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Refined Tips and Tricks (Spoilers)

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Ebon
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Refined Tips and Tricks (Spoilers)

Post by Ebon »

UPDATED 7/1/2007 - See last two posts for most recent Tips and Tricks.

Interested in how to get 344,000 Skill XP in one shot? Or how about going to your second quest (scratch that - FIRST QUEST) with an Obsidian weapon? Or how about killing Jack in two shots? If so, read on. This is my little guide on how to max out your stats and beat the game in under 4 hours. WARNING: there will be Spoilers throughout this post.

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Well, I’ve been playing Fable TLC on the PC for about a month now. I picked it for cheap and have definitely given it a work out. Since I got a lot of initial tips from this site that helped me in my games, I thought I’d return the favor by posting some of the refinements I’ve found. This is not a grand compendium or a be-all-end-all by any stretch of the imagination. I just wanted to pass along to the people who have helped me some of the little things I’ve found. Cheers.

Basics before we begin – just in case you don’t know:

‘Buy all/Sell all’ trick – Fable’s economy is based on Scarcity. That means things are cheaper when there is a lot in stock, and you sell things for more when the shop has none in stock. You can make a lot of money by buying a shop out of something that it has a lot of, then selling it back to the shop at an inflated price – repeatedly – without even leaving the store. In the beginning Will potions work well, mid-game Emeralds work well – late game Emeralds and Diamonds do well. I offer some advanced tips on this trick below.

Hero Save trick – During a quest you can Hero Save and then Load your game, keeping the XP, gold, and items already earned. This works best in the Hobbe Cave quest getting you two extra silver keys, a Will Masters potion, and about 30,000 XP. People also like to do it during the Arena for a lot of XP. Don’t use it more than 6 times or your profile will get corrupted. I don’t use it very often because I don’t like to retrace my steps.

On Teenage/Apprentice training:

After completing your initial training with the Guildmaster, you will be given the opportunity to “Play” with Whisper. I suggest doing this because it can be very beneficial for your early economy. Go back to the melee ring to be graded. If you beat Whisper while only getting hit at most 1 time, you’ll get an A+ and an Iron Katana. This may not seem like much, but it can actually be pretty handy in fighting Wasps, and at the very least can be sold for a 100+ gold, which is good this early in the game.

You can go to the Archery ring and get graded to get a crossbow, which again translates into an early 100+ gold. One trick here, how well you need to do depends on how you did in your training with the guildmaster. It’s easiest when you score around 40 on the first test with him. That will mean you only need a little over that to get an A+ on your graded test.

Finally, the most lucrative test is the Will training. This doesn’t seem to open up until after you’ve tested at one of the other ones though. I haven’t noticed any difference for grading between the first test and the second test, i.e. I’ve scored 24 on both the first test and 24 on the second graded test and it still gave me an A+. Your reward here is a Will potion and a Rez potion. Very nice and translates to an extra 600+ gold very early in the game.
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Post by Ebon »

On the Wasp attack:

You probably don’t need any help here, but I have noticed one cool boon with the timing if you play it just right. After you’ve graduated, take the quest and right away head off for the picnic grounds. Don’t search the guild or go after anything else. Go kill the Wasp queen, and skip through the cinematic by pressing ESC. Run back to the Lookout point and interact with the statue. The timing should work out that it’s pointing at Greatwood, so you can run over there, go in the nook, and get the Piercing augmentation way early in the game. Once again, we don’t really care about the item, only the fact that it can be sold for 1500+ Gold. If you want, go run around Greatwood and get the Will Master’s elixir.

On the Fishing Game:

It can be kind of a pain to get a fish big enough (30+ Grams) to get the silver key for the contest. One trick I’ve found is that you can keep fishing at the spot where the ripple for the moonfish appears. Even after the ripple is gone (and the one next to it), you’ll keep getting moonfish, which tend to be bigger than regular fish. One or two tries here usually gets you a fish big enough, rather than the half-dozen attempts it can take with normal fishing sometimes. Another trick is all you have to do is walk out of the fishing pond (after getting the golden fish and the silver key) and return to activate the contest.

