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Completed Blind newfag plays Pool of Radiance!
- Thread starter Monstrous Bat
- Start date
Monstrous Bat
Cipher
- Joined
- Dec 30, 2011
- Messages
- 638
Starting Out
Did I mention the plot in this game? Well, basically, the city of Phlan is currently occupied by all kinds of monsters, so the council of Phlan decided to recruit adventurers to help them retake the city of Phlan. Our party came here, seeking to gain great treasure and fame. Simple, eh?
The temple. They offer healing services. The price is expensive (really fucking expensive - a simple CLW costs a hundred gold pieces), however.
The dock. We can take a ship to the Sokal Keep, if we have any reason to.
According to the manual, we'll have to train here in order to level up. We can also hire mercenaries here.
The council is where we are given quests.
The park is empty. I think it is, at least.
And finally, the slums of Phlan. The slums are currently infested with monsters. Our goal is to get rid of them.
See ya, bro.
Let's visit the city halls, then.
This is the clerk.
I'm not sure how do we "clear" an area, since the monsters are randomly spawned. Maybe we will have to kill a boss or something.
Outside the city halls we read the council's proclamations. Let's look them up in the Adventurers Journal.
Alright, now is a good time to buy our characters some equipment, since they didn't start with any. All our fighter (including Procrastianna - tranny cleric or not, she has the second highest strength in our party. Which should give you an idea how shitty our stats are) got a set of chainmail. Kezerilla got a leather armor since she can't wear anything else, while Grunker and Elwro got a shield. As for weapons, I gave Elwro a longsword, Magnus a 2-handed sword, Grunker a morning star, Kezerilla a short sword, Procrastianna a flail and Bee a quarterstaff. Bee and Kezerilla also got several darts. (No screenshots, sorry. I forgot to take one)
Here's merchandise of another shop. What does these items even do, anyway?
This is another shop that sells silver items. What's special about silver items? I have no idea. Maybe they do extra damage to undeads and devils.
We dropped by some tavern. Apparently we could gamble here. We didn't, but we did hear some rumors.
We rent a room at the inn, which cost us a platium piece (=5gp).
We have our spellcasters memorize some spells. At this level, our clerics can cast 3 level one spells a day, while our mages only have one. Procrastianna memorized two CLWs and a Detect Magic, while both Grunker and Bee memorized a Sleep (because this spell is overpowered in every CRPG I've played).
Spell memorizing works diffrently in AD&D. The time it takes to memorize spells depents on the number and level of spells you want to memorize. As you can see, it takes 4 hours and 45 minutes to memorize these spells.
Alright then. We are all set. Let's start exploring the slums!
Let the rape begin!
This game even had an automap, albeit a rather primal one at that. It shows walls as well as your position, but nothing else. Still much better than none though.
The reason our bros all looks the same is I forgot to edit their "icon" until after this battle. Anyway, allow me to explain the various commands shown at the bottom of screen: (M)ove makes the current active character move. (V)iew let you examine the character's character sheet. (A)im let you aim an attack at a creature (melee characters can just move into them to attack though). (U)se let you use items or change equipment. (Q)uick will let the computer do the combat. (D)one allows you to delay, bandage an unconscious teammate, end your turn, or guard (more on that later).
Elwro acts first, so we make him attack one of the kobolds.
Procrastianna comes next.
Very X-treme.
Kezerilla delays in hope of getting a chance to backstab.
Bee aims at another kobold.
Kezerilla acted. Not a backstab, but still a kill.
Magnus killed the last one.
They didn't even land a hit on us.
They didn't leave much loot. Elwro took the short swords; we will sell them once we are back in city.
Oh, and I edited our bros' icons to make them more distinguishable. This is Elwro.
Procrastianna.
Grunker.
Magnus.
Kezerilla.
And Bee.
We encountered some orcs.
The orcs actually managed to land a few nasty hits. As you can see in the second screenshot, Elwro was severely wounded in this fight.
The loot is decent though. That's 4.8 gold pieces.
Procrastianna cast a CLW on Elwro to patch him up.
Well, this seems like a good time to try out the Sleep spell. Can Grunker even cast spells while wearing armor?
He can. And all three kobolds failed their saving throw, which was expected.
Attacks made against helpless targets are guaranteed kills; even Bee can one-shot them.
Several fights later, we are out of spells, so I decided to bail.
