Glossary

A place in the original program, given as a number such as 0x23E6DC. The 0x means the number is written in hexadecimal (base 16), the way programmers number memory. An address names the routine or the value I am talking about, so that anyone with the program can look at the same spot. The site keeps addresses in the "How we know" boxes, not in the stories.

Every hero has an age, kept in fortnights and shown on his character sheet in years. He grows older in three ways: a fortnight each time the party rests at an inn, the time the party spent outside each time it arrives in a town (worked out from the step clock), and two months when he is fetched from another town to join the party.

How old a hero starts depends on his race and, oddly, on his Luck: within a race, the luckier hero is always older. An Elf with Luck 13 can start at over 300.

The manual says "Age adversely affects the adventurer's attributes after he reaches his declining years." The program never does this. Nothing in it reads a hero's age except the character sheet, which prints it. No attribute falls and nobody dies of old age. The story is in Heroes do not get worse with age.

Commodore's home computer, and the version of Phantasie III this site is about. The Amiga version is credited in the game to Westwood, with the original version by Winston D. Wood, published by SSI in 1987. The game came out on other computers too (the manual speaks of Apple and 8-bit versions, and there is an Atari ST version), but every finding here is read from the Amiga program unless it says otherwise. The Amiga's sound chip is Paula.

My name for a number the game works out for every hero when he trains: how quickly he learns. The game never prints it. It comes from his class and two or three of his attributes, a different mix for each class:

• Fighter: twice his Strength plus his Dexterity.
• Thief: his Strength plus twice his Dexterity.
• Priest: his Strength plus twice his Intelligence.
• Ranger: his Strength, Intelligence and Charisma.
• Monk: his Strength, Intelligence and Dexterity.
• Wizard: twice his Intelligence plus his Luck.

That sum is multiplied by 100 and divided by a number set for each class, and the result is never below 17. The experience a hero needs for his next level is divided by his aptitude, so a higher aptitude means less experience to earn. The manual says the experience needed "depends on his race, attributes, and class". In the program it is the class and the attributes; the race counts only through the attributes it gave him.

The suit a hero wears, from Clothing to God Armour, each with a point value. A hero can have one suit readied. Wearing it needs enough Strength.

In the 1987 game armour does not do what you would expect. Each point of armour takes 5 off the hero's defence, so heavier armour makes him easier to hit, and the armour itself takes nothing off a blow. The only attack it softens is a monster's breath. The story, with a test of 276 blows in the running game, is in Heavy armour makes you easier to hit. Monsters have an armour number too, and the program never reads it, which is why Binding does nothing.

The shop in every town, key A on the town menu. Despite the name it is a general store: weapons, shields, armour, bows, potions, scrolls and other treasure. Each town keeps its own stock, and the stock is saved with the game. You buy with the party's gold. You cannot sell at the armoury counter itself: the one place a hero can sell is the Distribute screen.

What happens when the whole party dies. Instead of a game-over screen, the party's souls stand before the gates of the Astral Plane, a Great Demon speaks, and each hero is judged in turn: destroyed, brought back to life, or raised as one of the undead. The survivors are then sent to a town picked at random. A hero whose Constitution is below 2 is destroyed at once, with no roll, and one who comes back loses a point of it.

Phantasie III also came out for the Atari ST. I began the project with it, and today its program is a second witness: where a finding matters, I check whether the ST program does the same as the Amiga one. Where I have checked, the two agree, such as Constitution never giving hit points and the Wolf being broken in both.

A hero's skill with a hand weapon, written as a number on his character sheet. The manual calls it a percentage, and at low levels it works like one, but heroes can go well past 100.

A hero's Attack is shared out over the blows of his order. Thrust is one blow with the whole of it, Attack is two blows with half each, and Slash is more blows still. Each blow's chance to land, out of 100, is its share of the Attack minus the monster's defence, plus 30 for every step the hero stands ahead of the party's average rank (and 30 less for every step behind it). A blow at the monsters' back group is 15 harder. However low the sum, a hero's blow always keeps a chance of at least 1 in 100, and a monster that is not Okay (asleep, lamed or knocked out) is hit every time.

Attack goes up only when the hero trains.

The five numbers that describe a hero's body and mind: Strength, Intelligence, Dexterity, Constitution and Charisma. The character sheet also shows a sixth, Luck. They are rolled when a hero is made, and each race has its own highest roll for each one; the manual prints the table.

A few events in the dungeons raise an attribute by 1 at a time, up to 30. When a hero joins the party, the game cuts his Strength, Intelligence, Dexterity and Constitution back to 22 and his Charisma to 20, so anything above that lasts only until he next joins. Luck is never cut. A raised attribute does not change his skills until he next trains.