On Trading:

I will offer some advice on making the well known ‘buy all the potions/gems, sell all’ trick work for you most efficiently. Extra levels of Guile will help of course, but they are NOT necessary. At this point in the game, you can get by with just Guile 1 and still make enough money to make life easier. I go back to the Guild, sell off all my Rez potions and the Piercing Augmentation. With the capital from that and the Wasp quest, you should have enough to buy the guild shop out of Will potions. Even with Guile 1, you can get the trick to work, quadruple your money, and buy a vastly better weapon. Personally, I go for the Obsidian Longsword. I don’t think it’s worth going through the trick however many times to get a master weapon at this point. The bandits/guards you’ll face at Orchard Farm and Greatwood Gorge will die in two hits to an Obsidian Longsword and two hits to a Master Axe, so why give yourself carpal tunnel.

One thing I have noticed is that your attire can affect your profit margins significantly. One time I tried to do it with Dark Villager gear on and Guile 3. I was only making about 8 gold per potions per iteration, which sucks. I changed into Apprentice gear, and the margin went up to 25. I’m not sure, but attractiveness seems to play a role, so it may be worth investing in a Normal Haircut and Normal Beard to boost those stats. Speaking of Apprentice clothing, you can always sell off your Villager gear at a clothing shop to raise some extra cash and just wear your Apprentice get up.

More stuff on early trading: The guild shop may be a good shop to do the trick, but he’s not the best. He’s a good place to get your quantity up, cause after a while you want to get as many potions as you can to pull off the trick most efficiently. I’ll buy him out, check when he’s going to restock, go off to Bowerstone, sleep a few days, go back and buy him out again, just to get the number of potions up so I’m making twice as much money each time I do it. One note on going to Bowerstone for the FIRST time, it will turn the clock BACK to morning. So even if you go in at night, it doesn’t jump ahead, and the guild shop won’t get re-stocked. The time goes backwards.

Speaking of Bowerstone, the shop keeper here is actually one of the best places to do the ‘buy all/sell all’ trick with Will potions. You need to come to him with plenty in hand to make it work though. Buy him out even though it’s expensive, and sell your 60+ potions back to him at a reasonable price. When you buy them back from him though, you’ll notice he sells them for like 21gp when he has an excess amount, which is better than the 33 the guild shop sells them for. This means your margin on each iteration is even better, making you more money even faster. He’s also a good spot for another reason, because he’s so close to a Cullis Gate, which I will explain further below.

One thing I haven’t seen mentioned is that the Skill experience you get from trading and doing the ‘buy all/sell all trick’ IS affected by your Combat Modifier. This can be a serious benefit for your XP. I will go off somewhere, get my combat modifier up, and port back to the shops before I do the trick. This will translate into some nice bonus XP when timed correctly. The best I’ve ever gotten was upwards of 344,000 Skill XP on one trade that happened very luckily. I had collected a bunch of Emeralds, gone through the Hobbe Killing Contest, and the Hobbe Cave. Since I had been to Oakvale I already had upwards of 100 emeralds in stock. I went to the Darkwood Demon Door, the one with the combat challenge. I took the challenge and got my Combat Modifier to 25+. A trader spawned, and I had to go run after him after killing all the Hobbes. He was an Emerald trader, so I went from like 100,000gp to 1,000,000 (I was making 70,0000+ per iteration focusing only on Emeralds) and got 344,000+ Skill XP in one go. Pretty sweet eh? The tricky part is getting the right trader to spawn. I tried to do it again with another character after the Escort trader quest, but before the Hobbe Killing Cave quest, and the wrong trader spawned.
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Post by Ebon »

On the Physical shield:

As no doubt many have read, getting the Physical Shield can be really helpful in keeping your Combat Modifier high, and hence, getting a lot of XP. What I haven’t seen mentioned is that if you go this route, it means you don’t have to worry about Armor. If you have Physical Shield activated, the damage you take is unaffected by your armor. Go ahead and try it for yourself. I had to experiment with one guy who I let put me in a corner. I’d put on the Shield wearing Plate armor, let him hit me a couple times, and see how much damage it did. I’d heal up, then wear nothing but my British Drawers, let him hit me the same number of times and find that the damage done to my Will power was the same.

