FF1: The Warlock of Firetop Mountain

Here is the complete graph of The Warlock of Firetop Mountain.

Tl;dr:  The idea here is to use directed graphs to provide optimal walkthroughs of Fighting Fantasy gamebooks; in this case, The Warlock of Firetop Mountain.  Check out the beginning of the Deathtrap Dungeon post for tips on how to read the graph.

Overall Impressions

It only makes sense to go back and try graphing the first FF book to provide something like a baseline to compare the rest of the series against.  I didn't own Warlock as a kid, so all my impressions of it have come from the blogosphere and from finally cracking it open yesterday.  I didn't expect much more than a fairly generic dungeon crawl, and for the most part that's what I got.  It's your bog standard subterranean lair populated with refugees from Tolkien, the Brother's Grimm, and the Bronx Zoo.

The first thing that struck me about it was that it seemed thinner than any other FF book.  Most of the sections offered little more than a selection of corridors to choose from.  The second thing that struck me was the relative lack of instant-death sections:  a mere three, less than 1%!  That's a far cry from Deathtrap Dungeon's 31 (my current record holder).  That doesn't make it much easier to win in the end, as we'll see, but might make it easier to make progress through most of the story.

There were some nutty game mechanics that made it annoying to graph, like having to collect various keys stamped with numbers then summing the numbers on three such keys to "use" them.  It initially resulted in more than a dozen orphaned sections, so accounting for all of them took a bit of doing.  More on that later.

I've pieced together what I think is the optimal walkthrough.  The latter part of the story has quite a few threads, so the episodes listed here don't necessarily occur in the given sequence in all cases.

Episode 1:  The Start (1) to the Iron Portcullis (303)

Your first goal is to retrieve the Dragonfire spell and first of the three essential keys.  The key is bronze, surprisingly close to the entrance, and stamped with the number "99."

At the cave entrance, you immediately hit the first Fighting Fantasy's iconic T-junctions.  Go west (71).  You'll encounter an ORC and will have to Test Your Luck to avoid fighting him.  Regardless of what happens, you wind up at a door (301).  Press on northwards (208) until you reach another door.  It opens to a room with a table that's hiding a wooden box (397).  Open the box (240) and fight the SNAKE inside, disregarding that in real life you'd surely throw the box and snake across the room, and that any small snake, following its instinct, would surely try to flee from you or at least hide in a dark corner.  But this is FF, and treasure requires a blood sacrifice.

After you dispatch the snake, you notice the bronze key with '99' stamped on it (145).  Pick it up and proceed down the hall.

Oddly, this episode has one of two true orphan sections in the book:  Section 320 has no antecedent and simply says that you slam the door on something and run up the hall to 363.  My best guess is that it's a vestige of the ORC encounter in the next part of the story:  Section 370, in which you stumble on the ORCS, gives you the option to "slam the door quickly and run on up the passage," but it directs you to section 42, not 320.

At 363, you encounter a closed door that's doing a bad job suppressing terrible singing.  You bust it open (370) to find the aforementioned ORCS.  You put them to the sword for their lack of talent (116), search the room, and find a box marked "Farrigo Di Maggio" (378), evidently the name of one of the realm's more powerful wizards.  You open it to find the incantation for the Dragonfire spell (296) which, to clarify and avoid embarrassment, does not produce dragon fire but instead protects you from it.

Proceed to the next T-junction (42) and go east (113), northward (285), walk past both doors (314 > 300).  Each of these forks offers a mini-adventure to collect more items, none of which are essential.  You finally arrive at the iron portcullis (303).

Episode 2:  The Iron Portcullis (303) to the River (218)

The goal of this episode is to get the second of the three essential keys.

Pull the right lever (128) to raise the portcullis, enter, and go east (58).  

Eat some food if you want and proceed through 367 > 323 > 255, arriving at a door.  Open it to discover a metal statue with a single jeweled eye.  Try to take the jewel (338).  Predictably, the IRON CYCLOPS comes alive and attacks.  Once you kill it, pry out the jewel and discover a small key stamped with the number "111."  This is the second key.

Next is a straightforward fight against a BARBARIAN.  Dispatch him to find a mallet and stakes (hmm, vampires?).  Proceed to a nicely-furnished room (189) and examine the paintings (25).  One is a painting of Zagor, the eponymous Warlock of Firetop Mountain, and it's enchanted to mesmerize you.  "Fight" him by showing him the CYCLOPS's jeweled eye (31).  It will turn his gaze and earn you another SKILL point.  (This is called foreshadowing, kids.  Keep that jewel handy.)

The rest of this episode is inconsequential and inevitably herds you to the river.

Episode 3:  The River (218) to the Dragon (106)

This is a huge, tangled mess that takes up half the book and includes Warlock's infamous maze.  We'll navigate through it to pick up the third and final key.  To do that, we first have to find the boat house key.

First, we have to get across the river.  The easiest way is to pay the ferryman three gold pieces (218 > 3 > 272 > 7 > 214).  Take the passage to the northwest (271) and proceed through the door (336).  You're going to have to kill the dog (249) and then the man, who turns out to be a WEREWOLF (304).  Only then will you discover the boat house key.  Take it and go south to 66.

Head east along the river (99) to the boat house (383).  Of course, you have the key, so use it (80).  The SKELETONS will bum-rush you.  You have a 1 out of 3 chance to avoid a fight by pretending to be their new boss (SKELETONS are dumb).  Otherwise, you'll have some sort of altercation.  Regardless, when you get a chance, check their tools more carefully (34) to find a silver chisel and a mallet (you're really set against a vampire -- too bad we won't see one), then proceed to the next corridor (96).

In a weirdly non-interactive bit, you evade some more SKELETONS by hiding in a niche in the wall.  Then you encounter what turns out to be a sleeping WIGHT, evidently a deep sleeper since the clattering SKELETONS didn't wake him.  Test Your Luck to pass him without a fight.  Either way, you'll wind up in the next passageway (360), skipping quite a bit of useless narrative as you run down a staircase into a chamber containing three dead bodies (89 > 286).  You can search the first body (294) to pick up a few gold pieces, then split (107) to avoid disturbing the other two, which happen to be GHOULS.  (This must be the Undead District.)  Press onward to 197, where another portcullis drops behind you, cutting off your retreat.

And so, we enter the maze:

This is a ridiculous bit of highly-tangled narrative that plenty of other FF bloggers have rightly complained about.  I have to think that Ian Livingstone wrote this only because this was his first gamebook and he had little idea what readers would be willing to put up with.  It's reminiscent of Zork's notorious "maze of twisty little passages," but is actually quite a bit more complex.

The Zork maze map from www.deblauweschicht.nl/retrogaming/

Zork's maze has fewer vertices, just 20 or so, depending on what you count.  Warlock's maze has about 70.