The rearmost of the three places a hero can stand in a fight. See Rank.

A combat spell in four strengths, Binding I to IV. The manual says Binding inhibits "the movement of monsters, making them easier to hit", and that it is "particularly effective against flying creatures and monsters that are difficult to see".

In the 1987 game it does nothing at all. The caster spends his magic points, and the spell lowers the monsters' armour, a number the program never reads. The fight goes on exactly as it would have. My fix makes Binding cut the monsters' defence instead, to 85, 70, 55 or 45 percent of what it was, so blows and arrows land more often. That fix is one of my own set.

Every hero and every monster has six body parts: the head, the torso, the left and right arms and the left and right legs. Each part is in one of four states: Okay, Injured, Broken or Gone. The party panel draws each hero as a small stick figure that shows the state of his parts, and the character sheet lists them.

The parts decide part of a hero's status. A head or torso that is Gone kills him, and one that is Broken knocks him out. A leg that is Broken or Gone leaves him Down. A right arm that is Broken or Gone leaves him able only to Parry. How parts get hurt and mended is under Wounds.

One of the five attributes: looks and charm. Its one large effect is on the price of training. The price goes with the square of how far the hero's Charisma is from 20, so it falls steeply as Charisma rises, and at exactly 20 a level costs 5 gold. Past 20 it climbs again. No hero is made with more than 18, and joining the party cuts it back to 20. Charisma is also part of a Ranger's aptitude.

The third choice my recreation offers when you make a game disk, after The 1987 original and With Justin's fixes. It opens the list of every switch, and you turn each one on or off yourself. It is also the only way to turn on an enhancement. You can come back to the list later with Set fixes on disk on the list of disks.

A hero's profession, chosen when he is made. There are six: Fighter, Thief, Priest, Ranger, Monk and Wizard. The class decides how many hit point dice he throws, what his skills can be trained to, which spells he can learn, and his aptitude. A few rules of the fight look at it too: only a Thief can strike the monsters' back group with Attack, Slash or Thrust, and only a Fighter or a Thief can Lunge at it.

One of the five attributes: toughness. The manual says it adds to a hero's hit points. In the program it never does, at creation or at any later level. What it does do: it is the base of his Swimming skill (twice his Constitution, plus 30), it keeps him from being destroyed at the Astral judgement (below 2 he is lost at once), and Resurrection takes a point or two of it, never leaving less than 3. The story is in Constitution never gives a hero hit points.

"Continue a previously saved game", the first choice on the game's start menu. It loads the game last saved on the game disk and puts the party in the town where it was saved. The game treats that as arriving in the town, so the party is aged by the days it had spent outside before the save, again, every time you Continue from the same save. One of my fixes stops that.

On a disk with no saved game, Continue says nothing: you are simply in Pendragon with no party, which is a new game.

How hard someone is to hit, the number taken off every blow aimed at him. A monster's defence is part of its record, and some are very high: a Light Fairy has 90.

A hero's defence is worked out once, at the start of every fight: half his shield's point value, plus twice his Dexterity, plus a quarter of his Parry skill, minus 5 for every point of armour he wears. It can go below 0. A monster's chance to land a blow on him, out of 100, is the monster's attack for that blow minus his defence, with 30 added for every step he stands ahead of the party's average rank, and 30 taken off for every step behind. A hero who is not Okay (asleep, down or knocked out) is hit every time.

One of the five attributes: quickness and agility. It counts twice in a hero's defence, so it is the best protection a hero has. It also helps decide what he can use: a bow needs his Strength plus his Dexterity to reach the bow's requirement, and a hand weapon needs twice his Strength plus his Dexterity. It is part of the aptitude of Fighters, Thieves and Monks.

Key D on the town menu. The game asks "Are you sure you want to redistribute?", takes every readied item off every hero, gathers everything the party carries into one pile, and deals it out again one item at a time. Each hero then readies the best of what he was given. Anything nobody wants can be sold here, for three quarters of the armoury's price. This screen is the only place in the game where an item can be sold.

The same screen opens by itself when the party arrives in a town with treasure it found on the road: the finds are handed out or sold, and then the party's experience is shared out. Compare Trade Item, which moves one item.

A building, cave or castle the party walks through square by square, seen from above. There are eleven: eight on Scandor, such as the Pendragon Town Archives and the Gnome Caves, one on each of the planes, and Nikademus's Castle in the Underworld. The map of a dungeon starts blank and fills in as the party explores.

A dungeon holds guardians, traps, locked and guarded doors, random fights on some floors, and events. The party can leave only by a stair. When it does, the game asks whether to save the map; a saved map keeps what the party has done there, such as beaten guardians and sprung traps.

