Gold Box Pool to Pools run complete

[Null Null]

Same party through all 4 games.

OK, people have batted this about on various sites but haven't seen anyone saying they actually did it. (Not worth playing through the Ice Caves in Secret?) It's not that hard, at least until the last fight of Pools of Darkness. I'm not claiming some sort of hardcore-gamer achievement, this is more of a proof-of-concept thing for anyone who wants to do a 'D&D the Way Your Daddy Played It'-style thread where they do the whole series with characterizations of the PCs and so on.

Party as it was initially designed was:
3 Human Fighters, 1 Half-Elf Fighter/Mage/Thief, 1 Human Cleric,1 Human Mage.

1 of the fighters was dual-classed to a mage after reaching level 13 in Secret. He finally got up to 14 as a mage near the end of the game.

In Pools, I changed another fighter to a cleric after reaching level 17 (min THAC0).

The first couple of games weren't that bad, because you have 8th level clerics and mages and 9th level fighters (10th pretty quickly as I did everything in Pool) in Curse, and 12th level characters pretty quick in Secret due to all the XP you gained in the prior game.

Pools of Darkness was, of course, harder. (Duh!) The extra fireballs helped, but the low HPs (I saved before going up a level in Pool but was rather lax about it) got to be a pain in the final battle when all the Blue Bane Minions and Dracoliches breathe on you. I mugged Vala to get an extra Ring of Blinking, and did the thing where I ran around the corner and slowly drew out the enemies a few at a time to win the last fight. (No, I didn't pull the wait-behind-a-wall trick; every enemy went down.)

Still have to see about Dave's Challenge.

 

[octavius]

I played through all four games twice - once on the Amiga back in the days, and once using DosBox a couple opf years ago.
The hardest parts were the caves under Hap (magic resistant Drow (Hasted Fighter/Thief doing backstabs was the most effective tactic against them) and a Dracolich), the Arie and Moander parts of PoD, and of course the most difficult fight of them all: the final fights in PoD. The Mulmaster Corp is optional and quite easy if you either cheese it (Dust of Disappearance) or abuse the poor AI.
The most tedious part was those endless ice caves in Secret. If it wasn't for Secret being so much weaker than the other games in the series I would have played through the whole series more than twice.

The final battles were actually harder playing the DOS version, due to the Ring of Lightning Immunity not working. Fighting "honourably" (not abusing the poor AI) I needed several tries and I even had to edit my characters' DEX up to 18 to beat those fights, and even then I only had one character left standing at the end (a dual classed Ranger/Mage). With the Amiga version I don't recall it being particularly difficult, since that Ring help tremendously and is also one of the few items that survive the travels through limbo.

 

[Null Null]

I played through all four games twice - once on the Amiga back in the days, and once using DosBox a couple opf years ago.
The hardest parts were the caves under Hap (magic resistant Drow (Hasted Fighter/Thief doing backstabs was the most effective tactic against them) and a Dracolich), the Arie and Moander parts of PoD, and of course the most difficult fight of them all: the final fights in PoD. The Mulmaster Corp is optional and quite easy if you either cheese it (Dust of Disappearance) or abuse the poor AI.
The most tedious part was those endless ice caves in Secret. If it wasn't for Secret being so much weaker than the other games in the series I would have played through the whole series more than twice.

The final battles were actually harder playing the DOS version, due to the Ring of Lightning Immunity not working. Fighting "honourably" (not abusing the poor AI) I needed several tries and I even had to edit my characters' DEX up to 18 to beat those fights, and even then I only had one character left standing at the end (a dual classed Ranger/Mage). With the Amiga version I don't recall it being particularly difficult, since that Ring help tremendously and is also one of the few items that survive the travels through limbo.

Ha, nice! I always wondered why they did that.

One thing I used to do on the Drow was cast Cloudkill. It was very entertaining to burst into the barn, drop the blue clouds of death on the entire enemy, and whale on the Efreet while his minions dropped dead.

Another spell you probably didn't use but I found useful: the Death Spell, which works up to eight hit dice, could be dropped on the Drow Priests and Priestesses in Kalistes' Parlor. You could knock 'em out without having to use Delayed Blast Fireballs and hit your party.

 

[octavius]

One thing I used to do on the Drow was cast Cloudkill. It was very entertaining to burst into the barn, drop the blue clouds of death on the entire enemy, and whale on the Efreet while his minions dropped dead.

Another spell you probably didn't use but I found useful: the Death Spell, which works up to eight hit dice, could be dropped on the Drow Priests and Priestesses in Kalistes' Parlor. You could knock 'em out without having to use Delayed Blast Fireballs and hit your party.

Yeah, I've found the Death Spell is quite handy against the Drow, especially when playing FRUA where the Deah Spell is one of the most common spell on scrolls. But in CoAB if you do Hap/Dracandros right after Tilverton you are not high enough level to cast Cloudkill or Death Spell unless you found scrolls.
I haven't tried the Cloudkill spell against Drow. Doesn't their magic resistance work against it? If not I can see how it can be very useful; if it doesn't kill them outright the poison damage will at least prevent them from casting spells.

