Hunt the Wumpus(TI99) FAQ/Walkthrough version 1.0.0 by schultw.andrez@sbcglobal.net(anti spam spoonerism) Please do not reproduce for profit without my consent. You won't be getting much profit anyway, but that's not the point. This took time and effort, and I just wanted to save a memory of an old game and the odd solutions any way I could. Please send me an email referring to me and this guide by name if you'd like to post it on your site. ================================ OUTLINE 1. INTRODUCTION 2. CONTROLS AND THE BOARD 3. GAME MODES 4. STRATEGIES 5. VERSIONS/CREDITS ================================ 1. INTRODUCTION Hunt the Wumpus was one of the first games ever for the computer. It featured 20 rooms, linked like the vertices of a dodecagon. You had to travel through rooms and figure where the Wumpus was by oblique clues. The TI-99 version adds a few twists. There are pits, bats that take you to a random room, and levels of difficulty. You also have winding passages that can confound matters or, in some cases, offer clues. I'm going to concentrate on the very easiest, because those have the most concrete strategy, and then extrapolate to the harder levels the strategy is basically "think harder." Of course, I'll try to give a few examples. 2. CONTROLS AND THE BOARD AND RULES You use Q to fire, when you think you know where the mugwump is, and ESXD or the arrows to move. I recommend the keyboard, as you are less likely to have the computer think you hit the same key twice and thus mess up anything you started. As you get better, this may be the most frequent way you lose. Also, to fire on the Mugwump, you don't need to be 1 square away. You can fire through a long corridor, and the arrow will get there. Watch out when restarting a game. You'll want to push Q after you lose a game to view the map, but push another key to go back to the game, as if the game skips, you may well wind up having to fire from your initial square. That's an automatic loss, since you always start on a square at least 2 away from the Mugwump. The board is 7x6. Each square may contain a slime pit, the mugwump, or a bat. Squares with one exit leading to a slime pit(through a tunnel of any length) are green. In addition, some squares that don't contain bends (UL/DR or UR/DL) have red squares. There's a rule to this, and it's what helps you solve the game. A red dot is two tunnels or less away from a mugwump. 3. GAME MODES Easy mode has 2 slime pits and 1 bat and 8-14 curvy squares, where you have either a U-L and D-R passageway or a U-R and D-L passageway. Hard and Pro mode have 2 bats and more curvy squares, which makes things more difficult, because you may be roadblocked from perfectly safe moves by a phalanx of squares with red dots. The default easy mode allows you to move from one square to another, one at a time. You can see every square you've been on, where the bats are(bats randomly decide whether to move you to another room, which may be lethal) and which rooms are close to slime pits. Blindfold doesn't let you see the previous room you were in. Express sends you from one room to another, with no passages. You can't back up if you get scared, and long tunnels aren't shown. 4. STRATEGIES Starting off on pro will probably get you in hot water, so I'll start with the easiest of the easy, and some basic rules. 1. if a red dot is next to a non-red dot, then all moves from the red dot are safe. Because all moves are to a square 2 away from a non-red, which cannot be the mugwump. 2. being able to establish a row or column helps you immensely in figuring out what is where. 3. if you have 2 green squares adjacent to a square you haven't been to yet, then that square is probably the slime square. However, that is not always the case. And in fact, if it is not, you know the slime pits are together. 4. try to exhaust all possibilities before risking going blindly from a green square(if you must)--unless, of course, you are pretty sure there is no slime pit that way. 5. as you get further through the board, it is more and more important to avoid bats, who can drop you anywhere, including on the mugwump or on a slime pit. 6. it is safe but not terribly productive to walk into a square that has a bend in it. You'll already know what's there, and it may help you to check your work or fill more of the board out, but it will not tell you anything about any additional squares. 7. try to figure out what squares need to have a bend in them. For instance, if you have b b b g ? g ? If the upper ? has a bend in it, then the lower ? has the slime pit. 8. on the hard levels, you may have to guess. It's better, if you only have 2 passages that might contain the mugwump, to fire away than to take chances exploring. It wastes less time, too. 9. if you get killed, be sure to study the map and see where your assumptions went wrong. The basic rule of being 2 away from something is best, but I found early on I miscalculated how curves went, and I re-miscalculated when I moved up to pro level. I didn't realize the passages could be so long. 10. if you can determine that having the mugwump in one square would cut off a red dot and there's no possible way to get to it, then by all means, shoot there. Just don't go by a hunch--make sure that there are no passages going off the screen, and identify a red dot that couldn't get to square X with 2 jumps. 