Yendorian Tales: Book I: Won! (with Summary and Rating)

The endgame sees Zamora restored and the sequel set up.

         

Yendorian Tales: Book I

United States 

SmithWare (developer and publisher) 

Released 1994 for DOS

Date Started: 6 May 2026

Date Ended: 19 June 2026

Total Hours: 37

Difficulty:  Moderate (3.0/5)

Final Rating: (to come later)

Ranking at time of posting: (to come later)  

      

Summary:

    

Yendorian Tales is a superior shareware game by a talented family of programmers. On the continent of Yendor, where society is divided into spellcasters and the miners who supply the spellcasters with their ore, a party of six sets out to determine why monsters have started invading the mines. Soon, the chief wizard, Zamora, is struck down by a mysterious figure, his magical orb stolen, and the party's mission grows.

   

The game combines elements from several successful commercial releases, predominantly Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny (1988), which is replicated in the axonometric interface, the NPC dialogue, and the tactical combat. The game has solid mechanics, although the sheer volume of combat gets to be too much, and the economy, initially promising, ends up hilariously broken. The story ends up being a bit unoriginal, but the game, unlike almost all its predecessors and contemporaries, has rewarding side quests.

   

****

   

I thought it was time to wrap this up. AlphabeticalAnonymous's Search for Freedom entries, plus my own Multi-User Dungeon break, afforded me some breathing room, so even though I could have stretched it into two or three additional entries, I pressed forward to the end.

     

Paltivar, the game's villain, stands by the stolen orb.

       

The main quest, kicked off by the theft of Zamora's orb, had me meeting all the scattered members of the Society of Wizards. I guess I was supposed to visit them in turn, each supplying the clue to the next. But my habit of feeding the JOURNAL keyword to everyone I met meant that I met some of them before I was supposed to. Each had a task for me to accomplish; each gave me an item when I finished, then supplied the title (but not the name) of the next wizard; each was accompanied by Zamora's voice whispering a clue as to some name or keyword.

       

Member	Location	Task	Item	Hint
Flagell  The Hermit	Cave	Kill a wyvern nesting nearby.	Flagell's Scroll	The first of last is third, and the third of first is last.
Paundor The Diplomat	Port Hope	Buy a Grapnel Arrow, use it to retrieve the Great Red Gem from a cave.	Red Powder	Half of "W" is sixth.
Bysette  The ?????	Moloch	Retrieve a ring that he lost on Blackmane.	Magic Branch	It is in the middle backwards.
Prezlin The Merchant	Duomin/New Devon	Find out what happened to Winze.	Magic Liquid	One from each end is A.
Griffin The Scholar	Athaneum	Retrieve the Hourglass of Stopped Time from the desert.	Sands of Time	He and Prezlin begin the same.
Winze The ????	Devon	Retrieve lava from the underworld.	Amulet of Lava	Eight letters make up his name.
Quai The Explorer	Cave in Desert	Kill the Cynotaur to free Quai.	Horn of Encasement	N/A

           

I had finished through Prezlin's quest at the end of the last session, though I hadn't returned to find him in New Devon. I visited the city first thing at the beginning of this session and got Prezlin's item and hint. He sent me on to the Scholar, who I already knew was Griffin from dialogue ages ago in the Athaneum.

      

That missing piece annoys me.

       

New Devon also had a side quest in which the governor wanted me to deliver a peace treaty to the king of the giants and return it with his signature. The king was happy with the terms ("Little people will stay out of the mountains; giants will stop attacking town") and signed it. I had to flee from a lot of giants on the way in, but otherwise it wasn't a tough quest. I got enough experience from it to reach Level 10.

    

The last city I had to explore was Anatolay. (I never ended up exploring the two mines that lay just outside of town.) The most important things I found here were:

   

• An enhancer who would take +2 or +3 items and enhance them to +3 or +4. This bridged the gap between the enhancer in the Athaneum and the enhancer in Port Hope. I got all my weapons and armor enhanced, then went to Port Hope and got everything up to +5. This all cost far less than it should have.

• The Amulet of Anatolay, which the governor of Port Hope wanted. When I returned it to him, I had enough experience for Level 11.

          

We're just calling them that in-universe, huh?

        

It occurs to me that most of the leveling in this game comes from finishing the side quests and not from fighting regular foes. This is good because I fled from pretty much every regular combat this session. For combats that I knew or suspected that I had to fight, I adopted a fairly simple strategy:

       

• Have my wizard cast "Earthquake" every round.
• Have my clerics cast "Critical Damage" every round.
• Have my two fighters and thief restore the spellcasters with purple potions, heal anyone who is low on health with white potions, or toss silver potions (poison) and gold potions (acid) at enemies.

