User:GuardianOfTheWastes/Golden Oldies Wiki/Sword of the Samurai/FAQ by one Toenail Lord

The following is an FAQ that I found useful on several occasions whilst playing the game. In order that it is kept as true to the original found here, I have done nothing other than 'wikify' his piece. This will cover the hints and tips and things that I won't. Enjoy!

Sword of the Samurai guide by Toenail_lord

Version 1.00 completed July 13, 2005

INTRODUCTION
Thank you for reading my Sword of the Samurai guide. Sword of the Samurai is an overlooked game from 1989 that is actually a blast to play. You are a samurai lord in the Sengoku Jidai era- the age of the warring states in Japan. Militaristic monks, fanatical peasants, devious samurai and powerful warlords run rampant throughout the country as the military rule of the Shogun has been broken by years of infighting and treachery throughout the nation. It is your duty to bring your family to greatness and, someday, unite the whole of Japan under your rule. Good luck!

MAKING YOUR CHARACTER
If you choose to start a new game, you will be asked to enter your name. If you hit enter without typing anything in, you will be known as Unknown Samurai. I always put in a Japanese name for my character so as to keep the integrity of the background intact. After this, you choose which province and clan your character is from, each with a different set of bonuses. The four stats listed, from left to right, are honor, generalship, swordsmanship, and land. Do not choose any clan with 7 honor points, because there is a limit for new characters as to the height of their honor, and you will only be wasting a point. Swordsmanship is not a useful skill, so do not choose one clan for this specifically. This, however, does not apply for any other stat. I would recommend choosing Clan Uesugi, because they have the maximum attainable honor and the highest generalship. After this, you choose your family's bonus, which adds to the points in that skill. I play Uesugi, so I choose land so that I can have plenty of soldiers to command.

CONTROLS
F1 brings up a list of your opponents. F2 brings up a map of Japan. F3 brings up a menu of what your rivals are up to and any possible tasks that need completion. Alt-S allows you to save. Alt-R allows you to restore. Alt-Q makes you quit to DOS.

YOUR FIEF
After you have made your character and seen the opening scenes, you are brought to a menu detailing the commands possible within your fief. These commands are

Equip more Samurai (Equips more troops if your fief can support more) Practice Kenjutsu (Up to a maximum of 6 Swordsmanship points) Drill your troops (Up to a maximum of 6 Generalship points) Donate land to the Buddhist temple (Always able to do so, even if it has no effect. It will cause you to lose troops if the number of soldiers you have already is at high capacity) Raise the rice tax within your domain (Raises the amount of land you have. However, it also causes an honor deduction and makes your rivals more capable of inciting yours peasants to revolt) Travel (Allows you to go onto the overworld map) Retire from worldly affairs (Only available if you have reached Old age. Careful- if you retire without an heir you will lose the game)

If you choose to travel, you will be presented with three options

Travel alone, testing yourself against fate (You travel alone. Any encounters you meet will yield the maximum amount of honor) Travel disguised as a poor ronin (Allows you to go on secret missions against other samurai. However, any encounters you meet will yield very little, if any, honor) Travel at the head of your troops (Sends you with your army. You need to go with your army if you wish to attack your enemies or go on campaign. The honor yield from encounters, however, will be reduced, as it is not quite as courageous to defeat your foes with your army at your back.)

THE WORLD
If you leave your fief, you will go out into the world. On your map there will be a variety of symbols- the only ones you need concern yourself with are houses, the arrows, the manor, and the castle. The place where you emerge from into the world is your house, where you rule over your fief. This should be fairly obvious because your name is right next to it. The other houses are your rivals, and their names are beside theirs as well. The more complicated looking house is your lord hatamato's house. You can enter their domain when you move onto their house and their picture pops up.

The arrows lead to different provinces, and if you move over atop of them and press enter, you will move to the new province. However, before you move to another province, make sure you press F2 and take a look at the map. The blue province is your clan's province- the yellow is the enemy clan's province. The white colored provinces are emerging powers, your future enemies, and the grey ones are unimportant clans.

