Picking items when failing to obtain clue

[chrysalis2]

After reading through many of the episode summaries and interviews, I developed a thought.

I wonder if a team failed to get a clue (not enough right answers to riddles), then whatever they picked would be forced into a losing path, I think e.g. the team that lost by actually picking a weapon (which usually treguard would tell the team its a bad idea when they die, and was in the guide they were given). Now this team were given a clue, but even me in my 40s I cannot understand that clue, how children were supposed to understand it I dont know. But there is of course many deaths where no clue or only one was obtained instead of both, and its a thought does the producer of a show let teams "luck" into it. So the causeway lady as an example, she wants a comb for her hair, what happens if they pick the comb, would it have been the same scene?

[Canadanne]

I think they generally did allow them to "luck into it" even if they didn't earn a clue - as long as they have the right object and use it when they're supposed to, all is well. Problems only tend to occur when they *don't* happen to pick the right object, or when they didn't get enough riddles right to earn a spell. (I haven't actually checked so I might be forgetting examples to the contrary!)

[Mystara]

In the early series, there seems to have been a definitive, specific, laid out path. An item was used in a particular location and if you didn't have the item (for whatever reason) when it was needed then you died.

The problem is that this lead to the situation where you can do badly in the clue room and still get through the dungeon by being lucky with your selection of items. On the other hand, if you did well, picked up exactly the right items, but missed a clue (or didn't understand the advice given) you were certainly dead. So bad teams could progress and good teams could fail, and it wasn't necessarily clear why.

Later series seem to have eased up on this and there always seems to have been an alternative approach available for taking the wrong items (at least in level 1).