An interesting mechanic in this part are the WANDERING MONSTERS.  Periodically, a section will tell you to flip to 161 to roll up a random encounter, have your fight, then flip back or to some other section.  To simplify the graph, section 161 only appears in the comments for sections where this happens.   For example, sections 14 and 234:

There is nothing to gain from these random fights, so we'll avoid them.

Press forward and go east (48 > 391).  Go through the passage in the east (52), then north (354), west (308), north again (54), and through the door (179) into the room with the MINOTAUR.  You'll have to kill him (258) to collect a few gold pieces and a red-colored key stamped with the number "111."  This is the third and last of the essential keys.

Backtrack to 54 > 308, and this time go south (160 > 267), south (246), north (329), east (299), north (359), west (385), and up (398).  Feel around the rock face to find the button and push it (364), climbing through the door that appears (373) and down to the crossroads (85).

Congratulations, you've made it out of the maze.  Go north to meet the DRAGON (106).

Episode 4:  The Dragon (106) to the End (400)

This is the endgame.

Obviously, you want to take the offer to hunt around in your pack rather than attack the DRAGON directly (126).  There's nothing in your pack, but it buys you time to remember the incantation for the Dragonfire spell (remember, the words magically disappeared from the piece of paper you found them on).  You cast the spell in time, of course, repelling the DRAGON's fire attack.  Rather than try a different attack, like stomping you into a thin paste, it opts to run away.

Shrugging, you proceed to the room with the "old man" (26 > 371 > 274).  Whatever way you approach him, he'll reveal himself as the WARLOCK and will assume his impressive "fighting stance" (358).  Again, fighting is senseless when you have magical artifacts, so look through your pack for a weapon to use (105).  If you're sharp, you'll recall that his portrait wasn't too fond of the CYCLOPS's jeweled eye, so pull it out (382).  Sure enough, it somehow fries the WARLOCK on the spot.

Firetop Mountain is seriously lacking in the boss fight department.

But not so fast:  To win, you have to break into the WARLOCK's treasure chest.  Fortunately, you collected the three keys that will do the trick: The one marked "99" and the two marked "111."  To "use" the keys you must sum their markings and turn to that section.  NASA assures me that the sum is 321, so go there and finally open the treasure chest (169 > 400).  Congrats, you've won.

Let's take a closer look at this part of the graph:

Pretty cool, isn't it?

This is a fairly sophisticated game mechanic, especially considering this is the first FF book.  The situation breaks down like so:  There are six numbered keys throughout the narrative, stamped "9," "66," "99," "111," a second one stamped "111," and "125."  The chest has three locks, each taking one key.  Mathematically, a selection from a set of distinct members is called a combination.  If you have some number n of things and want to choose a smaller number k from them and order doesn't matter, you have the case "n choose k" and the number of combinations is given by the formula

where the exclamation point represents the factorial function.  A factorial for some number x is just the sum of all the positive integers equal to or less than x; for example, 4! = 4 x 3 x 2 x 1 = 24.  So for our case of "6 choose 3" there are 20 possible combinations.  Here they are, just for fun:

You may notice a few of the sums in the rightmost column are duplicates.  This is due to the fact that twe have two keys inscribed with "111."  Removing the six duplicates gives us 14 unique sums, each of which nicely correspond to one of the "solution" sections in the book:

The book is at least kind enough to let you know if you've gotten one or two correct (198 and 182, respectively), though if you get none correct you're killed (200 > 387), and if you have fewer than three keys the story simply ends with you sitting down and having a good cry (not a joke).

So, the winning sum is 99 + 111 + 111 = 321, which leads to 169 > 400, but you might notice another winning section on the graph, 192, marked in purple:

192 is the other orphaned section; it has no antecedents.  Why is it here if none of the key combinations sum to 192?  It's probably a mistake, but if we want to be charitable we can suppose Ian Livingstone added it to make cheating a wee bit more difficult.  A kid trying to trace references backward from 400 might get to 192 and waste a lot of time trying to find keys that sum to it, only to get fed up and put an actual physical book down in favor of playing Atari or watching Saturday morning cartoons.  Gee, thanks, Ian!

Final Thoughts

Warlock is a tedious and derivative book in many ways but it set the standard and tone for all that was to follow, so any self-respecting survey of FF books can't afford to ignore it.

Much of the story is inconsequential.  The only items you really need are the three correct keys, but it's helpful to avoid boss fights by having the Dragonfire spell and the CYCLOPS's jeweled eye.  Everything else is gravy.

FF10: House of Hell

Here is the complete graph for House of Hell.

Tl;dr:  The idea here is to use directed graphs to provide optimal walkthroughs of Fighting Fantasy gamebooks; in this case, House of Hell.  Check out the beginning of the Deathtrap Dungeon post for tips on how to read the graph.

Overall Impressions

I'm working through the books I had when I was a kid.  House of Hell was one of those, though it was titled House of Hades here in the religiously-oversensitive United States.  My copy even has some of my old marginalia, like "Turn to 88 for the meaning of Mordana in Abbadon (see 110)" and a list of all the enemies you fight, so I must've taken it somewhat seriously back in fifth grade or whatever it was.  I did get a copy of the "uncensored" UK version recently, just for fun.  I graphed the US version though, in case there are differences.

The story is a pretty straightforward haunted house tale, albeit with devil worshippers and a bit of gore.  The illustrations by Tim Sell are cartoony enough to not make it too gross or scary for kids.  I imagine Bernie Wrightson could've provided far more nightmare fuel.  The potentially grossest bit for me was the idea of guys wearing dead goats heads.  At one point you find a headless body of a dead goat or sheep (you can't tell), suggesting that the goats heads are real and that the cultists are doing some nontrivial taxidermy to wear another creature's skin, hair, and horns as a mask.  Sounds pretty unpleasant, especially on hot days.

I liked the idea of the named rooms.  The house is a bewildering maze of corridors and doors, but the names give a bit of personality and help with navigation.  Just for fun, here are all 12 named rooms and their respective sections:

• Erasmus Room (5, 140)
• Diabolus Room (13)
• Apollyon Room (17)
• Mammon Room (123)
• Eblis Room (125)
• Asmodeus Room (154)
• Tuttivillus Room (155)
• Shaitan Room (200)
• Mephisto Room (298)
• Balthus Room (299), named for the main antagonist of The Citadel of Chaos
• Belial Room (312)
• Abbadon Room (335)

Graph-wise, this is the most nonlinear story yet.  The only true bottleneck, apart from the beginning and end, is section 318, which occurs in the endgame.  Every other part of the story occurs as one of several possible threads.  I was able to split previous books into "episodes" between story-wide bottlenecks so you'd proceed smoothly from one episode to the next in sequence.  Not so here.  The episodes below describe what I consider to be the fastest path to victory, but I'm sure there are others that are arguably as fast.

There are 20 instant death sections.  That's slightly more than Citadel's 18 and far fewer than Deathtrap Dungeon's 31.  You aren't going to get killed after 10 sections on average though, because they tend to be clustered in certain parts of the story.

