Gold Box SSI's Gold Box Series Thread

[octavius]

The final battle against Big T was very easy.

With that amount of cheating how could it not be easy?

 

[Ruhfuss]

The final battle against Big T was very easy.

With that amount of cheating how could it not be easy?

What amount of cheating? The imported items from GSF made the earlier parts of the game admittedly much easier (translates into "less tedious for me" - after all, this is just a grind run to power level for Pools of Darkness (EDIT: without taking the same PCs through multiple runs of the same game)). The farther into the game, the more stuff was replaced by Curse items. I'm pretty sure that the fight won't be more difficult with slightly higher AC. The used consumables were all regular Curse items. Versus the enemy clerics, no Road Runner AI exploit was neccessary due to nuking with (Curse) consumables.

Btw, when transfering from FRUA Pool to FRUA Curse, one keeps all of the FRUA Pool items. That's even nastier compared to transfering from GSF to Curse.

 

[Jaesun]

Yeah sadly, there is no take items from party function in FRUA. You can in Dungeon Craft though.

 

[Ruhfuss]

If only to improve my standing with octavius again , I deliberately unequipped all items and deleted each PCs special effects file before transfering from Curse to Secret.

 

[Hitoshura]

I'm playing Pool of Radiance and all my human clerics and magic users reached their max level. I heard that the extra XP they accumulate will be usable in Curse to gain a level but can I gain more than one in this way? I don't remember which game did this but if you were eligible for several levels you would only gain one and your XP would be reduced to one point below the next one.

The game crashed on me when a Wild Boar from the Kobold's Cave died on it's own. I'm playing in DosBox from the bundle on GoG. Known issue? How this can be avoided?

 

[ProphetSword]

Pretty sure all the Gold-Box games will keep you from gaining more than one level at a time. You'll likely end up one point below the second level you would have gained.

 

[Ruhfuss]

I'm playing Pool of Radiance and all my human clerics and magic users reached their max level.

Unfortunately, the level caps for spellcasters in the first volume of any Forgotten Realms Gold Box game are ridiciously low. When their few spells are spent, single class spellcasters are next to useless in combat. In games that offer the option to dual class for humans, even a single level of a warrior class dualled to either Thief or spellcaster gives much better utility in broader range of usable weapons, and especially ranged weapons.

AFAIR in Pool there is a way (if you don't mind using exploits) to keep Dirten, the NPC cleric, so that you could replace your (single class?) Cleric with something more usefull. Or, if you want to keep your single class spellcaster for use in the following game, you could remove it from the Pool party after it has accumulated enough XP and re-add on a need-to-have-spellcaster basis. In the meantime, just level a new single class Fighter instead.

Also, I hear that all-warrior-parties are the new hype for the lower volume games.

 

[octavius]

I'm playing Pool of Radiance and all my human clerics and magic users reached their max level. I heard that the extra XP they accumulate will be usable in Curse to gain a level but can I gain more than one in this way? I don't remember which game did this but if you were eligible for several levels you would only gain one and your XP would be reduced to one point below the next one.

Multi-class characters rule in PoR for this reason. Also, Elf multi-class Mages can use metal armour when casting spells for some reason.
If you import fo Curse, head for the trainig hall to gain a new level, then inititate a fight in the tavern for another level.

The game crashed on me when a Wild Boar from the Kobold's Cave died on it's own. I'm playing in DosBox from the bundle on GoG. Known issue? How this can be avoided?

Yes, it's a known issue.
I recall there was a way to avoided it, but I can't remeber the details. I think the solution may be to kille the other enemies first, and then leave the boars to last, since the problem occurs when the bounce up again.

 

[Hitoshura]

Basically, I want to transfer my chars up to Pools of Darkness and that's why I went with only humans. I went with 2 fighters, 2 clerics and 2 magic users. Multi characters will be obsolete in Silver I would guess because of the highly questionable AD&D design of level caps for non humans, non thieves. I'm not sure when I'm going to dual class my characters, we will see. I never did that series before, only Pool of Radiance back in the day on NES but I played the Krynn series to completion a long time ago. Can you go back and forth between 2 classes when you dual class or when you leave your initial class, it's a final decision?

Yeah, having single class clerics stuck on level 6 ain't amazing but the game is not too difficult anyways, BS stuff aside. My level 6 MU do their work by doing giant barbecues of there's that. I got Dirten (level 6) and a generic Warrior (still only level 4) as NPCs. Dirten sucks, the AI has no idea what to do with spells and often lose its turn doing stupid shit. The Warrior is more effective, doing damage is always welcome.

