Gold Box SSI's Gold Box Series Thread

[PunchBarkeepInFace]

Sorry, I keep confusing items from Treasures with items from Gateway. You are right. There are only two magic shops and they don't sell wands.

 

[Jo498]

This seems a general problem of RPGs (and also other strategic games). I would usually prefer a difficulty where I am able to beat some situations only "barely" or be able "come back" after a drawback. But at a difficulty I find challenging this is usually/often impossible. If I make a mistake or have bad luck, I am often screwed and have to re-load. Sure, there is also the tendency to want to play "optimally" but I try to avoid this. So it is usually a compromise: re-load if a character dies, do not re-load if some go down or petrified etc.

It's probably quite difficult to implement anyway. E.g. in the Goldbox games: For a dungeon to be a challenge without resting the individual battles cannot be too hard. If several of the individual battles are very hard, the dungeon will usually be impossible without resting. Or the frequent situation that one gets imprisoned but keeps all the gear. This hardly ever makes sense (it is sometimes highlighted ironically: Oh, they let us keep our items...) It would be, in a way, much cooler to have to break out fighting with stones and improvised shanks, then get some mediocre weapons from the guards and maybe finally recover some of the original gear. Or not. Find other gear instead.
But OTOH everybody loves cool items and weapons and hates to lose them. It's also cooler if they have to be found or made by a specially commissioned magical smith or so than just bought.

Then there is the factor that some "realism" gets simply annoying. If, like in some older games, starving is really a problem, or, early in PoR one cannot train a character because of insufficient money, many people will simply become annoyed or frustrated. But if "detect magic" does not help much because there are too many +1 weapons and armor around to carry to the next shop or when one has to drop lots of gold to still be able to move in combat, it gets ridiculous as well.

 

[Deuce Traveler]

Most CRPGs with side quests and dungeons are going to seem too easy in the latter parts of the game for those that decide to explore the open world. In a sense, that ease of difficulty is a reward for the player who takes the time to get the most of the game.

jRPGs are an exception to this, but an annoying exception since dull grinding often becomes a necessary part of the game that you must indulge in before being strong enough to proceed to the next game. The best game that maintained its difficulty for me were the early Spiderweb Software exile games, which featured unique optional dungeons that added to the lore of the game. And you at least wanted to go through some of them for the extra loot and experience points in order to survive the increasing difficult later parts of the games.

 

[Jo498]

I absolutely loved the early Exile games, for various reasons, but including the one you mention. Especially in the first one also started with no or really crappy equipment and it felt like a big advance when everybody had iron (instead of stone or bronze) weapons. In those respects the later Spiderweb games were not an improvement.

 

[Null Null]

Buck Rogers, you lost it and got it back a few times. I'm not sure why they couldn't do that in the other games. They had the room for the extra code because they didn't have any spells?

Sadly, there is no way to do this in FRUA, though you could flip the bytes that destroy Drow equipment to destroy all non-Drow equipment--of course, then they can't get it back!

 

[Jo498]

Treasures of the SF is certainly much better!
I don't yet get how the weather has an impact - reduced movement in outdoor combat?
The idea with the "lucky papers" discovering plans of the bad guys, is nice, but a little too random and also largely redundant because Amanitas also tells the party what to do.

Storytelling with an NPC is nicely done (although so far not much follows from the love story)
Re-inforcements can make one severely underestimate how hard a battle will be... in a certain battle (that apparently can become easier if one manages to do something beforehand but I did not...) one first seems to face only a large number of fairly weak opponents but they are joined by about 10 or more magic-users in the following rounds. I was lucky that I managed that one at the first try.

Because there are frequently magic-users involved early on, some early battles can be quite hard (I started without a pur mage, so my multi-mages might have been comparably week). I had to re-try a certain battle (final battle in the Way Inn) five or more times (although in the end it was mostly luck with initiative not some superior tactics). The greated margoyles apparently have negative THAC0 or so, they reduced healthy characters with 50 HP or so to a bloody pulp in two combat rounds.

 

[Dorateen]

One thing about the Savage Frontier games, I like how prophetic they were toward future titles. In Gateway you find the Sword of Icewind Dale, and get to visit Neverwinter and meet Lord Nasher long before other studios got their mitts on those names.

 

[octavius]

And Treasures had romances long before BG2.

 

[Dorateen]

Sad, but true. Although I have remarked on this before, at least SSI did it the right way. The romance options were NPCs who joined the already formed party, rather than shifting the paradigm to a single PC that would then become the center of the universe for all these companion affections, such as in modern games.