This book has mechanics that make for fun graphing.  At one point you're given a tip about a secret passage, but you can use the tip only in certain situations by subtracting 10 from your section number at that point.  On my first pass-through I had a couple orphaned sections that I only found parents for after coming across that tip.  In another case you find a key with the number '27' stamped on it.  Later, you're told to use the key by subtracting the stamped number from the current section.

In addition to the usual SKILL and STAMINA scores, you also have FEAR.  At the outset, you roll 1d6 to determine the maximum FEAR you can handle.  You start with a zero FEAR, but "scary" situations can add to it. If it reaches your max, you die.  Some chill situations, like enjoying an alcoholic drink, can decrement your FEAR, just like in real life.

Episode 1:  The Start (1) to the Entrance Hall Landing (350)

The main thing to accomplish here is to get into the house as quickly as possible, get the clue about talking to the "main in grey" in the basement, and encounter the HUNCHBACK.

From the beginning (1), simply use the door knocker like a sane person (357) as opposed to creeping around peering in windows.  The butler, Franklins, will answer and lead you inside (8).  Examine the paintings (304), in particular, the one of the elderly lady (250).  She'll tell you to seek help from a man in a grey robe.  The Earl of Drumer arrives (277) and offers you something to drink.  Accept the brandy (394).  This subtracts one FEAR point, but has no effect here since you haven't yet been afraid.  You proceed to the dining room (309), and the description mentions its "rich red" wallpaper, which is important later.  The white wine is always drugged in this story, so accept the red (395).

So far things are copacetic:  You've had two free drinks and they're offering either duck or lamb for dinner.  It doesn't matter which you pick; either way you ask him about his family (28), which gives him an opportunity for some exposition.  Franklins interrupts, offering fruit, cheese, coffee, or still more brandy.  Oddly, the book gives you a choice of three combinations of three of these, with zero clues about which is correct.  Turns out you want to avoid the cheese.  I'm not sure it's possible to drug cheese, but they apparently did, so take the fruit, coffee, and brandy (224).  You're now up to three drinks in less than an hour, certainly over the legal limit and likely approaching your maximum ALCOHOL score, so they lead you to bed.  You'll be staying in the Erasmus room (5), which was named for Alan Erasmus, cofounder of Factory Records.

You can try to leave (59), but they've locked the door.  Pretend to go to sleep (63) until you hear a shuffling noise outside your door (158).  Hide behind the door to surprise whoever it is (373).  (This is a recurring tactic throughout the story.)  It's the HUNCHBACK, so cold-cock him (399).  If you get him down to 4 STAMINA (220) he'll beg for mercy and won't likely forget you -- an important point for later.  You won't get much useful info out of him right now, so lock him in the room and start exploring.  You find yourself on the landing above the entrance hall (350).

Episode 2:  The Entrance Hall Landing (350) to the Top of the Main Staircase (193)

Your goals here are to get the clue about the Kris knife and the clue about "Mordana in Abbadon."

Turn to the right (332).  You'll immediately encounter a friendly GHOST who drags you into a room (73) to tell you that the only way to defeat the Earl is to attack him with the Kris knife.  Unfortunately, she's attacked by ghostly dogs before she can tell you where to find it.  You're given the option to either combat the Earl and his evil house or simply escape, but escaping will involve missing key clues, so you decide to fight (257).

Proceed down the hall (287) to the door across from the Balthus Room (86).  It opens to a narrow passageway with a window.  Inspect the window (110) to find the message "Mordana in Abbadon" written in condensation.  You're instructed to turn to section 88 if and when you decide to speak this phrase.  Proceed to the top of the main staircase (193).

Episode 3:  The Top of the Main Staircase (193) to the Entrance Hall (132)

The goal of this episode is to determine the meaning of the message you just received.  We'll skip over vast tracts of inconsequential story to do so.

First, open the unmarked door (377) to the storeroom and examine its contents (83) to find some garlic, a liquid, and a meat knife that you can use as a weapon to give you a +3 SKILL boost.  The liquid is poison, so avoid it and leave by the same door (233).  Ignore the unmarked door and continue down the hall (374).  Turn right, following the landing (272) past the Tuttivillus Room to the door to the Abbadon Room (175).  Open the door and go in (335) to find an old woman sleeping.

Wake her up (139), despite the fact that she's (un)dead, and ask her for information about the house (170).  You'll have to fight her GREAT DANES, which, unlike the dogs that pestered the GHOST, are real.  Once you kill them, stay to inspect the room (19), then blackmail her by threatening to destroy her plants unless she dishes info.  Ask her about secret rooms (321) and she'll ask you, "What is my name?"  Her name is Mordana and she's in the Abbadon Room, so you respond with, "Mordana in Abbadon" (88).  She tells you (295) there is a secret passage under the cellar stairs.  She forgets the password, but someone named Shekou knows it.  This is the point where you're told you'll be able to search for the secret passage by subtracting 10 from the section that describes the space under the stairs, should you be so lucky as to find it.

Leave the Abbadon Room (159) and go back downstairs to the entrance hall (132).

Episode 4:  The Entrance Hall (132) to the Cellar Stairs (393)

You're in the Entrance Hall again and the front door is right there.  You might be tempted to open it, but doing so will just result in 3 FEAR points when you see something unpleasant that blocks your way.  In fact, you're only halfway to the story's end.

The goal here is to get the hip flask of brandy, find the HUNCHBACK, and get him loaded so he gives you the correct password to the passage under the cellar stairs.  You also want to find the grey-robed man in the cellar, as the helpful GHOST suggested.  He'll provide a crucial hint for the endgame.

Choose the door on the left (353) and enter the drawing room.  Your buzz is fading, so help yourself to some more brandy (292) for +3 STAMINA, grab the hip flask, and fill it with one for the road.  Examine the corner shelf (192) and grab the dagger.  If you examine the fireplace (303) and read the letters (364), you'll get an idea that the cellar password might be "Pravemi," since the letter signed by Count Pravemi suggests the Baron change his password to something that reminds him of "the sound advice of a good friend."  This is the sort of tenuous inference that would've been utterly lost on me as a kid, but it makes no difference since it's a false lead.

Hilariously, you learn that the Baron's previous password was "Goathead," which in context is right up there with "Password", "Admin", or "123456789" in terms of security.  Count Pravemi might've done better to suggest two-factor authentication.

Examine the demon face on the mantelpiece (85).  Doing so will reveal a secret button but will also summon two FIRE SPRITES from the fireplace.  Rather than fight them, try "another approach" (145).  Move slowly backward toward the window (64) and dump a potted plant on them to make then disappear.  Press the secret button (392).  It opens a false wall panel that serves only to lure you onto a Looney Tunes-style trap door, which you subsequently fall into (397).