         

You're goddamned right I do.

       

The economy is so broken by the end of the game that you could buy all the purple (full mana restore) and white (full health restore) potions that you could possibly need in a lifetime of adventuring, not to mention processed Nuore. Even if the economy wasn't broken, you find so many of these things that you hardly have to buy them.

      

Griffin was a pain to find because if you (L)ook at NPCs, the game tells you one person is Griffin, but you have to (T)alk to them to find out that the game is wrong. The real Griffin wanted me to find the Hourglass of Stopped Time in the desert in the northeast part of the continent. This is accessible from a mine near Giant Town (past the paleoscinus). The desert is a small region ringed by mountains with multiple caves. Dragons fly overhead constantly, which is annoying.

      

The game identifies Vincent as Griffin.

         

The hourglass is between two frozen dragons in the middle of the desert. When I grabbed it, they came to life and (instead of thanking me) attacked. I killed them, although I don't think I had to.

         

One wonders why I didn't freeze the moment I entered the hourglass's presence.

         

Back at the Athaneum, Griffin smashed the hourglass and gave me the sand. I got the final clue, but by then I had figured out that the clues spelled out PALTIVAR—an NPC I had already met in Devon. He had sent me on a quest to find his apprentice, Joseph, who in turn wanted me to find some sweet wine. Spoiler: Paltivar turns out to be the "big bad" of the game. 

       

Few games logistically explain how the evil castle is so full of monsters. This one, admittedly, doesn't explain how a single alcoholic was able to corral a bunch of ghosts and demons.

            

Griffin said I should speak to Winze next, but I already knew that he was dead, so I figured I could skip this quest and go right to Paltivar. I visited town after town, asking for SWEET WINE or BOTTLE in the taverns. After five or six tries, I got a hit in Stachus. Grabbing a single bottle somehow led to my having 65,535 bottles in my inventory. To add insult to injury, the game won't let us drink them.

   

I returned the bottle to Joseph, who spilled a little dirt on Paltivar: "A few years ago, I helped him round up several types of monsters for his castle. He didn't tell me where it was, but I know it wasn't on the mainland." When I returned to Paltivar's shop in Devon, he was gone, so I started searching the various caves in the desert. I eventually found the last member of the Society of Wizards, Quai, imprisoned in a cave by the Cynotaur. 

     

I think his name means "dog-bull."

          

I killed the Cynotaur in a long battle and got his horn. Quai then told me that I "did not have all of the items that [I] need." He admonished me to make sure I had spoken to all members of the Society of Wizards.

     

Just what you want to hear when you're 30 minutes away from civilization.

           

I despaired at circling all of the cities asking for SOCIETY again, but I consulted my notes and realized I hadn't actually gotten a clue from Winze or his grieving wife. I returned to Devon and spoke to Winze's wife, Joan. This time, she asked me for flowers for his grave; fortunately, I had bought a bouquet ages ago from a random NPC somewhere. When I gave it to her, Winze's ghost appeared. He had a quest: "Travel into the Underworld and bring back a small quantity of lava." He opened a portal in the north part of the cemetery to take me there.

      

I love that there's no discussion about how we're going to carry lava. I mean, we could cool it with any variety of spells, but then it wouldn't be "lava" anymore.

          

"The Underworld" turned out to be a large cave system with a lot of demons, devils, and lava beasts. Lava beasts suck because they have a ranged attack that can easily kill the last character to flee, when all of the enemies are focusing on him exclusively. 

   

There were pools and lakes of lava but no way to retrieve a sample. I had to loop the area a couple of times before I realized that one of the figures wasn't attacking me. I figured he must be an NPC and talked to him. He said he was Demonacus, "master of this realm," and that he planned to lead his demons in conquest of the world. (According to Usenet posts, in an early version of the game, Demonacus failed to appear. SW Games had to send around a patch.)

      

That's what you went with? "Demonacus?" How long did that take to come up with?

         

Demonacus attacked with a bunch of demons, lava beasts, and princes of evil, but here's where my standard combat policy paid off, and I whittled them down. Demonacus had an Amulet of Lava on him, which was good enough. It was the last item I needed for Quai, who (after I made the long trek back to him) assembled all of my quest items into the Horn of Encasement, which he promised would nullify the protections of the magic orb.

           

Demonacus and his allies.