 

[dragonbait]

I transferred characters from Pool to Curse once. But I never took my PoR team all the way through all 4 games. That was mainly due to the fact that newly created characters created for Curse always seem to end up with more HP's, even at creation point usually. I alway's maxed out my characters stats at character creation point. I'd rather have a level 5 maxed new curse character than a level 8 transferred PoR character with the same amount of HP or possibly having less HP. It is cool that we can transfer characters through all the games, but it's just something that I never did. Kudo's to those who did though.

 

[Null Null]

One thing I used to do on the Drow was cast Cloudkill. It was very entertaining to burst into the barn, drop the blue clouds of death on the entire enemy, and whale on the Efreet while his minions dropped dead.

Another spell you probably didn't use but I found useful: the Death Spell, which works up to eight hit dice, could be dropped on the Drow Priests and Priestesses in Kalistes' Parlor. You could knock 'em out without having to use Delayed Blast Fireballs and hit your party.

Yeah, I've found the Death Spell is quite handy against the Drow, especially when playing FRUA where the Deah Spell is one of the most common spell on scrolls. But in CoAB if you do Hap/Dracandros right after Tilverton you are not high enough level to cast Cloudkill or Death Spell unless you found scrolls.
I haven't tried the Cloudkill spell against Drow. Doesn't their magic resistance work against it? If not I can see how it can be very useful; if it doesn't kill them outright the poison damage will at least prevent them from casting spells.

Right. They didn't seem to resist it as often as they should have, not sure why. I was 11th level (remember, my mages had been imported from Pool), and I did Hap last; I did Zhentil Keep first (which was a pain even for my augmented party), then Yulash, then Hap. As I hadn't played the game in a while I wanted to see if I could do things in a weird order. I did Tanetal first in Pools, and Kalistes last, which made the Web Dimension really easy, because once you get your mage to 30th level or so, the drow magic resistance doesn't work anymore.

I even thought about looting Gothmenes' Palace without the Crystal Ring so I wouldn't have to worry about his coming back, but you can't take the stuff out with you without cheating (and I wanted to see if a Pool-to-Pools run was possible without cheating--mugging Vala is technically allowed by the rules and has a long and dishonorable tradition).

Now, of course, I have no such inhibitions...

 

[octavius]

I tried doing things in a different order once, by visiting Yulash after Tilverton. But those Zhentil Terror Teams, with their pre-buffed mages, were just too damned tough.
Never thought of doing Zhentil Keep second, although I seem to recall crpgaddict doing it succesfully.

 

[Invictus]

I never tired that either; I got Secret of the Silver Blades first as a present and then went from there straight to Pools of Darkness. Later on I got the first 2 games along with the Krynn Trilogy but I never got around playing with Pools of Radiance all the way to the end
What is with the isssues with Silver Blades? I really like that game and still consider it a worthy installment in the series...overall all the goldbox games are worthy; some might be better than others but defiently no clunkers here

 

[octavius]

What is with the isssues with Silver Blades? I really like that game and still consider it a worthy installment in the series...overall all the goldbox games are worthy; some might be better than others but defiently no clunkers here

99.9% trash mobs and 0.1% interesting encounters.
By the end you will have killed armies of high level mages and fighters - enough to conquer all of Faerun many times over - and they all hang out in some godforsaken mines and caves under a glacier?

 

[Null Null]

Agree with above. The level thing's kind of funny--Legion Wizards were 14th level, making them more powerful than the mages in the next game. Levels in all the Gold Box games except Pool were inflated from the P&P AD&D point of view, though--given the poor AI, it couldn't really be otherwise. If you compare Pool of Radiance with Ruins of Adventure (the P&P version), monsters are beefed up and their numbers increased.

Also, it was completely linear, so you had no choice but to slog through monsters and monsters in the ice caves. Note that most of the other games either had a few main quests you could do in any order (Curse, Pools, Gateway) or lots of little quests you could mix up the order for (Pool, Death, Treasures). The ones with strong linear stories (Champions, Dark Queen) at least tied things into the landscape so you had different towns you could visit. Secret was just MONSTERS ATTACK! x 100.

But hey, if you liked it, great! Try the others, they're even better.

 

[Invictus]

Maybe I al remembering through rose colored glasses (hey take a look at my avatar) since Silver Blades was my first Goldbox, so I don't remember the trash combat that badly but perhaps you guys are right
Replaying these games from start to finish would be great nowadays (especialy Gateway and Treasures which I played alongside a friend so I never got to do everything myself) but with my RL, workload and backlog of games that seems unlikely...funny how I rather replay my favorite 90s classics than play current games for the first time

 

[Null Null]

Oh, I'd know the Dreadlord anywhere. I think liches were one of the few monsters that got redesigned for every game...you actually have separate combat icons for liches in Secret, Death, Pools, and Dark Queen.