We have to re-memorize spells each time we rest, which is rather annoying. Anyway, here's Grunker's select of spells (Bee's one is exactly the same).
And this is Procrastianna's.
Back in the dungeon, we tried to parley with a group of kobolds.
Hell no. We will just kill you instead.
IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO TOTALLY AVOID COMBAT IN POOL OF RADIANCE.
Ooh! A pre-set event!
We kill the orcs with ease.
Pre-set encounters give a lot more experience it seems.
You can't tell from the screenshot, but we were fighting goblins here. Due to bad rolls and bad tactic on my side, we almost suffered a TPK in this fight. 5 AC didn't sound too bad until you remembered that most our characters have a THAC0 of 20. Anyway, we survived, but barely. Time to bail.
They drop good loots at least.
Another pre-set encounter.
That's... a lot of goblins, to say the least.
But Bee put them to sleep, and we killed them with ease.
Yes. Pre-set encounters definitely gives more experience.
Hmm... Yes.
Very helpful
Hmmm... We are not in great shape, but Grunker still has a Sleep spell. I figured we could afford exploring another room.
Uh-oh
To add insult to injury, they took out Bee before any of us could even act.
Here we are, outnumbered and outpowered. Our only hope is...
Grunker's Sleep spell. It worked - we put 9 orcs to sleep in one cast.
Which only delayed the inevitable.
Last party member down.
...And there goes our first TPK.
So this is the end of the first update. And I believe, bros, I believe the rape has only just begun.
Did I mention the plot in this game? Well, basically, the city of Phlan is currently occupied by all kinds of monsters, so the council of Phlan decided to recruit adventurers to help them retake the city of Phlan. Our party came here, seeking to gain great treasure and fame. Simple, eh?
The temple. They offer healing services. The price is expensive (really fucking expensive - a simple CLW costs a hundred gold pieces), however.
The dock. We can take a ship to the Sokal Keep, if we have any reason to.
According to the manual, we'll have to train here in order to level up. We can also hire mercenaries here.
The council is where we are given quests.
The park is empty. I think it is, at least.
And finally, the slums of Phlan. The slums are currently infested with monsters. Our goal is to get rid of them.
See ya, bro.
Let's visit the city halls, then.
This is the clerk.
I'm not sure how do we "clear" an area, since the monsters are randomly spawned. Maybe we will have to kill a boss or something.
Outside the city halls we read the council's proclamations. Let's look them up in the Adventurers Journal.
Alright, now is a good time to buy our characters some equipment, since they didn't start with any. All our fighter (including Procrastianna - tranny cleric or not, she has the second highest strength in our party. Which should give you an idea how shitty our stats are) got a set of chainmail. Kezerilla got a leather armor since she can't wear anything else, while Grunker and Elwro got a shield. As for weapons, I gave Elwro a longsword, Magnus a 2-handed sword, Grunker a morning star, Kezerilla a short sword, Procrastianna a flail and Bee a quarterstaff. Bee and Kezerilla also got several darts. (No screenshots, sorry. I forgot to take one)
Here's merchandise of another shop. What does these items even do, anyway?
This is another shop that sells silver items. What's special about silver items? I have no idea. Maybe they do extra damage to undeads and devils.
We dropped by some tavern. Apparently we could gamble here. We didn't, but we did hear some rumors.
We rent a room at the inn, which cost us a platium piece (=5gp).
We have our spellcasters memorize some spells. At this level, our clerics can cast 3 level one spells a day, while our mages only have one. Procrastianna memorized two CLWs and a Detect Magic, while both Grunker and Bee memorized a Sleep (because this spell is overpowered in every CRPG I've played).
Spell memorizing works diffrently in AD&D. The time it takes to memorize spells depents on the number and level of spells you want to memorize. As you can see, it takes 4 hours and 45 minutes to memorize these spells.
Alright then. We are all set. Let's start exploring the slums!
Let the rape begin!
This game even had an automap, albeit a rather primal one at that. It shows walls as well as your position, but nothing else. Still much better than none though.
The reason our bros all looks the same is I forgot to edit their "icon" until after this battle. Anyway, allow me to explain the various commands shown at the bottom of screen: (M)ove makes the current active character move. (V)iew let you examine the character's character sheet. (A)im let you aim an attack at a creature (melee characters can just move into them to attack though). (U)se let you use items or change equipment. (Q)uick will let the computer do the combat. (D)one allows you to delay, bandage an unconscious teammate, end your turn, or guard (more on that later).