Check what the name of the yellow province is if you're intent on heading out of your own province- the enemy province is the only other province with anything valuable. After you move onto the arrow to the enemy province and press enter, you arrive in the enemy's province. There is only one house here that has a name, and it is your main enemy's house. You can only interact with him if you are in a poor ronin disguise (to commit treachery against him) or you are leading your troops (to invade him). The other use for the overworld map is if you are moving around you may go into an encounter, which you may choose to take to raise your honor.

YOUR CHARACTER'S STATS
In the actual game, you have five stats. You can check these at any time in the roleplaying game by pressing F1, then moving your cursor to yourself and pressing enter. From left to right, they are honor, land, soldiers, generalship and swordsmanship. You raise honor by performing bold deeds, beating the encounters on the overworld map, marrying a woman of high honor, donating land to the Buddhist temple, succeeding in a treachery against your enemy and having an heir. You lose honor by retreating from battle, having treachery committed successfully against you, being captured or spotted while attempting treachery against another clan member, raising the rice tax and refusing to avenge an insult from another samurai. You raise land by winning campaign battles, successfully attacking the enemy from the other province and raising the rice tax. You lose land by donating to the Buddhist temple, being captured in a failed treachery attempt and losing a battle to an invading force. You raise soldiers by equipping samurai. You lose soldiers by losing enough land to support them all or getting them killed in battle. You raise generalship by winning battles. You cannot lose generalship. You raise swordsmanship by winning sword fights. You cannot lose swordsmanship.

YOUR CHARACTER'S RIVALS
When you press F1, you will be shown a list of your enemies, in descending order of skill from left to right. Usually, when you get to a new level of the game, you start on the lowest rank. Pressing enter on any of the portraits shows their name, clan, fealty (if any), age, location, and disposition towards you (blank if there is no particular bend.) The screen also shows the size of his army, fief, as well as his family members and hostages (if any). Also, it will display his stats. You can visit your rivals to ask them for their daughter's hand in marriage, to insult them, or invite them to a tea ceremony. If you choose the latter, and the rival accepts, you will gain friendliness with them. If you insult them, you will either fight a duel with them or damage their honor.

When you become high enough rank, one of your rivals, usually the lowest, will begin threatening you and should you refuse to heed his demands he will commit treachery against you. However, keep in mind that you, too, can commit treachery against him. By taking the disguise of a poor ronin, you can head to their fief and choose either to incite his peasants to revolt against him or commit some manner of treachery against him. If you choose to incite his peasants to revolt against him you will be sent to kill his tax collector, which will set off a revolt. If you choose to commit some treachery against him, you can choose to commit treachery, which will lower his honor significantly, kidnap a member of his family to hold for ransom or to keep him from attacking you, or assassinate him. Failing in the former two will cause you to lose honor and land- failing in the latter will make your lord command you to commit seppuku, ritual suicide, or he will kill your entire family. So make sure you do not fail.

There is, however another easier way to eliminate a rival. Go to his house in person and talk to him, then choose to call him a coward whose ancestors hauled dung. If he chooses to fight you, you can attempt to kill him in a duel. If he refuses to fight, his honor will plummet. You can also choose to attempt to assassinate your lord, but this is the only way to attempt to rid yourself of him. Later on, when you are a hatamoto, you can also attack your daimyo on the battlefield, but this only serves to weaken your forces since you have to attempt to assassinate him as well. If you fail to defeat your lord in an assassination attempt, however, your entire family will be executed, meaning an automatic game-over. Also, you can deal with your enemy in the other province. You cannot challenge him to a duel, however, but you can invade him to gain a very, very tiny portion of his land or kidnap part of his family/assassinate him to gain honor.

YOUR LORD
For the first two stages of the game, you serve under a lord. Your lord will occasionally come up with tasks- either bold deeds (a way to raise honor) or campaigns (a way to gain land). Your rivals will attempt to complete these tasks for themselves so as to gain these benefits. To take on a bold deed, you should preferable travel alone to the lord's domain. If you wish to take on a campaign, you must travel with your army to his domain. If you anger your lord by attempting to assassinate one of your fellow clan members and fail to do so, he will order your seppuku. If you attempt to kill your lord and fail, he will kill your entire family. Your lord will either die by himself in time, or you can kill him yourself. When he dies, his best officer will take his place, hopefully you.