 

[Jaesun]

SSI did not develop Treasures of the Savage Frontier, Beyond Software, Inc. did...

SSI is not to blame for the ROMANCE DECLINE...... but they DID Publish it.

 

[octavius]

SSI did not develop Treasures of the Savage Frontier, Beyond Software, Inc. did...

For me Beyond Software will always be

,

while the Savage Frontier games were made by

 

[Kirben]

I played through Gateway to the Savage Frontier again, and was annoyed that even the MS-DOS version suffers from a major bug. Events stopped been triggered at random, a few times during the game play. If you didn't know events were meant to occur, you might not even know that bug was occurring. I liked how the Shambling Mounds give out fantastic treasure though, which I assume is a bug too, rather than their previous victims items.

Has anyone managed to complete the final battles at Champion level? I had to drop back to Veteran level in order to defeat last battle with fighters, mages, Shambling Mounds & Vaalgamon. That was with a party with higher levels (8-11), due to training via Curse of the Azure Bonds.

I was disappointed by the items excluded when transferring characters to Treasure of the Savage Frontier, and I don't mean Vaalgamon's items. I mean the 'Gauntlets of Dexterity', the best item offered by magic shops, which I had for every character. That was really cruel for players, after having to save up so much money to get the 'Gauntlets of Dexterity' for every character.

Does Treasures of the Savage Frontier share a common game engine too? I was hoping it might be possible to easily work around the level limits again, especially since my party is already close to the original limits.

 

[Jo498]

As I said above, I played the game but the last battle on "veteran" (or whatever the second highest level is) but have not yet tried the last battle. And my party is more like level 7 and I can't get the slow spell so I'll probably never succeed.

For some reason I got used to playing those games on the 2nd highest lvl although the 3rd highest/middle lvl is the default lvl (PoR has only the default lvl). It seems that the only difference is the HP of monsters (about 20% more/less for each lvl above/below the middle/default one). Or are they also more dangerous/do more damage? I think I once heard that the party would gain more experience as well but this is probably untrue...?
In any case I started "Treasures" on the default lvl, partly because I began with a new party (which is only lvl 4/5, so about 2 lower than one imported from Gateway) and because with lots of magic-using opponents early on (and fairly weak mages in the party) battles can become really annoying if they take too long. In Treasures the new feature of reinforcements would also make battles harder. In any case for most monsters (except the ones with breath weapons and I find those imbalanced anyway) it's mainly tedious to battle 20% (or 40%) more HP.
But maybe the second half of Treasures will now become too easy (with my lvl8/9 ranger/mage coming to power), so I might switch to the higher lvl.

 

[Jo498]

As I said above, I played the game but the last battle on "veteran" (or whatever the second highest level is) but have not yet tried the last battle. And my party is more like level 7 and I can't get the slow spell so I'll probably never succeed.

For some reason I got used to playing those games on the 2nd highest lvl although the 3rd highest/middle lvl is the default lvl (PoR has only the default lvl). It seems that the only difference is the HP of monsters (about 20% more/less for each lvl above/below the middle/default one). Or are they also more dangerous/do more damage? I think I once heard that the party would gain more experience as well but this is probably untrue...?
In any case I started "Treasures" on the default/middle lvl, partly because I began with a new party (which is only lvl 4/5, so about 2 lvls lower than one imported from Gateway would have been) and because with lots of magic-using opponents early on (and fairly weak mages in the party) battles can become really annoying if they take too long. In Treasures the new feature of reinforcements would also make battles harder. In any case for most monsters (except the ones with breath weapons and I find those imbalanced anyway) it's mainly tedious to battle 20% (or 40%) more HP. Sure, it can be considerably more difficult sometimes, but rarely in an interesting way.

But maybe the second half of Treasures will now become too easy (with my lvl8/9 ranger/mage coming to power), so I might switch to the higher lvl.

 

[octavius]

I always play CRPGS on default difficulty, since I don't think increasing the difficulty slider adds anything; the enemies don't get any smarter, they just suffer from HP bloat. Instead I usually play CRPG Iron Man Light (only reload if party death or accidentally hitting wrong key at critical moment), and with restrictions on resting, and having as many races, classes and genders as possible represented in my party.
TBS games OTOH I usually play on max dificulty.

 

[Jo498]

I probably got used to one notch above the standard setting because when I first played those games in the early 1990s a friend had claimed that the characters would gain experience faster, so one would get a more powerful party. This is probably wrong. I agree that except for the breath weapons the bloated HP do not matter much.

