
underground to meet with the Erdlings to talk about freeing them, they took Herd
and Kanna Eld with them, where they both eventually became members of the Joined
Council. At the end of the books, Herd lives in the Temple Grove with his
family, but because the Temple Grunds are off limits in this game until later
on, Herd was placed in Broadgrund. His age is unknown, but Teera is 9, so I'm
guessing Herd is in his 30s.
Herd is probably the easiest character to play. Some homes won't serve him
because he is Erdling, but it's not a big deal, and Erdlings can eat lapans with
no problem, so it's easier to get good food. His stats are the same as Neric's
but he is in a better location near the Broadgrund Shops and 3 spirit
characters. His spirit skills are average and he is strong physically.
Pomma D'ok (Kindar)
Spirit Limit: 10
Stamina: 10
Home: Skygrund
Food in house: pan
Pomma is Raamo's younger sister. One day, Raamo and Neric brought an Erdling
girl named Teera to their house. Pomma was very sick at the time and ate a lot
of wissenberries. When Teera came, Pomma was cured and the 2 girls became very
strong in the spirit skills, able to eventually pense images and words and
kiniport objects. However, Teera was an Erdling and D'ol Regle didn't like that,
so he kidnapped Teera and Pomma and threatened them with death. He almost killed
them, but Pomma and Teera kiniported his gun away and the people realized that
the girls were Green-sky's last hope. They became the "Holy Children" and were
idolized by the people. Then, they eventually hid and people thought they were
taken until they reappeared right after Raamo fell into the Bottomless Lake. At
the end of the books, she is 8 and lives in the Temple Grove, but the game put
her in Skygrund (where she originally lived at the start of the books).
Pomma is a moderately difficult character to play. Her spirit skills were scaled
down from the books, but they're still the highest in the game; Pomma can pense
both emotions and messages from the game's onset. Beacuse of this, she won't
have to meet all the spirit characters. What makes her a tough character is that
she's very weak. She can't jump very far or carry much, and she must eat and
rest frequently. As Pomma, you may get a lot more use out of the HEAL command
than as Neric, Genaa, or Herd. Try to make a point of finding strange elixirs to
make Pomma stronger. You will need 2 to bring her up to the starting strengths
of Neric, Genaa, or Herd. She starts in a rather mediocre location.
Charn Arnd (Erdling)
Spirit Limit: 5
Stamina: 15
Home: Silkgrund
Food in house: roast lapan
Charn was Teera's playmate in Erda. They were of the same clan, although the
books don't give much of a definition for a clan other than sharing the same
cavern. Perhaps they are cousins or some such. He was the first Erdling other
than Teera to stand above the Root, and later when Pomma and Teera got lonely
and lost a lot of spirit skill, they asked Raamo to send Charn to them in the
Vine Palace. Charn helped them run away from the life of honour and hid them
under the Kindar Garden (Kindergarten?) for a while, but the people got scared.
They thought Axon Befal had taken the children and would kill them. At the end
of the books, he lives in Upper Erda on the forest floor, but the game puts him
in Silkgrund. He is 9 years old.
Charn is a hard character as well. He's weak like Pomma and doesn't have her
spirit skill, and his location is pretty bad. Use Charn only if you want a
relative challenge.
Comparing the characters
Name Spirit Stamina Location Type
Neric 5 20 Star Kindar
Genaa 0 20 Grand Kindar
Herd 5 20 Broad Erdling
Pomma 10 10 Sky Kindar
Charn 5 15 Silk Erdling
In order of easiest to hardest (arguably): Herd, Neric, Pomma, Genaa, Charn
4. OTHER CHARACTERS
There are many other characters in the game that are not playable.
Spirit Characters
There are 5 spirit characters (not an official name). Each one will raise your
spirit limit by 5 points, probably causing you to learn a new spirit skill. When
you learn a skill, you will also get a vision regarding Raamo. (The "vision" is
just text, not an image, but the game calls it a vision because your character
sees it.)
The Wise Child - Located in the Garden Grunds. From the Garden, go right one
screen and then up the vine. Jump across the gaps in the branches and enter the
hut.
The Hermit - Located in the Grand Grund. Climb all the way to the top and enter
the hut surrounded by bramble. You will need a trencher beak or wand-of-Befal to
get there.
D'ol Nesh-om - Located in your dreams (really). Climb all the way to the top of
Skygrund. You will need a vine rope to get there. The hut up there had a nid.
Sleep in the nid for a few seconds, until your stats change at least once, and
then exit the hut. You will be in the clouds! Walk to the right and there is
D'ol Nesh-om, who is actually long-dead.
Hearba (Raamo's mother) - Located in the Temple. Enter the Temple Grunds and get
the Temple key, then go to the top of the Temple.
Vatar - Located underground. Fall through the false floor and follow the cavern
around until you see a funny-shaped green outline. Enter the door to find Vatar.
Other Characters
D'ol Falla - Located in the Vine Palace in the Temple Grunds (you don't need the
Temple key this time). Talk to her and she will let you get her key, which is
located elsewhere in the Temple Grunds.
D'ol Salaat - Doesn't make an actual appearance, but his followers may kidnap
you and put you in a hut you can't otherwise access at the top of Broad Grund.
There is a strange elixer in the hut.
The Nekom (not "D'ol Nekom" <_< >_>) - May kidnap you and put you in a house on
the forest floor surrounded by bramble. The wand-of-Befal is in the hut.
Rarely, a Salite or Nekom member will hurt you and you will be taken back to
your nid-place. There is sometimes 1 of those underground near the door leading
to Raamo.
Raamo - Located deep underground in a hidden cave. Find and save him to win the
game.
Gatekeepers - They guard the underground entrance. You will need to bribe the
first with wissenberries and give the second a token.
A bunch of nameless characters - Located all over. Mostly, they give you vague
hints or useless statements, some of which I still don't understand. Some will
let you rest or take food or tokens (rarely other items) or let you buy items.
Animals
Lapan - These look like bunny rabbits and were common Erdling pets. Pensing a
lapan's message will add 1 to your spirit limit. There are 4 of them in
Green-sky:
- High up in Sky Grund on its right side, 2 screens east of the strange elixir
and 1 screen east of a token and vine rope. Glide down from above to reach it.
- Lower in Sky Grund on its left side, above that screen's normal branch. Glide
down from above, but beware of the patrol often on the higher branch.
- Very low on the right Garden Grund. Glide from above to reach it.
- Underground in Raamo's cave. Glide down from the screen above, and be careful
not to fall into the water.
Sima - These look like monkeys and were common Kindar pets. Pensing a sima's
message will add 1 to your spirit limit. There are 4 in Green-sky:
- High in Sky Grund, at the point where the ladders end. Go left 1 screen and
glide down to the lower branch.
- At the top of the Garden Grunds. You must kiniport yourself to it to pense it.
- Near the top of Silk Grund. Go to the right and go down the vine.
- Near the bottom of the right Temple Grund. Climb the vine from ground level
and glide left from the top to the ledge with the sima on it.
Spider and Snake - These will bite you if you come near them, causing you to
fall. You might tear your shuba this way. Also, because if how they walk back
and forth, they can hit you over and over again!
