Bedroom
The game starts in your room. Before moving, [L]ook at the things around you, then try [A]cting. This is good policy everywhere you go. The game rewards you for being curious.
Bedroom
[A]ct to open the chest, [A]ct to open the drawer, then [G]et "All" (easier than picking up things one at a time.) The stuff in the chest is your starting equipment. Remember, you need to [E]quip it after you pick it up or it won't be any use.
Note: It's important to get the mirror now, because later on the game may glitch and delete it from the room, and you'll miss a fun plot point.
Leave the room and you'll run into Jacob. Do what he says and go upstairs. Talk to the Archmage Eldritch there. He asks you to find some Adamantite dust. The quest begins!
Eldritch
Jacob
Go downstairs, and down again, to the library. Find the book on the table and [A]ct to learn the light spell. That was easy!
Check out the books along the wall to learn about doppelgangers.
Go downstairs again. Go to the dining room and check out the map on the wall. Handy!
Tower Interior
Map On The Wall
Leave the building. Now you're in town. Go west and north until you find Moe's Magic Shop. No one's home, but you can go in and collect a flyer for a potion sale.
Bring the flyer back to the tower and all the way up to the floor your room is on. North of your room is Drek's room. [T]alk to him, then after he mentions the magic shop, end the conversation and [D]rop a flyer on him. He'll vanish. Explore his room and you'll find a scroll with the Heal spell. [A]ct to memorize the spell.
Drek
Daxam
This is where things start getting complicated. You'll need to go into the wilderness, so you'll need to get companions. Leave the tower again and head south and west into the bar.
Go through the kitchen and into the basement. Cast Light to look around. In the barrel is a pouch with 40 gold.
In Town
Interior
On your way out, [T]alk to Mayheco the barkeep. He relays you to Billy Bob, the bucket seller. His shop is east of the tower in town. Talk to him and he'll refer you to Alvin. Good to know.
Mayheco
Billy Bob
Instead of chasing Alvin, go into the hotel east of the bar. The only way to get into the rooms is to rent one from Mary, so do that. In one of the rooms you'll find Riley, but he won't cooperate until you get Sir Isaac to sober up. Go over to the bar and talk to Sir Isaac. Seems he wants apples.
Mary
Riley
Leave the town through the south gate. Northwest in the woods you'll find a bunny in a cage. Set it free and it will turn into a dryad, who will give you some seeds. Go to the fancy garden to the southwest and [A]ct to plant them.
Town Gate
Outside By The Town
High Desert
The Woods
Caged Bunny
Idunn The Dryad
Wander away for a while. Maybe try to fight a few monsters. If you get poisoned or paralyzed, Brother Vincent can heal you in town. If you get killed, just accept the free resurrection and walk outside again. You'll lose some gold doing this, but you can always get more through combat. In fact, that's the only thing random combat is good for in this game. Seriously. There is no such thing as experience from combat. No matter how often you fight - which will be often - you learn nothing!
Typical of a teenage apprentice I suppose.
Brother Vincent
Rat
Giant Snake
Eventually when you return to the garden you'll find apples. Collect them and bring them back to the bar. [D]rop them on Sir Isaac and he will join you. Lead him into the hotel and [T]alk to Riley again. Now you've got a decent party!
Fancy Garden
Sir Isaac
Sir Isaac is not very strong, but Riley is good. He will also give you essential information at times. You could potentially dismiss Sir Isaac just to cut down on maintenance. The game scales encounters according to the size of your party, eliminating most of the advantage of having extra companions.
Now that you have some muscle, it's time to fetch Alvin. Head northeast out of town into the forest, then north until you find a rope going down into a hole. Go down, cast Light, and wander around until you encounter Alvin mid-battle with some goblins. Join Alvin's battle and he will join you afterward.
Goblin
Alvin
In the lower-right corner of the big room past Alvin you'll find a secret door on the south wall. Walk through it. In the next room, on a blank-looking patch of floor (how informative), you'll find a shovel.
Down the ladder nearby is a nasty fight with a ghoul which you may wish to defer.
Ghoul
Exit the hole, back up into the forest. Go back to the fancy garden where you got the apples. [A]ct to dig with the shovel. [G]et the nightcrawlers.
Go back to town, over to the fountain. [D]rop the nightcrawlers on the fountain. The fish will eat them, then retrieve a blue key for you. [G]et the key.
Plains
Fountain
In the northeast corner of town is a haunted house. You can walk into it now that you have the blue key. Here you'll encounter a pack of ghosts, which could be a nasty battle. If you're having trouble with them, note that you can run away from the combat and then just step into the house past them. Instead of chasing you they'll stick to the door.
Ghost
The Fear spell is written on the wall inside the house. If you need to, run away from the combat a second time to get outside.
By the way, the house next to the haunted house is locked on the outside, but there's a secret door on the west wall of the tower basement that will get you inside, where you'll find a nice defensive item to [E]quip.
