Fable II – A Collection of Hints and Tips

I’ve heard a lot of people in forums asking about various things in Fable II that they could do to make their life in Albion better. These are things like “how can I make money” to “what are the best weapons in the game” and of course the question “why the hell am I so fat? I run through Albion adventuring and eat a couple of pies and now I’m fat? What GIVES?”

These are all good questions, so that’s why I thought it’d be cool to show my friends who read this blog a compilation of guides and tricks that I’ve found useful why wandering about the countryside with me and my dog, Argo.

Click on the link below to read more!

Money Makin’

In Fable II, there’s a good way to do things and then there’s the bad way to do things. For me, I just can’t seem to go around killing villagers and pick pocketing little old ladies. I hear this is the fastest way to make money, but I’m not going to be a thug. Even when I play video games, I have strange moral issues. I’m sure you’re not surprised.

Now, making money the good way in Albion takes some finessing and charm. So, the first thing you may want to do is to start charming the pants off the villagers in Bowerstone and chances are they’ll give you discounts upon discounts for the products they sale. And when you sell stuff back to them, they’ll buy it from you for a higher price. After you’ve gotten bored making everyone fall in love with you, now it’s time to make some cash.

After the charm has gotten to work, head on over to the Blacksmith in Bowerstone and take the job. This job is pretty easy and if you’ve got the right amount of coordination, you can probably make 50k in gold in about 30 minutes. I know, it’s boring work, but if you want the best weapons money can buy and FAST, just do it.

After you’ve become a master blacksmith, why don’t you use your hard earned money and go to your “Quest” menu and then check out the “Sales” menu under “Quest”. Now, see if there’s a sale on weapons anywhere in Albion. If there is, EXCELLENT. Check out which weapons are for sale. You’ll see on the right side of the screen the “sales price” and the “base price”. The base price is what you’ll probably be able to sell the weapon for to another vendor. The “sales” price is what the vendor is going to sell the weapon to you for. Find the weapons that have a low sales price and a high base price.

When you’ve bought all the weapons you can, head on over to Fairfax Gardens, which is past the Blacksmith shop in another little area. Find the traveling vendors, which are wandering all about Fairfax Gardens, and find a weapons or gun dealer. Sell your sale weapons to the vendor and PROFIT.

Now, don’t do this too many times. You may see after the first time of doing this that the economy will change around you. Things will be MUCH cheaper. So, make sure you buy lots of things from that specific town to make up for the lousy economy.

I think the first time I did this, I made like 200k in gold, which left me with plenty of money to buy the blacksmith shop, the inn and a couple of those vendors in stalls throughout Bowerstone. Here’s the best part: you’ll accrue money for any shop that you buy, EVEN when you’re not in the game (well, only if you’ve patched Fable II with the patch from Xbox live). If you have other games to play sign on out of Fable II, let your character bake at 350° and come back in 2 or 3 days to see a profit. The longer you character bakes, the more money you’ll see, which is actually pretty fun.

Especially now that you have games like Fallout 3 to play.

You can make even MORE money if you raise the rent on your properties, but you might piss some people off and you’ll get a higher corruption rating, because you’re a dirty slum lord! You’ll also help sink your town’s economy into the pits. Of course, the lower you set the rent, the higher your purity will become and the better your town’s economy will be, but you’ll make less money.

For a more in-depth guide to making money, check out this guide over at GameFaqs.

Questing in Albion

Questing in Fable II is actually pretty easy. The developers have given you a pretty little trail to follow so that you can find your quests more effectively and quickly. There are a few quests, though, that you’ll have to be able to find without the quest trail, specifically the Archeology strain of quests from Fairfax Gardens.

You do have a valuable partner in finding these types of quests, though. That partner? Your trusty, ol’ dog. You’ll have to read the clues given to you by the Archaeologist lady and go in the general area the clues points you at. And there goes Argo… or whatever you’ve named your dog. He’s such a good boy.

Most of the other quests in the game are pretty easy to get to, beat and steal experience points for, so for those quests you can’t figure out where to go, you’ll eventually find them. Just listen to what your dog is doing when you’re in new areas and most of the time, he’ll lead you on your way.

