Morning Play

I played the game this morning for 15 minutes and I was very frustrated with the mouse button working improperly. I still did not decide on using cheats, because I'd rather play the game without them. I bought many spells for my fairy and for my future fairies, including The Falling Tree, which is a very good attack spell of nature. But my fairy needs to get on level 19 to be able to use that, and she is after this gameplay on level 16. I read on zanzarah.fandom.com that she will evolve into Viteria already on 22nd level. So it is nice to have her and train her. I might not be able to kill the Corgot of level 10 without getting Sillia onto level 19. I also checked and Viteria is apparently of much higher health points than her earlier model.

I found information that there are other cheats than only the console cheats, and I remember that they used to work. Apparently it's enough to type in words on keyboard for them to work, without any prior actions. The „gold” cheat might very come in handy, and I think I will use it. It gives 1000 coins for every use. This one cheat code might be entirely sufficient for me. Thanks to that, I will have money for magic merchants, and for golden carrots.

So next time I'll play, I will try it. When it comes to my plan described in the previous article, I have already bought good attack spell, now I need to train Sillia to level 19, and then go and defeat Corgot. I still have problems with controling my buttons during fights, and they often get out of hand. So perhaps raising Sillia three levels up will be also a good practice of fighting. I also bought Birch Skin for her, which is a defensial spell. It seemingly is worse than Oak Skin, because Birch Skin causes hits to have 20% less damage, and Oak Skin makes them have 80% less damage, but Oak Skin can be only used five times during a battle, while Birch Skin works 40 times. So I think it is better. The enemy fairies shoot very often while they fight, at least the godforsaken Corgot of level 10 does, and the Oak Skin quickly runs out during fights with him.

Watch Movie

After Thoughts

It's the second day of my Zanzarah gameplay. I am thinking of using cheats in the game after all, because I feel I need some compensation for this goddamn mouse cursor lag, which costs me nerves every time I play. The game is harder to bear because of that, and maybe I will use cheats. I would use them for: getting magic spells for fairies, and getting money for Golden Carrots. I will do some reading on Magic Merchants and the spells they offer, because there are different spells sold by each of them.

Whether I will use cheats or not, I have not decided yet. My plans for next play are:

get good nature attack spell for my fairy

perhaps get a better nature defence for my fairy if possible

defeat the corgot who guards the silver sphere and give it to the elf in order to get the water fairy whom she carries

train water fairy by common fights with wild fairies

go to Endeva and defeat that boy who blocks the other entrance

Getting Easy

I have changed the spell and jump controls, and have eventually decided on Left Shift for flying and Spacebar for spell attack. And I am too tired with the game today to keep playing. The cursor problems in the game menu are still unnerving. And I am a bit bored. But fairies I meet are all easy to combat, except for the Corgot who guards the silver sphere, and I think I just need to get on a tad higher level to win against him. I finished tonight with exactly 400 coins, which was too nice a sum not to sum up the game for today. Especially that I have already done my first shopping, buying three spells at the Magic Merchant.

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Controls Issue

I am very sad because the problem with cursor does influence my play a lot. It turned out the mouse buttons don't work properly also during battles. However I can change that to keyboard buttons. But the fight controls were already keyboard buttons... However they were the worst keys I could choose, as I initially picked Z and X for fight controls, and my move controls were WSAD. So there was no physical possibility of leading a normal fight, as I also needed to use the mouse cursor for view control, and thus was in material need of a third hand. In fact a third hand of a tiny size. So during this gameplay I chose left and right mouse button for fight controls, and that didn't work out for me too well. The buttons did not answer on many occassions, which means that the game did not react to me pressing them. And I think – I think – that when Z and X were in control, the game did react every time; only problem was the layout of these keys, which were too close to WSAD buttons to use them normally. I will have to decide on fight controls therefore. But with mouse buttons badly operating, this may not be easy to solve, because I still need the mouse for view control, and I need WSAD for move control – so it is quite difficult to find a good solution for fight controls.

Obviously hence all my problems with fairy duels, which actually resulted in me laughing my head off at my own clumsiness. And I know in the future I will have to still put up with these problems until I find some solution to this controls issue. I will have to be testing other combinations. The mouse buttons didn't work during fights, and that was frustrating. But I decided not to give up, because surely some button layout may be physically ok, and without solving this issue, the gameplay will be all about me trying to make a living in Zanzarah despite a lack of fighting talent.

Spacebar and Alt may be good. I will try that next time.

I'll add that my computer is a laptop and I don't use a normal mouse but a touchpad.

Or perhaps Q for attack button will be ok. But Left Shift may be even better, with Spacebar for flying.
And incidentally, to make matters worse I forgot that I had Z and X input as fight controls, which additionally influenced my battles, and made me switch to mouse controls during play.