         

It took me about half of the final session to find Paltivar's castle on the southeastern island. I had to explore multiple cave systems, fleeing from dozens of enemy battles, to even get to the island. Then, once there, I had to explore multiple caves (there are eight separate entrances on the island) to find my way to the castle—which had no entrance, so I had to explore more to arrive in the castle from the basement. Along the way, I found the second-to-last map piece. I never did find the piece covering the desert in A5.

     

A password check gets me into Paltivar's castle.

      

The castle had five levels, all very annoying for the sheer number of enemies I had to flee from. The first level was full of secret doors, so I had to test basically every wall space. There's a spell called "Reveal" that shows them, but it disappears every time you're attacked, which is always. Also annoying is the way the "Miner's Light" spell constantly wears off, and you have to wait and suffer the animation as the area around the party grows dim, then watch another one when you re-cast the spell and it gets light again.

    

I don't remember anything special about Level 2. Level 3 had a bunch of teleporters, most of which just went to other places on the same level, so I had to find the right one to get to Level 4—all the while fleeing from ghosts that continually respawn. 

     

A maze of teleporters.

       

Paltivar was standing in a large, open room, next to the orb on the fifth level. Nearby teleporters went to Devon and into the meeting hall at the Athaneum, and I thought it was nice to get an explanation of how the evil wizard had gotten around so deftly. 

        

I exit a teleporter in the Anathaneum—exactly where Paltivar exited when he struck down Zamora.

       

I buffed with healing, attribute potions, "Party Invisibility," and "Shield of Mist" before approaching him. He attacked with a bunch of archmages and princes of evil. Again, my usual strategy won the day with only a few potions required. For some reason, it was important for me for Paltivar to die to a melee attack, so after all his allies were dead, I spent some time maneuvering my lead fighter into the right position.

        

A "Critical Damage" spell reduces Paltivar's forces. My guys have "Party Invisibility" on, so you only see their weapons.

        

A message popped up when he would have died: The Society of Wizards intervened to prevent me from striking a killing blow. The message said to use the Horn of Encasement to retrieve the or, then bring it to the healers at the Athaneum. 

     

Victory is stolen from me.

      

I had enough experience for Level 12, but I just went directly to the Athaneum, where the endgame sequence began the moment I walked into the healers' chambers. The orb helped restore Zamora. Once he was on his feet, he reunited the Society of Wizards to deal with Paltivar. Apparently, they had some kind of deal that none of them would ever allow another to be destroyed (tell that to Winze!). It turned out that Paltivar had turned evil a long time ago, and it was the Society that banished him to the island castle. Since that didn't work, they came up with a new punishment: "We decree that you shall exist for eternity in a single instant in time." With that, Paltivar slowly dissolved away.

         

Paltivar suffers a potentially-horrifying fate.

       

Question: Is he conscious for this? Because that seems pretty unfair no matter what he's done. No mortal crime deserves eternal punishment. (This is an issue I have with a lot of religious doctrine, by the way.) Anyway, a few days later, Zamora told us that Paltivar used the orb to make the fog around Yendor so thick that no ships could come and go (never mind that the fog was there even when Zamora had the orb). Zamora has recently discovered that the wizards back in the homeland of Thaine are using Nuore for "evil purposes," so he's not so sure that lifting the fog was a good thing. End of game.

     

The fog bank at the edge of the world wasn't just the developers being lazy.

       

It sounds to me like the Society of Wizards knew exactly what was going on. But instead of telling me to "seek out this bastard named Paltivar that we banished to an island for being evil," they had to feed it to me one letter at a time.

      

Some of the items I never got around to using.

        

I rushed the ending a bit, I admit. Since I didn't explore some of the mines, I didn't find keys to almost half the cities. I didn't find the final map piece (though that might be bugged and impossible). I found but never tested a Scroll of Portals, a Scroll of Revealing (I assume it casts "Reveal"), a Ring of Protection, a Poison Trident, an Ice Medallion, and a Crystal of Power. For reasons I've mentioned, whatever they do, I didn't really need their help. I ended the game with over 300,000 gold pieces plus 52 jewels, 20 ancient scrolls, thousands of units of ore, and hundreds of excess weapon and armor items that I could have sold for a lot more. It's hilarious that four postings ago, I thought the economy was good.