5. ITEMS
The items are listed alphabetically.
D'ol Falla's Key - The item with 2 apostrophes in its name, this is a pretty
hard item to get your grubby little paws on, but it's worth it because it lets
you get the spirit lamp. First, you have to go to the Vine Palace in the Temple
Grunds and talk to D'ol Falla. She will grant you use of the key but she won't
actually give it to you. Go to the forest floor under the Temple Grunds and find
a place with a vine you can't quite reach and a bunch of small platforms at a
trunk. You have to jump between the platforms and glide to the one next to the
vine, unless you have the self-kiniport ability (spirit limit of 30 or higher).
Jump to the vine and climb up it. You'll have to switch back and forth with
another vine, then at the top it seems like a dead end. Glide to the right and
there's a grey platform with a door in the trunk on it. Enter the door for D'ol
Falla's key. If you didn't talk to D'ol Falla yet, the game won't let you take
the key.
Fruit & Nuts - A food item. Both Erdlings and Kindar can eat it to restore 5
points of food energy. Neric and Genaa have it in their nid-places at the start
of the game. You can find more in some nid-places and at the Broad Grund Shops
(left door).
Honeylamp - Essentially, these were lamps baited with honey that would attract
luminescent insects to light your way. Lamps are used to light your way
underground, but after a while they will disappear! You would have to use many
lamps underground, and they're pretty heavy, but luckily there's a better
solution: the spirit lamp, which never goes out. Because of the spirit lamp's
existence, honeylamps don't really have much usefulness unless you're trying to
challenge yourself. You can find honeylamps scattered around Orbora and the
tunnels or buy them at the Broad Grund Shops (right door).
Pan Bread - A food item. Both Erdlings and Kindar can eat it to restore 5 points
of food energy. Pomma has it in her nid-place at the start of the game. The
books usually call it "pan-fruit". You can find more in some homes and at the
Star Grund Shops (right door).
Roast Lapan - A food item. Both Erdlings and Kindar can eat it to restore 5
points of food energy, but if you're Kindar, you will lose all your spirit
energy when you eat it, so I recommend that you stick to other food sources if
you're Kindar. Herd and Charn have it in their nid-places at the start of the
game. You can find more in some homes, and in a shop on the forest floor near
the Garden Grunds.
Strange Elixer - Yeah, funny spelling. It should be "elixir", not "elixer". This
is the best food item in the game because it raises your stamina by 5 points and
completely refills both your food and rest energies! When you get one, you can
eat it right away or save it for when you're feeling weak, depending on how
badly you want the stamina boost now. There are 5 in the game:
- Near the top of Sky Grund, visible to the right before you can reach it. Climb
one screen above it and glide down. This is the only one you can get early in
the game.
- At the top of Garden Grunds in an area you can't directly reach. Kiniport
either yourself or the elixir.
- At the top of Broad Grund. Get kidnapped by a Salite (a follower of D'ol
Salaat) and kiniport or use the Temple key.
- At the top of the Temple Grunds. All you have to do is get there.
- Underground in a shallow tunnel occupied by a spider. Kiniporting is probably
the best way to get it.
Shuba - The garment worn by the Kindar. You must have at least 1 shuba in your
inventory to be able to glide. When you get hurt, there's a chance that your
shuba will tear, causing you to lose it, so it's a good idea to have 2 of them.
There is 1 in your house when you start the game and they are sold at the Star
Grund Shops (left door). One house on the forest floor has them. In the books,
they came in many colours, but in the game they all seem to be light green.
Spirit Bell - This bell will ring when you pass by a door underground. This
doesn't seem too useful at first, but keep in mind that a few underground doors
are hidden, including the one leading to Raamo! You should get the spirit bell
before you try to save Raamo underground. D'ol Nesh-om had it in the funny dream
world. Climb Sky Grund and sleep in the nid for a bit, then exit the hut and go
right in the cloud world. Talk to D'ol Nesh-om and he'll let you take the spirit
bell.
Spirit Lamp - The other "spirit" item, although this one is a lot harder to
find. It's in the Temple Grunds and you need D'ol Falla's key. Go right from the
Vine Palace and you'll see a building. Enter the building and you'll find a room
with 2 gates to the right. The Temple key doesn't work on these doors! Use D'ol
Falla's key instead and you'll enter the Chamber of the Forgotten, which has the
spirit lamp in it.
Temple Key - this is used to open most of the gates in this game (except the 2
that need D'ol Falla's key). Gates block access to most of the Temple Grunds,
the Temple itself, and small rooms in the Nekom and Salite houses. There is also
a gate underground, although you don't need to pass through it to reach Raamo.
The key is actually in the Temple Grunds though! To get there, climb to the top
of Star Grund and grunspreke to the right until you reach the end of the screen.
Jump to the right from the very edge and immediately glide to the right at the
end of your jump, and you should make it over the gate and into the Temple
Grunds! Climb up to the top and glide down to an area with a door in the trunk
of the tree a bit above a ledge. Enter the door and you'll find the Temple key.
Now it'll be a lot easier to return to the Temple Grunds, and you can visit
Hearba in the Temple for a spirit boost.
Token - The money of Green-sky. All items in stores cost only 1 token each,
oddly enough. It also costs a token to enter the underground area. Tokens are
easy to find though. Your house always has 3 at the beginning of the game, and
tokens are often just laying around on branches. They're very common
underground, which is logical because in the books, tokens are used by the
Erdlings only. You can also get tokens from people's houses if you ask, or by
selling items.
Trencher Beak - This is used to cut bramble that will hurt you if you walk into
it. Stand facing the bramble and use the beak with the "USE" command. Sometimes,
the beak will break after use, so you should either carry several or get the
wand-of-Befal. There is "bramble" (rock falls, maybe?) underground too! The
Hermit's hut is blocked by bramble, as are both houses you reach from being
kidnapped. If you find yourself trapped, use RENEW. Remember that you can jump
over bramble that is 1 or 2 squares high. Your best source is the middle door of
the Broad Grund Shops, but there is one high in Silk Grund near a sima, a good
place for Neric or Charn to get a beak.
Vine Rope - These are used to cross a few gaps. The gap must be level and fairly
short, and it only works with branches or grass and not artificial platforms
(the ones with the ///// pattern on them). Mostly, it's useful to get to the top
of Sky Grund. Stand at the gap facing the gap and "USE" the rope, then stoop
down and crawl across the vine. If you try to walk, you'll fall through. The
vine rope disappears when you leave the screen after using it, so if you fall
later you will need another one. There are many vine ropes near branch ends in
Sky Grund, but if you run out, you can buy more all the way at the Star Grund
Shops (middle door). Another place you can use the vine rope, as demonstrated in
the sample quest, is if you land on that island on the forest floor and can't
jump to the right.
Wand-of-Befal - This is also used to cut bramble, but it never breaks. It can
also kill animals and people, but watch out! Killing an animal (even a spider or
snake) reduces your spirit limit by 1 PERMANENTLY! Killing a human reduces it by
5, also PERMANENTLY. It's possible to make the game unwinnable in this way, as
there are a limited number of available spirit limit points! The wand-of-Befal
is in a house on the forest floor surrounded by a LOT of bramble, so you should
probably get kidnapped by the Nekom to get there. Then, you need to either
kiniport or use the temple key to get the wand (which looks more like a sword to
me).