You once again hear the approaching shuffles that herald the return of the HUNCHBACK and once again are given the option of hiding behind the door to surprise him.  Instead, search the room for a weapon (50) and you'll find a tree branch that's conveniently the size and shape of a baseball bat, good enough for +3 SKILL.  As tempting as it might be to tee off on his head, hide it behind your back and stand meekly in the corner (263).  When he comes in, greet him like the old pal he is (367) and follow him out of the room.  Since we've met him before, jog his memory of you (230 > 198).  He'll tell you his name is Shekou (bingo!).  Critically, whether he gives you the real password or a false one depends on whether you share your brandy.

Offer to share (93) and he'll do two shots right out of the cap.  He doesn't give you the password but hints that it's "like the name of the house, but mixed up."  It was a significant challenge as a pre-teen kid in the '80s to come up with spooky anagrams for "Drumer."

Rather than follow his advice and take the corridor, stay and look around (166).  Take the door on the right-hand wall (209) that leads to the dungeon.

There are three people locked in the cell.  Unfortunately, there is nothing you can do for any of them.  Fortunately, one is the grey-robed man you've heard so much about.  Speak to him (363) and he'll reiterate that the master can only be killed with the Kris knife, but only if it's done in a red room, like the dining room.  The dining room is normally locked, but you can find its key "hidden behind the mirror when ceremonies are taking place."  He says he and his fellow prisoners will all be dead before the night's out, strongly implying that just such a ceremony will soon take place.  Hmm.

Leave immediately (91) and ignore the next door since it leads to the torture chamber.  Instead, proceed down the hall to the stairs (393).

Episode 5:  The Cellar Stairs (393) to the End (400)

In case you've lost track, you're still in the cellar.  Remember falling down the Looney Tunes trapdoor?  Now you find yourself at the foot of the stairs leading to the main floor but, whoops, you're attacked by BATS and suffer one FEAR point since tiny winged mammals are so frightening.  The idea of cellar stairs rings a bell, so you decide to seek shelter under them (320).

You're given the option to hunt around for a secret door and are told that some of the bricks look funny, but you aren't given an explicit option to do more.  This is where you must remember your instructions from Episode 2:  Search for a secret passage under the stairs by subtracting 10 from your current section number.  My trusty calculator tells me that's section 310, so off you go.  It redundantly asks you if you want to search for secret doors.  Yes.  Yes, you do.

You find a secret door, surprisingly enough, and are asked (276) if you want to try a password or search for a catch.  You know the password, so choose that (237).  You're asked to select from "Pravemi," "Goathead," "Murder," or "Kris."  Interestingly, it first appears as though the same thing happens in each case:  The door opens to a small room with a box on a table.  In fact, they are four identical rooms, but you can only escape the "Murder" room (174):  The others lead into the first of several narrative dead ends that stagger on a while before inevitably resulting in death.

So say "Murder" and the door to the correct room opens.  Enter (48) and you'll find the Kris knife in the box.  Oddly, if you continue searching you'll eventually find a door to one of the identical rooms, and entering that will once again result in your death.  That's some fiendish plotting on Steve Jackson's part.  Otherwise, with the Kris knife in your pocket, you awkwardly climb the cellar stairs (293).

Try the door to your right (260), but it'll be locked.  Continue down the hall and enter the next room on the right (113), which turns out to be a reception room with a large mirror and a table.  Hmm, didn't someone say the key to the dining room was kept behind a mirror?  Despite it freakily not casting a reflection of you (are you a vampire?), you touch it and find your hand passes through.  Investigate the room some more (324).  You check out the table and find a hidden compartment with a box.  But, oops, someone's coming!  Grab the box and dive through the mirror (147 > 3).  Inside the box is a golden key.

Behind the mirror, you find yourself in a small chamber (160).  Use the golden key to unlock the right-hand door (294 > 10).  It leads to a dusty room where someone recently hid a cast-iron key behind a stone in the wall.  This is the key stamped with '27'.

There's nothing more to gain behind the mirror, so step back through it (349 > 131).  Follow the hallway around to the next T-junction (58).  You're asked to take the left or right door.  The right door leads to the kitchen, which is yet another cul de sac of inevitable death, so take the left (323).  You'll need the cast-iron key to open it, which you do by subtracting the number on the key from this section number.  Microsoft Excel says the result is 296, so off you go.

You've reached the endgame:  You just unlocked the red dining room and you have the Kris knife.  Now all you need is to summon the Earl and stick him.  Fortunately, there's a bell pull for the butler.  Give it a yank (318).  Both the Earl and Franklins arrive and you give them a stern talking-to.  You all assume battle positions and you're given the option to attack one or the other.

You must attack Franklins first (336).  In a dramatic and shocking plot twist, the butler did it.  The Earl is just a figurehead, and attacking him will just give Franklins the opening he needs to kill you.  The first blow you land causes Franklins to transform into his true form:  A HELL DEMON (or in the United States, a HADES DEMON).

I'm sure the illustration for section 181 directly inspired Jeff Easley's awesome cover to Manual of the Planes in 1987:

Which clearly inspired the cacodemon in DOOM in 1993:

Sadly, Tim Sell never received royalties from TSR or iD Software.

Regardless, the DEMON lays another 3 FEAR points on you.  If you're still alive, you'll have to fight this thing with its math-defying SKILL 14 STAMINA 12.  SKILL, being set with a 2d6 roll, normally can't exceed 12; however, in this case you get +6 SKILL for having the Kris knife and you've picked up a few other SKILL power ups along the way, like daggers and a big-ass tree branch, so in theory it could be a fair fight.

If you defeat the DEMON (400), you don't actually kill it, but you do feel sorry for it before candles ignite the room and set the whole place ablaze.  Evidently, the Earl skedaddled during the ruckus, not even staying to bash you over the head with a folding chair, tag-team style, because he's nowhere to be found.  You run to a safe spot outside within viewing distance, possibly with popcorn, to watch the place burn down.  Congrats, you've won.

Final Thoughts

Like Citadel, this book focuses more on plot coupons than combat.  There are only a few necessary fights and not all of them are to the death.  That said, the FEAR score is a considerable obstacle to winning.  Plenty of things that aren't really scary tend to bump up the score bit by bit, eventually scaring you to death.  Also, the house is an absolute maze.  It's not possible to navigate it with any confidence without mapping your progress in some way or just building a complete graph as I did.

As I mentioned before, the kitchen is one of several long bits of story that offer choices, fights, and items only to amount to nothing since, whatever you do, you inevitably die.  These strike me as lazy storytelling at best, or the author being a sadistic bastard at worst.  How do you rage quit a book?  Throw it across the room?  Toss it in the fire?

There are actually quite a few Satanic tropes in this book:  A pentacle (151), direct references to Satan (the room names, albeit in different traditions), and not least, an actual human sacrifice (314) which describes the killers as "smearing the unfortunate victim's blood all over themselves."  Scooby Doo this ain't.  Dell may have changed the U.S. title from Hell to Hades but all that stuff is still in there.  Regardless, this book still struck me as cartoony as a kid, maybe because of the goofy illustrations.

