“Crypt of the Sorcerer is renowned for being one of the hardest of Livingstone’s books. The sheer number of items and numbers you need to find to even get to Razaak is huge. Stray off the true path even a little, and you’re screwed. It also has one of the very toughest boss fights in the Fighting Fantasy series. If you don’t roll high skill, stamina and luck scores at the beginning, you can forget it. And yet it’s always been a perennial favourite of mine. Razaak is one of my favourite FF villains (up there with Count Reiner Hydrich and just behind Zagor in my own mind), and there are some other truly brilliant characters within the book.
As such, I played this book a lot in my youth, and still remember it pretty well. However, while I have beaten the book more than once, I have never done so without cheating. Yes, I used to cheat at Fighting Fantasy books. Who didn’t? But for this series, the challenge is to beat them all fair and square. Thanks to my dishonest youth (and a lot of luck), it only took me three attempts to beat Razaak. How did I do it? Read on.”
cucumber-s
