HIM: The Wolf at the Door v1.1.3
by Thralni

No matter where I go or what I do, the wolf always finds me.

Contact me at benjaminvansoldt@gmail.com if you have any questions or comments.

Contents
Introduction
Information/known bugs
Tips and hints
Walkthrough
Some final plot questions answered
Credits and thank you
Version history

Introduction

HIM: The Wolf ar the Door is my third scenario to be released. Actually, it'll be my fourth, if I count in El Presidente, which I did with Nikki. However, as EP was mostly Nikki's work, I usually don't count it in. So anyway, HIM: The Wolf at the Door is the sequel to HIM. The story of HIM continues in a small mining town called Pilgrim's Rest, in the hope for answers to what happened in the Harson Mining Coorporation (HMC).

Information/known bugs

There will come a time when you need to use special abilities. These will be given to you at that time. These abilities are:

1) Show energy points
2) Rest

The particular piece in which you need these abilities requires you to do stuff, but every time you do something, energy points will get drained. Ability 1 will show you how much you have left, and the second one will make you rest. Beware though! Resting takes up a lot of time!

There are no know bugs at this moment. If you find a bug, don't hesitate to send me an email about it!

Tips and hints

1) Be sure to explore a lot, otherwise you may miss important stuff (although in Hard difficulty this might be a very bad idea).
2) Don't be too liberal in time. Do what you have to do, explore, but don't waste time. Even more so if you chose one of the harder difficulty levels!
3) If you find yourself in a nasty position regarding health/mana getting low, take a rest. Beware that each time you rest, you waste 50 turns!
4) This scenario contains no combat. Remember this. Even if you think this scenario contains combat, there is no combat. Your survival depends on remembering this!

Walkthrough

Warning: this chapter may contain spoilers on what the party will be doing (no plot points are revealed, though). Do note that you'll miss out on stuff if you follow this walkthrough.

1) start (Introduction, The forest)

After the introduction sequence, you will get a message that'll ask you to read the readme file (which is the file you are reading now) and you will get a message about the difficulty setting. You can choose from three difficulties, and affected by what you choose is the timer that determines when you fall ill. This disease timer starts running once you enter the actual town of Pilgrim's Rest (which is not the town with the grass, the two houses, shed and hanging corpses! It's the town after that).

The disease works in levels, level 1 being just the beginning, and level 6 being the worst. Below is a small table outlining the disease pattern and what to expect at each difficulty level.

Disease level | Start after ticks | What to expect
--- | --- | ---
| Easy | Medium | Hard |
1 | 600 | 300 | 200 | Just coughing from time to time, nothing serious.
2 | 1200 | 600 | 400 | Again just coughing, but in a higher frequency.
3 | 1800 | 900 | 600 | Coughing, all party members get disease status now and then.
4 | 2100 | 1050 | 700 | Coughing, all party members get disease status now and then but in a higher frequency than at level 3.
5 | 2400 | 1200 | 800 | Coughing, all party members get disease status now and then but in a higher frequency than at level 4, also poisoning starts.
6 | 2700 | 1350 | 900 | Coughing, all party members get disease status now and poisoning in a higher frequency than 5. Beware: at this stage, party members start transforming into zombies. When a transformation occurs is completely random and hard to predict. Just get out of the scenario before the disease hits level 6!

Now, Hard really is hard if you don't know where to go in the scenario! That's why I urge you choose easy for a first time! Of course, if you plan on following this walkthrough, you can take hard, since you won't be doing any real exploration. It's your call.

When you got all this, the scenario finally starts. The party starts out in a forest. Follow the road north, until you come to the next town. Here, follow the road into the next town. Here, again, follow the road, again into the next town.

2) Pilgrim's Rest

The way the next two towns are built is a very linear one. Be warned: from this point on, a timer will be running that, if you are not fast enough, will kill party members in the end! There is nothing to stop the timer from working, so try to get a move on.

When you enter this town, just keep following the road, until you end up on a very bloody, messy square. Just follow the road to the east, until you come to a split in the road. Take the alley just to the south, and follow that, through the hole in the wall with blood in front of it. When you go through the door, go west, and follow the road west again, then south to the next town.

When you enter the next town, again, follow the road. Take the first alley east, and follow that alley, going in the general direction of east as much as possible. When you emerge onto a big road, look at the double doors to the north. See that? That's the barracks. Make a mental note of its location; we'll be coming back soon. Now, though, go south all the time. First over the road, then the alley with the destroyed houses. Follow this alley west, and follow the road to the west. When you come to the split in the roads, go north. First into the building to the west (where there are these holes in the walls in the buildings both west and east of you), then onto the square. Go to the house with a sign next to the door and parquet inside. Go inside, and read the scrolls on the bookshelves. Now go back to the building in the southwest corner. Enter it, and inside this building, go as southwest as you can, where you'll find a desk. Ready to run? Good, then "look" at the desk. At the end, prepare to run to the barracks.

3) Running: Pilgrim's Rest, the roofs, the church, the cemetery and the end

Read the scrolls in that desk? Good, then run to the barracks. Don't fight the zombies! If you kill a zombie, a new one is placed at a spot close to you, meaning there is an endless supply of zombies and you'll only be wearing yourself out. So don't fight, just don't...

