Bugs:Dungeons of Avalon II

This page details bugs of Dungeons of Avalon II.

Dungeons of Avalon II follows the series tradition of shipping with game-breaking bugs that render it unwinnable. There was a re-release which fixed the critical bugs, but only in German.

NPC bug (EN)

In the English release of the game, the NPCs on the first dungeon level are bugged. They appear in the wrong locations, use the wrong graphics, give out or require the wrong items, and text appears cut off. The bug is attested in a a September 1997 review.

The bug is caused by superfluous 00-bytes in the English-language NPC dialog. This leads to every NPC encounter being off by one. This results in the prison cells being guarded by the Thiefs Rabun instead of the Prison Guards; but you must get past the prison cells to recover the Antipoisen item to get past the Thiefs. This renders the game unwinnable.

The bug can be fixed by hex editing the game executable AVALON-II-E as follows.

Location	Change from	Change to
ad06	00	5f
afae	00	5f
b13d	00	5f
71d2	53 40 61 d2	61 00 ff 4a

One of the pirate releases of the game attempts to patch this bug by fixing the off-by-one. However, the game is still unable to be completed due to other bugs.

There are also some minor formatting issues with the NPC text, but nothing game-breaking.

Button switches broken (EN)

The last two levels of the game introduce a new type of button block with a small button. Pressing it once opens a passageway elsewhere in the map, as normal for a button. Pressing it a gain turns it into a Forcefield, which can be bypassed using a Killmagic scroll as usual.

However, in the English language release, the buttons do not respond when clicked. This renders the final level impassable, because reaching the final boss requires hitting these buttons.

Final level bug (EN/DE)

On the final level, entering a random monster encounter causes the game controls to freeze, rendering the game unwinnable. This affects all encounters on the level except for the final boss fight, which appears behind a series of locked doors that require keys.

This bug affects all versions of the game in both English and German, except for the bug-fixed release which came with the Amiga Games Sonderausgabe 1/95 CD-ROM, in the file dungeonsofavalon2.dms.

Save game files are compatible between versions, so the solution is simply to copy your save game file over to a copy of the Sonderausgabe 1/95 German version in order to play the final level. Once you reach a series of locked doors which require keys, only the boss fight remains, so it's safe to bring the save game file back over to the English version.

Wrong or missing text (EN/DE)

On the level of the Tower of Roa with pits, Message 6 is unused, and Message 5 is used twice. From context, it's clear that Message 6 was meant to be used in one of those locations.

Message 5 reads "HERE THEY ARE,THE SIX." ("HIER SIND SIE ALLE 6.") It is located near chests containing six keys, as alluded to in Message 0: "FIND FIRS ALL SIX,THAN GO GO DOWN." ("FINDE ALLE 6, DANN ERST GEHE RUNTER.") However, Message 5 also appears at the end of a line of ice tiles which end abruptly in front of a pit. It would make more sense for this to be Message 6: "I HOPE THAT WAS NOT SO FRIGHTENED FOR YOU.. LORD ROA." ("NA HABT IHR EUCH ERSCHRECKT! LORD ROA.")

On the final level, Lord Roa's taunt is missing. An unused message for that level says "WELCOME YOUR FOOLS. I'LL REVENGE FOR MY FATHER. FIRST I'LL KILL YOU,THAN I CONQUER AVALON. HA HA HA HAAAAA." ("WILKOMMEN IHR NARREN. ICH WILL RACHE FÜR MEINEN VATER.ERST KOMMT IHR DRAN .DANN EROBERE ICH AVALON. HA HA HA HAAAA.")