YMMV / The Fabled Lands

• Game-Breaker:
  • A cave in the north-west corner of Book 2 hides a treasure that you can only attempt to retrieve once, and has really nasty fail conditions (ranging from loss of Rank to instant death). However, solve the puzzle (through luck or having found and solved a complex cypher) and you can lay claim to a +10 Defence Shield, an obscenely powerful item that will make you nigh-invulnerable in battle.
  • It's easier than you might think to get a +6 sword in Book 5: set up shop in Aku as a magician. You'll be tasked with resurrecting a noblewoman's child from the dead, a task that requires average-level Magic and below-average Sanctity checks. The hardest part is acquiring the incredibly-expensive ingredients for the ritual... except you can get them for free as quest rewards by travelling a short distance north to the Hall of Heroes and completing the quest there in favour of Grendal, which only requires a diplomatic approach and a single average-level Charisma check.
  • The White Sword. +8 attack and cannot be lost, even if you die.
  • On a mundane level, in book 1 you can easily and safely navigate to an encounter where you joust three incredibly non-threatening knights, who reward you with three suits of plate armor. Plate armor offers +6 protection - enough that you'll have a major advantage in every fight you'll get into even in book 2, and sells for a good chunk of cash that will be extremely useful for a book 1 character. The developers of the cRPG adaptation must have been aware of this, because you're now forced to fight the three of them at once, making things more difficult.
  • Molhern's Smithy, a magical anvil along the road in book 2. Pay enough money and you can upgrade your weapons and armour to high levels.
  • The removal of the level cap. While the basic stats cannot be raised above 12, stamina can be raised and defence is linked to both stamina and rank, essentially making a player invulnerable in combat once sufficiently leveled.
  • Book 5 has a tome that allows for fast travel between the main "hub" cities of each book. This greatly speeds up progress when performing quests that cover multiple books.
• That One Boss: Book 6 has a random encounter with a 'Wacko' (a pirate from Akatsurai). He has no name or plot importance and is not even supernatural- just a big, scary looking pirate- but he is one of the toughest fights in the entire series, stronger even than the actual dragon faced in the same book.