Wissenberries - A food item, but if you eat it, you lose 2 points of food
energy, 2 points of rest energy, all of your spirit energy, and some time. The
only real use it has is to bribe the first guard to the underground area.
There's a store in Grand Grund that sells berries, and they're also often found
near the ends of branches.
6. WALKTHROUGH
This walkthrough will get you through the entire game. I've marked some areas as
being optional. These are things not required to beat the game, but you can
still do them to complete everything. If you follow all the detours, you'll max
out your stats and collect all the unique items in the game. If not, you'll miss
out on some stuff but still save Raamo.
Getting Started
Load and run the game. For the C64, enter:
load"*",8
and then
run
Hit Return after each line, of course. The game will load and will ask you to
flip the disk over (if you're on an emulator, just select the other disk image).
Hit the spacebar and the intro will play. The intro is a set of 4 screens that
are nowhere in the actual game. As a kid, I thought there was a way to explore
that area, but alas, it was not included in the game area.
When the intro finishes, select START GAME and choose the character "HERD". You
will have to insert the first side again when prompted and switch back to the
second side. Herd is the easiest character for beginners and the walkthrough is
written for him. If you want, when you finish you can try the other 4
characters.
You will start the game in Herd's nid-place. Take all the items in the house: a
shuba under the bed, 3 tokens on the shelf upstairs, and a roast lapan on the
table downstairs. To take an item, walk over it and hold the joystick button and
move the joystick down at the same time. Then, select "TAKE" from the menu.
6.01. The Wise Child
The Wise Child is the easiest spirit character to find. She is in the Garden
Grunds, just one grund to the left of us. Get out of the house and go left.
Climb down the vine and take the wissenberries--we will need them much later.
Don't eat them.
Continue leftward and go up the next vine. You should see a hut and a bunch of
platforms. Jump from platform to platform and enter the hut.
Speak to the girl inside (press down and the joystick button to access the menu,
then select "SPEAK"). She introduces herself as the Wise Child and gives you the
power to pense messages. You also receive a vision about Raamo sinking below the
Bottomless Lake.
(Note: It is unknown who the Wise Child is. I'm guessing it's Herd's daughter
Teera, a character who was very important in the books but did not show up at
all in the game, but she is not referred to as the Wise Child anywhere in the
books (only "holy child"). Still, she is the only major female child character I
can think of, other than Pomma, who is already in the game...)
Whew! That was easy! Now we've earned our first spirit power (actually our
second, because we started with pensing emotions). Let's try out our power right
now. Stand near and face the Wise Child and select "PENSE" from the menu (down
and button, remember?). You should get an emotion ("HOPE AND JOY") and a message
("RAAMO'S MOTHER CAN HELP YOU"). If you were too far away or not facing the Wise
Child, you just got the emotion. Raamo's mother is a character we will meet much
later in the game.
Pensing is a good way to get hints in the game, and when a character offers you
rest, always pense them first to determine if they can be trusted.
6.02. The Hermit
Our next target is the Hermit of Grand Grund, another spirit character, who will
teach us how to heal ourselves.
First, though, we'll deal with some other things around here. If you want, enter
the buildings around here and talk to and pense people. Glide or walk to the
left and you will find the Garden, where Kindar students go to school. Kindar,
Garden, Kindergarten. German for "children garden". Coincidence?
Go back to the screen at the right side of the Garden (the one where you can see
the word "GARDEN" on the building) and climb down the purple vine to a branch.
Go to the right. See that cute little bunny rabbit hopping around? Aww ^_^ If
you could get close to it, you could pense it and raise your spirit limit and
restore your spirit energy. But it's too far to jump, so we'll have to glide. Go
back to the vine and go about halfway up the next screeen up (with "GARDEN
GRUNDS" visible) and jump off the vine to the right, then glide right. Try to
land on the branch with the bunny (actually a creature called a lapan).
Check your "STATUS" from the menu. Your spirit limit should be 10. We started
with 5 and got 5 more points from the Wise Child. Your LEVEL OF SPIRIT is
probably lower (5 for me), as it depletes when you pense people and restores
over time. When we pense the lapan, our spirit should rise.
Pense the lapan. You should get "THE SPIRIT RISES WITHIN" (you have to be close
and facing it and you have to have the PENSE MESSAGES ability we just got). If
it still didn't work, you probably ran out of spirit energy and you can just
walk around a bit and come back.
Check the STATUS again. Now our spirit limit is 11 and our level of spirit
energy has been restored to the new maximum, 11. Notice the rest and food
levels. For me they're both 9, you might have something else. These energies
deplete over time and when they get below 0, you're taken back home. You should
check your status periodically. We also have a stamina of 20, which we may raise
later, and it should still be day 1 (late morning for me). Time passes during
the game and you will lose on day 51. Your character can't die, so the only way
to lose the game is to run out of time.
Glide downward and you'll see a city on the ground! Enter the leftmost building
and talk to the woman inside. She offers you another shuba. Isn't that nice?
Pense her and she'll give you another hint for later, "GLIDE FROM STAR TO
TEMPLE". She shows love and support, which is good as some characters won't like
you. Take a shuba from the house. Now we have a backup in case our original one
breaks.
There are many houses around Orbora that have people who will give you
something, usually a token or food. You can only take from each house once a day
and they do run out of things if you take everything. Some houses won't want to
give you anything; this is dependent on whether you're Kindar or Erdling. We're
Erdling in this game, so a few people might say like "THIS IS A KINDAR HOME" and
not give us anything. If you play as a Kindar (Neric, Genaa, or Pomma), they
might give you something, but some people will always be stubborn jerks.
Go to the next house to the right and he'll say "VATAR BELIEVES IN YOUR QUEST".
We won't meet Vatar until we've almost beaten the game. The house after that on
the next screen has a man offering you rest. When someone offers you rest,
always pense them! Many of them are evil and will kidnap you or steal something.
His emotion is APPROVAL, so it's OK to rest here, but you probably don't need
rest now. If your LEVEL OF REST is below 5 you may want to rest. If you rest,
you'll probably be hungry afterwards, so eat your lapan. Otherwise, save the
lapan for later. (Note: If you're Kindar, don't eat a lapan. Instead, try to
find fruit & nuts or pan to eat. We're Herd so it's OK.)
The next house is actually a shop selling lapans. If you just ate your lapan,
you might want to buy another here. Talk to the shopkeeper then "BUY". Now,
"TAKE" a lapan. You've just spent one of your 3 tokens. Don't worry, you can
find more tokens later. You should always try to have at least 1 food item
(other than wissenberries, which you should never eat), but if you have too many
you'll get loaded down and get that annoying "YOU CAN CARRY NO MORE" message.
There are plenty of places where we can find food.
Check your INVENTORY. You should have a lapan, 2 shubas, 2 or 3 tokens, and
wissenberries. Now we'll do more shopping, but not here. We'll go to the Broad
Grund Shops.