When you're there, go through the first door to the west and up the stairs. We're now on the roofs. The trick in this town is the following: find the quickest route over these roofs, to the northwest of town, where you can jump onto the church grounds. Note that everytime you jump, your energy points are drained (which can be checked by using the special ability "check energy points"). If energy points are completely drained, use the ability "rest" to rest and restore the energy points. Note that this costs 50 ticks, so try not to rest too much! The correct route is the following (see the town's map, too) (Note that as of version 1.1.1 this map is slightly outdated, but not in such a way that making a new one is necessary. The altered part revolves around the roof you walk on between 3 and 4):

Walk, following the pavement, to the other (eastern wing) of the barracks (1). Now, go south, until you think you are one square south of the big wall-like thing on the house just on the other side of the street, to the east (2). Walk towards the roof's edge, and when prompted, jump (3). When landed on the roof, go to the west part of this roof's house, like shown on the little map. Jump towards the west (4), and when on the next roof, go to the north and jump (5). Now go to the west and jump down (6). Beware that at (7) zombies are waiting for you!

After having jumped at (6), you will have entered the next town: the church. From this point on, depending on how ill you are, you'll get messages about feeling dizzy. When this happens and you don't rest, your health and mana points will slowly be drained. Health with 4 to 7 points a turn, mana 6 to 9 points a turn. It depends on the "level" which the disease has after how many turns the dizziness occurs. With every level the disease gains, there are less turns you can walk before the dizziness kicks in. To get rid of dizziness and restore your health and mana points, use the resting ability. Beware though! It is up to you when you want to rest. Only thing I can do is give hints at what I think is a good point. So, as said, health and mana points are drained when dizziness occurs. If you are actually being chased by the zombies, it'd be a bad idea to start resting. However, if you just enter a new town, it'll take a while before the zombies start appearing. Use this to your advantage! Now, to continue with the walkthrough:
Go inside the church and close all the doors (there are nine of them: north, south and east). When you have done that, go to the altar and read the dialog boxes, until it ends and the zombies start to invade. As quick as you can, go through the door to the west, then the door to the south. The next door to the south is trickier. You need to have a big, preferably two handed weapon to bash open this heavily locked door. If you're not sure if you have such a weapon in your inventory, pick up the staff from the table, and approach the door. The door will be crushed, and you can proceed out, to the cemetery. Just head north.

The next town is the cemetery, and you can be out very soon: just go to the most northeastern crypt. Enter it, and go down. Next, you'll be underground. Go through the tunnels. At the first split, with a path going up, stay down and head on. Next, there is again a split in paths. Take the northern one. When you emerge, you emerge in a sort-of living forest. Just follow the path again.

In the next town you emerge in a lusher green place, looking more like what you saw in the first three towns of the scenario. Head north to succesfuly exit the scenario. That's it, you're done!

Some final questions answered

Q: So, this whole plot in HIM: TWD, did you take that from Resident Evil?
A: As a matter of fact, no. It was all my imagination's doing. I have never heard of or done anything with Resident Evil. The first time I heard about it, was when TM asked me if I got my plot from Resident Evil. So no, contrary to HIM, HIM: TWD's plot I made up on my own.

Q: I get this weird feeling when reading the dialogue boxes. I mean, I'm with a party of four, yet we all feel the same stuff? Think the same stuff?
A: (Do note I'm only including this because once somebody asked me this. I thought I'd put this in here to give a short explanation of what I have been imagining when I wrote the dialogue for HIM: The Wolf at the Door). Dialogue in HIM:TWD might seem a little strange, but it isn't, really. Only thing you ahve to do is set your mind to a different way of story telling. In the first place, what you read in the dialogue boxes, can be taken as one of two ways: Either it is one of the party members telling the other party members stuff (and therefore he tells it to you too) (or for singletons: the singleton's thoughts), or it is the result of all party members commenting on how they feel. However, since it'd be quite some work to include all your party members' thoughts, you only read the conclusion of all thoughts of your party members. I hope this clarifies it all a bit...

Q: How about singletons? Why is the text in the dialogue boxes always plural?
A: For several reasons: First of all, there is a goal I want to achieve. I want the player to be able to sympathise more easily with the party, and using the single person plural in my opinion helps to reach that goal. Secondly, The way I see it, it's not just the party member that's in the game, it's also you, the player. The party member and the player are in this together: "we".

Credits

Beta testers: Nikki, Jewels, Celtic Minstrel, Grail Shadowblade, Turtle, Tre'zar, Josephine Elder, Ephesos. Thank you all for your great help!

Very special thanks go to Nikki and Turtle. Thanks for your great comments during beta!

Graphics:
- Blood on wall by Nioca;
- Dying sun splashscreen by Arancaytar;
- alternate zombie graphic from Avernum 2, ported to BoA by Jemand;
- Fog in graveyard splashscreen by "Doctor Beef" (outside source);
- Altar with golden cross by Nikki;
- Grass floors around the church and cemetery from BoE, converted to BoA by Luz;
- Trees without leaves by Ephesos;
- Wrought iron fence + gate by me (Thralni);
- Dead potted plant by me (Thralni).

Additional music by myself (Thralni) (Do note, that only Mac users will get to hear the additional music. Sorry Windows users, but custom sounds can not be put in the windows versions of the game, due to the fact that sounds seem to be hard coded into the game in the windows version)

Thanks to Radiohead, for the title

Version history

1.1.3 - Released version - fixed some typos and added in some extra calls to check whether party is in combat mode or not when attempting to enter a new town.

1.1.2 - Fourth beta release: some more small bug fixes and typo fixes. Some small dialogue changes

1.1.1 - Third beta release: small bug fixes, added a small item: Dead potted plant and replaced the lived potted plants with the dead ones.

1.1.0 - Second beta release: Almost complete overhaul of the dialogue in the scenario, fixed a bug where in town church you didn't necesarily have to go to the altar, fixed typos, disease has been delayed and extra levels in disease severeness have been added. Also gave the "rest" ability more of a role in the scenario.

1.0.0 - Initial release for beta