Elwro acts first, so we make him attack one of the kobolds.
Procrastianna comes next.
Very X-treme.
Kezerilla delays in hope of getting a chance to backstab.
Bee aims at another kobold.
Kezerilla acted. Not a backstab, but still a kill.
Magnus killed the last one.
They didn't even land a hit on us.
They didn't leave much loot. Elwro took the short swords; we will sell them once we are back in city.
Oh, and I edited our bros' icons to make them more distinguishable. This is Elwro.
Procrastianna.
Grunker.
Magnus.
Kezerilla.
And Bee.
We encountered some orcs.
The orcs actually managed to land a few nasty hits. As you can see in the second screenshot, Elwro was severely wounded in this fight.
The loot is decent though. That's 4.8 gold pieces.
Procrastianna cast a CLW on Elwro to patch him up.
Well, this seems like a good time to try out the Sleep spell. Can Grunker even cast spells while wearing armor?
He can. And all three kobolds failed their saving throw, which was expected.
Attacks made against helpless targets are guaranteed kills; even Bee can one-shot them.
Several fights later, we are out of spells, so I decided to bail.
We have to re-memorize spells each time we rest, which is rather annoying. Anyway, here's Grunker's select of spells (Bee's one is exactly the same).
And this is Procrastianna's.
Back in the dungeon, we tried to parley with a group of kobolds.
Hell no. We will just kill you instead.
IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO TOTALLY AVOID COMBAT IN POOL OF RADIANCE.
Ooh! A pre-set event!
We kill the orcs with ease.
Pre-set encounters give a lot more experience it seems.
You can't tell from the screenshot, but we were fighting goblins here. Due to bad rolls and bad tactic on my side, we almost suffered a TPK in this fight. 5 AC didn't sound too bad until you remembered that most our characters have a THAC0 of 20. Anyway, we survived, but barely. Time to bail.
They drop good loots at least.
Another pre-set encounter.
That's... a lot of goblins, to say the least.
But Bee put them to sleep, and we killed them with ease.
Yes. Pre-set encounters definitely gives more experience.
Hmm... Yes.
Very helpful
Hmmm... We are not in great shape, but Grunker still has a Sleep spell. I figured we could afford exploring another room.
Uh-oh
To add insult to injury, they took out Bee before any of us could even act.
Here we are, outnumbered and outpowered. Our only hope is...
Grunker's Sleep spell. It worked - we put 9 orcs to sleep in one cast.
Which only delayed the inevitable.
Last party member down.
...And there goes our first TPK.So this is the end of the first update. And I believe, bros, I believe the rape has only just begun.
Elwro
Arcane
Nice! You got quite far before the first party-wipe. And yeah, Sleep is our only chance right now. Remember to buy arrows to kill sleeping enemies.
procrastinator
Arcane
- Joined
- May 10, 2011
- Messages
- 1,059
How about resizing those screenshots? Looks better to me.
procrastinator Eh no it doesn't really look that good. 
It looks like you've applied some kind of shitty blurry filter. 
The only acceptable way is to resize the original screens x2 using the Nearest Neighbor filter. That way the screens will remain pixelated the way they should be:
= The only (!) way it should look.
Personally I use ImageMagick to resize images for my LPs. Here's a brief tutorial
1. Install Imagemagick (Windows binary download page here)
2. Create a separate folder for an update (say, Update01) and copy all the relevant screens you took with DosBox there.
3. Open Command Prompt (you know, that MS-DOS style thingy) in that folder (described here for Vista and here for Windows 7)
4. In the command line, type
mogrify -filter point -resize 200% *.png
and all the png images in that folder will be resized in no time! (mogrify is Imagemagick's batch convert command, -filter point resizes the images using Nearest neighbor)
5. Profit!
Hope that helps. It's really easy and intuitive once you try it. Alternatively, you can use IrfanView for batch resizing, just be sure to use the nearest neighbor filter and nothing else.
It looks like you've applied some kind of shitty blurry filter. The only acceptable way is to resize the original screens x2 using the Nearest Neighbor filter. That way the screens will remain pixelated the way they should be:
= The only (!) way it should look.