This means that for most of the time, you can wear whatever clothing (or lack there of) you feel like without handicapping yourself. The only time I ever worry about armor is when I expect to take enough damage to drop the Physical Shield before I’ll have time to react. This usually only occurs at the final battle with Jack the Dragon by which time I have Archon’s Armor on. Otherwise, I run around in Will User attire.

It’s important to continually improve your Physical Shield. If you are gaining XP at the break neck pace I describe, you’ll be going up in renown and the enemies will start getting stronger fast. I usually raise Physical shield and Mana Power with all my general XP because otherwise the damage you take will be too much. I usually have two levels in PS before doing the Escort the Traiders quest, and mastered PS before Finding the Bandit Seeress.

The other reason I like Physical Shield is that it is very synergistic with this character build. You’re buying as many Will potions as you can find, so you have plenty of reserves. I tend to use two handed weapons, which also work well with the Shield because you don’t get stunned when hit. Physical Shield also opens up a nifty way to get a lot of Will XP. You get 5 XP times your Combat Modifier every time you activate the shield. One thing that works well is that after you’ve cleared all the enemies out of a given area and raised your CM, you can rapidly turn your Shield on and off. Near the beginning I’ll do this anytime my CM is around 20+ and until it runs down to about 15. You’ll have to use a lot of Will potions to make this work, but thankfully you probably have 200+ so it should be just fine.

To master the Physical Shield you have to get pretty ‘Good’ in your morality. I usually take Protect Orchard Farm, Escort the Raiders, then Hobbe Killing contest, and the Hobbe Cave twice with a Hero save. This gets me ‘Good’ enough to purchase level 4 Physical shield, but not too good. You don’t want to get too good, because the best spell I’ve found to complement Physical Shield is Berserker.

Some people have said they like Slow Time to complement Physical Shield. I like it, but I usually go for Berserker first. Slow Time doesn’t work as well with my combat style. It delays the XP orbs from coming out of guys, and it sometimes will let you take all the Hit points from an enemy without actually killing them. I’ve had too many instances where in the Arena Whisper just taps somebody I already hit in Slow Time mode, denying me the XP. I still will buy Slow Time, but I use it less often. So I have since taken up the fast and furious assault of the Berserker. You don’t have to wait for Orbs, your combat goes quicker, you tend to get higher Combat Modifiers, you swing great weapons with one hand, your enemies can’t block your shots, and you get decapitations all the time. Pretty fun.

The problem with Berserker is it can be a pain to master along side Physical Shield, because the Shield wants you to be good, and the Berserker wants you to be bad. Don’t get me wrong, you can do just fine with Berserker 3, but I like to get it mastered with as little effort as possible. In a little bit, I’ll tell you how.
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Post by Ebon »

Where last we left off:

OK, so in terms of your general quest status, we’ve just finished the Protect Orchard Farm quest. Along the way, we’ve been buying as many will Potions as we can find, and if we’re rich enough and lucky enough, Emeralds. It’s also a good idea to buy as many Crunchy Chicks as you can for later as well.

As many know, it’s crucial to save your ‘Ages of . . . ‘ potions till you have a high Combat Modifier, because you get 1,000 XP per CM. By this time you should have gotten an Ages of Might in the house southeast of the Barber in Bowerstone and an Ages of Skill in the Pond at Lookout point. The question is when to use them? I’ve experimented with a number of character builds. One option is to save them all the way to the Arena when you’ve got a CM of like 60+. I don’t really like this option because it stalls your progress too much. Another Option is to wait until the end of the Escort the Traiders quest when you face the Stone Troll. When you are here, you can target the troll with your bow, and continually charge it up. If you get close, he’ll use his less damaging area attack, which you can back away from, and then get close to him again. I usually let him do his jump attack about 20 times (refilling my Will power as needed) then let go of my bow string. Since you’ve been charging your bow the whole time, one hit will kill him and give you a CM of 25 or so. This is a good time to use your Ages potions and also chow down on Red Meat (for Strength XP) which you can get a lot of at the Darkwood Camp store, Fish (or Will XP), and Carrots (for Skill XP) which you can buy a lot of at the Bowerstone store.