A creature a spellcaster can call into a fight with the spell Summon Elemental. There are three, Air, Mist and Mud, and they sit at the end of the Guild roster as if they were heroes. Before it can be summoned, one of them has to be added to the party in a town. It travels with the party without taking one of the six places, and it fights beside the heroes once it is called.

It is not the same as the Mud Elemental the party can meet as an enemy, which is an ordinary monster.

A switch for something the 1987 game never had, as opposed to a fix for something it got wrong. Enhancements are always off unless you choose them: they are not in With Justin's fixes, and the only way to turn one on is Choose my own, where they are marked "New". One example plays my own arrangement of Ode to Joy at the ending.

A square in a dungeon that runs a small script when the party steps on it, drawn on the map as a star. Events print messages, offer choices, give or take items and gold, start fights, raise attributes, and hold the game's characters, such as Filmon. The script can look at the party's records, which is how Filmon knows whether your heroes beat the villains of Phantasie I and II.

Key E, on the map, in a dungeon and in a town: "Who shall be examined?" It shows a hero's character sheet (his attributes, skills, age, hit points and the rest), then the items he carries, then his spells. Looking takes no time. The manual calls it Inspect.

Short for executable, the original game's program.

What the party earns by winning fights. After a battle the game shows the experience and the gold won, but the experience is not given to anyone yet: it is kept for the whole party until it reaches a town. There you share it out, giving each living hero one, two or three shares. A party that is wiped out loses what it had not shared.

A hero's own experience is what lets him train to his next level. How much he needs comes from a table by level, divided by his aptitude, and it falls further when the hero's score is high (to a half at 200, and to a sixth at 250). The amounts grow quickly: at aptitude 100, going from level 16 to 17 takes about 12 million points. From level 17 the arithmetic overflows and the last levels need no experience at all, which one of my enhancements can put right.

The wise old sage the manual sends you to find in the Pendragon Town Archives. He sets the party its quest against Nikademus, and you go back to him for directions after each part of it. What he says when he first meets you depends on your heroes' past: see Why Nikademus would never suspect you.

One change of mine to the 1987 rules, which you can turn on or off. See Switch.

A combat spell that sets a hero's arrows alight, in two strengths, Flame Arrow I and II, each with a party version that works on everyone (P.Flame Arrow). The manual calls it Arrow Flame and says it adds 15 (or 25) to the bow's point value.

In the 1987 game it does something else. A bow's damage is normally its point value times 2, plus 4. Flame Arrow throws that away and puts the point value plus 15 (or 25) in its place, so on a strong bow, such as the Long Bow or the God Bow, Flame Arrow I makes the arrows weaker. It does raise the hero's chance to hit with the bow. My fix adds the 15 (or 25) to what the bow already does, as the manual promises, and it is one of my own set.

The foremost of the three places a hero can stand in a fight. See Rank.

The 1987 game writes your saved game and your saved dungeon maps onto its game disk, and it checks a disk before it uses it: one that is not a Phantasie III game disk is refused with "This is not a Phantasie III Disk." The manual's quick start has you make your playing disks before you begin.

My recreation keeps the same idea in your browser. A game disk there is a named disk holding the same files the 1987 game would write, the saved game and the dungeon maps, and you can have several, each with its own game. Each disk also holds its choice of rules: when you make a disk, the game asks "Which rules for this disk?" and offers The 1987 original, With Justin's fixes or Choose my own. To change it later, pick Set fixes on disk on the list of disks. A disk can be exported as an Amiga disk image (an .adf file) and imported again.

The party carries one purse of gold between all its heroes, and every purchase is paid from it: the armoury, training, new spells, a roadside inn. Each hero also has his own account at the bank in every town, and gold has to be withdrawn into the party's purse before it can be spent. Begging monsters for mercy, if they accept, costs the party its whole purse.

In a fight, the monsters stand in up to two groups. See Monster group.

A monster, or a band of monsters, that waits on one square of a dungeon and fights the party when it steps there. Win, and the guardian is gone for good (as long as the map is saved when you leave). Run from it, and the party normally stays where it stood, with the guardian still waiting. Some doors are guarded the same way. A bug in the 1987 game lets a party standing in an open doorway run from a guardian and still end up on its square; one of my fixes stops that.

In the manual, the Guild is where adventurers are made, kept and trained. It keeps the roster, the list of every hero you have made (up to 25 records, three of them taken by the elementals), and the party of six is formed from it. On the Amiga the Guild's work is done from the town's menus: New Member, Add Member, Drop Member, Purge Member, Rename Member, Learn Spells and Training.