Go right 1 screen and up the vines until you reach a big house. We're back in
Broad Grund, where we started, but a couple of screens lower. The person in
there will give you a hint about D'ol Falla's key for later. Go to the right and
you'll reach the Broad Grund Shops. There are 3 doors, each of which leads to a
different shop.
The left door goes to a shop selling fruit and nuts. This is a food item like
the lapan, so here's another place to go to get food. Both Erdlings and Kindar
can eat fruit and nuts. The middle door is what we want now. Buy a trencher
beak. (Remember to do BUY and TAKE!) Like shubas, they can break so it's good to
have a spare, so buy another beak if you can afford it. The right door has honey
lamps, which are useless to us because we'll get the spirit lamp later.
If you're tired, you can go up 2 screens and left 1 to your house. Rest up and
eat some food, then go back to the Broad Grund Shops and buy fruit and nuts.
Otherwise, just continue.
From here on out, I'll generally assume that you know how and when to eat and
rest, but I may point out some friendly houses for food and nids.
Go up 2 screens from the Shops. We're taking a special route to avoid a
kidnapper who sometimes patrols the more direct route to Grand Grund. The woman
in the house to the right is a jerk, so don't bother going in. I don't think
it's possible to get those 2 tokens as any character. Go to the end of the
branch and glide to the right, as the branch for the next grund is too high. Go
right and you should reach a trunk with ladders, or a building called "Grand
Hall" which is 1 screen below the trunk/ladders screen. Enter the Grand Hall if
you want, but there isn't much in there. The 2 people in the hall don't say much
of importance.
Climb the ladders. The man in the first blue house will give you pan if you ask.
On the next screen up, the woman in the house (also blue) will give you a token.
Keep climbing, ignoring the honeylamp on the next screen because we won't need
any honeylamps. On the screen above that, you can no longer climb straight up.
The man in the house (blue again) will offer rest, but don't rest there because
he is really an agent of the Nekom. If you rest, he'll kidnap you and take you
to a faraway hut that it's difficult to escape from without RENEWing. Go to the
left to exit the screen.
Climb the vine, go right, climb the vine and ladder, and follow the branches
around to a hut. There is bramble surrounding the hut to the left and right, so
you will need to use your trencher beak. Face the bramble and "USE" the trencher
beak. If it breaks, that's why we bought 2 beaks before. If you only have 1 and
it breaks before you can reach the hut, you'll have to get another beak.
Enter the hut and talk to the Hermit. You will learn how to heal yourself, which
is the next spirit skill, and will get a vision about Green-sky mourning for
Raamo. Pense the Hermit and the message will be "SEEK A SKY-NID AND A DREAM".
Hmmm... That's where we're going next.
6.03. D'ol Nesh-om
Yes, according to the books his name is properly spelled with a hyphen, although
the game omits the hyphen.
You can actually jump over the bramble to the left of the hut if you stand on
the 3rd / of the platform. Glide all the way to the left and you should be
pretty close to home again. Rest up at the house if you need to and replenish
any lost supplies like trencher beaks or shubas. You might be running low on
cash though. Go 1 screen right from Herd's house and climb up the ladder. Go
left and climb the vine for 2 more tokens.
Once you're ready, return home (or RENEW if you're fine wasting a day). Go to
the left, back to the Garden area, but this time keep going left. Past the
Garden, you'll find a vine rope at the end of a branch; take it. (This screen is
where the SAMPLE QUEST starts you off if you select it from the menu, by the
way.) If you run out of room in your inventory, drop the trencher beak, as we
won't need it again for a while, if ever. It'll still be there if you need it
later.
If you climb down the vine, you'll encounter a spider. There are spiders and
snakes in some areas of Orbora, and if you run into one, you fall and get hurt,
sometimes repeatedly, and stand a good chance of losing a shuba. Glide to the
left from where the vine rope was to avoid the spider. (You could also jump over
it.)
Go left to the trunk with the blue house and ladders. The man in the house has
pan but isn't willing to share, so climb up the ladder.
Two screens up is another house. The woman in here will give us a token. Up
another screen is a man offering a nid; it is safe to rest here if you'd like,
but unless your rest level is very low (like 2 or below), hold off for now
because we'll soon get a strange elixer. Go up 2 more screens on the ladders.
You'll reach a screen with a sima (looks like a monkey) and you can't go up any
further. Head left.
Fall through the gap to the branch lower on the same screen; not the one all the
way to the left, but the one under the branch you were on. Go to the right and
you'll be able to pense the sima to restore your spirit energy. Your spirit
limit should now be 17. This is good because pretty soon, we'll need a lot of
spirit energy.
Jump back to the ladder (if you miss, glide down and climb back up the ladder).
Go left again and keep going until you reach a screen with a funny purple thing
(the strange elixer) and branches with a large gap. This is where the vine rope
we just got comes into play. Jump to the left side of the gap from the branch to
the left (you can't walk there, although it looks like you can) and face the
gap. "USE" the vine rope, and it should appear in the gap. Stoop down and crawl
across, then stand up again and walk to the next screen above.
There's a gap in the branches; fall down it and glide down to the strange
elixer. Pick it up. Eat the strange elixer, then check your STATUS.
Whoa, now our rest AND food went up to 12. Our stamina has been increased to 25.
Now, we can go longer without having to eat or rest, and we got our rest and
food energies replenished to their new maximum value.
Of course, now the vine rope is gone...
Good thing this area has a lot of vine ropes in it. Go back to the screen with
the sima and go right and there's another one. Head back to the gap and use it.
If you fall while climbing the rest of the way, explore the tree for more ropes.
If you can't find any, go all the way to Star Grund and you can buy some more,
but hopefully you won't have to.
The screen past that gap we fell through before has a spider. There's no easy
way to avoid it, so try to wait for it to be far to the right of the area in
which it walks back and forth. Jump across the small gap and then to the next
branch quickly and continue following the branches from there.
Go right one screen, up, and left. This time there's a snake. When it's to the
right of its range, jump over the snake, then wuickly jump to the next platform.
One screen to the left is a hut; enter it.
In the hut is a nid, but no other people. Strange. Sleep in the nid (even like 1
second is enough), then go back out through the door.
You're in the clouds! Go to the right and talk to the man. He introduces himself
as "D'ol Neshom" and gives you the power to grunspreke. This basically means we
can grow branches in some areas, which we will be doing shortly. You receive a
vision that Raamo will rise again and unite the Kindar and Erdlings. Take the
spirit bell in the small structure to the right. This will help un when we're
underground later. Now, go back to the left and out the door (twice) and we're
back in Green-sky.
6.04. Pensing Animals
Remember the lapan and sima we pensed? There are several similar animals
throughout Orbora that we can pense now. This section is optional and you may
skip to section 6.05 now if you'd like.
From the sky nid, go right 2 screens. Beware of the snake. Now, jump to about
the middle of the screen and glide down, past the screen we had climbed up
before. Try to be toward the left when the screen changes to land on a short
branch with a white lapan. Pense the lapan to raise your spirit limit.