Personally I use ImageMagick to resize images for my LPs. Here's a brief tutorial
1. Install Imagemagick (Windows binary download page here)
2. Create a separate folder for an update (say, Update01) and copy all the relevant screens you took with DosBox there.
3. Open Command Prompt (you know, that MS-DOS style thingy) in that folder (described here for Vista and here for Windows 7)
4. In the command line, type
mogrify -filter point -resize 200% *.png
and all the png images in that folder will be resized in no time! (mogrify is Imagemagick's batch convert command, -filter point resizes the images using Nearest neighbor)
5. Profit!
Hope that helps. It's really easy and intuitive once you try it. Alternatively, you can use IrfanView for batch resizing, just be sure to use the nearest neighbor filter and nothing else.
procrastinator
Arcane
- Joined
- May 10, 2011
- Messages
- 1,059
Nah, it was just an -adaptive-resize 200%.Eh no it doesn't really look that good. :p It looks like you've applied some kind of shitty blurry filter.
Which only goes to show that pixel art should only be resized with nearest neighbor.
Each area has a fixed amount om random encounters. After defeating all of them plus the fixed encounters an area is considered cleared.
No, you get extra XP from treasure. The papers the orcs were looking at were to Clerical Scrolls with Cure Light Wounds (you never can have too many CLW spells).
No, that healthy looking goblin was wearing magical leather armour. I hope you picked it up? It should be worth 1000 gp.
BTW, kudos for using such weak characters. Low DEX and CON hurts, but STR can usually be improved later.
Wyrmlord
Arcane
- Joined
- Feb 3, 2008
- Messages
- 28,886
I remember that in another Gold Box game, there is a room with 20 beholders, 20 powerful spellcasters, 20 knights, and then another 20 beholders waiting in a single long file to slaughter you.
Uh-oh
To add insult to injury, they took out Bee before any of us could even act.
Here we are, outnumbered and outpowered. Our only hope is...
Grunker's Sleep spell. It worked - we put 9 orcs to sleep in one cast.
Which only delayed the inevitable.
Last party member down.
I mean, you play these games, you come across the uber large encounters, and your only reaction to such Gold Box game fights is:
ARE YOU KIDDING ME?
Now that he has had a TPK, maybe he'll reroll the characters with better stats (and max hps)?
This (would brofist if I had the option). Pixels are beautiful, none of that blurry nonsense.procrastinator Eh no it doesn't really look that good. :p It looks like you've applied some kind of shitty blurry filter.
The only acceptable way is to resize the original screens x2 using the Nearest Neighbor filter. -snip-
Definetely resize - otherwise nice first update! Was hoping for a second there my last sleep spell could save what otherwise looked like inevitable defeat.
Monstrous Bat
Cipher
- Joined
- Dec 30, 2011
- Messages
- 638
octaviusIf you insist. The next update shall be resized. (Thanks bee for the instruction!)
Relax, Wyrmie. It's just 16 orcs. We can deal with that.
What? Of course no! I've gone through worse! I can handle this shit, I tell you!
MOAR? 
Monstrous Bat
Cipher
- Joined
- Dec 30, 2011
- Messages
- 638
Slums, Part One
Reload.
Well, let's head back to the city.
Did I mention we have found a short bow and some arrows in the same treasure bag in which we found the gems? Well, I had Bee cast Detect Magic on them to find out if they are magical. They are.
We can let a shopkeeper (A)ppraise our gems.
They will offer to buy the gems. The price is, to a certain degree, randomized. 500+10 wasn't very good; let's reload.
Oh. So this is the magical leather armor octavius was talking about. We keep it to ourselves, of course.
Shopkeepers can also (I)dentify our items for 200 golds each. AFAIK this is the only way to ID an item.
In hindsight, I probably shouldn't have wasted money on that. Should've just tested it on Kezerilla. Oh well.
I gave the armor to Kezerilla to improve her abysmal AC.
Also, this is the merchandise of some arms shop. Note the expensive plate armors.
I savescummed a bit (with such a gimped party I don't feel particularly guilty doing that). In the end, we sold the gems for a total of 1010 golds. I bought Elwro and Procrastianna two pieces of plate armor to increase their AC. Plate armor is the best type of armor available to us, lowering AC of the wearer to 3 (2 with a shield). It also hinders movement, though; an unarmored character can move 12 sqares every round. A character in plate armor can only move 6.
The magical shortbow goes to Grunker. In addition, I also bought two shortbows for Elwro and Magnus. Now we are finally looking like proper adventurers.
Vengeance time!
Ugh. They took out Magnus in the first round.