A book that did disturb me as a kid was Invasion of the Black Slime and Other Tales of Horror.  It was a Which Way book, not a gamebook, but one of many cheap Choose Your Own Adventure knock-offs.  It read like a slasher flick, with far more suspense and much more realistic illustrations, dabbling in what would be later termed "body horror."

I never asked my mom for another Which Way book.

Anyway, with all the Satan and cult stuff and the three our four alcoholic drinks the main character enjoys, I have to hand it to Steve Jackson and Dell for slipping some adult-ish content into House of Hell amidst the great Satanic Panic of the 1980s.  This and a good Dead Kennedys album were probably enough to put any budding Gen X'er on a path of lifelong moral turpitude.

FF2: The Citadel of Chaos

Here is the complete graph for The Citadel of Chaos.

Tl;dr: The idea here is to use directed graphs to provide optimal walkthroughs of Fighting Fantasy gamebooks; in this case, The Citadel of Chaos.  Check out the beginning of the Deathtrap Dungeon post for tips on how to read the graph.  Citadel's is similar but required more annotations since there is more going on.

Overall Impressions

This is the second book I've graphed, after Deathtrap, but Citadel is clearly more sophisticated even though it's earlier in the series.  It's less linear and has fewer bottlenecks, though it still has enough that I was able to split the story into a sequence of unavoidable episodes.  However, Citadel's graph splits enough that it's easy to miss whole chunks of the book, bypassing required items without warning.  This is where the "replay value" comes in, I suppose.

The average Deathtrap section had just two options (Go left or right?  Fight this thing or run?).  The average Citadel section offers more options due to the magic system (Which of these spells do you want to use?) and the sheer number of artifacts (Give them the ointment, the pocket myriad, or the spider in a jar?).  In graph theory, a vertex's degree is the number of edges incident to it.  A directed graph like ours distinguishes the degree of incoming and outgoing edges into indegree and outdegree.  So, the average outdegree in Citadel is higher than in Deathtrap because there are more choices.  A section with a high indegree is a bottleneck of sorts since it ties many story threads together, so having a high average indegree is an indicator of how bottlenecked a story is.

Citadel has fewer instant death sections than Deathtrap, which isn't much of a surprise:  18 (4.5%) compared to Deathtrap's 31 (7.8%).  Most of them occur in the final boss fight against Balthus Dire.

Required Spells

You'll need an Illusion spell to get out of jail, a Shield spell to protect yourself from Balthus Dire's trident trap, a Weakness spell for the CLAWBEAST, and E.S.P. and Levitation spells for the final battle with Balthus Dire.  Other spells are optional.

Episode 1:  The Entry (1) to the Courtyard (251)

The first encounter is with the guards:  The iconic APE-DOG and DOG-APE.  The goal here is to avoid combat, which you can do through four paths.  You can either bluff your way in by posing as a herbalist (261) or trick them with fool's gold (96).  The herbalist route has a number of complicating factors.  The easiest thing to do is say you came to treat "Kylltrog" (81), evidently a pal of theirs.

Episode 2:  The Courtyard (251) to the Citadel Door (218)

This bit immediately splits into three threads.  You have the most to gain by approaching one of the groups (321) and sitting down with them (134).  They'll immediately tell you the password to the Citadel.  After you fight them you'll get their gold coins, brass key (later referred to as a copper key), jar of ointment, and Potion of Magick, which boosts your MAGIC points.  The ointment is essential if you want to succeed along the shortest path.

If you then approach the two men talking (269) and say that the dagger is worth eight gold pieces (186), you'll get the opportunity to buy it without a fight (15).

If you say you want to use magic against the WHIRLWIND LADY (47), you'll get an opportunity to run to the central fountain (209).  This effectively switches you to the thread that you would have followed by walking boldly across the courtyard, but now with the items gained from fighting various folks.  Drinking the clear liquid in the fountain gives you a clue to defeating the CALACORM.

There are a few more encounters in this episode (dealing with an injured man, avoiding an unseen archer, and falling in a pit) but you have nothing to gain from them.

Episode 3:  The Citadel Door (218) to the Narrow Hallway (177)

This is a brief episode.  The only way to not fight the RHINO-MAN guard is to give the correct password (371) or to bluff your way in by Testing Your Luck (198).

Episode 4:  The Narrow Hallway (177) to the Grand Dining Hall (169)

This episode takes up about half the book and is fairly interconnected.  The one essential thing to get is the combination to Balthus Dire's quarters (obtained in 238, from a library book), which is cleverly just the number of the section that opens his door.  It's presented in the text as, "Do you know the combination?  If so, turn to the section of the book with that same number."  Without it, you're doomed to a non-failure outcome of "trying again" (164).

From the Narrow Hallway (177), take the door (5) and ring for the butler (40).  Trust the butler's advice and take the left fork to the GARK (243).  This bypasses the useless encounter with the WHEELIES and puts you on the path to the combination.  You'll need to fight the GARK to get his hairbrush, so prepare to use a spell (11) and either cast Creature Copy (262) or fight him yourself (16).  Either way, you must kill him (180) and not just run away.  Why this guy has a hairbrush with only a tiny little ponytail is anyone's guess - maybe he has a girlfriend.

Proceed to the T-Junction (99).  Take the right-hand door (38) and enter as instructed (132).  You're now in the library.  Ask the librarian for the secrets of the Black Tower and you'll learn the combination (238).  If you then go to the section about Balthus Dire himself (18), you'll learn how to defeat him without combat.  Counter-intuitively, you'll want to press your luck and read another book (84) only for the librarian to get suspicious and sic some guards on you.  They'll give you some roofies and throw you in jail (234).

The only way out of jail is to use an Illusion spell and convince the CALACORM guard that he's being attacked by an enemy (a mouse).

This course takes you inevitably to the LEPRECHAUN (210), which is an emotional rollercoaster but relatively benign.  Playing it cool with the LEPRECHAUN makes him friendly enough to grant you a silver mirror and a magic battlesword (323).

The mini-episode to the next bottleneck diverges into three paths:  One to the wine cellar (the copper door, 144), where you can get a pocket myriad from the BLACK ELF, one to the sewers (the brass door, 386), and one to the LAUNDRY LADY (the bronze door, 338), which is really just a short cut past the sewers.  The LAUNDRY LADY can give you a hint about needing a golden fleece.  It's arguable which path is simpler since both involve combat and/or Testing Your Luck.  You'll need either the myriad or fleece to get past the HYDRA later.

Section 275 describes the pocket myriad as "an enchanted gadget that can become any one of a number of weapons or useful artifacts."  The ELF turns it into a knife, but of course it's damaged in the fight and merely becomes another inert object for you to barter with.