A side benefit of chowing down on a lot of produce at the end of this quest is you can then go to the Demon Door in Barrow fields, which wants you to be fat, which you will be after eating 50+ Red Meat and 50+ carrots, and nets you a Will Masters Potion. From here you can go to the Grey house, fish for the silver key, and if you’ve gotten all the other ones along your way you should now have ten to open the chest with the sharpening augmentation. You’ll also get a couple more Ages potions that are really handy.

There is one problem with this second way. IMHO, you want to have Physique 3 and the Master Greatsword before going on the Escort the Traiders quest. It’s not necessary at all, but it makes it nice and easy when you’re killing all the bandits with just one hit. To get the Strength XP prior to the quest, I have sometimes used the Ages of Might potion after getting my CM up around 10+, usually in Greatwood Gorge. I hate grinding, so I don’t like running around killing guys just for Strength XP. You can use a little General XP to get your Strength up there, but generally I try and save my General XP for Will powers. Also, if you use it now and have a little left over, you often can jump from STR1 to STR4 in one go. In my mind, getting three advancements early on is more valuable than getting one advancement late game, especially cause you’ll have more STR XP than you know what to do with later in the game.

On Oakvale:

The Gamebanshe walkthough states there is no ‘Evil’ way to handle the Ghost and opening up the Chicken kicking competition. This isn’t true. There is a very simple way to speed this quest up and keep all the loot for yourself. Right after you talk to Maze and he takes you down to the shore line, run over to where the widow hangs out – then kill her. No really, it works. I got so pissed off at having to run all over Bowerstone that I finally just took my aggression out on the poor widow. Lo and behold, when you run over to the chicken kicking competition, the guy says ‘I need a Hero to get rid of a ghost. Oh, you already have. Well come play chicken kicking.’ All the buried treasure is available for you to grab for yourself as well. So for a little murder, you get less hassle and more gold.

One thing I’ve seen some people complain about is having played chicken kicking dozens of times and never getting the silver key. This contest is different then the fishing contest in that if you do too good, you don’t get the lower rewards. You need to kick between 150-249 to get the key. After I’ve gotten at least 150, I’ll often kick the chicken down the center, or walk over the line, just so I don’t risk getting 250 or more and not getting the silver key.

My first stop is usually to the general store to buy the owner out of produce and Emeralds. I’ve found the ‘Buy all/sell all’ trick works fastest when you focus on just one or two items and accumulate a large quantity of them. So I usually focus on Emeralds. While buying him out, I take note of how soon it will be before he restocks. After the chicken kicking competition opens up, you can make use of the bed in the house nearby for free and without danger of the guards. I’ll sleep there however many days it was until the next Emerald supply comes in, and then go buy him out again. You can do the ‘Buy all/sell all’ here for just a little while and get hundreds of thousands of gold.
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Post by Ebon »

On hunting Hobbes:

The other advantage of getting the Master Greatsword is you can start crafting what I have termed my ‘Hobbe Killing Stick’. In Greatwood Gorge you will find a Flame Augmentation, you can buy another one in Darkwood Camp, and you’ll get a Lightning Augmentation at Darkwood Weir. Hobbes are vulnerable both to Flame and Lightning making this an extremely powerful weapon for dispatching them.

I’ve seen it said bandits and guards are weak to Flame, but that’s not been my experience. If you don’t believe me, try it for yourself. Take a weapon, hit a bandit a couple times and watch the numbers in the lower left hand corner to see how much damage you are doing. Put a Flame Augment on the weapon and hit them again. You’ll see that the damage doesn’t change. On the other hand, for Hobbes the damage goes up for each augmentation.