Grunker cast a Sleep centered on this orc leader, putting all monsters around him to sleep. I also discovered that Sleep DOES friendly fire, because Elwro fell asleep as well.
Bee put more orcs to sleep. Note that all creatures in the red area are asleep, and mundane orcs don't have a ranged attack. That means...
...We can use the awake orcs as practice targets, and they won't even be able to retaliate!
Procrastianna cast a CLW on Magnus because we need moar firepower. But Magnus refuses to get back up despite having positive HP. WHY IS THAT, MAGNUS? WHY ARE YOU NOT HELPING???
I made a major mistake here by killing this orc leader. This opens a gap in our sleeping-orc-barrier, and an awake orc immediately charged in to perform a coup de grace on Magnus, who was also asleep.
Uh-oh. The Sleep spell has wore off.
Game over.
That was just bad luck. Let's try again.
It goes even worse this time, the orcs killed 4 of our bros in the first round.
Codexian does not give up so easily. I changed our formation so Bee and Magnus aren't immediately vulnerable to enemy attacks.
Oh hey, Bee won the initiative. A good start.
Grunker comes next. Sleeping-orc-barrier construction complete, and none of our bros has gone down yet. Things are looking good.
We pick off the awake orcs one by one.
Procrastianna can't use any ranged weapon, so she will just murder some sleeping orcs in melee.
I had Procrastianna cast CLW on herself because she was wounded in the first round and I don't wanna take any chances.
Slaughter.
Sleep finally wore off. Only 3 orcs left though.
Magnus killed one of them.
And the rest surrendered.
That's 60gp there.
Procrastianna cast Detect Magic on the loots to find out if there are any magical ones.
The broadswords goes to Elwro, Grunker and Kezerilla, respectively. (Yes, thieves can use broadswords.) The flail goes to Procrastianna. The enchanted chainmail goes to Magnus.
Our newfound loots have brought some much needed to our party. Grunker in particular have a THAC0 of 17 with his broadsword +1. Also note that Magnus' AC has been lowered by 1 point. We went back to the civilized parts to sell other non-magical loots.
We ran into this dude in the slums. Let's try talking with him.
He gave us a quest. We accept, of course.
What kind of stupid name was Ohlo anyway?
So this is the Old Rope Guild, huh? Let's take a look at our automap...
Shit. This is one of those areas in which automap isn't available. I wasn't expecting to run into one of them this soon. We shall explore elsewhere for the time being.
Inside a 3x3 room we found a hemp market. We overheard some monsters talking.
Guards huh? Bring it on, we shall take ca--
HOLY MOTHER OF GOD.
Ten mundane goblins and ELEVEN goblin leaders. This cannot end well.
Maybe we can still save ourselves with a few casts of Sleep.
You didn't really expect that to work, did you?
Neither did I.
Reload.
We take another route this time.
THIRTY orcs and two orc leaders, and the leaders are out of Sleep's range. Reloaded right away.
Corridors like this leads to other blocks of Phlan. For now, though, I just want to clear the slums.
Ah, yes. THIS is a battle we can win.
After two casts of Sleep we were surrounded with sleeping kobolds.
Bee murders some hapless kobold.
Procrastianna casts CLW on herself.
The rest of battle was cakewalk.
There's a magical bracer among the loots. I wonder what it does?
Apparently it was an AC6 bracer, which sets your AC to 6. I gave it to Kezerilla, because a melee thief with 13 in DEX needs every single point of AC they can get. Hopefully, we will find another bracer for Bee before long.
An empty storage room? What is this?
Hmm... I couldn't find a way into the 1x1 room on the northwest corner of map. Maybe there's a secret door?
Yes. Yes there is.
We found another magical shortbow as well.
Look, a new kind of monster!
I wonder if they are strong.
Well, they are. But not overly so.
Their THAC0 seems fairly low, but they aren't too hard to kill.
They managed to take out Procrastianna. I'm not worried, though.
Grunker is AWESOME. Have high STR really helps.
The reward was unimpressive though.
Oh, wait. THIS is what they were actually guarding.
FUCK YEAR WE ARE RICH NOW!
Yet another magical shortbow, and a magical ring as well!
Incidentally, I changed Grunker's icon since he's using a sword now.
The ring turned out to be a Ring of Protection +1. It won't stack with armor enchantment bonus, so I gave it to Magnus. Then I bought Grunker a piece of plate armor. Finally, I had Elwro and Magnus swap armor since Elwro could use some extra mobility.