Kirben: what do you mean with events being triggered? random encounters?

One thing I still find annoying in the UI is that one has to hit return to enter the menu for "look" etc. while walking around. This is different between games (I think in PoR one can just hit S or L or entering search or look mode while walking around, also A for the map view, and once you are used to this you are really clumsy with the other way.

And I think that the multi-class characters are too weak compared to dual class (or the latter overpowered). In Treasures I dualed a ranger to mage at lvl 8 (this is quite a bit into the game, he started at lvl 4 or so). Because one has at least one good additional NPC fighter throughout most of the game, it is not a problem that he is a poor low lvl mage for some time (and he becomes a decent 90+ HP mage fairly quickly). Now he is lvl 8/9 so can access his ranger abilities as well, has about twice the HP of my elf fighter/mage (7/8) and also overtook that elf in mage lvls already because the XP are not split. Whereas the elf is stuck at max lvl 7 as a fighter and gets at most 2 HP when gaining a mage lvl.

 

[Kirben]

Kirben: what do you mean with events being triggered? random encounters?

Encounters in specific rooms failed to work, and messages after combat were not been shown. The problem occurred in Purple Rocks and the Star Mounts areas, when I played through the game.

 

[Ruhfuss]

Does Treasures of the Savage Frontier share a common game engine too? I was hoping it might be possible to easily work around the level limits again, especially since my party is already close to the original limits.

Yes, it does: Pools of Darkness

TSF is fully compatible with POD, and some items from TSF, which are not available in POD, will work in POD (Belt of Protection +1/+2).

Some things that TSF handles differently are Gauntlets of Ogre Power (considered a weapon) and the Ice Storm spell (the only Goldbox game AFAIK that has Ice Storm deal actual COLD damage).

So you can actually go SSB -> POD -> TSF -> POD and do something like:

- create new PCs in POD (Level 14 Fighters...)
- dual-class them
- outfit them with items imported from SSB
- play through TSF (Magic-Users, Clerics and Thieves with 141 HPs at Level 1)
- and continue in POD with ~ 750K starting XP in PCs 2nd classes

+5 stuff from SSB will be displayed as BROKEN in TSF (e.g. "PLATE MAIL BROKEN", "SILVER LONG SWORD BROKEN"), but works fine otherwise.

Wanna shoot your opponents heads off with ranged weapons? Have a Fighter ready the Vorpal Long Sword, dual-class him to e.g. Magic-User, Vorpal Long Sword gets unequipped due to wrong class, but the item property ("VORPAL WEAPON") will remain active on the character (check with MAGIC -> DISPLAY when encamped). Nets you Magic-Users with beheading capability when using simple Darts (3 attacks per round)...

 

[Jo498]

Am I misremembering or are there only up to +4 weapons/armor in PoD? Maybe one can import +5 stuff from Secrets but I think one can only acquire +4 items within Pools. Which is kind of disappointing as IIRC characters start with +2/+3 stuff from scratch. Equipment is somewhat disappointing in those higher lvl goldbox games anyway because most of it is just boring + something stuff. Except for the very rare like the vorpal sword or mace of disruption they cannot do anything interesting.

(I don't quite see the point in playing TSF with lvl 14 140 HP characters but decapitating with darts sounds fun....)

 

[Ruhfuss]

Am I misremembering or are there only up to +4 weapons/armor in PoD? Maybe one can import +5 stuff from Secrets but I think one can only acquire +4 items within Pools.

So it is. Kinda disappointing.

(I don't quite see the point in playing TSF with lvl 14 140 HP characters but decapitating with darts sounds fun....)

When I first played POD some 23 or 24 years ago, I went with an all Human single class party (due to racial level fuck), with the exception of the (obligatory?) Fighter/Thief. Went for Dwarf, but was always pissed beeing stuck with the level 9 Fighter part. I think I started over at some point, replacing the Dwarf with a dual classed Human Fighter/Thief. I remember getting wasted at the final battle initially. Believe it or not, but AFAIK after some head scratching this was the first time in a Gold Box game that I actually pre-buffed my party. (And no, POD wasn't the first Gold Box game that I finished. )

The final battle in POD isn't that tough when you realize the following (which I did unfortunately only after not so few attempts at getting past the 2nd stage without having a PC getting DESTROYED by those floating eyeball things):

- the Scroll of Prot Dragon Breath in POD has either unlimited or at least very many uses
- Fighter class PCs + Girdle of Giant Strength + Fine Long Bows ROCK (like with the pre-buffing, until this point my PCs almost never used missile weapons

Then there was Dave's Challenge. Which, after a bit of a learning curve and "optimizing" PC equipment, was quite manageable with my almost-all-single-class-PCs (party was Paladin/Ranger/Fighter-Thief/Cleric/MU/MU, which I still remember very well; unlike what I had for breakfast yesterday). This was also when I realized that the best armor is no armor, but going for Braccers 'n stuff for total AC -21 with only POD items. Then I got mad because I couldn't go on. Oh, well.