Hobbes give you a decent amount of XP and are relatively easy to kill, especially if your next two stops are the Hobbe killing Contest and the Hobbe Cave. You’ll be killing all of the shorter hobbes in just one hit, and the big one in two. Cast Berserk and you’ll mow them down like grass.

On Hobbe Cave:

I’ve found that the number of enemies you face and the amount of experience you get changes based on how you walk through the caves. The standard route is to rescue the bandit, and offer him up as a replacement for the boy, either leaving him to die or killing the Imp as you see fit. This will actually spawn less enemies and get you less XP.

You can skip saving the bandit, raid the Cave Larder, and make your way to Focus Chamber. You meet the Imp who says you need to provide an alternative sacrifice. At this point, I run over to the circle of flowers to dig up the silver key. The Imp will just float there waiting for you. I then charge up my bow again like we did with the Stone troll, but for not as long, and kill her in one shot. This makes it easier to kill her than when you’ve got hobbes running around your feet. It also seems to piss them off, and spawns a lot more hobbes for you to kill on your path back. This can make the quest more difficult, but more lucrative, and if you are using the ‘Hobbe Killing Stick’ it’s not that hard.

I’ll often do a Hero Save at the Hobbe Cave so I can get an extra couple of silver keys and another Will Masters potion. If you really get in a groove, you can go through the Cave four times, get your silver keys up to 20 and get the Murren Greathammer before even going to the bandit camp. But that can get pretty boring. With just one Hero Save though, I’m ‘Good’ enough and have enough experience to master Physical Shield, get a level or two in Slow time, some ranks in Multi-Strike, and some levels in Berserk.

On finding the Bandit Seeress:

I always chose the Bandit Blood Boast because I know I’m going to be killing a lot of bandits to get a lot of XP. Some people have posted a couple ways to make getting through the gates easier. One way is to hide behind the rock and use Slow time to race around and through the gate when no one is looking. This usually works best. However, I have discovered another way. With the Master Greatsword and Slow Time, and a little arrow sniping, you can actually kill all three guards before they raise the alarm. It takes good timing and a lot of speed, but it is possible to do.

At this point in the game, we’re looking to accumulate as many ‘Evil’ points as possible so we can master Berserk. Step one is to buy the store out of Crunchy Chicks, but don’t eat them quite yet, just hold on to them like you’ve been doing with any found along the way from other traders. Step two is you can kill the game dealer to get your Bandit Pass. Don’t forget to raid the southern nook for an Ages potion and a buried silver key.

Make your way to the showdown with Twin Blade. We’re going to want to kill him for evil points, but not too fast. After you’ve defeated him, you can cast Slow Time and run around killing all the other bandits. This way you won’t have to face both them and Twin Blade when you attack him. After they’re all dead, finish off Twin Blade and raid his tent for loot.
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Post by Ebon »

On Skorm’s Bow and Berserk:

I’ve seen people post how they’ve sacrificed upwards of thirty people to the Chapel of Skorm and not gotten Skorm’s Bow. If you are doing that, you are doing it all wrong. To get Skorm’s Bow, you need to get around 500 or so Evil points in ONE shot. If you’ve sacrificed 30 people, you’re probably so Evil you’ll never get the bow. You’d be better off going to the Temple of Avo, donating a boat load of money to get really good, and trying for the bow again.

After defeating Twin Blade is the best time to do this. Rather than port back to the guild, run into the camp and hire the Evil Merc. Some people have said when you sacrifice and who you sacrifice doesn’t matter. Maybe this is the case for other platforms, but for the PC it certainly does matter. If you don’t believe me try sacrificing one of the shop keepers from Darkwood Camp and see how well you do. Not very well, I’d wager. After hiring this Merc, port to Bowerstone, go into the Tavern and Hire the other Evil Merc. I also tend to sleep in the Inn till it’s early evening.