My test harness: a small program on a modern computer that loads the original 1987 program, unchanged, and runs one piece of it at a time. I set up a situation (a party, a fight, a dungeon square, the state of the dice), let the original code run on it, and record exactly what it did. It is built on the Unicorn engine, which can run the Amiga's processor instructions on a PC.

This is what the site means by "Tested by running the original code". It is stronger than reading the code, because it shows what the code really does, but it is not the same as watching the game being played: for that, see the running game. Each recorded case becomes a vector.

The healing spells, in four strengths. Like every spell family, the number after the name is its strength, and the stronger ones cost more magic points (1 for Healing I up to 4 for Healing IV). Each one restores some hit points and mends some body parts, more for the higher ones: Healing III can mend a part that is Gone, and Healing IV a Gone part and an Injured one, or two Broken ones. They can be cast anywhere, in a fight or out of one. Priests and Rangers learn them.

Outside a fight, in the 1987 game, any of them brings a dead hero back to life, at no cost to his Constitution. The story is in Healing I raises the dead, for free.

One of the characters you make and play, called an adventurer in the manual and a member or character by the game itself. Each hero has a race, a class, attributes, skills, a level and a record that holds all of it. On this site the heroes in the pictures are my own party: Xarn, Lockett, Relf and the others.

How much harm a hero (or a monster) can take, often written HP. The character sheet shows two numbers, what he has now and his most. At 0 or below he is dead. Blows, spells, traps, water and lava take hit points away; healing spells, potions and a night at an inn give them back.

A hero's most hit points come from his class, his level and the dice, and nothing else. When he is made he throws dice worth 2 or 3 each (5 dice for a Fighter, 4 for a Priest, Ranger or Monk, 3 for a Thief or Wizard). At every new level he throws again from scratch, and if the total is no better than before, he gets his old most plus 1. Monsters' hit points are fixed by their kind: Nikademus has 1200.

Key I on the town menu: the party spends two weeks resting, free of charge. Each living hero gets back all his hit points and magic points, has every Injured and Broken body part mended (a part that is Gone stays gone), may gain a point of most magic points ("Magic increases!"), and ages a fortnight. The dead are not rested. The inns on the road are under Roadside inn.

The manual says a stay at the inn cures "1 Break or 2 Injuries". That is what a roadside inn does; the town inn mends everything but Gone parts. In the 1987 game an inn also wakes a hero who is marked dead but still has hit points above 0; one of my fixes leaves him dead.

One of the five attributes: the mind behind spellcasting. It sets the size of a Fireflash spell (the caster's Intelligence halved, plus 1, times a number for the spell's strength), and it is the main part of the aptitude of Priests and Wizards. The manual adds that it limits how many spells a hero can learn.

How far a hero has risen, from 1 when he is made to 21 at most. He goes up one level at a time by training in a town, once he has the experience and the gold. Each new level rerolls his most hit points and trains three of his skills. The manual's charts stop at level 15, and so do most of the game's tables: from 15 on, skills, magic points and the price of training stop changing with level, though hit points still grow.

The master of Lord Wood's Camp, a dungeon in the north of Scandor that the map describes as "Many men guard tent here". With Nikademus, he is one of the monsters the party can never Run from. The game has two endings. Beating Nikademus makes every hero a Superhero; the other ending, the one the code ties to Lord Wood, makes them Darklords.

The sixth number on the character sheet. Every hero, of every race, starts with Luck from 8 to 13, and I know of no way it ever changes. It is not used for much, but where it is used it matters: a luckier hero starts older (see Ageing), it is part of a Wizard's aptitude, and on the lava of the Underworld a hero with Luck 13 never burns.

What a hero spends to cast a spell, often written MP; the Amiga's character sheet calls them Magic Power. Like hit points, the sheet shows what he has now and his most. A spell costs 1 to 4 magic points, by its strength. They come back with a night at an inn or a magic potion, and a rest at an inn can raise a hero's most by one, up to a limit set by his class and level.

The middle of the three places a hero can stand in a fight. See Rank.

A second way to play my recreation, beside the faithful 1987 screens: the same game underneath, with a screen and controls of today. It is still being built. Its changes are part of it, not switches, so they never appear among the fixes.

Anything the party fights. The game has 80 kinds of monster, from Skeletons and Kobolds to Dragons, giants and Nikademus himself. Each kind is a short record of 38 numbers kept in one file: its hit points, magic, attack, defence, spells, picture, courage, what it carries and the company it keeps. One of them, the Wolf, never appears on the Amiga, because one number went missing from its record: see The Wolf you will never meet.