Go to the left and you'll be on a branch with a token and a vine rope. We won't
need to use a vine rope again, but it may still be useful if you end up in a bad
spot. Take it if you want. Tokens may still be useful.
The next animal is also in Sky Grund, but further down and on the left side.
Glide down from here to return to the screen with the yellow sima. Climb down
the ladder 1 screen, then go left and follow the branch all the way to the end
(you'll end up climbing back up 1 screen on the way). Glide down 3 screens,
trying to stay about 1/3 of the way across the screen from the left and try to
land on the tiny branch with the grey lapan. If you miss, climb back up and try
again. Pense the lapan. We could have tried to glide diagonally down and to the
left from the branch one screen above, but a kidnapper sometimes patrols that
area.
Glide to the left and you should reach a branch with wissenberries. We've
actually wrapped around the map and are in the right Temple Grund, but it's
impossible to reach most of the Temple Grunds area from here. Follow the branch
to the left 3 screens and glide off the end, ignoring the vine. Go left 1 screen
in the glide and stay about 3/4 of the way across the screen from the left.
There is a grey platform with a grey sima on it. Land and pense the sima.
If you've pensed all the animals mentioned so far, you should get the ability to
kiniport tools. w00t. We don't need this ability yet but it will be useful
later. Raamo washes up from the lake and appears dead, "but you can't be sure".
Hmmm...
This ends the optional detour. Now, return home. You may RENEW if you'd like, or
glide down to the forest floor and climb the vine to the right of the trunk. Two
screens up, you'll find a point where there's another vine to the left and you
can't continue up the current vine (you'll stand up instead). Jump left to the
short vine, then climb it to its end and jump right to return to the original
vine. Continue climbing and go to the right once you reach the top.
Glide right at the wissenberries and you'll probably land on the forest floor
again. (If we had just walked right, we would have to have crossed a lot of
water, which acts like a RENEW if you fall in.) Go right and climb Sky Grund
until you reach the first house in front of the trunk (the man inside has food
but won't give us any). Go right past the spider, climb up the vine, go right
again past the Garden, climb the short ladder (not off the screen, just the
short one to the higher platform near the other green building on the same
screen), right, up the second vine, right some more, and eventually you'll reach
your house.
6.05. Entering the Temple Grunds
Start at Herd's house. If you skipped the optional section, just keep walking
and gliding right for a while until you're back in familiar territory, or use
RENEW.
We will be going pretty far to the right this time to reach the Temple Grunds.
It's a long way, so check your status. Ideally, your rest and food should be 12
or close to it, and make sure your spirit limit is at least 20. If you're
running low, rest at your house or get more food at the Broad Grund Shops.
After a nap and 2 meals, I'm up to rest 11 and food 12. If you have the money,
you might want to buy some fruit and nuts to take on the journey, too.
From the screen with Herd's home, go right. Ignore the house to the right. The
gray man 1 screen right of that will give you a hint if you pense him. The
branch will end soon and you'll have to glide down. If you catch the branch 1
screen lower, just continue right to the screen with the ladders going up and
down. If you miss it, climb the trunk until you reach it. Now, go up 1 further
screen. We could just go to the right, but sometimes there is a kidnapper there.
At the screen with the blue house (with food) and green man, go right. The next
house is a wissenberry store; don't bother buying any berries.
The next house to the right is rather interesting. The woman will invite you to
rest, but if you pense her you'll get "I NEED A SHUBA". If you rest, when you
wake up you'll actually lose your shuba! Avoid the hosue and press onward. Two
more screens to the right is a pink house. The woman living there has tokens but
won't give Herd anything. Climb up the ladder.
The grey house above doesn't have anything important in it, so go right. The
orange house has a woman who will grudgingly let you have a token.
Go right once again. There might be a man patrolling a branch; he is a
kidnapper. Drop down the gap instead of going right, and then glide right when
you're far emough below the branch. You should land on a branch with a sima and
a trencher beak. Heal if you want, then pense the sima for a spirit boost. Take
the beak if you want too, although you won't need it for a while. Glide right.
You should land near the Star Grund Shops. The left door sells shubas! If you
only have 1 shuba, I recommend that you buy a second one. The middle door leads
to a vine rope shop, and the last door sells pan bread (good food for Erdlings
and Kindar alike). Note that you can't climb down the vines here. They're
one-way, up only.
If you keep going right, you'll reach a screen with a gate and the words "TO
TEMPLE GRUND". The green man says that the gate can be opened with the temple
key, but it is lost! Don't worry, we'll get in soon enough. If you walk to the
right you'll crash into the gate, so just walk left and climb up the ladder.
Go left a bit to climb the next ladder up. The green man mentions the Hermit,
who we've already visited. The person in the house says something rather
mysterious, "SPEAK WITH STAR IF YOU HAVE THE POWER". I have no idea what that's
supposed to mean. Does anyone else know?
If you go right, you can pick up 2 more tokens. Glide down to the left and
return to the screen with the brown house.
Go up the ladder from there to the pink and purple house. You can't take the
items within (the house is really Neric's starting point). Go right. The man in
the blue house is a jerk, so avoid him. Check your spirit level. If it's less
than 16, go do something else in the game for a while until it recharges.
Stand at the very end of the branch and face to the right. Note that you can't
stand on the square that looks kinda like a Y. The end of the standable branch
is 1 square left of it. From the menu, select "GRUNSPREKE". You should get "THE
LIMB GROWS" and the end of the branch will change a bit. Step right onto the new
branch and you can stand on it! Now, "GRUNSPREKE" again and step right, and keep
doing that until you reach the edge of the screen and can't grunspreke anymore.
Stand on that far right square and jump to the right and glide right!
If all goes well, you'll go sailing right over the gate! Welcome to the Temple
Grunds.
6.06. D'ol Falla and the Temple Key
Go up the ladders and enter the Vine Palace. (This is where Herd actually lives
at the end of the books, by the way.) The man near the entrance apparently
doesn't like us. Maybe he's one of D'ol Salaat's agents or something. Go up the
stairs to the right and then go left to meet D'ol Falla.
She will allow us to take the "forgotten key", but won't directly give it to us.
We will get that key later. For now, exit the Vine Palace.
Go right one screen. The green building here has a woman and 2 gates that we
can't pass yet. We'll be back later. If you go right from here, you'll find a
grey and purple house with a woman who will give us fruit and nuts.
From the screen with the green building, go up the ladder. Going right from here
will lead to another purple and grey house, this one with a young boy offering
rest. The offer is legit, so rest if you'd like.
Go back to the ladders and go up 2 screens. Jump between the platforms, being
wary of the spider, and climb up the vine. The spider is troublesome here
because it's on such a narrow ledge. Now go left and there's another spider and
a strange elixer!
You can jump to the elixir, but if you've been pensing enough animals you can
also kiniport. Make sure you have at least 5 points of spirit energy and a
spirit limit of at least 25 and select KINIPORT from the menu. Select the elizer
with the cursor and hit the joystick button, then select the ledge on which Herd
is standing and press the button again. The elixer moves! Pick it up and eat it.
Our stamina is now 30, and our rest and food are each up to 15. Now that our
stamina is 30, we can jump a bit farther, which helps when avoiding those nasty
snakes and spiders.
