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tiggum's review
2.0
If not for one thing I'd rate this as a pretty average Lone Wolf. It's weird how much of it you can skip straight past but kind of neat as far as replayability goes. I would have liked to see more of the ancient city underground and spend less time on the journey there, but that's par for the course at this stage and not as annoying to me as the lack of jungle in [b:The Jungle of Horrors|1260806|The Jungle of Horrors (Lone Wolf, #8)|Joe Dever|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1243558891s/1260806.jpg|1040739]. But you know what really ruins this book? Zakhan Kimah.
If you were playing these as you bought them rather than for free online and this was one of the first ones you got, you were basically fucked. If you don't pick up the Psychic Ring then you automatically die, and if you do then you get a fight that's basically unwinnable.
But if you played all the previous books then you're also fucked. Bring the Sommerswerd with you and you either lose it (and have to use the Psychic Ring, see above) or hold on to it and get a basically unwinnable fight.
The only way to have a decent chance of beating this book is to metagame the fuck out of it. Leave the Sommerswerd at home for no good reason and bring the Dagger of Vashna instead - even though it normally confers no benefit whatsoever. Even then you get, at best, a 90% chance of not automatically dying - it can be as low as 50% - and only if you know to throw it at him instead of just fighting him with it.
If you got lucky with your initial combat skill roll back in [b:Flight from the Dark|893396|Flight from the Dark (Lone Wolf, #1)|Joe Dever|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1388331153s/893396.jpg|2283922] and made all the right choices since then, this fight is easy. But if you played less than perfectly (or were just unlucky) then you're going to lose. There's really only one explanation for it, and it's that Dever slacked off and didn't playtest it, and it's just bad and dumb.
If you were playing these as you bought them rather than for free online and this was one of the first ones you got, you were basically fucked. If you don't pick up the Psychic Ring then you automatically die, and if you do then you get a fight that's basically unwinnable.
But if you played all the previous books then you're also fucked. Bring the Sommerswerd with you and you either lose it (and have to use the Psychic Ring, see above) or hold on to it and get a basically unwinnable fight.
The only way to have a decent chance of beating this book is to metagame the fuck out of it. Leave the Sommerswerd at home for no good reason and bring the Dagger of Vashna instead - even though it normally confers no benefit whatsoever. Even then you get, at best, a 90% chance of not automatically dying - it can be as low as 50% - and only if you know to throw it at him instead of just fighting him with it.
If you got lucky with your initial combat skill roll back in [b:Flight from the Dark|893396|Flight from the Dark (Lone Wolf, #1)|Joe Dever|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1388331153s/893396.jpg|2283922] and made all the right choices since then, this fight is easy. But if you played less than perfectly (or were just unlucky) then you're going to lose. There's really only one explanation for it, and it's that Dever slacked off and didn't playtest it, and it's just bad and dumb.
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