Also, some of our characters have enough experience for a level up now. TO THE SCHOOL!
Uhhh... Yes? Is this how you gain level in this game?
Apparently, by "evenly matched" he meant "you will fight your own doppelganger". Magnus' opponent is exactly the same as him - same HP, same THAC0, same equipments.
With some luck, Magnus defeated his opponent without losing a single HP. No level up, though: he just got a hundred experience points.
Oh. So here is where we train characters.
Damn, we aren't as rich as I thought it seems. We only have enough money to level one character. I decided that we will let Bee level up.
Bee will learn another level 1 spell. I was a bit torn between Charm Person and Enlarge, here. In the end I picked Charm Person.
Remember the jewels we got in that secret treasury? Selling them net us more than 10000 gold pieces. Now we can level up the other characters!
Incidentally, we can also hire mercenaries in the school. We didn't, though, because they would take away our experience points as well as our phat l00ts. Besides, "evoker"? Bah, blaster mages suck ass. Buffing/debuffing is the way to go, noobs.
Anyway, here's your latest character sheets:
Elwro hasn't changed much.
Procrastianna can now cast four level 1 spells a day.
Magnus has lowered his THAC0 by 1 point. He's also the most tanky character in our party at this point.
Grunker still doesn't have enough XP for a level up.
Kezerilla got a small HP boost.
Finally, Bee can now cast two level 1 spells before needing to rest. Yes, that means TWO Sleep spells per day. Her HP is still shit though.
Alright guys, I will end this update here. In the next update we shall clear out the slums. Stay tuned!
Reload.
Well, let's head back to the city.
Did I mention we have found a short bow and some arrows in the same treasure bag in which we found the gems? Well, I had Bee cast Detect Magic on them to find out if they are magical. They are.
We can let a shopkeeper (A)ppraise our gems.
They will offer to buy the gems. The price is, to a certain degree, randomized. 500+10 wasn't very good; let's reload.
Oh. So this is the magical leather armor octavius was talking about. We keep it to ourselves, of course.
Shopkeepers can also (I)dentify our items for 200 golds each. AFAIK this is the only way to ID an item.
In hindsight, I probably shouldn't have wasted money on that. Should've just tested it on Kezerilla. Oh well.
I gave the armor to Kezerilla to improve her abysmal AC.
Also, this is the merchandise of some arms shop. Note the expensive plate armors.
I savescummed a bit (with such a gimped party I don't feel particularly guilty doing that). In the end, we sold the gems for a total of 1010 golds. I bought Elwro and Procrastianna two pieces of plate armor to increase their AC. Plate armor is the best type of armor available to us, lowering AC of the wearer to 3 (2 with a shield). It also hinders movement, though; an unarmored character can move 12 sqares every round. A character in plate armor can only move 6.
The magical shortbow goes to Grunker. In addition, I also bought two shortbows for Elwro and Magnus. Now we are finally looking like proper adventurers.
Vengeance time!
Ugh. They took out Magnus in the first round.
Grunker cast a Sleep centered on this orc leader, putting all monsters around him to sleep. I also discovered that Sleep DOES friendly fire, because Elwro fell asleep as well.
Bee put more orcs to sleep. Note that all creatures in the red area are asleep, and mundane orcs don't have a ranged attack. That means...
...We can use the awake orcs as practice targets, and they won't even be able to retaliate!
Procrastianna cast a CLW on Magnus because we need moar firepower. But Magnus refuses to get back up despite having positive HP. WHY IS THAT, MAGNUS? WHY ARE YOU NOT HELPING???
I made a major mistake here by killing this orc leader. This opens a gap in our sleeping-orc-barrier, and an awake orc immediately charged in to perform a coup de grace on Magnus, who was also asleep.
Uh-oh. The Sleep spell has wore off.
Game over.
That was just bad luck. Let's try again.
It goes even worse this time, the orcs killed 4 of our bros in the first round.
Codexian does not give up so easily. I changed our formation so Bee and Magnus aren't immediately vulnerable to enemy attacks.
Oh hey, Bee won the initiative. A good start.
Grunker comes next. Sleeping-orc-barrier construction complete, and none of our bros has gone down yet. Things are looking good.
We pick off the awake orcs one by one.
Procrastianna can't use any ranged weapon, so she will just murder some sleeping orcs in melee.
I had Procrastianna cast CLW on herself because she was wounded in the first round and I don't wanna take any chances.