From here, port to Barrow Fields, and race to the Chapel of Skorm. You can kill a few guys along the way, but don’t waist too much time, as starting your trek when it’s already dark is meant to minimize your down time waiting for midnight, but can be cutting it kind of close.

Once at the Chapel you want to sacrifice the two Evil Mercs as close to midnight as possible. Some times you hear ‘Lights out you horrible lot’ sometimes you see money being taken to pay your mercs (on the hour every hour), but sometimes these indicators don’t appear. So sometimes I just do the sacrifice when it looks like midnight to me rather than letting the time go past. The first one should give you the bow, but I tend to skip through the cinematics because I want to sacrifice the second one close to midnight as well. Do that, as quickly as possible and you should generate well over a 1000 Evil points in total.

Unfortunately, this probably still won’t be enough Evil points to get Berserk four. That’s where the crunchy chicks come into play. Port back to the guild, and chow down on chickadees. I usually do them in groups of 25 and test to see if Berserk 4 has become available. It seems you don’t have to become truly Evil, just neutral enough though. I’ve tried re-hiring the Mercs to sacrifice them again, but they don’t seem to re-spawn until you’ve done another quest. So the crunchy chicks chow down is the easiest and fastest way to change your alignment the rest of the way.

On Witchwood:

The other nice thing about becoming Evil at this point in the game is that it sets us up nicely for getting the Sentinus. The Temple of Avo works just like the Temple of Skorm. In order to get the Sentinus, you have to get a hundreds of ‘Good’ points in one shot. With one character, I went to the Temple with tons of money and already nearly maxed out in my ‘Good’ personality. I gave a few thousand, and then I gave like 200,000 to try and get the Sentinus. No Sentinus appeared and I only got like 50 good points. I gave another 200,000. No Sentinus and no ‘Good points’. I gave another 300,000, and got nothing. I had maxed out my ‘Good’ trait and so I couldn’t get the Sentinus to be awarded. The same thing will happen in reverse at the Temple of Skorm, which is why it’s easier for Good characters to get the Bow.

Likewise, that’s why at this point in our quest, we are well positioned to get the Sentinus. We’ve just generated a ton of Evil points to get the Bow, and more still to master Berserk. All it will take at the temple is throwing a couple thousand at first and around 60,000 after that to get the Sentinus. The Sentinus is a really nice weapon to have because it has the Silver augmentation on it, making it perfect for killing Balverines. If you want, you can donate some more money to have your age reduced and be granted the title of Paladin.

The White Balverine:

At first, it really doesn’t matter what weapon you hit him with, it only counts hits. For a funny image, pull out your old ‘Stick’ and hit him with that. It works just as well as a Great weapon. Also, don’t forget to get all the Silver keys along the way.
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Post by Ebon »

On the Murren Greathammer:

After the White Balverine, if you’ve Hero Saved at the Hobbe Cave and gotten all the other silver keys available, you should have 20, which makes the Murren Greathammer at the Hero’s Guild available. The first few times I played through the game I just went for the Solus Greatsword. I’ve since come to prefer the Murren Greathammer. The MG has a couple big things going for it despite its reduced damage, namely its augmentations. The Experience Augment is much more beneficial in my opinion than either the Health or Flame Augment on the Solus. Furthermore, you’ll find that in the later parts of the game most of your enemies have armor making the Piercing Augmentation more valuable than the sharpening Augment on the Solus.

Do your own experiment. Hit a couple Minions with the Solus, than hit another couple with the MG. You’ll see the MG actually does more damage. With maxed out strength, Berserk 4 and the MG you can actually kill minions in just one shot. It won’t happen right after Berserk is cast because it takes a few seconds to rev up. But after that, you can slaughter them with impunity. The Solus still works best though against unarmored foes, namely guards, bandits, and the kraken.

