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Tips and short wakthrough
Great game, dumb instructions. Lots of items in the manual don't exist, and many items in the game aren't documented in the manual. I'll try to straighten things out here.
Nonexistent stuff: batteries, hourglass, folding bridge, Potion of Ill Health, wooden key, fool's key, mansion key.
Undocumented (or incorrectly labeled) stuff and what it does:
Music box - destroys red ghosts such as Ivel the Unbeatable.
Strange black cube - coughed up by the one-eyed monster when it drinks some swamp slime; use it to free Jip.
Block - use it to fix broken switches and progress.
Vine - this helps Thing escape from a hole.
Red potion (wrongly labeled as pink potion) - takes away half of Fester's ill-health if used.
Jeweled key (wrongly labeled as secret passage key) - unlocks trapdoor in mountains.
Black egg - Morobe's ghost leaves this; removes half of Fester's ill-health if touched.
Spider eye - use in the statue of Strobia in the graveyard to awaken her; she'll fully restore ill-health if Fester talks to her.
Shockwave - a powerful weapon; can't be used unless Fester's ill-health is full, but it takes away half of his ill-health.
Spider key (wrongly labeled as iron key) - unlocks gate in wetlands.
Iron key (wrongly labeled as doom and gloom key) - unlocks gate to the false mansion.
Amulet of true sight - use to reveal Smied when he disappears.
I think that's about it for items. Here are some hints on sticky parts of the game.
If you don't know how to beat Romit, you'll probably wind up immensely frustrated. He takes hit after hit for hours on end. Turns out you have to beat him in a different way from most bosses...here's what to do. Rush at Romit and push him towards the side of the room by jabbing him repeatedly with lightning. Once he's stuck by a wall, keep on jabbin' and voila! Romit falls over the edge...turns out the "room" is really a plateau!
Getting through the final section of the game can be very infuriating because you can't continue inside the mansion - you get plopped outside Smied's dungeon! Here are my tips on making it through the whole shebang in one shot. First of all, make sure you have full cookies and ill-health. Get to Smied carefully, losing as little ill-health as you possibly can. The trick is to get past Smied without using any cookies; luckily, he's not that hard to kill if you're careful and keep using the amulet of true sight to reveal him when he disappears. Smack him with your bowling ball as well as lightning. Now...you have to get through the mansion without using cookies. The mansion isn't all that difficult (especially because your ill-health meter fills up after you polish off Smied); just make sure to travel along carefully. Don't beat the red ghosts on the "dance floor" until you really need ill-health, as they will each give up a nice, nourishing skull but will not return once killed. You'll have to pull three "trigger" books to activate a hidden stairway. Once in the attic, do NOT touch the egg Morobe gives you! It's BAD! And now...Jellinsky and her gargoyles!
Get ready for the fight of your life. This is what you were saving all those cookies for! You'll need 'em, boy, because this ain't easy! The gargoyles keep splitting off into smaller ones that you have to annihilate, and it's a real pain in the neck...Use Dragon Belch cookies, the bowling ball, and lightning to just keep whaling on the gargoyles. Conserve your black beetle cookies until you're just about dead. So your ill-health meter won't get depleted (even a tad) while it's filling, use a crusty cookie before a black beetle cookie. While you're invincible, get in close and hack away! When it wears off, go back to dodging and stabbing/throwing whenever possible. Do the same thing with your other two cookies when you're almost dead. Warning: this is a lot harder than it sounds (those darn things can take about a googolplex hits to kill), so good luck!