At this point I honestly don’t remember much about Adventure goes, so I’m going to blog about my playing experientially, like The Stack and The CRPG Addict.
I’ve hit a snag on the Don Eckman port:
I CAN SUSPEND YOUR ADVENTURE FOR YOU SO THAT YOU CAN RESUME LATER, BUT YOU WILL HAVE TO WAIT AT LEAST 90 MINUTES BEFORE CONTINUING
IS THIS ACCEPTABLE?
Specifically, SAVE doesn’t work (other than to give this original message, which has interesting implications for authentic play) so I have to restart every time.
I switched over to the Kenneth Plotkin port, which has a single save game that works and normalizes capitalization, but otherwise seems to be fine.
I’ve been playing a lot of old-style adventures lately, and one thing I’ve noticed is my initial forays into the dungeon/fortress/whatever have been purely mapping expeditions. It’s curious if I imagine it in a story sense, that I am creating alternate-universe clones to scout for me before the “real” expedition begins. This is especially the case for old adventures with lots of instant-death-puzzles. For me, part of getting over the amount of instant death was not to imagine each traversal of the map as a coherent narrative: only the last successful trek matters in a story sense.
While Adventure doesn’t have anything in the way of instant death that I’ve seen so far, now there’s an inventory limit of 7 items (*ahem* thank you Don Woods) so inventory optimization is important; fairly early on without any special effort I find myself maxing out my limit.
So I’ve been avoiding picking up things for the moment and just mapping, but even without solving any puzzles (except for the dragon, which I distinctly remember because it was unfair) I can map a huge chunk of the area:
Click the map above for a full sized PDF map.
I find refreshing the vast amount of exploration available for solving only a few puzzles. It’s hard to find the equivalent in modern games (or even many older ones). One tendancy that I’m glad has died out is the “go north one way, go west to go back” trick. Drawing the bottom section around Bedquilt has been torturous. It does, however, accurately convey the same confusion as crawling about a cave.
I’ve been making my maps with Trizbort, which has been working great except for the mazes. They’ll likely be the focus of my next post.
Renga in Blue 
I agree with your points. Whenever I start a new game (especially if it’s a larger game), I always map out all the locations accessible before starting the puzzles.
I’ve finished my game for the 350-point adventure. One thing I remember is that I had gotten all the other treasures without the pirate showing up, and I had to go into the maze before the pirate was “spotted” and the chest appeared. Somewhat of a design flaw if you ask me, since it’s quite possible to run out of lamp batteries before the pirate shows up.
On to Zork then, I guess.