Slaughter.
Sleep finally wore off. Only 3 orcs left though.
Magnus killed one of them.
And the rest surrendered.
That's 60gp there.
Procrastianna cast Detect Magic on the loots to find out if there are any magical ones.
The broadswords goes to Elwro, Grunker and Kezerilla, respectively. (Yes, thieves can use broadswords.) The flail goes to Procrastianna. The enchanted chainmail goes to Magnus.
Our newfound loots have brought some much needed
to our party. Grunker in particular have a THAC0 of 17 with his broadsword +1. Also note that Magnus' AC has been lowered by 1 point. We went back to the civilized parts to sell other non-magical loots.
We ran into this dude in the slums. Let's try talking with him.
He gave us a quest. We accept, of course.
What kind of stupid name was Ohlo anyway?
So this is the Old Rope Guild, huh? Let's take a look at our automap...
Shit. This is one of those areas in which automap isn't available. I wasn't expecting to run into one of them this soon. We shall explore elsewhere for the time being.
Inside a 3x3 room we found a hemp market. We overheard some monsters talking.
Guards huh? Bring it on, we shall take ca--
HOLY MOTHER OF GOD.
Ten mundane goblins and ELEVEN goblin leaders. This cannot end well.
Maybe we can still save ourselves with a few casts of Sleep.
You didn't really expect that to work, did you?
Neither did I.
Reload.
We take another route this time.
THIRTY orcs and two orc leaders, and the leaders are out of Sleep's range. Reloaded right away.
Corridors like this leads to other blocks of Phlan. For now, though, I just want to clear the slums.
Ah, yes. THIS is a battle we can win.
After two casts of Sleep we were surrounded with sleeping kobolds.
Bee murders some hapless kobold.
Procrastianna casts CLW on herself.
The rest of battle was cakewalk.
There's a magical bracer among the loots. I wonder what it does?
Apparently it was an AC6 bracer, which sets your AC to 6. I gave it to Kezerilla, because a melee thief with 13 in DEX needs every single point of AC they can get. Hopefully, we will find another bracer for Bee before long.
An empty storage room? What is this?
Hmm... I couldn't find a way into the 1x1 room on the northwest corner of map. Maybe there's a secret door?
Yes. Yes there is.
We found another magical shortbow as well.
Look, a new kind of monster!
I wonder if they are strong.
Well, they are. But not overly so.
Their THAC0 seems fairly low, but they aren't too hard to kill.
They managed to take out Procrastianna. I'm not worried, though.
Grunker is AWESOME. Have high STR really helps.
The reward was unimpressive though.
Oh, wait. THIS is what they were actually guarding.
FUCK YEAR WE ARE RICH NOW!
Yet another magical shortbow, and a magical ring as well!
Incidentally, I changed Grunker's icon since he's using a sword now.
The ring turned out to be a Ring of Protection +1. It won't stack with armor enchantment bonus, so I gave it to Magnus. Then I bought Grunker a piece of plate armor. Finally, I had Elwro and Magnus swap armor since Elwro could use some extra mobility.
Also, some of our characters have enough experience for a level up now. TO THE SCHOOL!
Uhhh... Yes? Is this how you gain level in this game?
Apparently, by "evenly matched" he meant "you will fight your own doppelganger". Magnus' opponent is exactly the same as him - same HP, same THAC0, same equipments.
With some luck, Magnus defeated his opponent without losing a single HP. No level up, though: he just got a hundred experience points.
Oh. So here is where we train characters.
Damn, we aren't as rich as I thought it seems. We only have enough money to level one character. I decided that we will let Bee level up.
Bee will learn another level 1 spell. I was a bit torn between Charm Person and Enlarge, here. In the end I picked Charm Person.
Remember the jewels we got in that secret treasury? Selling them net us more than 10000 gold pieces. Now we can level up the other characters!
Incidentally, we can also hire mercenaries in the school. We didn't, though, because they would take away our experience points as well as our phat l00ts. Besides, "evoker"? Bah, blaster mages suck ass. Buffing/debuffing is the way to go, noobs.
Anyway, here's your latest character sheets:
Elwro hasn't changed much.
Procrastianna can now cast four level 1 spells a day.
Magnus has lowered his THAC0 by 1 point. He's also the most tanky character in our party at this point.
Grunker still doesn't have enough XP for a level up.
Kezerilla got a small HP boost.