And by the by the way, there's a character named Sedrick in the building nearby that you can hire for extra support, but he's generally not worth it. Plus he speaks only in rhyme, which can get on your nerves after a while.
Sedrick
Bring Alvin to visit his friend Billy Bob the bucket seller, and you'll get a free bucket.
Go over to the bar and talk to Phineas Taylor. Among other things, he'll tell you about his bears.
Phineas Taylor
Leave town and go to the edge of the forest, just to the northwest, where you'll see a conspicuous-looking tree with a hole in it. There's a bee hive here. [A]ct to hang your bucket from the tree, then go wandering around for a while. You'll need to waste a lot of time or the bucket will only be half full. A day or two will suffice.
Stout Forest
Dark Forest
Head out into the wilderness until you encounter a wandering character named Bounty Bob. He's usually southwest of the town. He'll tell you about his search for a diamond mine. Get him to tell you where it is, and then since you're with him, buy the pick he's carrying.
Bounty Bob
Collect the bucket from the tree if you haven't already.
Head north past the lake to the slimy pool. Now you can [A]ct to dive into it, since you've talked to Bob. Wander around in a clockwise direction until you find a statue. Riley will explain that you can invoke it. [A]ct to invoke. It'll tell you a few interesting things about the cabin near the lake.
Lake
Slimy Pool
Leave the way you came, by [A]cting on the pool. Go west to the cabin, and knock on the door. If your bucket is full enough, you can sneak inside.
Goldilocks is hilarious. As soon as she joins you, head over to the rug. She'll find a ladder. Go down and poke around in the secret lair. Grab the wizard's hat, and open the wooden coffer to find a scroll. [A]ct on it to learn Silence. Try the porridge and the beds on the way out of the cabin.
Cabin
Goldilocks
The bucket is outside the cabin where you left it. [G]et the bucket, for use in the next adventure. To wrap things up, go back to the pub in town and look for Phineas. In his place you'll find tickets to the circus. Grab those.
Since you're in the pub, talk to Cookie in the back room and ask about his stew. [A]ct to try the stew. Errrgh! Oh look, he dropped some matches. [G]et those.
Cookie
Go into the tower and [T]alk to Drek. Ask to buy something from him, and he'll sell you a "powerful potion". It'll be expensive, so you may need to go fight critters until you have enough cash.
Leave town and head west, to the big boulder. If you have enough strength and/or companions, you can [A]ct to move it aside, revealing a ladder.
In the first room you'll find a statue. [A]ct to pour the potion on it. [T]alk to Jennifer and she'll join your party.
When you enter the next room you'll be attacked by guards, and it'll be a nasty battle. Steal their gold and playing cards afterwards.
Jennifer
Guard
The door closest to the card table leads to a room with some equipment. Grab it if you like. The next time you rest, your companions will ask to use the equipment and swap their gear around.
South of there is a room with beds. One has a chest next to it. [A]ct on the chest, then on the stone, then [G]et the jail keys.
Due south, there is a secret door on the east wall. This leads to a jail.
Rescue Sneezy from one of the cells. In another cell you'll find Medusa. Show her the mirror.
Sneezy
Medusa
Now here, I had to personally take a little diversion, because I could not find the mirror in my inventory, and it had also vanished from my room back in the tower. The game had absorbed it somehow. I really wanted to defeat Medusa though, because maybe she would drop some fantastic treasure! But what could I do?
Hack the game, obviously.
Usually, I would hack a saved game. That is, I would save my game in the emulator so my progress gets written to a virtual disk file, shut down the emulator, and then open up the disk file in a hex editor and go looking around. But in this case, I was dealing with disk files that were much more sophisticated representations of the media that Tangled Tales was originally sold on, because using anything less would render the game inoperable. These disk files were big chunks of magnetic signal data, like a wicked version of morse code.
The interior of a 5.25-inch floppy disk, like the kind Tangled Tales used, is a round shape that's made to spin, much like a vinyl record but about 1/5 the size. It's made of thin flexible plastic and coated with magnetic particles. The graphic below shows the data on side 1, disk 1 of the original Tangled Tales media. The dark areas are the equivalent of positive magnetic charge, and the light areas are negative magnetic charge. So, if you could look at a disk and "see" magnetic charge like it was a color, you would see something like this.
The virtual disk files I'm using to run Tangled Tales in the emulator are essentially this. Just a huge collection of wiggly variations between positive and negative charge, drawn in the shape of a disk.
Instead of looking at letters and numbers of a message, I was looking at the equivalent of dots and dashes used to transmit the message, with complicated variations in the signal thrown in to make eavesdropping harder. On the original media, those signal variations made the disks harder to copy by conventional means, and formed the front line of the war against software piracy.
Unfortunately for me, searching through data represented this way, and making meaningful changes, would be very hard. I mean, I'm good at what I do and could probably find a way eventually, but killing Medusa isn't worth that kind of time.