Whichever way you go, you wind up in the GOLEM room (257).  The only thing to be gained here is the SPIDER-MAN in a jar (a critter the GANGEES identify in section 39 as "Racknee").  Since he's not very useful, it's best to run for the door (200 to 237), which opens to the Grand Dining Hall (169).

Interestingly, taking the left route after the GARK takes you to a game room where you can play three different games to earn power-ups:  Six Pick (171), Knifey-Knifey (365), and Runestones (278).  Each are pretty inventive games-within-a-game.  I definitely remember playing these as a kid.  Visiting the game room will bypass the library though, so will prevent you from learning the combination.

Episode 5: The Grand Dining Hall (169) to the Tower Staircase (140)

You'll inevitably wind up at the balcony (363), but the quickest and safest path is to go up the right-hand staircase (197).

If you opted to go to the sewers in the last episode, you won't have the pocket myriad so will need to get the golden fleece.  Take the left door (228) and either smash it down (88) or use the copper key (296).  It leads to the bed chamber (292).  You must give the lady the GARK's hairbrush and successfully Test Your Luck in order to pull the golden fleece off her bed.

The bed chamber unfortunately skips the most interesting encounter in the book:  The nursery (64).  It's an incongruous room with three small orc-children, their beds, and a bunch of stuffed animals.  This section used to puzzle me as a kid, when I identified somewhat with the little guys.  I wondered what their life must be like hanging out in that room.  Did someone bring them food?  Did they ever leave?  If so, did the MIKS or the GARGOYLE or the BED LADY give them any trouble?  This being FF, you are given the option to kill them.  The result is pathetic and somewhat troubling.

This episode also contains the only "bug" in the book:  an orphaned section, 258, which isn't accessible from any other section.  It appears to let you offer something general to the orc-children.  It must have been replaced by section 3, which lets you offer something specific.

Regardless, you proceed to the spiral staircase that leads to the upper tower (140).

Episode 6:  The Tower Staircase (140) to the Combination Lock (229)

This is the home stretch to Balthus Dire, and the only episode where you have nothing to gain.  The best you can do is get through it as quickly as possible.

Take the left hand door to the island room (25).  This bypasses the useless encounter with the MIKS.  The trunk is a trap, so simply walk around the trench to the door on the other side (206).  This leads to the dreaded GANJEES room (182), which is infamous among FF adventurers as a likely place to die.  In fact, you will die here unless you present them with either the ointment or the charmed amulet.  You can only get the amulet from the SCOUTS in Episode 2 if you forego the combination to Balthus Dire's quarters, so give them the ointment (291) and proceed to the HYDRA (328).

You'll want to "use something from your backpack" (226); specifically, the golden fleece (37), which lets you pass the HYDRA without combat or penalty and proceed to the locked door to Balthus Dire's quarters (229).

Episode 7:  The Combination Lock (229) to the End (400).

It's interesting that this endgame episode has a whopping 64 entries (16% of the book!).  Navigating through it in the simplest way either requires hard-won foreknowledge, absurd luck, or the god-mode provided by an annotated graph.

Turns out you only need the proper combination and four spells to get through it, no combat required.

First, enter the combination (217) to open the door.  You'll want to immediately cast your Shield spell (293) to avoid the trident trap, then proceed to the gentleman himself (374).

If you do get sucked into fighting him, you'll find him a tough opponent with SKILL 12 and STAMINA 19.  Fortunately, there's an easier way.

Cast a Weakness spell to quickly dispatch the CLAWBEAST (158) and an E.S.P. spell (187) to read Dire's mind.  Follow that with a Levitation spell (279) to avoid his earthquake spell, then run over the window (78) to pull the drapes over his head (124).  This has the unintended side effect of exposing him to sunlight, which kills him and makes you wonder why his room had a window at all.

Congrats, you've won (400).

Final Thoughts

Though not as difficult as Deathtrap Dungeon, Citadel is plenty tough and offers a number of alternate routes to victory.  You can succeed with minimal combat, though it's essential to fight the group in the courtyard to get the ointment.  Again, you can get past the GANJEES with the charmed amulet instead, which the SCOUTS give you freely, but doing that means not finding the lock combination.

Then again, what ten year old is going to insist in starting from zero knowledge each play through?  Clearly, you're supposed to build up knowledge through trial and error and not be an insufferable (middle-aged, knuckleheaded) purist who insists on starting from scratch each time.  A perfect run-through with zero assumptions would require an astronomical amount of luck.

Citadel was my first FF book and is probably my favorite for that reason.  I liked that the monsters included animals with swapped heads, which you'd expect from a chaos wizard.  The orc-kids and gambling games were especially memorable.

FF8: Deathtrap Dungeon

Here is the complete graph for Deathtrap Dungeon.

You might want to open it in a separate tab or window for handy reference as you read this.  Yes, it's very tall and narrow.  You'll have to zoom in and scroll.  This article does include some snapshots of the more interesting bits.

A word about how to read the graph:  The vertices are story sections, which I colored as follows:

• Yellow:  Combat, with the enemy named
• Blue:  Obtaining an item or relevant experience, with it named
• Red:  Death, or failure
• Orange:  Not death, but an end to the story
• Green:  A choice dependent on having an item or a relevant experience, with that thing named, as in "needs key" or "needs to have spoken to the old man"

The first section (1) is at the top, obviously.  The victory section (400) is at the bottom.

I didn't mark sections that Test Your Luck or otherwise manipulate your statistics, because frankly that's most of them.

The green and blue vertices are particularly interesting since it's well known that Ian Livingstone enjoyed peppering his books with plot coupons.  Simply put, bad things will happen if you hit a green vertex without being downstream of the corresponding blue one.  For example, a green section might ask if you have a dagger.  You'd only have it if you hit the previous blue section that granted the dagger.  This game mechanic effectively lengthens the shortest path to success, which we might have naively found by using Dijkstra's algorithm.  The Graphviz software does implement Dijkstra's algorithm but it's not much use thanks to the plot coupons.

Spoiler Warning

If you don't want the story spoiled, stop reading this blog.  But seriously, do you need a spoiler warning for a book that's almost 40 years old?

Overall Impressions

Overall, it's more linear than I expected.  Never having done this before, my intuition was that it would be wider, more tree-like.  At the very least, I thought the initial T-junction would split the majority of the graph in two.  What I found instead was that the story was episodic and routinely funneled the reader down into bottlenecks, sections that can't be avoided.  The first bottleneck happens fairly quickly when the reader reaches the gem-eyed idol (37).

The next thing I noticed was the sheer number of instant death sections:  31 of 400, or 7.8%.  So on average, you're likely to die on every 13th section.  I suppose that makes sense for a book with "death" right in the title.

I've split the "episodes" that follow on the story's bottlenecks, so the story will force you to proceed from one episode to the next, in order, and you can't skip them.

The following synopsis is the fastest path to victory, or one of them.  There are a bunch of encounters in the book that aren't described here (the MIRROR DEMON, the MEDUSA, etc.) because they aren't on the fastest path.