In a fight the monsters stand in up to two groups, the front group and the back group, each of one kind of monster and up to five strong. The game calls them rank 1 and rank 2 ("Target rank 1? (or 2)"). Most blows can only reach the front group; a Thief can strike the back group, a Fighter or Thief can Lunge at it, bows can shoot at it, and some spells reach it.

When a monster dies, the rest of its group close up and each moves down a place. At the end of a round the two groups can change places: always when the front group is empty and the back one is not, and sometimes when the back group is the more dangerous. Two of the 1987 bugs live here, wounds that move to the wrong monster when a group closes up, and experience paid at the wrong monster's price after the groups change places.

Key M on the menu that opens every fight (M) Monster Names). It lists each monster group with its rank, how many are left and the kind of monster, under the heading "Monster Identification:". It costs nothing and does not end the menu.

The monsters' courage. At the end of every round the game asks whether they lose heart, by setting how dangerous the monsters still standing are against how dangerous they were when the fight began; if that has fallen below half, a 50-50 roll decides whether they flee. The spell Fear lowers it. The strongest monsters, from the Dark Gnome on, never flee. In the 1987 game a slip in the count means that kinds of monster with an even number of hit points never run away at all; one of my fixes is for that.

Key M on the town menu: a sage who tells the party its score and gives his verdict on it. He also remembers great deeds, calling the party "heroes of Gelnor" or "heroes of Ferronrah" when its heroes beat the villains of Phantasie I and II.

The evil sorcerer of the title, The Wrath of Nikademus, and the villain of all three Phantasie games. In Phantasie III he has come to Scandor, and the quest is to defeat him in his castle in the Underworld. He has 1200 hit points, and no Run ever gets away from him. Beating him ends the game, and every hero becomes a Superhero.

What each hero does in a round of a fight, chosen for every hero before the round begins. The Amiga's list:

• Attack: two blows, each with half his Attack.
• Thrust: one blow with the whole of his Attack.
• Slash: three or more quick blows. See Slash.
• Lunge: a Fighter's or Thief's blow at the monsters' back group.
• Aim Blow: one blow that, when it wounds, is far more likely to hit the head.
• Parry: no blow; he raises his shield and is harder to hit. See Parry.
• Fire Bow: one shot with his readied bow, at either group.
• Cast Spell: one of his spells.
• Move Back, Move Middle, Move Front: change his rank at once. A move is free: he still takes his order that round.

When a hero is not able to give the order you choose (too low an Attack to Slash, or no back group to Lunge at), the 1987 game quietly makes it a Thrust.

One of a hero's skills: his skill with a shield. A quarter of it goes into his defence all the time, so it makes him a little harder to hit in every fight. The Parry order makes him give up his blow to raise his shield: every monster blow at him that round has his shield's point value taken off its chance to land. A hero whose right arm is Broken or Gone can only Parry.

The heroes travelling together, at most six. They move together, fight together, share one purse of gold and one pool of experience. A summoned elemental travels with them without taking one of the six places. Heroes join and leave the party in a town, from the Guild roster.

The Amiga's sound chip. It plays four voices at once, and the Amiga's stereo is fixed in the hardware: two voices in the left speaker and two in the right. Every sound and both songs in my recreation are played the way the game plays them on Paula, from its own instructions.

The first town, "Crossroads of Scandor", where every new game begins and where the quest keeps bringing you back. The Pendragon Town Archives, the first dungeon, lie just south of it, and somewhere inside is Filmon. After the ending the game goes on in Pendragon.

The two earlier games of the series, set on the islands of Gelnor and Ferronrah. Phantasie III can take in heroes from Phantasie I ("Transfer Phantasie I characters" on the start menu), and it remembers their deeds: Filmon's speech and the town Mystic both look in every hero's record for whether he beat the Black Lord of Gelnor (Phantasie I) or destroyed the orb of Ferronrah (Phantasie II). The manual says you need not have played either.

The number every weapon, shield, suit of armour and bow carries, shown in the armoury as "Pt Val" and on the character sheet next to each readied item. The higher it is, the better the item looks, and the armoury prices by it: Clothing (1 point) costs 1 gold, Plate Mail (10) costs 981.

What the points actually do depends on the kind of item. A hand weapon's damage is a roll of 1 up to its point value. A bow's damage is a roll of up to its point value times 2, plus 4, so the God Bow (20 points) hits for up to 44. A shield adds half its points to the hero's defence. A suit of armour takes 5 off his defence for every point. When the game readies a hero's equipment, it picks the item with the highest points that he can use.

A hero's people, chosen when he is made: Human, Dwarven, Elven, Gnome or Halfling, or "Random", which gives one of the rougher races: Gnoll, Goblin, Kobold, Lizard Man, Minotaur, Ogre, Orc, Pixie, Sprite or Troll. The race sets the highest each attribute can be rolled (only a Sprite can roll Dexterity 22, for example), how old the hero starts (see Ageing) and which picture stands for him in a fight.