Glide down from here 2 screens, being about 2/3 across the screen from the left,
and you should reach an orange platform with a door some distance above it.
Enter the door (if you landed on the platform, you'll have to jump to reach it).
The girl inside wants to play. Interesting. Take the temple key and leave.
6.07. Raamo's Mother and D'ol Falla's Key
Go down 3 screens, back to where we entered the Temple Grunds, and go right 1
screen. This door leads to the Temple. Enter the door. There is a girl to the
left behind another one of those gates. It is actually possible to pense her
through the gate when she walks close, yielding the message "ENTER WITH THE
TEMPLE KEY". With the USE command, use THE TEMPLE KEY to open the gate.
A note about gates: They will close again once you leave the screen, so to go
back through a gate you'll have to re-open it. The temple key opens almost all
the gates in the whole game, including the one that was blocking our access to
most of the Temple Grunds before. We won't have to grunspreke in anymore. The
exception is the 2 gates to the Chamber of the Forgotten; those need D'ol
Falla's key, which we will get soon.
Go left 1 screen and climb the short ladder, then go left again and climb that
ladder. The screen above has something weird hanging from the ceiling, looking
something like a blimp. Maybe it's the spaceship used to get to Green-sky.
Anyway, go right 1 screen.
Talk to the woman, who is Raamo's mother. Her name is Hearba, but the game
doesn't tell you that. Now we can kiniport our body! (If you didn't pense all
the animals so far, you can just kiniport tools.) We get a vision that Raamo
lives. If you pense Hearba, she "says" that Raamo lives and that we must save
him.
Go right, climb down the ladder, and jump over the short grey barrier for a
quick exit from the Temple. Now, go right 2 screens. The Temple is big, isn't
it? There is another short barrier here; jump over it and glide down. (The other
door to the Temple doesn't lead anywhere important.)
Avoid the woman on the ground; she is a kidnapper. Go left 2 screens to find a
vine with a lot of short brown platforms near it. You can't directly climb the
vine. Instead, you have to climb the platforms, then land on the platform to the
right of the vine, then jump onto the bottom of the vine and climb. It may take
you several tries.
Climb up and there will be a second short vine to the right. Herd will stop
climbing around when the second vine starts. Go left slightly and then jump to
the right onto the other vine. At the top of the short vine, go right slightly
and jump left, returning to the original vine. Now, climb up to the top of this
vine.
Seems like a dead end, huh? Glide to the right and you should reach a grey ledge
with a very short door. Oddly enough, you can enter this doorway without
ducking. In the small "room" is a blue key: D'ol Falla's key. Take it and exit
the room.
Glide down and go left. You'll need a trencher beak to continue along the forest
floor to the left. If you don't have one, go back up the vine we just climbed
and glide way to the left.
Eventually, you should reach 2 vines, 1 starting quite a ways up the screen.
Once again, you can't directly climb the first vine, but you can jump from the
small mound left of the vine onto the vine itself. What follows is essentially
an extended version of the jumping between vines from before. You'll have to
keep switching vines to reach the top. It's the vine right of the Star Grund
Shops! It's an up-only vine, so you can't climb down it and return the same way.
Go right and use the temple key. We can go in the normal way now! Go right, up,
and right and enter the door. Remember these 2 gates? Even the temple key won't
open them, but we can use D'ol Falla's key. In the room to the right (the
Chamber of the Forgotten), there is an item on a shelf. Take it. It's the spirit
lamp. If you can't carry any more items, you'll have to go back outside to drop
something. Sorry. Drop any trencher beaks or vine ropes if you have to.
How's this for bad map design? When you exit the Chamber of the Forgotten,
you're likely to smack yourself into the first gate. Use D'ol Falla's key as
soon as the screen changes. On the other hand, if you don't mind getting bonked,
you can actually jump off the spirit lamp screen to the left and bypass the
first gate. You'll only have to unlock 1 gate that way, but you risk losing your
shuba. Exit the building.
6.08. More Optional Stuff
This section is optional; you may skip down to Section 6.09 if you'd like.
Remember before when we were trying to avoid kidnappers? Well, it turns out they
actually have some nifty stuff for us, and now we can handle them. Go back to
the Temple and glide down to the forest floor, then go right. At the bottom of
the rightmost Temple Grund, a yellow woman is sometimes walking back and forth.
Walk or run past her and you will be kidnapped by the Nekom. (If she's not
there, leave the screen and return until she appears. Kidnappers tend to be
flaky in this game.)
You are taken to a house with what looks like a sword in part of the house. You
have 2 options to get it: use the temple key on the gate or kiniport the sword
out of its enclosure. Whichever method you use, take the sword. It's actually a
"WAND OF BEFAL". (If you can't carry it, drop a trencher beak or other item
outside.)
The wand-of-Befal can be used like a trencher beak, but it never breaks! Yay, we
don't need beaks anymore! It can also kill animals or people, but DON'T DO THIS!
Everyone you kill with the wand will permanently damage your spirit and you may
lose abilities like kiniport and grunspreke FOREVER! ONLY use the wand against
bramble or rock falls, as you would a trencher beak.
Go outside and, what's this? This house is surrounded by bramble! Get out your
wand and hack away to the right until you reach the vine, then climb it. At the
top, head right and climb the next vine. Oddly enough, there's a vine to the
lower right that's impossible to get to. Whatever. Keep climbing and you'll end
up left of the Star Grund Shops. This is the other of those up-only vines. I
guess they didn't want you getting the wand or D'ol Falla's key too early,
although you can't get either of them very early anyway. If you want food, you
can buy pan here at the Star Grund Shops.
Go left. You'll pass something that looks like a well or gazebo or something; I
never understood what it actually was supposed to be. The man here says
something rather mysterious. Keep going left. The woman on the next screen tells
you to go to the Hermit if you pense her, but we already visited the Hermit.
Left again and you reach the SILK building. I think this is where shubas are
made. One person in there advises us to "CARRY BOTH SPIRIT TOOLS BELOW"; we have
both the spirit bell and the spirit lamp, so w00t for us. ^_~
Keep going left. Two screens left of the silkworks is where another kidnapper (a
grey woman) sometimes is. When you find her, run into her and you will be
kidnapped by the followers of D'ol Salaat, called the Salite in the game manual
and introduction and the followers of Regle in the books. Confusing, huh? That's
because Regle died, so Salaat is the new leader of the group.
Now we're in a house with no nid, oddly enough. There is a strange elixir behind
a gate; use either kiniporting or the temple key to get it, then eat it.
Exit the house and...where are we? Cut the bramble to the right and continue in
that direction. Glide down to avoid the snake and go left, then glide down
again. Hey, we're in Broad Grund again! The Salite's hut is in an area at the
top of Broad Grund that is inaccessible except by getting kidnapped.
Avoid the left house here, but you can enter the right house for lapan. Go left,
glide down, and go left some more until you're back to the Garden. Then, climb
the ladders up 3 screens. The blue and green house has pan. If you don't have at
least 10 points of spirit energy, go right and rest up in the green and grey
nid-place. Now go left to the screen left of the blue and green house.