Finally, Bee can now cast two level 1 spells before needing to rest. Yes, that means TWO Sleep spells per day. Her HP is still shit though.
Alright guys, I will end this update here. In the next update we shall clear out the slums. Stay tuned!
I wouldn't have bothered with those stats, seriously, but much 
to you for persevering.
And Bee getting only a single hp on that levelup. Ouch, she's going to be dirtnapping so much it isn't even funny.
to you for persevering.And Bee getting only a single hp on that levelup. Ouch, she's going to be dirtnapping so much it isn't even funny.
Perseverance pays off 
3 HP 
Mages, mages never change.
Mages, mages never change.
procrastinator
Arcane
- Joined
- May 10, 2011
- Messages
- 1,059
Elwro
Arcane
You really should hire a Hero or two.
Yes, you will get less XP, but the XP caps for the game are so low that it pays off to have some hired help in the beginning. Those heroes can mow down goblins like they were invalids, and make excellent meat shields when the game is trolling you.
The thief, cleric and mage hirelings are useless, though. Single class thieves are pitifully weak and sue to ppor AI they will never backstab. Clerics and Mages are supposed to take a share of the items, and they always waste their spells in combat, often hitting their own team mates.
And you should sell that +1 Leather. A Studded Leather gives the same protection, and being non-magical it can be used with a Ring of Protection.
It's funny to see a "noob" playing Pool of Radiance and being butchered by orc and goblins. :D
Personally I found that battle against the horde of Goblin Leaders to be the second most problematic in the first block. You really need two sleep spells there and hopefully high initiative (not likely with average DEX).
Yes, you will get less XP, but the XP caps for the game are so low that it pays off to have some hired help in the beginning. Those heroes can mow down goblins like they were invalids, and make excellent meat shields when the game is trolling you.
The thief, cleric and mage hirelings are useless, though. Single class thieves are pitifully weak and sue to ppor AI they will never backstab. Clerics and Mages are supposed to take a share of the items, and they always waste their spells in combat, often hitting their own team mates.
And you should sell that +1 Leather. A Studded Leather gives the same protection, and being non-magical it can be used with a Ring of Protection.
It's funny to see a "noob" playing Pool of Radiance and being butchered by orc and goblins. :D
Personally I found that battle against the horde of Goblin Leaders to be the second most problematic in the first block. You really need two sleep spells there and hopefully high initiative (not likely with average DEX).
Elwro
Arcane
These HP increases are brutal.
Monstrous Bat said:
Awesome stuff, continue! Not sure if Charm Person is worth it though!
GarfunkeL
Racism Expert
It's not in low-levels but can have its uses later when monsters are more likely to save successfully against Sleep or are immune to it.
And nobody spoil the OP about the plot or special encounters, please! Finding those is awesome!
OP, what Octavius said - your single-class characters are liable to hit XP cap fairly early and even the multi-classed ones will hit it before the end of the game - there's so much content to go through, plus don't worry about money. You'll be swimming in it about mid-game, with no way to store it and no other uses for it except levelling. At some point it's only worth it to carry platinum, gems and jewels.
Many for doing it the "right" way. Keep your chin up, you're in for a world of pain with those stats.
And nobody spoil the OP about the plot or special encounters, please! Finding those is awesome!
OP, what Octavius said - your single-class characters are liable to hit XP cap fairly early and even the multi-classed ones will hit it before the end of the game - there's so much content to go through, plus don't worry about money. You'll be swimming in it about mid-game, with no way to store it and no other uses for it except levelling. At some point it's only worth it to carry platinum, gems and jewels.
Many
for doing it the "right" way. Keep your chin up, you're in for a world of pain with those stats.
Monstrous Bat
Cipher
- Joined
- Dec 30, 2011
- Messages
- 638
Well, the fact that you can't directly control hirelings worries me a bit. I've seen the AI in this game and retarded doesn't even begin to decribe it.
But if you say so.
Single-class thieves can't wear studder leather armors.
Heh. You know what's funny? When I encountered that 20-orc fight I thought "fuck dude, this has to be the hardest battle in the first block". Then I found these goblins, and they made those orcs look like complete pushovers.
Anyway, the majority of the slums has been cleared. Only two fixed encounters left. One of them is Ohlo. Those who played the game should be able to guess the other one. I think I have underestimated the difficulty of this game. Really, that fight in the Old Rope Guild was pretty much a rapefest. Still not rerolling though, I love hard RPGs.
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