MARRIAGE
In order to gain the maximum amount of honor and continue to play the game without losing, you must choose a wife to give you children. When you first start the game, press F1 and check each of your rivals. You should be looking for anyone with an honor rank of 7 and a daughter who is not Old. If any of them and their wives are both mature adults or younger and do not have a full family (4 people), there is a possibility they will have a daughter in time. Make sure you marry as soon as possible to a daughter of high honor, so that you can raise your honor to its highest. There is also a matchmaker, but you probably should not use the matchmaker unless you are desperate because the wives shown usually are not of high honor and also cost land. If, however, you wish to marry them, you can visit the lord's castle and choose 'Court a bride'.

ASCENDING IN RANK
At the beginning of the game, you are a samurai lord (or, more properly, a gokenin). In order to become a hatamoto, you must gain honor, land, and equip more troops when you receive more territory. This will cause you to ascend the ladder of power. When you are at the highest point of honor, you can either choose to wait for your lord to die or kill him yourself, the latter being far more risky as you face a game over if you fail in your task. Also, keep in mind that you will have to take care of your jealous rivals in order to maintain your place. You can either do this by staying at home all the time, or kidnapping a member of their family and keeping them so as to provide leverage. They can be friendly to you, but they will still threaten you regardless.

The next level, being hatamoto, is almost a carbon copy of being a gokenin, but you are now provided with the fairly useless option of overthrowing your lord by strength of arms. This is useless because you will simply be wasting time to attack him directly, you will most likely need a strength that would get you to the highest rank regardless, and when you enter to assassinate him his guards will automatically be alerted to your presence. Best to either wait or assassinate him directly.

After you become daimyo, however, the game changes significantly. You no longer have the old overworld map, but can now move directly to your opponents, and encounters will occasionally present themselves without any input on your part. The campaign action is entirely directed at your command, as you can attack any province adjacent to you and take over. When you choose to move your army to conquer another province, the daimyo there will either surrender or he will attempt to fight you. Your kingdom will be colored in blue, while the other major opponents will be colored different shades. If you attack one of the colored enemies and fight a battle and win, you will increase the size of your land holdings.

As you get stronger, however the chance of part of your kingdom seceding grows, and it may occur so as to throw your plans into disarray. Once you gain control of Omi province (the province with the lake) and control half of the provinces, you may declare yourself shogun, at which all of the remaining independent daimyo will gather their forces to attack you. Defeat them, and you will win the game. However, declaring yourself shogun will not get you the best score. In order to get the best possible score, you must conquer every single province.

YOUR FINAL RANK
The ranks for your final score range from a forgotten shogun (worst) to a 300 year dynasty (best). In order to get the best score possible, you must get the following

12600 Soldiers A Vast Fief in 48 Provinces Unsurpassed Generalship Unsurpassed Honor An Adult Heir No Rivals Remaining

You can gain unsurpassed generalship by repeatedly fighting and winning battles, even when you have 8 points of generalship. I have only gained unsurpassed honor once, however, and do not recall how to gain it. If you know, please e-mail me at toenail_lord@yahoo.com so that I may edit it in. Thank you. :)

CONTROLS
The numberpad moves your character about. Pressing enter and pressing a number makes your character attack. 1, 2, and 3 are strong attacks which you must hold down to gain the maximum strength before releasing. The others are quick attacks. 5 does nothing. Pressing down backspace and a numberpad key allows you to parry.

HINTS
I never use backspace because I do not find it necessary. It is better to keep moving about and making quick attacks on the enemy instead of standing still and parrying him, since you can catch him off guard much easier if he is running around than if he is standing still. Only use the strong attacks if you're very sure you'll be able to hit him before he hits you- otherwise, you'll just get hit. Dueling is probably the easiest part of the game.

ENCOUNTERS
When you fight an enemy in a duel it is usually the same thing over and over, but with a different background. However, there is a rare encounter when you must fight three swordsman brothers and defeat them all in a row. This is probably the only derivative of dueling.

CONTROLS
Numberpad moves you around. Enter makes you attack- if you are at long range, you fire your bow, if at short, you use your sword.