On Enflame:

A number of people have touted this as the be all/end all of spells. I think it’s pretty good, but I’ll wait till later before getting a bunch of levels in it. I find it really helpful in a couple places though. When crawling through the prison dungeons, I like to cast Slow time and race past all the guards and get them to congregate at the end. Then I’ll let loose with an Enflame, go Berserk, and Decapitate the lot of them. Enflame also works well against the Kraken. His tentacles can be a pain to hit, but Enflame makes them easily go down. Then I unleash a Multi-Strike Berserk attack against the Kraken head.


Afterword:

So far my little refined tip list has given a map for about the first half of the game. I’m not going to go any further, because from here on out you should play however you see fit. I hope though I’ve given you some helpful hints on the initial stages for making your character building more fun and efficient. But since I promised it early on, I’ll give a few final tips on defeating Jack.

On Jack of Blades:

I’ve seen a lot of posts saying they needed hundreds of potions to defeat Jack. Using the above build this really won’t be necessary. You will need a number of maxed out spells though. At this point I’ll have mastered Physical Shield, Berserk, Slow Time, Multi-Strike, Assassin’s Rush, and Multi-Arrow. The last five spells don’t even really need to be mastered to pull this off however.

When Jack first starts, he’s protected by a field that you can’t get through until you kill his minions. I wait till they all get up and get going, I cast Slow Time, quickly followed by Berserk (this sequence seems to work best). The Murren’s Greathammer and Berserk makes cutting down the Minions pretty easy. Often Slow Time and Berserk will still be going when I’ve killed them all and Jack’s shield drops. If it’s taken me a little longer to kill the Minions, I’ll actually leave one of them alive, let the spells time out and cast them again.

Once Jack is unprotected, I cast Multi-Strike and often Assassin’s Rush to get up near him. One hit from a Str7, Berserk 4 Multi-Strike 4 Murren Greathammer will do the trick.

Jack then goes into aerial mode. I pull out Skorm’s bow, cast Multi-arrow, charge the bow up a bit keeping an eye on my Physical Shield and replenishing with Will potions as needed. Let loose with one charged shot or two quick shots and Jack is Dead. The same tactics work well for most of the other Boss enemies and make zooming through the later half of the game pretty easy.

Thanks for reading, and let me know if you have any other improvements.

Cheers,

Ebon
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Post by Ebon »

Updated

So here’s my first update in quite a while. I’ve beat Fable: TLC more times than I can count. After a while, I decided to challenge myself to see how fast I could complete the game without using any hero saves or file manipulations.

My record for completing Fable: TLC is 2 hours and 22 minutes, and that’s with letting the credits play all the way through. That means I beat Jack the Dragon in around 2 hours and 10 minutes.

So here’s my new refined tips and tricks, this time with doing a speed run in mind.

On trading: Appearance does matter along with your Guile skill. However, your Appearance and Scariness max out after a while at +100 each. What I’ve found is once you’re at +100, it doesn’t matter what you wear, so long as it doesn’t bring your Appearance below +100. So I don’t really bother with clothing or Armor for the most part (as I said above, Armor doesn’t matter so long as you have the Physical Shield active).

On Fishing: If you are interested in a speed run, skip it. For the most part, it takes too much time, and doesn’t provide enough reward. There are a couple exceptions, but on the whole, don’t bother.

On Silver Keys: Once again, skip ‘em, if you are interested in the speed run. I pick up just 5 of the easiest to acquire, and forget the rest. On the whole, you’ll realize they aren’t worth the time and effort.

On Experience: I stick to a pretty similar build as I described above. I’m a battle mage with maxed out Physical Shield, Berserk, Slow Time, Multi-Strike, Assassin’s Rush, Multi-Arrow, and Enflame. In my first posts I described how you can accumulate a lot of experience by repeatedly turning on and off your Physical Shield. I’ve figured out a couple tricks since then. First, it works best if you set the Physical Shield to 3-5 of your hotkeys. I usually put it on 7, 8, and 9. That way, I can hit all three buttons repeatedly. This lets you cast the spell much faster and many more times while your CM runs down. It only takes a second to run through your mana, then swallow a Will potion, and do it again. This allows you to get a lot of Mana XP very early in the game.

