Dungeon Lords is literally virtually absolutely the Wizardry 9 we didn't get.

[cvv]

This game didn't get any recognition because it was the most broken, unfinished mess in all history of vidya when it came out, maybe with the exception od Gothic 3. Tragic, really.

 

[OndrejSc]

I remember it had been advertised as Diablo in 3D.

 

[Desiderius]

Yeah, the sparse overworld thing reminded me of Diablo.

 

[Desiderius]

Anybody got a link for a good guide for this game. I'm too old to start from scratch.

 

[Nikanuur]

Anybody got a link for a good guide for this game. I'm too old to start from scratch.

I fear I can't find such thing, maybe someone knows better. Some information as to how to approach the game during the starting hours can be found from reading Classes and Races and how the Skills work:

https://dungeonlords.fandom.com/wiki/Classes
https://dungeonlords.fandom.com/wiki/Character_Info
https://dungeonlords.fandom.com/wiki/Skills

https://www.gamebanshee.com/dungeonlords/races/ (to the right)

 

[PanickedTushkano]

I played through it recently and wrote a review elsewhere, so I'm just going to repost it here:


"Dungeon Lords Steam Edition (30+ hours):

I just finished my playthrough with an Adept/Fighter/Paladin/Celestial/Crusader. The Adept (Cleric basically) is the core class and while he has access to Rune Magic he only automatically advances in Celestial Magic. The classes have a number of skills associated with them, so at first I didn't have much access to better armor types and not much choice in weapons. Many skills can be raised with use, but there are also skillpoints. Gaining new classes happens through doing quests for the guilds, so it's integrated into the world. It's overall one of the better elements of the game.

Other than that the plot is also fairly well written. There are only a small number of characters involved in it, but they usually have a good amount to say when the story calls for it and the voice acting is mostly decent enough. The story ended up being a bit convoluted, but it has its fun moments and it relies on fantasy character archetypes quite a bit.

But the world is quite empty outside of that and for the most part there are only a few side quests and some locations to find, though most places are related to some side or main quest. Enemies keep respawning, which was quite tedious, especially early on as long as my character was still weak. Travelling was time-consuming and frankly quite boring as the world just isn't interesting. Investing in Athletics helped a bit, but the main issue was that I had first to find a Moonstone somewhere as the fast travel can't be used without one. They only drop from rather high level enemies that only exist in one particular location. Even then the Moonbridges are not always in the best locations.

"Towns" themselves are quite simple and empty as well. One of them doesn't even have any pedestrians. Sense of place really isn't the game's strong suit. The world-building is almost all just in the plot.

The game doesn't look like much. Enemy designs are rarely interesting and look quite cartoonish without much detail on the models. Equipment and spells aren't any better. There is a day-night-cycle, but it looks so basic, that it's barely noticeable. There are a few decent tracks and there is some atmosphere, but it's not enough on its own and there are simply too few different ones to always be fitting. Combat music also keeps interrupting the other tracks.

Combat took a while to come into its own. At first I mostly relied on damage magic, but that was often slow going. But once I had piled on the numbers for a while and gotten access to some better equipment, it started working better. The combat difficulty mostly went away after the first half or so. A lot of the difficulty comes from the large and relatively complex dungeons. It's not always clear how to progress in those locations and it's really easy to miss key items. There are also puzzles and a good amount of platforming, so that led to quite a lot of reloading. I just used a walkthrough to my heart's content and am completely unapologetic about it. I wasted enough time even with that help.

Overall I'm still lukewarm on it. It has so many holes, it's still buggy, the game isn't always good at sign-posting, some of the voice acting seems to be missing, and so on and so forth. It would probably translate to a 6/10 for me."

 

[Be Kind Rewind]

Anybody got a link for a good guide for this game. I'm too old to start from scratch.

Gamebanshee has the only guide worth using, detailing differences between game versions, giving you a walkthrough of the game, info on classes, races, items and all that. Make sure to grab a copy of the physical map that is included with copies of the game if you don't have it. What it doesn't do is to recommend you a great build but I can tell you what I did for my last playthrough in terms of making a character.

Initially I was going to go for maximum spell penetration and focusing on arcane and celestial magic, it's much easier to start out with the Adept class than Mage since you get a learning bonus to armor skills and can tank more damage while healing yourself with crystals. The most potent mage is the female elf so D. W. Bradley actually gave powergamers a balanced choice there, you become a walking apocalypse and you get to stare on a nicely modelled ass but you're also forced to play as a femoid to get there. Playing as one of the two women races (elf and human) you unlock a special class progression though and for the sake of convenience and because I had already specced into armor I figured I might as well make a character focused on both melee with heavy buffs and sling spells from a distance. You can get a second starting class so I took mage for even better damage spells, then took the celestial class which makes it easier to buff yourself and you also get to shoot lighting out of your fingertips emperor Palpatine style. Going down the female exclusive class three I then did the Valkyrie quest for the class while still in Arindale and that made me OP as fuck for a while, with an incredible powerful polearm, heavy and medium armor, and a fat assortment of spells to both kill hordes of enemies and prebuff. Finally I ascended to War Witch, which gives you the incredible powerful power to leech health off enemies from any spell damage you deal to them, so basically nuking the room gives you health, you need to be pretty far into the game to get that though and you probably only have a couple of dungeons left at that point.