Episode 1:  The Entry (1) to the Idol (37)

The only thing of consequence here is obtaining the rope, the gold piece, and the hollow tube, which you can only do if you go east at the initial T-junction.  This rewards the character who's willing to be a rebel, since most of the other characters appear to have gone west.

So go east (56), scramble over the puffball (373), and drink the liquid in the bamboo pipe (147) to protect yourself against the upcoming heat trap (182 > 25).  At 197, you must open the door (171) to get the rope.  You'll fall into a pit and lose 4 STAMINA, but you need the rope to get the emerald.  You can get 3 of those STAMINA back by eating the dried meat found on the first barbarian's corpse, which is coming up.

Next is the ORC encounter.  There's no way to avoid fighting them, but at section 326 you obviously want to roll a high number to fight them without a penalty (380).

After killing the ORCS and taking their gold and hollow tube (a straw?), proceed to the wet corridor (164).  Open the door (299) into the room with the dead barbarian.  Walk over to search him (126), then eat the meat to replenish your STAMINA (226).  At this point you can return to the alcove (41) to get the goblet, though it will involve Testing Your Luck, but the goblet does not appear to be useful.  Eventually, you'll be herded off to the idol room.

Episode 2:  The Idol (37) to the Closed Door (239)

The gem-eyed idol is the first bottleneck:  You can't avoid reaching this point.  The story immediately asks you if you have the rope.  If you do you can get the emerald, which is good since you can't win without it.  Otherwise you'll have another attempt at getting a gold piece.  You'll have to fight the two FLYING GUARDIANS either way, a difficult battle.

Use your rope (396) to climb the idol, then you must only try removing the left eye (151).  Removing the right one (34) will release poison gas, killing you instantly.  You can Test Your Luck after climbing down (89) to see if you can pull the rope down, but I haven't seen that it's used again.

Episode 3:  Closed Door (239) to T-Junction (267)

It's possible to pick up three things along here:

• A gold ring that grants wishes (251)
• A poem read by a spirit girl (229)
• A dagger (94)

All three are used later.  To get the dagger you'll have to fight the GIANT FLY.

First, open the closed door (102) and insult Baron Sukumvit (251) to get the ring.  Proceed down the hall (344) and walk through the shaft of blue light (229) to hear the poem.  At the arched doorway (107), open the door (168) to find the dagger stuck in a pit of worms.  The worms are harmless, so pull the dagger out (94).  Proceed to the GIANT FLY (174).  You'll have to successfully Test Your Luck to fight it without penalty.  After killing it, proceed to 267.

Episode 4:  T-Junction (267) to SKELETON WARRIOR (381)

Obviously, it's ideal to head east (68) from the T-junction to skip the pointless ROCK GRUB battle.

The trip from 68 to the bottleneck at 237 is inconsequential except that you don't want to lose your shield at 271 since it helps defend you from the MANTICORE later.  Oddly, I haven't found where you received that shield.  It's not mentioned in the intro and I haven't seen where you pick it up prior to this.  There is another chance to find a shield in Episode 8, though.

The ruby orb gained at 285 has no further use that I've found.

Episode 5:  SKELETON WARRIOR (381) to ORC Bodies (338)

It's not worth tangling with the SKELETON WARRIOR since you'll only pick up a warning about the MANTICORE (a shield will help you beat it), so just tiptoe over to the alcove (128).  Don't eat the mushrooms; go down the steps (35) and jump through the door while waving your sword around like the psychopath you are (124).  You'll scare the hell out of the GOBLINS at 124, giving you an advantage.  You have no choice but to fight them.

At 81 or 307, you want to go north (136) so that you can obtain the sapphire, the second essential gem.

If you go in the door with the hand nailed to it (210) you'll see Ian Livingstone himself chained to the wall.  If you let him go he'll tip you off to having to collect gems to get through the dungeon before he suddenly exits stage left.

You'll inevitably come to an open pipe (78).  Go inside to get the iron key and the sapphire (162), but beware of going too far!

Episode 6:  ORC Bodies (338) to the DWARF (60)

This is an especially linear bit of the tale in which you're given the opportunity to team up with Throm, another competitor.  The book rewards the reader who gives Throm the benefit of the doubt, because doing so is the only way to get forewarned of the BLOODBEAST (via an article in a book) and to find another book containing a health potion.

First, put on the necklace (123) which is really a strength amulet.  Your stats will get updoots and then you'll go to 282 to meet Throm.  Go west with him (22) and accept his offer to lower you into the pit (63).  He'll join you and you'll find some books on a stone ledge (194).  Open the red leather book (52) to read about the BLOODBEAST and the black leather book (138) to get a potion.

Next, you encounter CAVE TROLLS (369).  You fight one and Throm fights (and always kills) the other.  You find a bone ring necklace on one.  You can either put it on or not; if you do, whether it helps or hurts you depends on your current SKILL score (64).

Regardless, you wind up in the stalactite room (221).  There's nothing to gain here, so proceed through the archway (60) to find the DWARF.

Episode 7:  The DWARF (60) to the Tunnel (213)

This next bit is a beautifully symmetric bit of the graph.

First, persuade Throm to not kill the DWARF (365).  You'll shoot some craps and either win (152) or lose (121).  If you win, he'll make you grab a cobra bare-handed (some reward!).  You have to continue trying to grab it, losing 5 STAMINA each time you fail.  If you lose, he'll produce two pills:  one with an S and one with an L.  They'll sap your STRENGTH or LUCK, respectively, and then you'll have to grab the cobra.  So either way, you're cobra grabbin'.

Next, this fun-loving DWARF gives you some lame anagrams and the situation boils down to three options:

• Fight a MINOTAUR (40)
• Fight a GIANT SCORPION (143)
• Not die, but end the story as the DWARF's lackey (347)

If you fight and survive, you'll have no choice but to fight a (drugged and/or out of it) THROM, and if you're feeling vengeful, the DWARF as well.  Beating the DWARF will earn you a coat of chain mail.

Episode 8:  Tunnel (213) to the BLOODBEAST (90)

This is the most complicated episode since it splits into three, and sometimes four, threads that interlink.  Unfortunately, there is a single correct path that you must follow to have any hope of succeeding.  The critical junctures are as follows:

Go west at either 108 or 394 so you end up at the sound of approaching footsteps at 59.  This winds up being another poor sucker who's stuck in the tunnels.  If you quiz him (367) and give him some gold (244), he'll tell you there's a doppelganger potion in the bird-of-prey chair.

Go north at 109 to end up at the bird-of-prey chair at 24.  Sit in it (256) to get the doppelganger potion.