11. I said it before, but double check passages from every square adjacent to a blank one. 12. And finally, if you have a red dot(A) adjacent to an empty, and a red(B) adjacent to THAT, then if you can safely verify 2 of the 3 paths from B are to safe squares, you can fire at the remaining one. It must be the mugwump. You may have to run around the board a bit to do this. 13. Probably the best strategy I find is to explore each red dot I find, and when I can't make any safe moves, then look for other blank squares and red dots. If there are a lot of blanks lumped together, then the non-blanks will be too, and that is helpful. 14. Don't feel you need to map the whole board. There's probably one weak square that will help you eliminate all other paths to the mugwump, and you can fire. 15. Take the time to make sure that winding passages don't make you forget that one dot is connected to another. It's tricky, but if you assume a dot is next to a blank and it's not(or vice versa) it messes everything up. 16. Accept that sometimes slime pits will be placed badly, or the mugwump will be on a green square. I think I've even seen him in a slime pit before. If you can't make any progress, don't bang your head. Just fire instead of walking around too much--you have plenty of time to check your work after you lose. 17. Back up immediately from a possible slime pit border and try to nibble around it and see if you can see which exits from it are safe. Also be aware that if a LOT of greens are in the same area, the pits are lumped. 18. Finally, after 20 or so games you probably need a break or you will start making dumb mistakes. Even if you are continually checking your work. 19. When you get to about 70% on one level, you're ready to advance to the next. 20. Hunches are pretty much worthless, so don't go on them unless you've really exhausted all the squares you can land on. Then, learn why they are wrong. 21. Always check your work, even when you think you've mastered the game. Now for some basic puzzles that can help you on your way. You'll see a lot of them early on. 0 | 0 - r - 0 <1 | r - r - r <2,3,4 This is a basic grid where you can see that 1 is red, so it is 2 squares away from the Mugwump. Now that path must go through square #3. It could actually go through 2 if 2 looped through, but you don't need to find that information out. You just need to find one tunnel--and of course, there are 4 that will win the game. The above happens a lot on the easy levels, and you should look for it at first before proceeding with tunnel connectors, which are technically the same thing, but they require a bit more verification. Like below. 0 | +-- r - 0 <1 | | - r - r---+ | | | +---+ Here we know the Wumpus is next to the DL of the red squares, so chip around there. Don't be demoralized if you find a loop--it's one less place to look, and a loop in fact precludes a lot of other tunnels that will confuse you elsewhere, since a level can only have so many loops. +---+ | | o - r - r - o | | Above, you know that the wumpus must be below either r. If you get a diagonal through the square below either, the puzzle is solved. Or if you can chip away at the sides to find one is not there, that works too. The big problem here is to find if the red dots pile up on the left or right. You have to be more careful on later levels, but remember that there are fewer actual squares on hard and especially pro, so the chance you'll guess right is greater. You can usually narrow the mugwump down to 2 corridors to shoot down, and that is good enough. Most other puzzles are a combination of the above with longer tunnels. If you want, you can use scratch paper to label rooms "1"(blank next to your red) or "2"(no blanks next to it) or note passage you would really like to explore. Then try to get to them via other roundabout ways to eliminate them. End of FAQ Proper ================================ 5. VERSIONS/CREDITS Thanks to the usual GameFAQs gang, current and emeritus. They know who they are, and you should, too, because they get/got some SERIOUS writing done. Good people too--bloomer, falsehead, Sashanan, Masters, Retro, Snow Dragon/Brui5ed Ego, ZoopSoul, War Doc, Brian Sulpher, AdamL, odino, JDog, Lagoona, Da Hui and others I forgot. OK, even Hydrophant in his current not- yet-banned message board incarnation. I am not part of his gang, but I want him to be part of mine. Thanks to CJayC for creating GameFAQs and SBAllen for creating the TI99 subsection. Hopefully this guide will help show his time was not wasted(totally.) Thanks to the writers of the Classic99 emulator and TI for making so many games free for us to play. Thanks to Wikipedia for the background information on Hunt the Wumpus.