So, I actually never really finished POD. In the past years, I once or twice went through all the Dragonlance games (COK was my first Gold Box game). Being able to plan a party and use all PCs continiously in 3 campaigns (COK -> DKK -> DQK) was something that I missed from the FR based games, especially since POD is still my favourite.

When I stumbled over jhirvonen's saves, I felt compelled to try POD again. To have some-kind-of a campaign feeling a la Dragonlance, and remembering that the curious me figured out all those years ago that POD PCs can be used in TSF, I thought "Oh what the hell, it could be fun" and went like this:

- created 6 fresh, fully maxed level 14 fighters in POD (although 3 of them happen to be suboptimal females with only 18/50 STR)
- dual-classed them to Cleric/Cleric/Thief/MU/MU/MU (want some serious late game firepower in POD)
- outfitted them with the loot they'd have if they actually completed SSB (the only way to have some +5 stuff)
- played through TSF
- using the clue books for orientation (no thank you, having mapped those games once before was enough)

So no Paladin, no ability to control NPCs, oh, and no (active) Fighter class at all (only the AI controlled NPCs). Sure, some ridiculous amounts of HPs, but still regular saving throws for the active class level. I wasn't in for a challenging game, but for a fun one, just to replay TSF once more, and kind of as a setup for a later POD playthrough. And still, there was one battle that was really challenging in TSF in the later part of the game, with all the Yetis and the one floating eyeball in the whole game. Most of my PCs couldn't use bows...

Btw, afterwards I kind of "earned" the right to equip my TSF-POD party the way I did, since I "somehow" happend to play through SSB again. Some sort of compulsion. Another rather strange party setup, with 5 Paladins, dualled to Cleric/Cleric/MU/MU/MU and a Ranger dualled to Thief (only because a Paladin/Thief is not possible due to alignment restrictions) right from the start. The game is rather dull, but I manged to have fun especially in the crevasses, with conserving all the consumables, wands and the likes for that part of the game and treating it with a survive-the-gautlet mindset.

Currently wasting time with another run through TSF with an almost-no-Human-party:

- Human Paladin(5)/Cleric (due to lack of capable non-Human Cleric dumbfuck)
- 2* Dwarf Fighter/Thief
- 3* Elf Fighter/MU

 

[Jaesun]

Going to do a

Paladin - Jaesun
Cleric - BLOBERT
Mage - BEE
Fight/Thief - Cloaked Figure
Fighter 7/Mage - octavius
Fighter 7/Cleric - Sceptic

run of Treasures and then Gateway. Don't remember if I will be able to get to the multi-classing in Gateway.

 

[Jo498]

Does the black crystal ring one can get in Treasures by training with a famous mage (Harpell) do anything? I had hoped it was a ring of wizardry but it seems more of a special item. Later on triggered by some event? Does the training yield anything but XP?

 

[Ruhfuss]

Does the black crystal ring one can get in Treasures by training with a famous mage (Harpell) do anything? [...] Later on triggered by some event? Does the training yield anything but XP?

No, no and no. The ring isn't even mentioned in the clue book. I once kept it on the respective MU for the rest of the game out of curiosity, but other than wasting a ring finger, the ring doesn't seem to do anything. Maybe some kind of foreshadowing device? (Think steam achievement. Also useless.)

 

[Deuce Traveler]

Going to do a

Paladin - Jaesun
Cleric - BLOBERT
Mage - BEE
Fight/Thief - Cloaked Figure
Fighter 7/Mage - octavius
Fighter 7/Cleric - Sceptic

run of Treasures and then Gateway. Don't remember if I will be able to get to the multi-classing in Gateway.

Promise you'll post pics.

 

[Jo498]

thanks! I just found and downloaded the clue book (the first I have ever seen of that series). I missed some special treasure on one of the islands (I was supposed to find and liberate that guy, so not exactly exploring for loot) but overall the special treasures seem quite rare in that game so far.