I can't tank as much damage or penetrate as much with my spells, but I'm more or less a death engine with the spells I'm using and when I get to close combat I can wear both heavy armor and wield heavy weapons effectively, that I then get to enhance with spells. Due to how spells work though diving into every spell school can be brutal on your wallet, how many you can cast are limited by how much gold you have and since I'm making good use of any of the best items I could find unlike a pure mage that would sell them off the only issue I have is running out of spells and once I do combat slows down.

 

[Be Kind Rewind]

played through it recently and wrote a review elsewhere, so I'm just going to repost it here:

"Dungeon Lords Steam Edition (30+ hours):

What the fuck man? Why would you play the crap version of the game for over 30 hours? Everything you have to write about the mechanics is also made invalid because of this.

Enemies keep respawning, which was quite tedious, especially early on as long as my character was still weak.
[...]
"Towns" themselves are quite simple and empty as well. One of them doesn't even have any pedestrians.
[...]
Investing in Athletics helped a bit, but the main issue was that I had first to find a Moonstone somewhere as the fast travel can't be used without one.

This review is a perfect example of what I mentioned about the game being a typical old school CRPG from the MSDOS days but put in a new coat of paint and changed up into an action RPG. Enemies aren't "respawning" but you are running into ambushes (or encounters) on the map just like how it used to be like in the old days. The towns are just there for you to get a couple of quests to get you into dungeon crawling, build up your character with classes, armor, weapons and potions, and to sell your loot. It's not a Richard Garriott renaissance fair larp. Because too much fast travelling would make the ambushes on the world map (which aren't so random, they are themed after the region you are in, so if you are in the elf country side you get to genocide elves, if you are in the land of the furries and scalies you get to genocide them, etc) a wasted effort since you'd just load-time past it like in a Bethesda game. I killed those moondogs first thing when I got up there, and sure it was a challenge, but isn't that what video games are all about?

I'm also pretty sure making Arindale less bustling was a design choice, the innkeeper scams you when you get a room and the joke is that despite him claiming it is the busiest season to charge you more he then says you can take any room in the inn you want except one which is occupied by a quest NPC. Elves just don't get out much.

Again this is why the Souls games got big, you don't hear people complain that the combat focused gameplay-oriented worlds they had were "empty" because they lacked constant cutscenes or life-sim stuff, mostly for the reason that the setting made more sense with a classical gameplay structure where the devs spent much more time making monsters with varied attacks and challenging dungeons instead of having you listen to a fully mocapped tranny tell you his life story in the wilds or watch animated bear sex as you would in BG3. You just don't get Bethtards or Biodrones playing Souls games and then calling them crap for not having romances, or Ubisoft style points of interests, or Bethesda "content" which consists of a tiny dungeon with a couple of plot skeletons, repeated hundreds of times across a large map.

 

[Be Kind Rewind]

Yes, I'm triple posting, what are you going to do about it?

For people that either want to go back to the game, like Desiderius, or new players I just want to say that the key to getting the most of this game is to go into it as if it was made in 1992, and keep in mind that you need to invest into level five into many skills for you to unlock more moves and combos, as well as that the game isn't a barely interactive movie or a life sim, it's in the name, you're going into this game because you're going to become a dungeon lord, you're going to master the dungeons, the OP as fuck monsters that will tear you a new one when you first encounter them, best the puzzles and challenges, and be an adventurer. It doesn't matter that the gameplay is the hack and slash that you really needs LAN friends to get the full experience with, it's no longer turn based, it's no longer a blobber, but it's the same game and adventure beneath the surface.

D.W. Bradley made a game for you, the gamer that still plays video games for the gameplay and overcoming challenges and not as a walking sims where you "take in the sights" or a barely interactive movie. It was the bridge between Wizardry 7 and Demon's Souls/Dark Souls/Elden Ring, less casual and more of an RPG, but with online and LAN multiplayer and real-time action oriented combat. It was the one time an ARPG earned the genre name.

 

[Desiderius]

Which version is best experience?

 

[Be Kind Rewind]

Which version is best experience?

The Collector's Edition, it is patched to the latest version and contains extra content. It also has no DRM and fully installs off the disc by default. You can still find it for sale cheap physically, it comes in a nice steelcase with a map. But I doubt D.W. Bradley is getting any richer off it so you might as well pirate if you don't care for physical releases.

