The Walk Through the Castle of Eliv Thade

The Story

The story behind the Castle of Eliv Thade isn’t too complicated. Many moons ago there was a very bright Kacheek with a love for puzzling. Thade was his name. He could solve any puzzle you’d shove in his face. Well, almost. One day one of his servants gave him a puzzle. Months later he still hadn’t solved it. For years Thade tried to find the answer, but simply couldn’t. Because of his big obsession with the puzzle he turned mad, giving him the... charming look he has now. The servants were scared of their own safety and fled the castle, leaving it to fall in despair. Many years later, Thade died alone. Very tragic indeed, as the puzzle remained unsolved. Now his spirit wanders the castle, trying to get revenge to anyone who dares to enter....

You’re still here and brave enough to enter? Great, ‘cause I’m here to guide you through it! Yes, I can understand that you’d rather have good Kacheek-experience and play Kacheek Seek, but although Thade might look... well, mentally disturbed, don’t let his looks fool you. His anagrams are not that hard to solve...

The Castle

Before entering, you can choose if you’re a scaredy cat or super brave. Wait—don’t click too soon. On the easy levels you get anagrams with fewer letters, but keep in mind, fewer letters mean a lower score. Although you can get the 1000 Neopoints per game with the easy levels, you might as well get yourself together and walk the super brave path as it means more points and maybe even some respect from others.

Upon entering you’ll see five rooms:

The Dining Room; here you’ll obtain the Sword of Skardsen.

The Bedroom; the Amulet of Thilg is hidden here.

The Library; in here you’ll find the Grimoire of Thade.

The Kitchen; here you’ll get the last item: the Shield of Pion Troect.

The Crypt.

You can’t enter the Crypt before you get all the four items hidden in the other rooms. If you bring these items to the Crypt, Thade’s spirit will be calmed (for now).

The castle is quite small, but keep in mind it wasn’t cleaned for a very long time – so yes, you might’ve just stepped on a bug – ew! Between rooms you have several tiles. Because of the bad maintenance some tiles are cracked. Don’t step on them. The chance that you fall through is too big, besides, who knows where you’ll land?

The Anagrams

While you get the images of dirty, scary and above all HUNGRY monsters out of your mind, I’ll help you with the anagrams since they are the hardest part of the game. If you ignore the screams and scary sounds.

Oh, by the way, you could also just click on the ghost right next to the crypt to turn off the music. Yes, that old Thade has a weird taste in music, all right.

Anagrams are words spelled incorrectly and the point of them is that you solve them.

An example: jugrde is judger misspelled.

How you can solve them? You could either grab yourself a dictionary and notebook and try to solve them by writing down every possible answer. OR you use other sources that you have. *wink wink coughs “Agraman revSol” coughs* Though I am sure you’re bright enough to solve them on your own.

However, to help you, you get hints. They give you the first letter (and the first after that, etc.). You start out with three hints and get one hint for every item you obtain. Hurray – you’re not completely lost!

The Score

Now, on with the scoring as it’s the most important part. Though I can’t even imagine why someone would give out points for walking around in a dirty, unsafe castle with scary sounds while solving anagrams, let’s just thank him for that.

On the scaredy cat levels you’ll get four, five or six letter words depending on how many steps you take (four for one, five for two and six for three).

You’ll get one point for four letters.

Three points for five letters.

Six points for six letters.

For entering a room you get 50 points.

For completing the anagram in the crypt, you get 150 points.

For resting Thade you get 50 points.

And last but not least, for sending your score you get 150 points.

Not bad, eh? Keep in mind that the NP Ratio is 2.00, meaning your score gets doubled.

It pays being a hero. So here goes your proof. For playing on the super brave levels you get five, six or seven letter words depending on how many steps you take (five for one, six for two and seven for three).

You’ll get two points for five letters.

Five points for six letters.

Ten points for seven letters.

And the same points for the rooms apply. This gives you 550 points and that doesn’t even include the walking. So you’re guaranteed to get 1000 NP per play.

Trophies and Avatar

I said before that to get 1000 NP, you could also play on easy. However, if you’re aiming for a trophy or avatar, you should play on hard. The game ends after you beat Eliv Thade, so you should walk around a lot and head for the end when you think you have enough points.

One last tip: when you’re aiming for a trophy, play on the first of the month. The scores are usually lower then.

Conclusion

This all sounds great, right? However, there are some downsides. Not all anagrams are easy to solve, since there are a lot of Neopets-related words in there that you might not know about. So you could run out of all of your three lives quicker than you can solve the anagram “Eliv Thade”.

Another downside is that the game does take up some of your precious time. But isn’t solving anagrams with threatening sounds in the background just about the best thing you can think of?

Please give feedback. Positive or negative, I don't care. :)