     

Here's my GIMLET:

   

Category	Assets	Liabilities	Score
1. Game World	Reasonably detailed backstory of Yendor. Clear (though evolving) main quest.	Main quest is a bit unoriginal and doesn't make a lot of sense given revelations at the end. Game world doesn't really respond to the player's actions.	4
2. Character Creation and Development	Four classes, presented slightly differently from most RPGs (i.e., transition from miners to fighters, magic students to wizards and clerics). Regular leveling with palpable increase in power via boosting attributes (which in turn determine what you can wear/wield) and acquiring spells.	Fairly simple system overall. Rogues wasted as usual. No role-playing by class, race, alignment, sex, etc.	4
3. NPCs	Many NPCs scattered throughout the towns. You learn backstory and lore from NPCs. Keyword-based dialogue system like Ultima.	NPCs don't have a lot to say. Keywords, but no dialogue options or role-playing.	4
4. Encounters and Foes	A couple of dozen monsters, mostly standard D&D derivatives, but with the types of special abilities, strengths, and weaknesses that I look for.  Encounters and weapon/armor drops are somewhat randomized, though sensible for the location.	Monsters are derivative. Few non-combat encounters, and only a few light puzzles.	4
5. Magic and Combat	Tactical combat grid works fairly well, recalling the best of Ultima V. System allows for melee attacks, ranged attacks, spells, use of special items, use of throwing items. Terrain is important.  Nice variety of spells.	Combats are far too frequent. Combats take too long. By the end of the game, battles are far too easy.  Generosity of money/equipment unbalances the spell system.	4
6. Equipment	Multiple types of weapons, armor, and shields restricted by attributes. Clear statistics to help determine which item is best.  Lots of usable items, including special artifacts, to find and wield. Ability to pay to enhance items.	Restricted to only weapons, armor, shields. No boots, cloaks, helms, rings, belts, necklaces, etc. No artifact weapons/armor. Items way too plentiful and generous.	4
7. Economy	Solid complexity. Lots of ways to make money (mining, battle, item sales, gambling, selling found artifacts, side-quests). Lots of ways to spend money. For the first third, the economy is pretty tight. Have to make some tough decisions about what to prioritize.	Economy gets far too generous by the halfway point. The party finds too much and the things that it spends money on do not cost enough. It should have taken tens of thousands of gold pieces to enchant weapons up to +5.	4
8. Quests	Clear main quest with multiple stages. About half a dozen meaningful side quests with solid rewards.  Many side-areas to explore with artifact rewards.	No decisions, alternate outcomes, or role-playing.	4
9. Graphics, Sound, and Interface	Graphics reasonably good for a shareware game, particularly in the cut scene graphics. Mixed keyboard/mouse controls are easy to master and let each player use what he's comfortable with.	Keyboard buffering issues cause problems throughout the game. Sound is underwhelming; just a few effects.	4
10. Gameplay	Reasonable nonlinearity. World can be explored in any order and some of the quest steps can be done out of order, as we've seen.	Not much replayability. Drags on too long (though only a bit). Gets far too easy by the end.	3
Other/Total			39

    

The total is high enough to at least near my "recommended" threshold, which is about 40 in 1994. Yendorian Tales is by no means a perfect game, but it's a commercial-quality game that transcends its shareware origins and has a lot of innovations and surprises (albeit mostly at the beginning).

   

I was sorry that I couldn't reach any of the Smiths during my coverage of this game, as I would have loved to include their comments and recollections. My childhood memories of the times I spent with my father all involve sitting on bar stools, so I find it heart-warming that Rodney Smith managed to enlist his two sons in such a creative and educational project. I hope they look back on the experience with fondness.

       

Exploration and combat in Yendorian Tales: Book I - Chapter II.

            

I also hope it sold well, but it's hard to find any contemporary reviews. There are Usenet references to it rating well on CompuServe. One heartening sign is that the Smiths kept going; Chapter I was followed by the awkwardly-named Yendorian Tales: Book I - Chapter II (1996) and Yendorian Tales: The Tyrants of Thaine (1997). Moreover, the trio followed the example of their primary inspiration (Ultima) by refusing to re-use the engine they created for the first game. Instead, they created a fusion of Ultima Underworld and Might and Magic III/IV. Both games feature far more complex inventory and character systems, including a set of 13 skills.

        

A shot from the never-released Fourth Book of Yendor.

       

SW Games announced the development of The Fourth Book of Yendor on their web site in 1999. It would apparently revolve around missing members of the Society of Wizards. The announcement promised a "fully animated smooth-scrolling world," "non-linear quests," and a "huge fantasy world to explore." A handful of screenshots suggest they took inspiration from Might and Magic VI: The Mandate of Heaven (1998). Alas, it appears the game was never finished, and SW Games went offline sometime between 2007 and 2013.

       

****

   

Previous entry in this series

   

****

   

For further reading:

 

My coverage of the games that I think most influenced Yendorian Tales: Book I: 

 

• Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny (1988)
• Ultima VI: The False Prophet (1990)  

06/21/2026