Your Doggone Dog

Speaking of your dog… he sure is useful, if not a bit annoying. I mean, he finds stuff for you and he wins over the hearts of villagers using his various antics and tricks you’ve taught him. There is a trick to him doing all of these things, though and you HAVE to find books to train your pooch. Now, there’s a bookstore in Bowerstone where I found a TON of trick books and dog leveling books. I think I got my dog’s fighting skills up to level 4 and his treasure hunting skills up to 5 at just ONE book store.

Now, not only will my dog kick some ass, he finds all the coolest treasures and dig spots that your pillaging little heart will love.

A word of warning though: once you’ve trained your dog up to level 5 on treasure hunting, he will CONSTANTLY be finding things for you to dig up or chests for you to open. If you’re not one to like your dog constantly bothering you, you may not want to train him up. But, that, in my opinion, is just silly. Who doesn’t want a ton of free crap that your dog finds?

Weapons in Albion

There are TONS of different weapons for you to find while you’re out questing and buying things in Albion. Even if you’ve only played for a few minutes, you’ll know that you have at least a sword and a crossbow. Well, those swords can turn into even bigger swords, maces, hammers and any other medieval weaponry you can think of.

You also get shooting weapons such as crossbows, muskets and rifles that will make killing people at long distances much easier. There’s nothing like shooting a guy with a rifle from 50 yards away and the guy flying back about 20 feet and all of his experience bubbles flying out of him like little droplets of blood!

What kind of weapons should you get, though? Well, the best weapons in the game are what they like to call “Legendary Weapons” and they can be found all throughout Albion in various places and after many different quests. The first Legendary Weapon I got was when I donated a ton of money to the Temple of Light. And by a ton of money, I mean like 20,000 gold, which is actually pretty cheap for a weapon, especially a Legendary one.

There is a list of all the Legendary weapons you can get in Fable II over at ProjectEGo.Net that you can find here. Not only does it tell you all the Legendary weapons in the game, it tells you the damage of the weapon and where you can find the specific weapon. Nice.

Now, for Non-Legendary weapons, you’ll want to check out the number of stars on a specific weapon you’re looking at. The more stars you have, the better the weapon is! If the weapon you’re looking at is better the your currently armed weapon, the new weapon will tell you so! There’s no way you’ll be walking around with crappy weapons in hand in THIS game.

Fighting Styles

I’ve done a lot of fighting in Fable II and have a lot of fun with the combat in the game. There are some guys, though, that are just tough to get past. These are usually thugs you can find in just about any forest throughout the game. They tend to block every single hit that you throw at them.

I was talking to my brother about this and he said he found out a combat style that worked out well for him. Get the magic spell called Time Control and use it while you’ve got your controller aimed at a specific enemy. What this does is allows you to jump behind the baddie and you can take him out with a couple of well placed strikes of your sword.

I also like to hit the “A” button while my sword is drawn, which makes your character roll about on the ground. This really makes the bad guys move around a lot and you can eventually get around their blocking moves by rolling up behind them.

Gaining Experience

So, in order to level up in this game, you have to get experience points! The fastest way to get experience points in my experience is to get out there and kill stuff! I was having problems getting out there and finding where to kill people. I would kill all the raiders and thieves I could find on the roads and just wasn’t getting the experience I wanted to ramp up my attributes.

That’s when I decided to continue on my main quest and found the Crucible in Westcliff. This place has so many experience points, that I was able to up a bunch of my skills. So, if you’re looking to ramp up attributes, get at least to the Crucible quest during the main quest.

Here’s a helpful warning: before you get to the Crucible quest, make sure you buy a TON of food and potions. There’s a reason there is so much experience in this place: there are a TON of bad guys to kill and you will almost die a bunch of times, so those potions are very helpful.

The best thing about the Crucible is that you can go into it over and over again, so really, you have unlimited experience you can gain there. Nice!

So, hopefully in this little cheat sheet, I’ve covered everything that might help my fellow gamers out. I know everything about the game isn’t listed here, but that would take FOREVER to write about all the aspects of the game. If you have a question about something or would like some other helpful hints on more specific topics, let me know. This game is too much dang fun!

[Images courtesy of Microsoft.]