Gates Of Integrity - free The Bard's Tale clone

[Dorateen]

[QUOTE="Fluent, post: 746131]You mention Wizardry 6+7 aren't about mapping. What do u mean by that? I thought one had to map those games by hand as well since there wasn't an automap system in either of them? [/QUOTE]

Wizardry 7 has a journey map kit, which is an inventory item the player has to discover near the beginning to enable the automap. And further, a character has to pump points into the Cartography skill to get more details to reveal on the map. This was always a feature I found brilliant about Crausaders of the Dark Savant. Still, there are some zones either dark or with teleporters that make it useful to map by hand.

 

[Fluent]

Wizardry 7 has a journey map kit, which is an inventory item the player has to discover near the beginning to enable the automap. And further, a character has to pump points into the Cartography skill to get more details to reveal on the map. This was always a feature I found brilliant about Crausaders of the Dark Savant. Still, there are some zones either dark or with teleporters that make it useful to map by hand.

Yeah, I like the sound of that feature a lot, too! Always nice to be able to develop a Cartography skill. Thanks for clearing that up! Does Wizardry 6 have something similar?

Edit - Since I'm already off-topic, Dorateen , you should really check out Stranger Of Sword City Revisited! It's got excellent gameplay mechanics, with a lot of deeply rewarding systems. Don't let looks deceive you, there's a LOT of cool stuff under that hood!

 

[newtmonkey]

I've been playing this the last few days, and I'm not sure what to think so far. I've already completed The Bard's Tale 1-3, so I know generally how to play this type of game.

The enemies get very difficult, very quickly, before you really have any tools to handle them. I cleared the first dungeon and my characters have all reached level 5 and have the best equipment available from the shop (also some nicer stuff that dropped from encounters)... but am now running into large groups of enemy spellcasters (10 Master Mages). Even if I have my Druid and two Conjurers all cast group attack magic, it's not enough to kill even a single one in the first round, which means up to 10 group attack spells coming my way in the first round, which wipes out several characters right away.

What is the strategy to use against this kind of encounter early in the game? Running never seems to work against large groups (the one time you really need to run).

 

[CryptRat]

Been some time but knowing myself the answer is probably : "I grinded."

Are you using the automap? If you do and since it's real-time outside combat it's possible that my characters were higher-leveled (drawing takes some time) since I played it before automap was included (obviously the game was better that way ).

 

[newtmonkey]

...

Yes, I'm using the automap, but I don't think there would be much difference in level at this point in the game, since the first dungeon is so simple.

I really cannot see how a level 5 party can realistically survive the second dungeon, as nearly every encounter is either a total party kill, or a half party kill if I can somehow win it. Resurrecting a single character at this point costs 20,000 gold, which is about what you earn over 8-9 battles, so I doubt I could just "roll with it" and make very slow progress.

Maybe the answer is just to grind levels. In that case, I will just stop playing this one.