Where a hero stands in a fight: the front, the middle or the back. Any number of heroes can stand in any rank, and you move them with the Move orders, which cost nothing. The rank is kept in the hero's record and saved with the game, so it lasts until you change it.

What counts is not the rank itself but where a hero stands compared with the rest of the party. The game works out the party's average rank, rounded down. For every step a hero stands ahead of that average his blows are 30 more likely to land, and so are the monsters' blows at him; for every step behind it, 30 less likely both ways. Bows do not care about rank, and rank does not change which hero a monster picks to hit, only whether the blow lands. So a party all on the same line, any line, gets no bonus and no protection at all. The manual says as much, and the 1987 ending puts the whole party in front: see Heroes on the same line lose their bonus.

The monsters' groups are numbered as ranks too, rank 1 for the front group and rank 2 for the back. See Monster group.

The weakest of the three kinds of proof on this site: I have read what the program says, but have not yet run it in the harness or seen it in the running game. A finding always says when part of it is only read.

In use. A hero carries up to nine items, and four of them can be readied: one weapon, one bow, one suit of armour and one shield. The readied items are what he fights with. In 1987 you never ready anything yourself: the game readies the best of each kind the hero can use whenever it re-equips him, for example after a trade or a Distribute. The game keeps the readied items apart from the carried ones, which is how a bow given away can stay readied: see One God Bow for the whole party.

The block of numbers the game keeps for one hero or one kind of monster. A hero's record holds everything about him, from his name, attributes and skills to his age, his rank, his items and the state of each body part, and it is what a saved game stores. A monster's record is 38 numbers. Many findings come down to one number in a record: which one it is, who writes it, and who reads it.

My rebuild of Phantasie III, which runs in a web browser. It plays by the same rules as the 1987 game, and its rules are tested against the original code (see Harness and Vector). It plays every bug as it shipped unless you choose a fix. The pictures on this site are captured from it, at whole-pixel scale. Beside the faithful game there is a modern take.

Spell 44, the spell for the dead, learned by Priests and Rangers at high level and costing 4 magic points. It brings a dead hero back with 1 hit point, and, as the manual warns, "The shock of dying will permanently lower the victim's Constitution one or two points". The program does exactly that, though it never leaves a hero below 3. In the 1987 game a Healing spell cast outside a fight does the same job for free: see Healing I raises the dead, for free.

One of the eight inns that stand alone on the map of Scandor, such as the Jolly Inn and the Deadly Inn; the manual calls them independent inns. A night there costs 250 gold. It rests the party like a town inn, with one difference: it mends at most one Broken body part or two Injured ones, which is what the manual says of every inn.

A piece of the program that does one job, such as working out a hero's defence, choosing a monster, or drawing the character sheet. Findings name the routines involved, with their addresses, in the "How we know" boxes.

Key R, "Run away", on the menu that opens every fight. The manual calls it Flee. If it works, the fight is over at once: no treasure, no experience, nobody hurt. If it fails ("You don't get away..."), the monsters get a whole round of blows before you can give an order.

Normally Run has to roll the dice, and the chance depends on the monsters in front and on how dangerous the two groups are together. From the Dark Gnome on, a Run that has to roll never works. There is one free escape: when the party has surprised the monsters, or finds them asleep, it may run with no roll. In the 1987 game that free escape can carry on into the next dungeon fight: see A free escape carried into the next fight. No Run of any kind gets away from Nikademus or Lord Wood.

Key S on the town menu. The game asks "Are you sure you want to save this game over your previously saved one?", and writes the whole game to the game disk: the roster, the party, its gold and experience, what it has found, the step clock and every town's stock. There is one saved game per disk. The game saves only in a town; in a dungeon you are offered to save that dungeon's map when you leave. A saved game comes back with key O in a town, or with Continue.

The manual says "Every time the party leaves a town the game is saved automatically." In the Amiga program I find no such save: only the S key and the transfer of Phantasie I heroes ever write the saved game. That is read from the code, not tested.

The land of Phantasie III, a continent that Nikademus has come to conquer, and the largest of the game's four maps. It has 14 towns, eight dungeons and eight roadside inns. The manual divides its map into 25 sections, lettered A to E from west to east and I to V from north to south. In the game you buy its map as Scroll IV.

A number on every hero's sheet for how far he has come on the quest; the Mystic reads it out for the party. It is worked out from the quests he has done. It has one effect on play: a high score cuts the experience he needs to train, to a half from 200 and a sixth from 250.