HINTS
If you are attacked in the fields, quickly try to find a four-way intersection. This way, you can easily move away in any direction from your enemies if they get too close. Also, they will have to line themselves up on the path, making them easy targets, or they will have to slog through the paddies, thus making it easy for you to move up and take them down by moving up the quicker raised path. If you are attacked in town, try and use your surroundings to make your enemies have to come a long way towards you, i.e. by an alleyway or past a well or garden that makes them take a long trip to get to you. In a castle, remember, corners are your friends. In a hallway, you can use a long corner to make it so that your enemies have to march a long way to get to you, and you can move either way to get to safety from ranged fighters. Also, you can use corners in rooms to pounce on anyone who walks inside, especially spearmen.

There are four types of enemies in a melee- archers, swordsmen, arquebusers and spearmen. Archers can be dangerous, but only if you allow them to be. You can easily take care of them by making sure you have avenues of escape so as to be able to dodge them and shoot back. Make sure you always pay attention to see if they are coming after you. You can easily defeat them in close combat, but make sure that there isn't another archer waiting to shoot at you given the opportunity. Swordsmen are ridiculously easy to defeat, just shoot them at a distance, and if you hold down enter you can block their attacks and chop them down. Arquebusers are more deadly versions of archers, and only appear in more advanced levels of difficulty. If they shoot at you they can hit you almost instantly. Spearmen are likely the most tough, because they have a strong advantage against you in close combat and often you cannot deflect their blows. Either attack them from a corner, or move to the side where their spear isn't.

Whatever you do, do not get hit. You lose one of your main advantages, mobility, if you get hit, and thus are far more likely to die in a melee.

ENCOUNTERS
There are three locations to fight in- castle, fields, and town. There are several variations on the castle, where you are either defending your castle from an intruder, attacking someone else's castle, or attacking the lair of brigands or pirates. In the case of brigands, you need to kill all enemies present. In the case of pirates, you must track down and kill their leader. If you are attacking an enemy castle, the object of interest is usually on the highest floor. When you are defending yourself, the object you must protect is very nearby. If the alarm goes off when you are in an enemy castle, the owner will awaken and you must fight him in a duel to win. Otherwise, he will be sleeping when you find him. In your own castle, if you shoot the leader of the invaders from a distant, he will die after two hits. Otherwise, you will duel him, and, should you win, you will gain land. In three-story castles, on the top floor there will be cricket floors which will make noise if you touch them. They will be slightly differently detailed than the rest of the floor, which will either work for you or against you.

In towns, there are several different encounters. In one, you must slay a tax collector. In another, you must rescue the wife of the mayor before she is taken away by the brigands. In yet another, ninjas come to assassinate you. I know of no variations for the rice paddy encounters.

CONTROLS
The = key moves your troops and allows them to turn as necessary. The - key makes your troops move in a particular direction without turning. The * key on the numberpad turns your troops without moving them. The numbers will bring you to whichever unit of soldiers you chose.

HINTS
Make sure to flank your enemies as often as possible. When you are attacking, they will not attack unless you are very, very close by. What you would want to do is place a unit to their sides or in front so that you can maneuver them or keep them in place for another unit to attack. The best units to pin an enemy down with are infantry, while you attack with cavalry. Also, archers are useful for luring enemies into traps, where you fire at an enemy, make them go forward and then flank them with infantry or cavalry. Arquebussers are useful in attacking enemy formations because of their high power, but the enemy needs to be pinned down first or they will be attacked. The arquebussers cannot run, so they will be put into melee, which is a bad thing. When you are defending, try to match the enemy formation and attack their weakest point or flank them while they are still moving in the battle pattern so as to throw off their attack plan. Do not use archers in a forest to lure enemies into a forest. They will just be attacked in melee and damaged or destroyed.

ENCOUNTERS
Defending and attacking.

PART 6.) LEGAL INFORMATION
Copyright Toenail_lord 2005

This guide may be reproduced under any circumstances. It may be placed on any website or otherwise distributed publicly without advance permission.

This guide may not be altered without prior expressed permission from the author.

PART 7.) PARTING WORDS
Please distribute this guide and show it to all your friends and put it on your websites. I really don't care if it's placed somewhere else just as long as I get credit for it. I want people to get interested in this game and find out about it, so that it may get a little bit of the life it was denied.

Peace.