Sucks that you can basically store only 2 levels - 1 XP to Curse. Is is the case with other games in the series as well?

 

[Ruhfuss]

Can you go back and forth between 2 classes when you dual class or when you leave your initial class, it's a final decision?

The latter. The initial class and all its abilities are inactive until you surpass its level with the new class by one, then you get the benefits of both classes, but only progress in the new class. It's explained quite reasonable in the manuals. The initial class should be the one with better HP and THAC0 progression, e. g. (warrior class) -> (spellcasting class).

Yeah, having single class clerics stuck on level 6 ain't amazing but the game is not too difficult anyways, BS stuff aside. My level 6 MU do their work by doing giant barbecues of there's that. I got Dirten (level 6) and a generic Warrior (still only level 4) as NPCs. Dirten sucks, the AI has no idea what to do with spells and often lose its turn doing stupid shit. The Warrior is more effective, doing damage is always welcome.

The spellcasting AI of the earlier titles is far beyond stupid. A Cleric NPC in most cases is only useful for the Cure spells and Detect Magic, and maybe as a punching bag if the AC is good enough. You have limited controll over NPC spellcasting by memorizing only party friendly spells. Your worst ally is a NPC Magic-User with area of effect spells.

Sucks that you can basically store only 2 levels - 1 XP to Curse. Is is the case with other games in the series as well?

That's one of the rules that they kept consistently through all of the Gold Box iterations.

 

[Ruhfuss]

Update on my Secret playthrough. With regards to players like Hitoshura that might not have played Secret yet, there might be spoilers following.

I'm currently in the mines, which are as diversified as ever. Duh. Paladins are level 12, Rangers level 13.

Progress is pretty smoothly. Especially in the earlier parts, the game throws lots of enemy spellcasters in the way, but nothing that can't be dealt with with proper use of missile weapons. Major source of accumulated damage versus the party were the higher tier BC warriors due to lower tier armor on my warriors. But since Secret is quite the loot fest, even the rather bland setting offers me fun in a steady feeling of progress. This is the Diablo of the Gold Box games.

Healing is a non issue any more, since every PC is able to cast Cure Light Wounds to empower a Fix. Poison or petrification needs a Power Word Reload, though.

I fear that dualling up to 4 warriors to Magic-Users in the near future will drain combat effectivesness down the toilet. You get used to seldomly having to rest running around with tin cans, all having high amounts of HP and pretty low AC.

Initially, I was considering to boot Vala after convincing her to give up her stuff; don't want to share XP for the remainder of the game. But I guess I need her as an additional warrior, until the Magic-Users are coming of age. Healing performance will suffer considerably, with only one Paladin and one Ranger on active duty.

EDIT: Compared to Curse, Secret seems to be reasonably low on bugs. There were some Plate Mails +1 that offered only AC like a non-magical Plate Mail, and once the game told me that the "Thief" (which I didn't have in my party - be careful, Paladins of the Realms, if your DEX is high, you might send the wrong message!) spotted something, but that was it so far.

 

[ProphetSword]

The spellcasting AI of the earlier titles is far beyond stupid. A Cleric NPC in most cases is only useful for the Cure spells and Detect Magic, and maybe as a punching bag if the AC is good enough. You have limited controll over NPC spellcasting by memorizing only party friendly spells. Your worst ally is a NPC Magic-User with area of effect spells.

If you had a paladin in the party, you would be able to take control of the NPCs. Can you dual-class into that class?

 

[Ruhfuss]

If you had a paladin in the party, you would be able to take control of the NPCs. Can you dual-class into that class?

That feature is only available in the later games, starting with Death Knights of Krynn for Knights and Pools of Darkness for Paladins (and AFAIR depending on some skill for the Buck Rogers games).

 

[Ruhfuss]

Oh, those clever bastards of developers. Vala's stats would have made her a nice candidate for a dual class Fighter/Thief. INT and WIS are to low to dual her to a spellcasting class, but DEX 18 (min. is 17) is enough for a Thief. And she starts as Fighter 13. But she's Lawful Good, which Thief's aren't allowed to be.

...must resist... to hexedit alignment...

 

[Metro]

Dual classes are for the weak.

 

[Null Null]

It's a game, he can play it however he wants; I'd argue he's proven his mettle by beating two games with no primary spellcasters. Besides a lot of the last battle in PoD is dependent on the random number generator anyway.