Anyway, I got to the Cottage, lost a fight with a difficult fairy living in a tree, and then won a fight against three chaos fairies, rescuing my scarecrow, who can now refill my mana. I still have only one fairy, and I need to get another one, and I was hoping to be attacked by a water fairy, but nobody attacked me even though I waded in water for long. So next time I will try to capture at least a worgot, as he is a very good nature fairy, and therefore good companion to my Sillia.

The first movie shows a black screen problem, because a black screen welcomed me when I loaded my game, and I think it may have been due to having the Xbox recording already on. So I turned it off, and put it on only after I entered the game. Which loaded normally when there was no camera on.
One more thing, a minor thing it is, but at the same time my first note it was when I started playing Zanzarah, that Amy moves too slowly. Her run is in fact a semi-fast walk. It is one of main reasons why the game seems to me a bit unexciting. Things generally happen a bit slow, and definitely a normal run in biology is faster than that.

Watch First Short Movie

Watch Second Long Movie

First Play

I played for twenty minutes and am horribly glad that the file weighs only 239MB. I had to stop abruptly because I was called out of the room to go shopping, but I came back to the game before leaving, and recorded additional 47 seconds. Thanks to which one can admire a nice bug with Amy losing head. She loses her head entirely until the end. And before that, during the 20 minutes of play, Amy starts to shake head violently when choosing a fairy from Rufus's house, and I wonder what the cause is for this strange bug.

The game is hard to play technically, because written dialogues, or monologues in fact, do not display smoothly on screen, and the mouse cursor doesn't work properly inside the game menu and inside Amy's backpack. So it is a bit frustrating to play. These glitches possibly stem from the fact that the game is outdated for my computer.

Even though this is ridiculous, that old applications do not work properly on newer techs, however that's the situation in computers for years now. It seems applications are treated as food which gets spoilt when it's out of date. Obviously never an old program ought to cause any troubles, because by logic the newer the system is, the better it should handle old applications. However logic is not the maker of technology nowadays.

When it comes to gameplay, it was a bit boring, and I don't think it's because I know the game well. I simply in my age need a bit more exciting atmosphere than offered by the game. Also the graphics could be better from artistic point of view. I had only one fight so far, a training fight, and actually I got very disoriented at its start, because my chosen fairy was the same kind and same name as my fight opponent. And I thought at first that it is my fairy who does not have any offensive spell, and therefore at the beginning of battle I didn't even try to push the attack button, wondering how long it will take my enemy to kill me. But I eventually did start pressing the button, and realised that it was my fairy who was on level eight already.

And that's that. I watched my recordings only after I came back from the store, and nothing particular happened in the store, so there's nothing to talk about. Although I got a little bit bored during gameplay, I think I will continue playing, and will arrive here with new updates soon.

Watch First 20 Minutes Movie
Watch Second 47 Seconds Movie

Beginnings

I am starting the game of Zanzarah. I have played it in the past I think three times, and I don't remember ever finishing it entirely, although once perhaps I did.

I obtained it from illegal sources, because I am horribly poor financially, plus this is a game which I had already played, and a very old one for 2019, in fact, so there doesn't seem to be an intelligent reason for purchasing it.

I have started using a program called Xbox Game, which registers computer screen activity together with sound, and I intend to record all my Zanzarah gameplay with it.

Apparently people like to watch such things, and most of such videos are simulator play, not a real human play, which turns out to be noticeable. And apparently people like me and things I do, hence perhaps this will not be boring or irritating.

I have used cheats in the past when playing Zanzarah, however only once in all my gameplays, and got money and special items thanks to them. Even though it is tempting to use them, I will refrain from doing that. I must add that I would only use them to get Golden Carrots, which are items that raise the fairies in their development, and maybe for money. But it is cool to try to beat the game without it, and Zanzarah is a challenging game.

Currently my computer system has 24,4 GB of free memory space, and that should be enough for recording. I also have a brand new Google e-mail, which comes with an internet disc space of 15GB, and I plan to store the files on the e-mail disc, and delete them from hard drive. I have only so far done tests of Xbox Game in Wizard101 MMO, and a 10-minute film from W101 weighs 535MB.

When it comes to Wizard101, I will be making a film from my gameplay which I plan to show on my site of ftp-wizard101.blogspot.com. The site is not a play diary, but an album with informations and articles. I do not intend to devote a diary to Wizard101, because I do not continue this game anymore, and the planned film of my gameplay is an exception done for a special test.

While Zanzarah is a game I know and therefore I know that it has the potential to grasp my attention until its end, and therefore I will be informing here of my progress as it will unravel.