At 188, you need to have heard the spirit girl's poem from Episode 3 in order to proceed to 155.  Her words will encourage you to dive into the water, taking you to 378.  After Testing Your Luck, you'll hear a girl's voice crying for help (356).  Enter the room (170) to find the Elf locked in battle with a BOA CONSTRICTOR.  Kill it (170) and with her dying breath she'll reward you by telling you to find some gems, including a diamond.  Her stash includes some bread (+ STAMINA), two daggers (useful for defending against the BLOODBEAST), and a monkey charm (saves you from the PIT FIEND).  Not bad!

Walking along the tunnel (192), you'll come across an iron grille in the floor.  Lift it (120) to reveal the grappling iron and leather pouch.  Reaching down for them (228) means you'll have to Test Your Luck, but either way you'll wind up with them. 

At 292 you come to a door.  You have nothing to gain from opening it, so continue to 230, where you'll encounter some TROGLODYTES dancing around a "large golden effigy."  Drink your doppelganger (aka polyjuice) potion (385) and run across the bridge (318).  You'll come to a locked door, but fortunately you have the iron key you found in the pipe with the sapphire.  Use it to unlock the door (86) to the four-way intersection.  You'll hear the voice of the author beckoning you forward to 187. 

And there he is, Ian Livingstone, once again, but now with a regrown hand!  (For those without the book, the joke is that the illustrator keeps drawing Ian Livingstone as prisoners.)  He'll reward you for bribing him (360), naturally, by putting you on the path to getting the diamond.  You get in a basket that he raises off the ground by pulling a rope.  This bit reminds me somewhat of the Shaft Room in Zork I.  Let's hope he's using multiple pullies for maximum mechanical advantage -- ol' Ian doesn't have much upper body strength.  

Unfortunately, Ivy, who happens to be a TROLL, is in the room above.  She demands a bribe too.  Try to talk your way out of giving her anything (328).  She'll namedrop Port Blacksand, aka the City of Thieves (FF5!) and get understandably distracted.  Continue the conversation (99) long enough to smack her over the head with a stool.  Searching the room (266) reveals an old bone, which you take.  What sort of creatures might want an old bone?

Walking downstairs (305), you conveniently hear the sound of barking dogs.  Throw them the bone (253) and run past (315).  You reach a high wall with a door, but inexplicably decide to use your grappling iron and rope to scale it (129) and catch your first glimpse of the PIT FIEND, which is really a tarted-up T-Rex.  Throw him your bone monkey charm (361), which he'll chomp on, as T-Rexes do.  It'll oddly expand to fill his mouth, which will distract him enough for you to Test Your Luck.

This is a consequential Luck Test, since if you fail (377) you'll have to fight the PIT FIEND, a murderous SKILL 12 STAMINA 15.  The one upside to being unlucky is that you get a replacement shield (95) if you lost yours in Episode 4.  As stated repeatedly, a shield is handy when fighting the MANTICORE.

At 214, you're asked to relinquish your weapons.  Ignore that and proceed to 181, where you'll overtake another competitor, the NINJA.  You'll have to Test Your Luck again to see if you can fight him without penalty; in this case, the penalty is a shuriken in the back that not only takes 4 STAMINA but also 1 SKILL.  The fight is difficult since he's SKILL 11 STAMINA 9, no slouch compared to the PIT FIEND, but defeating him is the only way to get the diamond, the third gem required to succeed.

It's a bit silly that the only route out of this space is to take a chute (127) down to the BLOODBEAST's room.

Episode 9:  The BLOODBEAST (90) to the End (400)

Fighting the BLOODBEAST  will go as well as possible if you were forewarned by the book in Episode 6.  At least then it's a straight battle (172), albeit against a SKILL 12, STAMINA 10 opponent coming off fights against a NINJA and possibly a PIT FIEND.

It is technically possible to pass without fighting it, but it requires a lot of luck.  You'll have to first claim to not have the forewarning (357) then either throw in a gem (332, but not the essential emerald, sapphire, or diamond!) or take a swing at it with your sword (180).  Either way, it'll respond with toxic gas and you'll have to Test Your Luck to avoid getting killed.  If you live (53), it'll be pawing (tentacling?) at you.  Make a run for the door (370) and roll two dice.  If you roll lower than your SKILL score, you'll jump away from it and escape without a fight (104).  Otherwise, you'll need a dagger to fight it (294).  If you don't have a dagger, you die (334).

There's enough luck needed for the non-combat path that it might be easier to just fight it straight up (172).

The option to throw an unspecified gem into the BLOODBEAST's slime pit is interesting.  One would hope you'd throw in something other than the essential diamond, sapphire, or emerald, but would a 10 year old kid playing this game make such a distinction?  Doubtful.  The book is littered with other non-essential gems, to be fair:  A couple topazes, a pearl, and a ruby orb, at least, none of which have any purpose except to possibly be thrown into this slime pit.

A dagger is essential if the BLOODBEAST grabs you (159 or 234).

The next and final unavoidable battle is the MANTICORE, another SKILL 11, STAMINA 11 bruiser, though it helps if you have a shield, in which case you can at least fight it without suffering a penalty (196). 

This book really is ridiculously difficult and probably not at all possible without memorizing the one correct path after countless attempts (or using a graph!) as well as having tremendous luck with the dice.

Finally, the endgame:  You have to have the emerald, sapphire, and diamond.  If you don't, you become a slave in the dungeon (3).

If you are lucky enough to have them, you have to arrange them in the correct order.  Of course, there are 6 ways (3 factorial, or 3 times 2 times 1) to order three items, so the graph enters an interesting section where five vertices are mutually-connected, allowing you to keep choosing different orders, though you're taking a penalty each time you get it wrong.

Graph theorists call this sort of mutually-connected subgraph a clique.  They're interesting because they're so tightly coupled.  Finding a graph's large cliques, or the largest clique, is computationally difficult, meaning even the best known algorithms take a number of steps that scale exponentially with the number of vertices.  However, it's often useful to find large cliques.  Consider a graph in which vertices are phone users and edges are calls made between them.  A service provider might want to identify large cliques to offer them special deals or discounts.

It's frustrating to think a player might have come this far throughout the book only to fail by having to guess which of the six possible orders are correct.  Each failure costs 2-7 STAMINA points from a player who was just weakened by two unavoidable and difficult battles.  You are given hints when you fail, Mastermind-style, telling you how many gems were in the wrong place, but with a legit shot at just one or two guesses it still feels pretty cheap.  Might've been more sporting to offer the player a hint at the order earlier in the book.

Even if you guess the order, you'll have to Test Your Luck a final time to avoid losing 3 STAMINA to poison gas.

Otherwise, you win.

Final Thoughts

Deathtrap Dungeon is arguably the most popular FF title, and for good reason:  It provides the purest dungeon crawl in a way that's more sophisticated than earlier books like The Warlock of Firetop Mountain or The Citadel of Chaos.  It's also incredibly difficult, which rewards replays.  The player can try it over and over, building up an arsenal of strategies that didn't work and exploring new ones, until they finally succeed.

Of course, having an annotated graph can help.