However, in addition to Physical Shield, Summon actually works better and faster using this trick. It casts quicker, takes less mana, and allows you to gain more XP even faster. After getting Physical Shield, Summon is actually the second spell I get because it makes it so easy to get all the other spells I need. Like I said, I usually hotkey Summon to 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 early in the game. I used to be addicted to this trick, and whenever I got my Combat Modifier above ten I’d use it to rack up 10,000+ in Will XP. In the interest of doing a speed run, I started limiting myself to only doing it a couple times when needed. As you go through the game, you are easily going to max out your stats, so you don’t need to do this all the time. I do it at the end of quests and that’s about it.
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Ebon
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Post by Ebon »

On Silver Quests: In keeping with the speed run theme, I don’t go on any of the Silver Quests. No Hobbe Killing Contest, No Hobbe Cave, No Hero Saving. You’d think this would make it a lot harder due to lacking some experience, but I found it not to be much of an issue.

On Maxing out Spells: Due to no Silver Quests, the build I described above gets altered a bit. I used to be able to max out Physical shield before going to Twinblade’s camp. When on a speed run, this has to wait until after the Find the Archealogist quest in Witchwood. After rousting him from his hiding place, I learned you can speed things up by not warping back to the Hero’s Guild. I just continue on my way to Knothole Glade, stopping by the Temple of Avo to max out my Good rating and to get the Sentinus. Whenever you accept a new quest it erases from memory the last place you ported to. So instead of going back to the Guild after finding the Archeologist, you can continue on to Knothole Glade, facing very few enemies. When you make it there, the gate becomes active for you. When you go back to the Guild, and accept the quest you can warp directly to Knothole Glade. It’s also here when I get level 4 of Physical Shield.

On starting out: So as I edited my initial post to indicate, I figured out it is possible to get the Obsidian Long sword before even taking your first quest. After finishing my training, I go and buy out the Guild shop of potions. Rather than going on the Wasp menace quest, I head to Bowerstone. Once there, I get the Normal Haircut, Beard, and Sheriff mustache to max out my appearance. I steal the Ages of Might potion and buy a fishing rod and spade from the item shop. I then sleep at the Inn for two nights, and warp back to the Guild. I buy the restocked Will potions, and do the buy all/sell all trick enough to buy the Obsidian Long sword.

After getting the Sword, I take the Wasp Menace quest, but before going to the picnic grounds, I fish for the Ages of Skill potion. Normally I would ignore the chance to fish, but I found it too be really helpful in just one minute.

At the Wasp quest I found a neat little trick can happen sometimes. Once the Wasp queen shows up, if you kill just 1 or 2 of the wasps she sends after you, you can then go after the Queen herself. For whatever reason, she is somewhat immune to your damage until you either kill all the little wasps, or she is able to spin off and send some more wasps at you. Even though she is immune, if you hit her repeatedly with the Obsidian Long sword, your Combat Modifier will continue to rise. This doesn’t happen perfectly every time. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. But on my record run of 2 hours and 22 minutes, I got my Combat modifier up to 13 on my very first quest; I then used both the Ages of Might potion and the Ages of Skill potion.

13,000 Skill and Might XP are really handy this early in the game. I get my Strength pumped, my Guile and Speed up, and get enough gold to buy the Master Great sword. The following quests are pretty easy cause you’re one-hit-killing all the bandits.

Finally, because I was doing a speed run, I skipped the Temple of Skorm and Skorm’s bow. I find a Master Longbow with 3 sharpening augmentations does just fine for taking down Jack of Blades. Once he is dead, I opt to kill Theresea and keep the Sword of Aeons. This gives you a massive boost of bad karma. After that I kill all the Prophets of the Fire Heart, and if needed, eat a bunch of Crunchy Chicks. This will make Berserk 4 available, which I use with Multi-strike to finish off the rest of the quests.

Thanks for checking out my Update, and good luck with all your games.

Cheers again,

Ebon
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taxi
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Post by taxi »

congrats

your the first person ive seen that says produce is the best money maker not property :) keep up the good n proper info
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