Sword of Fargoal/Monsters

There are 22 monsters that you'll commonly encounter in the dungeon. Most monsters are identically generated; one is only more powerful than another simply because of theinternal dice rolls. There are a total of five exceptions shown in the lists below.

These monsters are organized in two groups:


 * Humanoids are capable of stealing items from the player when they attack, making them a major threat during the endgame. They also collect gold from the dungeon floor.
 * Rogue (will always steal when attacking)
 * Barbarian
 * Elvin Ranger (Can shoot arrows)
 * Dwarven Guard
 * Mercenary
 * Swordsman
 * Monk (Can drink Healing potions)
 * Dark Warrior (on deeper levels can transform into a Dark WereTiger)
 * Assassin (generally invisible, can throw daggers)
 * War Lord (often carrying a War Shield)
 * Mage (Instantly steals spells, and disguised as one of the above monsters. Can teleport.)
 * Creatures: Creatures are a collection of the more typical monsters. They can fall down pits, causing them to be considered "clumsy".
 * Dire Wolf
 * Ogre (can throw skulls for damage)
 * Hobgoblin
 * Werebear
 * Lizard Man (Can Stench to cause weakness)
 * Gargoyle
 * Troll (Seems to do extra damage to shields)
 * Wyvern (Breathes Poison)
 * Dimension Spider (teleports)
 * Shadow Dragon (Breathes Scorching Darkness)
 * Fyre Drake (Breathes Fire)
 * Demon (Instantly drains experience, and disguised as one of the above monsters. Invincible.)

Sometimes, a monster is tagged as weak — this indicates your skill is about five times that of the monster. Accordingly, a monster tagged as powerful has a higher skill.

Starting on dungeon level 14 (or earlier if you tarry around), you may encounter a mage or demon. These appear to be a normal monster, but when you encounter them in combat, they will either steal your spells or drain your experience. The monster will then disappear. You can sometimes detect them if they appear to be a monster outside of their depth, such as a Rogue or Dire Wolf; but they are otherwise disinterested in the sword.

Monster Generation
On entering a new level, between 1 and 3 human monsters are created (using the monster strength of the previous level.) The monster strength rating is then reset, and an additional 2 to 4 creatures are created. As the Commodore 64 has 8 sprites, and one is used for the player, There is a maximum of 7 monsters which can appear at the same time on a given level. If there are less than 7 monsters, one may respawn from a staircase.

When a monster is created, it's either a humanoid or creature. Once that distinction is made, one entry is chosen randomly from the list according to the table below:

When a monster spawns from a down staircase, it causes the monster difficulty to be increased (until it is reset from a level change, as described above.) Up and down staircases will generate monsters at this difficulty level. This monster difficulty is reset to the dungeon level only after some monsters are generated during new level generation, thus it is not advisable to remain on a given dungeon level for too long.

As such, it may be wise to consider not killing monsters if you do not wish to increase the monster difficulty. If you pass them by, they will be displayed while they are in explored areas. You can keep tabs on them and prevent stairway respawns by leaving them alive.

Alternatively, if monsters are starting to become too difficult, consider taking a stairway up or down, generating some monsters of the same (too difficult) level, and resetting the difficulty to the dungeon level. Then, immediately take the stairs you used to get to this level. This will recreate your prior level with the difficulty reset, eliminating the increased difficulty.

Monsters will only move or regenerate from a staircase while you are within about 9 or 10 character-spaces from them. (The map is drawn from characters on the screen.) Also, it should be noted that monsters will never spawn from the staircase that you used to enter the level.

This can be used to your advantage, keeping yourself safe while giving you time to regenerate hit-points.