began to emerge and once again took over the mines. In desperation, the miners took all their gems to the Well of Knowledge, which is said to grant wishes and provide information for those who dropped treasure into it. The party was then summoned to the town of New Verdigris by the Well of Knowledge at the wish of the townspeople. They need the party to protect them from the monsters and so begins the story of the Secret of the Silver Blades. The party's objective is to adventure through the mountain region near Verdigris, entering areas such as the ruins of Old Verdigris, the Well of Knowledge, the mines, the crevasses, and eventually to the Dreadlord's castle. The party will face off against an evil group of humans called the Black Circle, many kinds of monsters in the mines and crevasses, and finally against the lich the Dreadlord himself. Gameplay To play Secret of the Silver Blades, one simply needs to create characters and form a party. The gameplay basics are identical to all games in the series. Characters can also be imported from Pool of Radiance and Curse of the Azure Bonds. Game differences Secret of the Silver Blades is similar to its two predecessors in gameplay and graphics. There is no overworld in this game, however. It takes place entirely in the first person maps. Graphics did improve slightly, though everything was still drawn in 16 colors. The game includes some new features introduced with Champions of Krynn, and adds a difficulty selector that the player can use to change the power of the enemy creatures. The game world was the largest yet for a Gold Box game, and it included cut scene illustrations of the story. It is the first Gold Box game in which random encounters do not stop after a certain point. Mages have the ability to use spells up to level 7, while clerics can reach level 6 spells. The arrow keys are conveniently usable to select menu options as opposed to using hotkeys, which was the only way in earlier titles, though the hotkey option is still available. There are only two known versions for MS-DOS: Music Like most of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons computer games, this game contains only one song. It was composed by John Halbleib, and was his last game when the developers replaced him with Tom Wahl.