The later versions fuck up the systems and loot totally, destroys anything good about the game.

 

[Desiderius]

Lol, I don’t know how to pirate games.

Is it not for sale online anywhere? This is how GOG screwed themselves.

 

[Be Kind Rewind]

Is it not for sale online anywhere? This is how GOG screwed themselves.

No, the only way to play the best version of the game is to either buy a physical copy, and most people don't even have a DVD drive anymore, or you have to pirate it. Another reason why the game remains so criminally underrated. I honestly feel pretty bad for anyone whose only or first experience with the game was the steam version. For one thing they introduced mana instead of letting you throw as many spells as you could, which were restricted in different ways depending on the magic school. Some were simple, like spell books or crystals, which would recharge depending on a skill that only some classes got access to, or you'd put together runes or mix ingredients which you'd have to either buy or find in the gameworld. The common issue of swimming in money and having nothing to spend it on doesn't exist in the original Dungeon Lords.

 

[Desiderius]

I've still got a drive. Where's the best place to buy one? This game sounds fun.

 

[PanickedTushkano]

There is still one cheap copy on amazon.de. Amazon. com doesn't look so good. Bunch of different versions which are mostly not available. Ebay has one or two that are reasonably cheap. Cover art at least looks like CE.

 

[cvv]

FYI this is what the CE looks like:

Spoiler

Sadly I haven't had a disc drive for over a decade now so no luck for me. I guess you can buy an external drive but eh....I rather pirate it.

While googling I forgot that before the Steam edition there was XII. Be Kind Rewind when exactly did they fuck the game up, with XII or the Steam edition?

 

[Desiderius]

FYI this is what the CE looks like:

Spoiler

Sadly I haven't had a disc drive for over a decade now so no luck for me. I guess you can buy an external drive but eh....I rather pirate it.

While googling I forgot that before the Steam edition there was XII. Be Kind Rewind when exactly did they fuck the game up, with XII or the Steam edition?

Wow, can't believe I never bought that when it was in stores. I've actually never bought something on eBay and rarely on Amazon (my wife has Prime so she's picked up a couple books/supplements for me over the years).

I probably did buy it, played it, and have now forgotten.

 

[Grauken]

when exactly did they fuck the game up, with XII or the Steam edition?

The Steam edition is a patched version of the XII release which came after the Collector's Edition, so the XII release is where they made everything worse (and even the patched XII Steam release is still not as good as the Collector's Edition)

 

[cvv]

Now skimming over the history of this game....seems it was published by JoWood?

If so JoWood would be directly responsible for two out of three most broken games in history - Gothic 3 AND Dungeon Lords. (Bloodlines 1 was published by Activision.)

Quite a feat.

 

[Trans-Financial-Man]

I played this piece of shit when it first came out. No it is NOT anything on par with Wizardry. I'm glad we got a remake of the first game that isn't weird Japanese anime shit. I am much more interested in that than this.

 

[Desiderius]

Got things fired up in the Collector’s Edition and finished Sewers on Wulfin Rogue. I like Rogue for early Identify and Chest skills. Ready for a restart using what I learned so far.

Any tips to avoid screwing myself? How good is leveling attributes relative to skills? Agility is really cheap for Rogue. Best second class? Thinking Mage.

 

[Nikanuur]

Got things fired up in the Collector’s Edition and finished Sewers on Wulfin Rogue. I like Rogue for early Identify and Chest skills. Ready for a restart using what I learned so far.

Any tips to avoid screwing myself? How good is leveling attributes relative to skills? Agility is really cheap for Rogue. Best second class? Thinking Mage.

I don't think you can go wrong with anything. All schools and all combinations have their 'prestige classes' and quest lines. Also, if you feel underdeveloped, there are always some respawning monsters to grind on.
For the same reasons as you, though, I picked up Thief as the first one.

Attributes and what they do:
https://www.gamebanshee.com/dungeonlords/attributes.php

If I remember correctly, there is no attribute gatekeeping associated with acquiring skills or something. Again, whatever you think is better for you works. It's a long game; all will come in time. It's just that sometimes things hover over the horizon for too long.

The only thing I remember to be extra careful about is accepting quests from the Houses. I don't know which ones lead to the 'final decision', but at some point you effectively cancel any other prestige class by choosing one. Keep a revert save before accepting anything from the Houses, and maybe like test if some other House still accepts you or not. Decide only if you are really ready, etc.

 

[Desiderius]

How do I put things in Quick Slots?

Clicking on potions just uses them.

 

[Sukhāvatī]

How do I put things in Quick Slots?

Clicking on potions just uses them.

Drag with right click iirc.

 

[Desiderius]

How do I put things in Quick Slots?

Clicking on potions just uses them.

Drag with right click iirc.

Doesn't work, right click just brings up window. If I click on a quickslot the cursor lights up, but left click uses pot or readies scroll, and right click just brings up window.