Realms of the Haunting/Game Mechanics and Glitches

General Notes About Running the Game

• note that there are several ways to perform the same actions in this game (all covered in the manual) and furthermore you can (and may) rebind keys as desired through the DosBox key remapper (see additional resources page for more instructions):
  • movement: arrow keys, keypad or mouse
    • strafing is bound on < and > by default (US keyboards)
    • keypad also has the HOME, END, PGUP and PGDN keys for tilting the view
    • mouse can be used for moving around, but also attacking; mouse view rotation sensitivity can be adjusted in the menu (it's faster to turn using the mouse than arrow keys)
  • attacking: CTRL or mouse left while already holding mouse right. There's also a way to move your hand left and right while holding a weapon but I don't know how I did that...
  • selecting weapons: 1-6 for equipping weapons from the first 6 slots of the guns inventory tab
  • the inventory: aside from pressing I you can also left-click the top left corner to enter the inventory. While inside it, 1-5 change tabs. ENTER selects an item and closes it.
  • Quicksave and Quickload: F9 and F10
  • RUN MODE toggle: manual mentions both CAPSLOCK and TILDE, for me (EU keyboard) only the key below ESCAPE works.
  • Quick reload: if you die, press SPACE to quickly load the last save
• Graphics
  • You can use the GOG graphics options "configurator" (found in the game folder) to change the scaling engine. Several settings (e.g. advinterp2x) cause shadows to render in a more gradual and natural way. This MAY NOT BE ALLOWED FOR SDA RUNS because of the "gives player benefits" -clause but at least it makes it easier to practise and to make sure you don't miss details. You can select "keep aspect ratio" which only has a cosmetic effect that does away with the bar of black at the bottom of the screen.
  • Changing the in-game graphics mode to a 320x200 mode makes the inventory screens and cursor bigger which may make it easier to click on things. On the other hand the greater resolution makes texts more legible.

General Tricks

• While run mode is on, you move so fast you keep getting stuck on each stair. To counteract this you have to keep jumping as you ascend them.
• Damaging floors only hurt you when you're not jumping.
• When you enter a Tower portal (or other teleporter), it preserves your direction.
• You should do the worm at all times when at all possible.
• If you save and load, it causes doors to close, so don't do it if you need to pass through.
• You can squeeze underneath a vertically opening door just by running at it.
• If you stand below a vertically closing door it may displace you a little bit on the side in a teleporting way, but the distance is very small.
• The positions of moving platforms are not recorded in the save file. This will probably allow you to save time in segmented runs/RTA. Check for other stuff like this actually and edit in here if you find anything!

Enemies

• The lumbering melee-attack monsters that guard the latter parts of the Tower (some of which are dormant at first) seem to sometimes drop various healing vials. This happens after they've exploded into fire.
• The A.I. makes the monsters think they can attack you when they're directly below you.
• You can stand on top of monsters. They WILL be able to attack you.
• You can hit things that aren't even near melee range. Left-clicking with the mouse is a good technique for aiming accurately while staying out of the way.
• There is friendly fire between enemies (but no in-fighting).
• Sometimes enemies can fall off the paths criss-crossing the Tower.
• Monsters can't cross certain lines and always stay inside the same general area.

Area-specific (but not category-specific) notes

• The imprisonment doesn't actually remove most of your items.
• 8-spoked place:
  • 7 switches puzzle: to get from the state where the lower path is open to the upper path being open, flip switches 2, 5 and 6. You have to wait a little bit before hitting the eye switch to get the right turret to shoot.
  • 5 switches puzzle: correct solution is to press the leftmost and top right switch and enter through the right side.
  • Shooting gallery: you don't (?) actually have to do this one to make the fire guy appear and the portal to be cleared.

Items (Location and use)

Non-plot critical readables (i.e. all except for Florentine's journals) are not listed here. THIS SECTION WILL BE UPDATED HEAVILY MUCH LATER

• Weapons

• Healing

• Plot Items