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I thought you guys might be interested to know that if you're emulating the TES Travels games Stormhold/Dawnstar, it totally IS possible to save the game and load it later (or if you die). Everywhere I see people are recommending the use of Kemulator to play those, and while it is customizable with key input and screen size, for some reason it doesn't store the save files anywhere and you can't use savestates.

There's a different J2ME emulator called sjboy. It is far less customizable (you can re-skin it to look like different phones but that's about it), and as best as I can tell any documentation online about what key inputs translate directly is long gone, so you have to resort to clicking on a few buttons in the GUI to get things to select in the menus. Traversing the dungeons and fighting stuff works just fine with the arrows and numpad though. Oh yeah and SJBOY SAVES THE GAME PROPERLY!!

So for anyone out there interested in Stormhold or Dawnstar, but not interested enough to play the entire thing in one sitting while freaking out that an enemy might kill you and you have to start over... that's your answer.

This might also be useful information to any enterprising person who has wanted to see "what happens if I gift this item to all these characters" but could only choose one NPC per playthrough...

P.S. Ngage emulation on a PC is still impossible. Symbian OS will indeed run on a PC but it will not load .sis files because it is itself an emulator and not a good enough one to emulate a second emulator... emulator-inception style. Sorry Shadowkey seekers

Very interesting! I might revisit them if that's the case.

I've just beaten the game, and I screencapped the boss and various screens in the ending for documentation since I can't find any online. I wasn't sure if y'all would want to use the images in the wiki. But I'm not authorized to post links or images or apparently even PM you, legoless, so I'm not sure how to proceed.

The pictures of the ending are here but you have to replace the *'s with .'s

http://i*imgur*com/R1sexgf*png

We have the text, but the mechanics on how to beat Stormhold are still pretty unknown. An article should eventually go here though, similar to our Dawnstar walkthrough. I've never seen that sprite for Varus before, so I'll be sure to upload it soon. If you wouldn't mind answering a couple of questions, a walkthrough could actually begin to take form.

How does the corruption mechanic work? Do NPCs just get corrupted randomly? Does it block their services? Where do you get Hollow Crystals?

When do Helga's rumors trigger (e.g. "Excavation in the south has opened new tunnels")? Are these areas blocked beforehand?

Does Varus only appear once all the tunnels have opened, or is it related to crystal collection? Where does he appear (e.g. first zone of third dungeon in whatever random direction)?

Once you kill Varus, what do you do with the Storm Crystal? Is it activated like a chest, walked over like a teleporter, or attacked like an enemy?

If you're interested in helping out, you should definitely register on the wiki. We have a project for finishing off the Java applet games.

He actually appears to have a different far-away sprite than the other enemies in the game, too. (Zombies, prisoners, and overseers all look a little different at a distance, but Varus seems to have his own.) Here's both of those. http://i*imgur*com/Qcl371L*png

Also of note is that periodically throughout the game Varus will terrify you by showing up right in the middle of your base camp, and give threatening dialogue about what happens to prisoners if they don't hand over crystals. This happened to me a few times, seemingly when I'd cleared out a wing of the dungeon, although I can't be sure what it was tied to. I am not entirely sure that it's the same sprite because I never thought to screencap him there (I was usually too distracted that he was where I'm used to passing through).



That's my #1 goal. UESP has been a stellar resource for me over the years and I'd like to make it even better, if that's possible.



As best as I can tell you... the corruption mechanic did not seem to be implemented at all for me in Stormhold. If it is, I never once encountered it happening to NPCs. I'd read about it happening so I know what you're referring to, and indeed the crystals I came across would say they were "filled", but every crystal I found in the game is "filled". Dark Aura crystals are filled but also apparently usable. It says "kill monster" for their effect, I have no idea what this means as it's never really done something noticeable for me.

I popped back and forth to the other NPCs in camp constantly, giving them stuff and being friendly and training skills, and never once was I denied their "services" due to corruption. Although only two of them actually provide services, Helga with magic services in exchange for crystals, and Beneca in the northwest who you trade other items to in exchange for crystals (usually in my case I picked Experience crystals although he will give you whatever crystals in the game exist apart from the final one).

Beneca's crystals are all exchangeable for any three items, no matter what they are.

It's possible that I didn't play "long enough"? I certainly didn't explore all four wings of the dungeon all the way. I did at least clear out half of the place looking for stuff; I probably played 6+ hours total over several days. There are several diseases that I caught, like Stone Blood, Grievous Harm, and a couple of others aside from the more general Blind or Haunted. No idea what some of them did. Helga was happy to cure them.



She seems to trigger them based on the number of treasure chests I opened, but I could be wrong. According to my final stat count I found 66 "gift points" (which, as best as I can tell, is just keeping track of how good of a gift-giver you are) and I'd estimate that she probably told me about 6 times of new tunnels. I'm not sure if that's related.