The way to reach the sima and elixer here is by kiniporting. Kiniport Herd to
the sima first, then pense it for a spirit boost. Now, kiniport the elixir to
Herd for a strength boost.
If you go left from here, you'll find a purple spider, possibly the only one in
the game...
Now we've got all the optional stuff in the game. Glide back down to the Garden
and prepare to start our journey below the root.
6.09. Going Below the Root
Now the title of the game finally comes into play. Make sure you have
wissenberries and at least 1 token, and either a vine rope or a spare shuba.
Make your way back to the right screen of the Garden. Go left as far as you can,
then down and left until you reach the trunk of Sky Grund (with the blue house
in front of it). Glide or climb down and go left 2 screens.
If you try to go through the doorway in the rock here, the game will say that
"THE DOOR IS LOCKED". Talk to the man and offer him wissenberries. Now you can
enter the door.
Inside the door, go down 1 screen and give the man a token. Now enter the door
and you will reach the system of caverns underneath the forest.
In the books, this tunnel eventually leads to the city of Erda, but you can't
get there in the game. The tunnels loop around left to right, so if you go too
far you may end up back where you started, just like above ground.
Go right and talk to the boy. He hears a voice from below...interesting. Maybe
it's Raamo. Take the tokens if you want and continue right.
The next screen has a grey spider which will go pretty far on the screen. Jump
over it and go right another screen. Climb down the rightmost ladder (ignore the
lamp; we have the spirit lamp so we don't need honey lamps), go right, and climb
down the next ladder.
If you go straight down, you might crash directly into a white spider! Wait for
the spider to move out of the way, then climb to the bottom and jump over it.
Note that it is impossible to jump from a ladder underground.
Keep going right, then down the ladder at the tunnel's end, then right some more
until you reach an open cavern with ladders going up and down. climb the ladder
down and go right.
Ah, it's the dreaded bridges. If you land in the water, you're taken all the way
back home and have to return on your own. To make matters worse, there's yet
another spider here! Cross the bridges and climb up the ladder.
Crawl off the screen to the left (press down on the joystick to crawl). Another
spider! But there's a strange elixer there too, and 3 tokens. We probably don't
need the tokens, but we can kiniport the elixir for a strength boost. The spider
can't be kiniported though. When you're done, crawl back to the right and head
up the ladder.
At the top of the ladder, go right and soon we reach a false floor! You can jump
past it, but it's actually better to fall down because that's how we can meet
Vatar. Fall down and glide when the screen changes to avoid getting hurt.
Go left, down, and right. It's impossible to get back up this way. You should
see an oddly-shaped green door outline. Enter the door and talk to Vatar for a
spirit boost. We don't actually need it with Herd, but a spirit energy refill
still comes in handy. After we talk with Vatar, he'll let us take some fruit and
nuts. Exit through the door.
Go right 2 more screens, up the ladder, and right 3 screens. It's the Bottomless
Lake! This part is pretty tricky because you have to jump onto the ladder
without landing in the lake. Go left, abck off the screen, and jump to the right
and you should make it. Hold up on the joystick as you jump to climb the ladder
right away. If you jump from on the Bottomless Lake screen itself, you're likely
to miss the ladder. From the top of the ladder, go right.
climb down 2 screens, ignoring the tokens guarded by the green snake, then right
1 screen. Toward the right side of the screen, the spirit bell should ring a few
times even though there's no visible door. Push the joystick button as though
entering a door, and it turns out there was a door there after all!
Go left. See that bunny? If you want a last-minute spirit boost, you'll have to
either kiniport to it or fall from above. I'd recommend the former, as otherwise
it's easy to fall into the water. Go up the stairs and climb the ladder. The guy
walking around on that ledge is Raamo. Kiniport to him and talk to him. He's
afraid of falling. Offer a shuba or a vine rope and you have won the game!
The game will tell you how many days you took and rate you as "MASTER" or
"GIFTED" etc. I took 4 days this time, although I've done it before in 3. You
will then be returned to the title screen.
6.10. Other Characters and Challenges
Congratulations, you've completed Below the Root! Now you may want to try
playing as one of the other characters. In brief:
Neric - He is probably the second-easiest character after Herd, but he starts
near the Temple Grunds which is inconvenient early on. With Neric, you probably
will be talking to many characters before you can pense messages. He is Kindar,
so he can't eat roasted lapans without losing spirit energy.
Pomma - She starts with the message-pensing ability but is very weak. She can't
make her way up to D'ol Nesh-om until she gets stronger or learns kiniporting
beacuse she doesn't jump very far, and she'll have to rest, eat, and drop items
often. It's probably a good idea to pense animals and speak to the Wise Child,
then enter the Temple Grunds as soon as you can to get the elixir and Raamo's
mother's spirit boost. You'll be strong enough after 2 elixers.
Genaa - She starts with no spirit skills at all. You will have to pense at least
5 animals in addition to talking to the Wise Child, the Hermit, and D'ol Nesh-om
just to be able to grunspreke! Also, because she can't pense at all in the
beginning, she has no way of knowing whether it's safe to accept a nid for a
while, or whether a character is a kidnapper.
Charn - The hardest character, probably. He is weak like Pomma (not quite as
weak, but still unable to climb Sky Grund at first), starts in a lousy location
(near where Neric starts), and doesn't have Pomma's spirit skill. Pense at least
5 animals because you can't get a strange elixer easily before accessing the
Temple Grunds.
You can also challenge yourself in certain ways:
- Try to beat the game as quickly as possible (with any character you want).
Avoid RENEW and its 1-day penalty and skip optional stuff like the
wand-of-Befal.
- Find another way through the tunnels.
- Beat the game without the Temple Key. This is rather annoying but possible.
You'll have to grunspreke every time you want to enter the Temple Grunds.
- Can you beat the game with Pomma or Charn with NO strange elixers?
(Self-kiniport may help in some areas.)
- Beat the game without the spirit lamp. You can also skip D'ol Falla's key
because the only thing it does is let you get the spirit lamp. Here's where all
those honeylamps would be useful.
- Reach Raamo with as little as possible. You still need to kiniport yourself to
save him, but with honeylamps (or the underground map memorized ^_~) you can get
to him very early in the game.
- Try hacking your way to the Nekom house with a zillion trencher beaks...
Another thing you can do is explore more of Green-sky. Taking both optional
detours in the walkthrough allowed you to get the useful stuff, but there are
more screens out there, especially underground. There are many tokens
underground to collect, a few other items, some rockfalls, and even a gate to be
opened with the temple key! I just picked an optimal route for collecting the
strange elixer and meeting Vatar.
And if you're wanting more, check out the next section...
7. LEVEL EDITOR
The Commodore 64 version (I don't know about other versions) has a hidden level
editor which I discovered when fooling around in VICE's monitor. To access it
from VICE, select "Monitor" from VICE's "File" menu or hit Alt-M. At the prompt,
type:
g 9000
and press Return. The monitor window will disappear and you'll get a USE WHAT?
prompt. Just hit the joystick button once or twice and you'll be in the editor!