You're not the only one with a life, you don't have to apologize, I just figured Secret and Pools were your only Goldbox games.

As for old games, here's my situation: I'm pretty busy myself, so I don't have time to learn the modern real-time games well enough to play them. Plus, if they're anywhere near as absorbing as I remember Pool, Curse, and Pools being, it won't be good. So I can pull out Pools and do things in the wrong order for half an hour to unwind before bed. Who cares what's current? If you like it, who cares what anyone else says? You don't play Dungeons & Dragons to get ahead in the world anyway (unless maybe you work in software.)

 

[Deuce Traveler]

In Pool of Radiance I used a mostly demi-human party so that I could have elven fighter/magic-users spamming sleep in the beginning and fireballs at the last battle. Curse was a bit harder with a demi-human party towards the end, but the Dust of Disappearance was a great equalizer.

I think I had the following:

Dwarven Fighter/Thief
Elven Figher/Magic-User
Elven Fighter/Magic-User
Half-Elven Fighter/Magic-User/Cleric
Elven Fighter/Cleric
Elven Cleric/Magic-User

I couldn't bring the demi-human party in Secret due to the slow level progression, level caps and lower hit points. They would have gotten slaughtered. So I went with an all human party and dual classed them in Pools of Darkness.

 

[Fowyr]

Been there, done that. Just replaced two fighters with paladin and ranger when started Curse.

Still have to see about Dave's Challenge.

Take a lot of arrows and darts.

Silver Blades

Don't forget that all game was inspired as much as wet cardboard box. Even "intrigue" with Black Circle was done horribly.

 

[Null Null]

Been there, done that. Just replaced two fighters with paladin and ranger when started Curse.

Still have to see about Dave's Challenge.

Take a lot of arrows and darts.

Silver Blades

Don't forget that all game was inspired as much as wet cardboard box. Even "intrigue" with Black Circle was done horribly.

That series was more about the tactics than the plot. Heck, it was Pool of Radiance, the one with the weakest plot, that inspires all the fond memories, because just about every dungeon let you go two ways:

Podol Plaza: fight everyone or sneak in and out
Cadorna Textile House: give the treasure to Cadorna like a good boy, burst it open and take the most money, or have the thieves open the lock and get half the money (and the Gauntlets of Ogre Power)
Nomad Camp: kill the nomads, the kobolds, or both
Kobold Caves: go in the front or go in the back
Lizard Man Keep: duel with a single lizardman or kill them all
Buccaneer's Base: buy the boy, open the animal pen and distract the guards and run off with him, or charge the captain and kill them all
Outpost of Zhentil Keep: sneak out or kill the whole base (or something in between)
Stojanow Gate: charge the gate or sneak in
Valjevo Castle: fight the gate guard or disguise yourselves and sneak through

You can even fight the town guards. The open-endedness came closest to a real game of D&D, at least as far as you could do it on 1988 computers.

 

[Fowyr]

The open-endedness came closest to a real game of D&D, at least as far as you could do it on 1988 computers.

And it's one of the reasons why PoR is my most beloved Goldbox. (It even was not my first, I started series with CoK.)

That series was more about the tactics than the plot

SotSB lacks in this department too. Repeating of one encounter twenty times is not good design. Damn, even my patience have limits. And I made a map of Verdigris myself. Probably I bash it too much, but really, it was only Goldbox that don't left almost any memories.
BTW, was it first GB where you can control NPCs if you have paladin in the party?

Also that list is brings tears to my eyes.

 

[crufty]

por was my fav as well--back in those days, I had a 4 color cga card; amazing what was done with 4 colors and a lot of patience.

 

[Null Null]

Minor addendum: beat Dave's Challenge with the original-Pool party.

Spoiler

The key to beating the final battle in Dave's Challenge is to remember that Dave (or whoever) erases memorized spells, not magic, so scrolls and wands still work. You can actually buy Wands of Ice Storm in Phlan before leaving, and you'll recall that Ice Storms don't allow saving throws and affect Bits of Moander. Also, due to a little oversight on the programmers' part, they can be used by fighters (but not clerics!). So you equip your entire party except for the Clerics (who have all the Necklaces of Missiles I picked up in Secret) with Wands and pelt the Bits of Moander and Blue Bane Minions and, later, the Red Dragons with Ice Storms. Of course, you should all have Fine Long Bows +2 and lots of arrows, and cast Fire Touch (as well as Haste, etc.) on your fighters before entering the battle.

 

[Metro]

Naga, please, I beat these games with the same imported characters and none of this fruity dual/multi class shit when I was 14.

 

[octavius]

First time i played Pools of Darkness I was stomped by the very first riddle of Dave's Challenge (no Internet or higher level geeks to consult back then), and the other time I was too exhausted after the final battles.
I think I have to dig up my old save from PoD again and try Dave (second) Challenge again some time.