You do not need to excavate all the way forward for her to find new tunnels as sometimes I'd still be going north, warping back and forth to drop stuff off, and she'd tell me about new tunnels in the west, south, and then north again if I kept finding things. The excavation is random and can be the same direction. She DOES give you a different message "There has been a breakthrough in the [direction]. Varus is on his way to the Storm Crystal in the XX (mine does not give the dungeon name). Please Hurry! You must stop him." when that time comes, so I skipped some wings of the dungeon altogether and headed that way... and she was right, I found him eventually.

Those areas are indeed blocked off beforehand. Early in the game this is easier to find, where you'll clear out one area of the dungeon and there'll be a noticeable tunnel that just ends; later on if tunnels open in that direction, that's the tunnel they continue from.



You do NOT have to clear every tunnel, no. I never once went east. I can boot up my file and head east and there's super weak monsters and crappy treasures waiting for me one block over that way. It must be crystal collection. As to what zone... Helga gives you the direction, hang on let me backtrack a bit.

Dungeon Camp -> Charred Walls -> Charnel House -> The Ashes -> Acolyte's Plea -> Priest Hole -> Last Rites -> Stormhold Refuge -> All's Lost -> Varus' Victory

9 blocks removed from the Dungeon Camp. Assuming I have the "biggest" version that purports to have 36 dungeons, then that makes sense for 9 in each cardinal direction, despite them not being laid out directly in those cardinal directions.

Varus just turns up as an enemy in that dungeon BTW. I didn't see that coming. Next to him was a treasure chest so I was headed for the blue dot and then HERE HE COMES. Honestly he was so hard that for a minute I wasn't sure if I just needed to get past him and open the chest, so I did, but it was just a regular chest with a crummy scroll inside.



Varus soaked up magic spells like a sponge for a while. I was playing as a Battlemage and my Destruction got up to 80 by this point in the game, so I could pretty much wipe out everything I was coming across with Damage and Doom Hammer spells. I noted that some enemies late-game were either absorbing my spells or draining my magic because I'd cast it once on some things and my magic would take a huge hit for seemingly no reason.

After like five minutes of luring Varus, casting magic and stepping back, then running away and healing and coming back, he finally died. (Could be he's immune to Doom Hammer, which is interesting.) Where he stood a moment before is that giant crystal. You step on it like a teleporter and it leads to the victory screens.



I bought an N-Gage off eBay a few days ago with hopes of playing the rest of TES Travels in one easy place. If there's anything else I can answer let me know, and I'll definitely register on the wiki sometime this week I can probably provide lots of the Battlespire screenshots y'all are asking for as I also beat that recently, and I recorded the entirety of floors 5 and 7.

Wow, lots to process! I'll try to start amending the wiki pages and I'll get working on a basic walkthrough. One more question: when Varus appears while you camp, does he attack or just give you a warning?

Batttlespire images would be excellent. For Shadowkey, what we really need is bestiary images and general article confirmation. The game data and dialogue is already available and mostly just awaiting transcription, but information on the actual gameplay was all written by a single user so it needs to be looked over and confirmed. If you're up for a challenge, the Shadowkey and Battlespire multiplayer articles are completely devoid of any in-game experience and were mostly surmised from extracted data and limited gameplay footage.

Edit: The walkthrough is up.

When Varus arrives suddenly in camp, he gives you a warning and as soon as you step away he disappears.



I'm on it! I'm a teacher in the US so next week we're off for Thanksgiving, and I can go back through to search a bit more as to what the hurdles are storywise. I'd never even thought to try the Battlespire multiplayer. Fortunately with Windows 10 they finally make the printscreen button dump to an image file immediately, instead of having to alt-tab into MS Paint. I'll... have to see what kind of images I can export on an N-Gage.

Great, added! A lot less dangerous than the Gehenoth, it seems.

My N-Gage QD arrived yesterday, and after tinkering with it (no instructions included) I got Shadowkey to work! I am elated.

I have a Bluetooth dongle coming via Amazon Prime which should let me connect to a PC (the QD has no USB-out) and I can drop the other Travels games onto it. First up I probably will go through Stormhold again to confirm a few suspicions and also try to explore it more thoroughly to see about these hollow crystals and such. I'm just stoked that I can play it on the go, as was intended

Edit: ...it's the darndest thing. Stormhold and Dawnstar (and Shadowkey, naturally) boot just fine from the N-Gage, Oblivion Mobile crashes every time.

Upon looking into it, Oblivion came out three years later than any model of the N-Gage, and the screen size is the right aspect ratio but the wrong size (too small). Trying to look up "does Oblivion Mobile work on an N-Gage" all I find is sites that lump all of TES Travels in together as a "yes" but apparently the answer is no? I can't find anywhere that actually says that it works, and I've tried a couple of different installs.

I won't call my dream of having all the Travels on one official handheld crushed just yet but it's looking grim. Ah well. Three out of four ain't bad

Double Edit: OH YEAH Also, the N-gage comes standard with a screenshot app! You open it and leave it on and apparently it can take screens from games and such. I'll be looking more into that this week.