A page of writing left by the people of Scandor, with clues to the quest. Some are sold in the armoury, others are found or given in dungeons; a player can find 16 in all. You read one with Use (key U), and it stays in your pack. The manual says scrolls can only be read in a town; in the Amiga program Use reads them on the map and in dungeons too.

The one scroll that is a picture, not writing: the map of the whole of Scandor, titled "Geography of Scandor", on sale in the armouries of the first three towns. See The map of Scandor is Scroll IV.

Nine numbers on a hero's sheet for how good he is at things, each roughly a chance out of 100: Attack, Parry, Swimming (crossing water without harm), Listen (hearing monsters before they arrive), Find Trap, Disarm Trap, Find Item (spotting treasure after a fight), Pick Lock and Fire Bow (hitting with a bow). The manual calls Find Trap "Spot Trap".

Skills change only when a hero trains: they never grow with use and never fade. For the party-wide checks (listening on the road, spotting a trap, picking a lock, finding treasure), every hero who is not dead tries in turn until one succeeds, even one who is asleep or knocked out.

The order of many quick blows. It splits a hero's Attack over one more blow for every 75 points, so three blows at 150 and four at 225. Below Attack 150 the game will not let him Slash and gives him a Thrust instead. Against a monster with a high defence, smaller blows can mean far fewer hits; the numbers are in Heroes do not get worse with age.

A hero's standing, shown as "Social" on his sheet: Peasant, Labourer, Craftsman or Noble, rolled when he is made. A higher class starts with more gold in the bank. The ending gives the party a new one: Superhero for beating Nikademus, Darklord in the other ending. In the 1987 game that new class is lost unless you save in town afterwards.

Magic a hero has learned and casts for magic points. The game has 57 spells, numbered, most in families of four strengths written I to IV, such as Healing I to Healing IV or Fireflash I to IV. Each class can learn its own spells as it rises in level, with Learn Spells in a town; Wizards and Priests learn the most. Some work only in a fight, some only outside one, some anywhere.

The manual's spell list is often wrong about what a spell does. Of the 57, 31 behave differently in the game; on this site, the program's behaviour is the one described. See Binding, Flame Arrow, Healing I to IV and Resurrection.

The one word for a hero's state, shown on the party panel. There are five:

• Okay: able to do anything.
• Asleep: from a stun, or caught sleeping by monsters at night. He does nothing until he wakes, and every blow at him lands.
• Down: a leg is Broken or Gone. He can still fight, but his blows are 40 less likely to land, and he cannot shoot.
• Out: knocked out, by a head or torso that is Broken.
• Dead: his hit points are gone, or his head or torso is Gone.

The game works the status out again from his hit points and his body parts at many points. That recalculation is behind two of the 1987 bugs, in which a dead hero comes back to life because his body and hit points say "alive".

One of the five attributes: muscle. It decides what a hero can use. A shield or a suit of armour needs his Strength to reach the item's requirement, a bow needs his Strength plus his Dexterity, and a hand weapon twice his Strength plus his Dexterity. It is part of the aptitude of every class but the Wizard.

An attack some monsters have, which hurts a hero and then puts him to sleep ("NAME is stunned!"). A stunned hero is Asleep: he can do nothing until he wakes, and every blow at him lands. Each round he has a chance to wake. In the 1987 game a stunning blow that kills a hero still stuns him, so the dead body is marked asleep until it "wakes" dead again; one of my fixes leaves the dead alone.

My word for one change to the 1987 rules that a player can turn on or off: one fix, or one enhancement. Each switch has two sides, the game as it shipped and the game with the change, and a game disk plays each one way or the other. With a switch off, my recreation plays that part of the game exactly as the original program does. Every switch is my own; none of them comes from SSI. Every one is listed, with both sides, on the fixes page.

A drawer of tools in the development copy of my recreation, not in the game players get. It can move the party anywhere, heal it, turn off random fights, start a chosen fight, win a fight or start the ending. Many of the pictures on this site were set up with it, and the findings say so where they were.

One of the three choices my recreation offers when you make a game disk. With it, every switch plays the game exactly as it shipped in 1987, bugs and all. A disk that has never been given a choice plays this way too. The other two choices are With Justin's fixes and Choose my own.

The Plane of Light and the Plane of Dark, two maps apart from Scandor that the party walks like the island itself. Each has one town (Light and Dark) and one dungeon (the Castle of Light and the Castle of Dark). With Scandor and the Underworld they make the game's four maps.

The original game itself: the file PhantasieIII on the 1987 Amiga disk, the machine code for the Amiga's Motorola 68000 processor. It is also called the executable, or the exe. Everything the game does is in it, from the rules of a fight to where each word is drawn on the screen. When this site says "the program" or "the code", it means this file, as SSI shipped it, never my recreation.