So if the virtual disks are off limits, what do I have to work with? The contents of the virtual computer's memory. Luckily, openEmulator lets you flash-freeze the state of the computer to a series of files, and it doesn't do anything tricky like compress or encrypt them. Somewhere in those files is the current state of my adventure. I could edit the data there, then reload the emulator with the changes I want.
Tangled Tales tried to defy me by using awkward formats for their character names and stats, but with a little trial and error in the hex editor, I found what I needed:
I started a new game, saved a copy of the emulator state, then picked up the mirror in my room and saved another copy of the state. By comparing the two, I found one change in the data that looked clean enough to represent an item being added to my character's inventory. Exploring around in that area of memory, I found the rest of my character's stats. So of course I maxed them out...
Thusly equipped with a hand mirror by divine intervention, I defeated medusa.
My reward: Nothing. Not even any gold. Hah!!
Anyway...
In a third cell you'll find a mysterious prisoner. He'll ask to join your party, and you can let him, but at some point in the future while you sleep, he'll transform into a doppelganger and attack you.
What's funny here is, before you camp, you can actually [T]alk to him and tell him to bugger off again, and he will. Then later on you'll see him wandering around town waiting to be recruited. (Of course he'll still try to murder you.)
Doppelganger
North of the jail cells is a hallway, where a disembodied voice asks for "the magic word." [A]ct to say "please". You'll be transported. Walk due east until you reach a wall. Jennifer will point out a secret door to the south. Step through it. Run from the combat, unless you need gold.
Mercenary
Sorcerer
There are many things to do here and in the rooms beyond, but for now we'll do three:
Down one ladder is a room with a weight machine in it. Using the machine will temporarily increase your strength.
In another room is a bookcase. [A]ct on it to reveal a secret room. Inside you'll find the Energy Blast spell, a powerful but expensive mass-effect combat spell.
A room to the east features a brazier. Take note of that for later on.
Now that you have Energy Blast, go back to the spot where you entered the room through the secret door that Jennifer pointed out. Take two steps west and one south, to the highlighted square. There you'll fight a nasty mage. Energy Blast his butt.
Thanbor
On the floor you'll find a canvas bag. [L]ook at it to reveal a tome inside. [L]ook at the tome. [A]ct on it to learn the Shield spell.
If you want you can keen exploring and find Daconda's room, with a cot in it. [L]ook at the cot to find a book that explains some of the goings-on.
Go back to the wilderness. Dive into the slimy pool again. Now wander around clockwise until acid starts dripping on your party. Cast Shield, and keep going, south and to the west. Along the wall you'll find a section of crystals. Sneezy will notice them, grab the pick from your inventory, and collect enough diamonds for your entire party.
If you head east from there you'll eventually find the Repton Chief. It's a hard fight. If you do kill him, [L]ook upward to spot the dagger he hurled into the ceiling. It's a nice treasure.
Repton
Get back to the town, whether by walking, or getting a free ride by throwing yourself at monsters until you're killed. Walk down to the basement of the tower. There you'll find a suspicious looking pool. [D]rop a diamond on it, then [G]et the resulting coal. [D]rop another diamond, and [G]et the second piece of coal.
While you're down here, if your charisma is high enough, you may have an encounter with some snakes that goes unexpectedly.
Go back outside and down into the dungeon behind the boulder. Locate the brazier again. [A]ct to light a match, then [A]ct to light the brazier. Poof!
Walk down the hall until you come up against an invisible barrier. This is the "mist door" described by the game. Now that you know it exists, you can ask Esmerelda about it.
Go back to the wilderness. This time find the cabin that's due west of the town. [A]ct to knock on the door. Inside, step over to Esmerelda, and Jennifer will have a conversation with her about passing mist doors. Now you know the secret!
Hut
Esmerelda
Back into the dungeon you go. To save on spell points, you can avoid casting "light" until you actually get to the room with the brazier:
[A]ct on a match and [A]ct on the brazier as before. This time, when you get to the message about the mist wall, [A]ct to say a word, and say "reivax".
Head down the hall until you encounter a floating skull. Gadzooks! Walk back to within one square of it, and cast Silence. Now you can pass through the door beyond.
You instantly meet Xavier. He's a supremely nasty opponent. You should probably just run from the guy, and go poking around his lair. Don't forget to disengage your Silence spell or you'll be drained of spell points.
Xavier
In the smaller room so the southwest you'll find some bowls, among other things. [L]ook at them to find a vial. Sneezy will find it upsetting. [L]ook at the vial, then [G]et it.
In the room to the north is an odd portal with three dragon heads on it. [A]ct to touch the red one, then the white one, then the blue one. Walk north to go into the portal. You'll end up in town.
Climb the tower and [D]rop the vial on Eldritch. He'll congratulate you and offer an ability increase. Charisma is always good, to make prices lower. Second to that would be speed, for running away from combat. He tells you to take some time off, but bugger that, more adventure awaits! [T]alk to him immediately.
Level Up!