Move the cursor around the screen and press the joystick button and you can
actually alter the screen. Press the F key and letters and numbers appear at the
bottom of the screen. This is your "palette"; each character corresponds to a
graphical display element. There are 2 such sets; press F to toggle between them
(indicated by the colours shuffling around).
Several other keyboard keys are active in the editor. The T key will quit to the
main menu. Press 1, 2, or 3 to change the colours of some screen elements. The X
key will switch the screen between above ground and below ground/building
interiors.
If you push the joystick button while the cursor is on the row with the numbers
on it, the screen border will turn red. Moving the joystick around will adjust a
3-digit number; this is the screen number identifying each screen in the game
from 000 to 511. Pushing the button again sets the number and you may use the L
key to load that screen from disk.
The screens for Orbora are arranged left to right and top to bottom. The upper
left is 000, then 001 is to the right, then 002, and so on until 031; the next
row starts at 032 and goes to 063, and so on until the bottom row which goes
from 480 to 511. The bottom 4 rows are all underground. Building interiors are
scattered around, mostly in the lower-numbered screens. The screens 125, 126,
157, and 158 form the 4-screen area in the introduction. Really they're hovering
over the right Temple Grund.
The S key is rather interesting; I think it is supposed to save the screen, but
it seems "dummied out" in some way. The original screen is restored and then the
game accesses the disk. There might be a way for an ASM programmer to modify the
program to allow saving again...
However, you can also use the level editor to warp around. Change the screen
number, then use T to quit the editor and select "CONTINUE" from the main menu,
and you'll warp to the new screen.
Warp to one of the intro screens (125, 126, 157, or 158) and you can actually
walk around the intro area!!!!! (I've wanted to do that since forever!) Pensing
the animals might give rather odd results, but you could end up with a spirit
boost (bringing the max with cheating to 45). Also, this trick only sometimes
works. Sometimes it'll just load a blank screen and you'll be falling over the
Temple Grunds. You should probably try 125 or 126 so you don't fall out of the
area right away, and it may help to be inside a building when you "g 9000". If
you exit the area, you may end up in the Temple Grunds or the Grand Hall.
Also, sometimes after doing this trick you'll disappear and start falling from
screen 000 (the gate to the underground) down the left side of the map...
How did I find this editor, you may ask? (Very technical explanation follows!)
Most of Below the Root is written in 6502 assembly language (ASM), but a small
part is written in a much easier-to-understand programming language, Commodore
BASIC. If after loading the program you type
list
instead of
run
you can see this code. Basically it just displays the "Windham Classics" screen
and loads the rest of the game, then jumps to the ASM portion to begin the game
proper. However, there is a rather interesting line of code in there:
240 SYS 36864:REM ENTRY
SYS is a command that runs an ASM program from Commodore BASIC. The number is
the location in RAM or ROM where the ASM program starts. REM is just a comment.
However, that's not what the line really says. This is the true line:
240 SYS 33792:REM"{bunch of delete control codes here}6864:REM ENTRY
So the program doesn't really go to 36864, it goes to 33792. It made me wonder
what was at 36864, so I tried "SYS 36864" from the READY. prompt and even
altered line 240 to really SYS 36864, with no results.
Later, I tried using VICE's monitor to jump to location 36864 while the game was
actually running. The hexadecimal equivalent to 36864 is 9000 (read the
"Hexadecimal" article on Wikipedia if you want to know more about hexadecimal),
so the monitor equivalent of "SYS 36864" is "g 9000". I got the USE prompt, then
I was in the editor. (This was in 2007, and which screen I was on is lost to
history, although I think it might have been the Nekom house screen or something
near it. Maybe that screen below the Temple Grunds with the small amount of
bramble...)
The editor was probably used during the development of Below the Root to allow a
non-programmer to create the screens in the game and/or to allow a programmer to
more easily create them. Perhaps at that time, the BASIC part of the program
really did jump to location 36864, or maybe the editor was accessible from the
menu (what's that gap above "START GAME" for?). Apparently, part of the code for
the editor was overwritten after the editor was no longer needed, which is why
now it takes you through the USE routine. The USE routine may have overwritten
the "editor start" code somewhat; note that the graphics show up as ordinary
characters and are invisible until you hit F, and similarly the screen number is
invisible until you access the screen-changing function. Also, the game seems to
somewhat run concurrently with the editor, as occasionally you'll hear sound
effects of your character walking and crashing into walls and such. The save
feature may have similarly been overwritten, or it may have actively been
crippled to prevent anyone from changing the game map permanently. Then, the
editor was never fully removed from the code.
It seems also that the game uses some other buffer for loading screens during
normal game play (otherwise, they might visibly load a chunk at a time because
Commodore disk drives were so slow). Then, once the screen is loaded, it's
copied (and probably decompressed) into the video RAM. It could be that the
editor at one time updated both the screen and the buffer, then saved the buffer
to disk, but now only the screen is updated. This may have been a deliberate
attempt to prevent screens from being modified by purchasers of the game. When
you try S, the disk is accessed, but the original screen is restored just before
that, indicating that it's just saving the original screen and not the modified
version. Perhaps the editor could be modified to allow for its full feature set
once again...
8. OTHER
Many names and words in Green-sky come from actual Earth languages other than
English:
Wissenberries, Wissenroot, D'ol Wissen, etc.: "wissen" is German for "to know"
Nid: French for "nest"
Grund: German for "ground"
Grun(d)spreke: "spreken" is Dutch for "to speak"
The game seems to suggest that characters with very short hair are male and
characters with somewhat longer hair are female, but the books indicate
otherwise. In the books, Kindar of either sex have short curly blonde hair and
Erdlings of either sex have long straight black hair.
Speaking of characters, I wonder what the significance of the colours is. It
seems that Nekom are often yellow and Salite grey, although I'm not really sure.
Most of the really important characters, including Raamo, D'ol Falla, and all
the spirit characters except the Hermit, use white sprites. Other colours such
as green and brown seem to be occasionally used at random.
There is a rather interesting bug linked to the DROP command. If you DROP an
item while you're standing at the far right of the screen, half of the item will
be placed on the left side of the screen one row below your feet. If the 2 sides
of the screen are level with each other in terms of ground, the half item
actually creates a hole in the ground! You can fall through and even go
underground if you do it from the forest floor. Be careful doing this
underground though, because if you go below the bottom of the map, the game
crashes. The underground area is 4 screens deep, by the way. You can't do this
trick in buildings though.
Once you have the KINIPORT TOOLS ability, you can actually kiniport things
around in houses and shops, even if the game doesn't let you take the items.
Weird, huh?
The game does have some spelling errors, such as "SPRIT", "D'OL SOLAAT", etc.
9. LEGAL GARBAGE
This FAQ is copyright (C) 2009 Taryn B. The game Below the Root is copyright (C)
1984 Windham Classics. The Green-sky Trilogy is copyright (C) 1975-1977 Zilpha
Keatley Snyder. All trademarks and copyrights contained in this document are
owned by their respective trademark and copyright holders.
This FAQ may only be hosted on GameFAQs. Do not host it anywhere else or claim
the FAQ's contents as your own.
END OF FILE