The original 1987 game, started from its own disk in an Amiga emulator (WinUAE) and played, with the emulator's debugger watching its memory. This is the strongest kind of proof on this site, shown as "Seen in the 1987 game": not only what the code says, or what a piece of it does when run alone, but what the game really did on screen.

My name for the game's count of time spent outside a town. Every step on the map adds to it: 1 on most ground, 2 or 3 on harder ground. Every step in a dungeon adds 1. Three of its units make a day, which is how the party's status shows it. The clock goes back to 0 when the party leaves a town.

It is the clock of ageing. When the party arrives in a town, every living hero is aged by the time on the clock. Because the clock is cleared only on leaving, and is saved with the game, a game continued from a save is aged by the same time again; one of my fixes is for that.

The last of the game's four maps, with lava on its ground, where Nikademus has his castle. Its one town is called Death. Walking on its lava burns the unlucky: on every lava step each hero's Luck is tested, and a hero with Luck 13 never burns.

A safe place where no monsters come: 14 on Scandor, one on each of the planes and one in the Underworld. Every town works the same way. Its menu leads to the Guild's work, the bank, the armoury, the inn and the Mystic, and offers the things that can only be done in a town: training, learning spells, Distribute, Trade Item, saving and loading.

Arriving in a town does three things before you see its menu: every hero is aged by the time spent outside, the treasure found on the road is handed out or sold, and the party's experience is shared out.

Key G on the town menu. One hero gives one item to another: "Whose item shall be traded?", "Trade which item?", "Who gets the item?". Then the game re-equips both heroes. It is quicker than Distribute when only one item moves, and it works only in a town. The manual says a hero can also sell an item by trading it to adventurer 7, but in the Amiga game Trade Item never touches the gold.

In the 1987 game a hero who gives away a readied item goes on using it: see One God Bow for the whole party.

Going up a level, key T on the town menu. A hero without enough experience is told how many more points he must gain. One with enough is told the price, paid from the party's gold. The price depends on the town, the level and above all the hero's Charisma, and it is never less than 5 gold or more than 15,000.

When he trains, he rerolls his most hit points and is given all of them, and he makes three picks among his skills. For each pick the game offers a new value from a table for his class and level, and in the 1987 game the pick moves the skill halfway toward that value, even when the value is lower than what he has. A pick cannot be declined, because Cancel takes the highlighted skill. One of my fixes makes a pick never lower a skill.

The manual tells you to rest at the inn after training to bring your hit points up to the new maximum. In the Amiga program, training already fills them.

A danger hidden in a square of a dungeon. When the party steps on one, its heroes try their Find Trap skill. If one of them spots it, the party is offered the chance to disarm it, which one hero tries with his Disarm Trap skill. If nobody spots it, it springs: it hurts the party, a line at the bottom of the screen says what happened, the party stays where it was, and the trap is spent. Some events set off traps of their own, such as shocks. In the 1987 game the line under a sprung trap usually describes a different trap; one of my fixes puts the right words back.

One recorded case from the harness: a situation set up, and exactly what the original code did with it, down to every number and every word on the screen. My recreation's tests check it against every vector I have recorded, many thousands of them, so if my code ever does something the original did not, the tests fail.

An Amiga emulator for Windows: a program that makes a modern PC behave like an Amiga, so the original game runs on it from an image of its own disk. Its debugger can stop the game at any moment and show what is in its memory, which is how I watch the running game from the inside, and how I recorded the sounds as the Amiga's Paula chip played them.

One of the three choices my recreation offers when you make a game disk. It plays the game with the switches I chose turned on, the fixes I would want for my own game, and every other part of the game as in 1987. It never includes an enhancement. The fixes page marks which fixes it has. The other choices are The 1987 original and Choose my own.

Harm to a body part, as opposed to harm to hit points. A part goes from Okay to Injured, Broken or Gone. Only a blow with a weapon (a hero's blow or arrow at a monster, or a monster's ordinary blow at a hero) can wound; spells, stuns and traps take hit points but leave the body alone. A blow also has to be big: only a blow larger than about a third of the hit points its target has left afterwards wounds at all, and a killing blow takes a part off. Which part depends on the kind of blow; Aim Blow lands on the head far more often than the others.

Wounds matter because of what they do to a hero's status: a broken leg slows him, a broken right arm stops him swinging, a broken head knocks him out, and a head or torso that is Gone kills him whatever his hit points. Healing spells and potions mend parts, more for the stronger ones, and a town inn mends all but Gone parts. The manual says Fireflash and Flamebolt wound a body part; in the program no spell of the party's ever wounds a monster.