I do like the GSF-as-a-way-of-getting-around-the-lack-of-rangers-and-paladins-in-POD bit. I always wanted to do a four-game playthrough but the lack of rangers and paladins made it harder. (My final party was: F/F/F/(F/M/T)/C/M, dual one fighter to mage in Secret at 13, dual the second to cleric in Pools at 17.)

Besides, his discovery of the GSF<->CAB and TSF<->POD loophole opens up a lot of interesting new options for Gold Box replays. My POD party was great for figuring out what was in all those deep forests in TSF, and it's so much fun to drop a Delayed Blast Fireball on Geildarr's 'sea of men and monsters'.

 

[Ruhfuss]

Thanks for the kind words, Null Null. Just some clarifications.

I didn't discover the GSF <-> CAB thing; that was either someone else in this thread (did a quick check, but couldn't find it near my first postings from last year) or in the comments section at crpgaddict's blog, but did so with TSF <-> POD when I got TSF in the 90ies, just by noticing that the character save files had the same filename extension and then some further investigation. No rocket science.

As was mentioned before, my playthrough of Curse without primary spellcasters was made significantly easier due to the fact that I was able to carry over most of the loot from GSF. But my point was never to show off some Hardcore Iron Man Style Game Skillz, just to do an unconventional one-party-same-characters-though-4-FR-volumes thing. Or a demo of "How to setup a powerfull party for Pools/POD - Hello, Dave! - by playing the earlier installments slightly differently".

I'll follow up with a progress report on my Secret playthrough.

 

[Ruhfuss]

Initially, I was considering to boot Vala after convincing her to give up her stuff; don't want to share XP for the remainder of the game.

Booting Vala only to prevent shared XP would have been a stupid decision. Starting with the Dungeon levels, the game begins to throw huge amounts of XP to the whole party for solving amazingly difficult riddles.

I dualled two Paladins(13) around the time I got Vala, and two Rangers(15) roughly 200.000 XP later. Obiously, there was lots of backtracking (teleporters ftw) involved, due to training. Digging for gems in the lower mine levels seems to be a way to earn unlimited XP in small quantities. Great to fill up XP gaps and not going insane from grinding mine dwellers.

Combat performance dropped significantly for a while, then a change of gameplay paradigm happened when the level gaps between the Magic-Users closed and quadruple Fireballs and Ice Storms started to fly around.

The Dungeon levels really were the sweet spot to level up the Magic-Users. Not as much combat as before, but much fixed quest XP for the whole party. Also, the encounters changed (Drider Base!) in a way so that the ability to injure many enemies at once became more valuable.

Without dual classing, with PCs imported from Curse, one hits the level caps very early, and has no character progress for what I guess is roughly 50% of the game. Both the remaining single class Paladin and Ranger hit level 15 before finishing the Dungeon. I expect them to both be able to level up to 17 -1 XP right at the start of Pools.

The Paladin(13)/Magic-Users reached Magic-User(14) in the Frost Giant Village, which again is a XP fest, this time from combat/money XP. The Ranger(15)/Magic-Users will get their Ranger abilities back right at the start of Pools.

If one doesn't enjoy navigating or mapping countless more or less empty corridors (did so once for this game, thank you, never again), the Clue Book for Secret is a must have. So far, it's definitely one of the better ones, with detailed maps and accurate descriptions of treasure per fixed encounter.

 

[Ruhfuss]

My POD party was great for figuring out what was in all those deep forests in TSF, and it's so much fun to drop a Delayed Blast Fireball on Geildarr's 'sea of men and monsters'.

I like to use Death Spell on the low level mooks in TSF. A spell that in the other games, when you finally get it, usually has no eligible victims.

 

[octavius]

My POD party was great for figuring out what was in all those deep forests in TSF, and it's so much fun to drop a Delayed Blast Fireball on Geildarr's 'sea of men and monsters'.

I like to use Death Spell on the low level mooks in TSF. A spell that in the other games, when you finally get it, usually has no eligible victims.

Personally I used it most in Secret, against monster with low HP, but nasty attacks, like Cockatrices.

 

[GarfunkeL]

Wait, you can take a Gateway to Savage Frontier party to Curse of the Azure Bonds? Or Curse party to Gateway? Or both ways?

 

[Ruhfuss]

Both ways. GSF <-> Curse and TSF <-> Pools.

 

[Null Null]

The only catch is with GSF->Curse and TSF->Pools transfers (which are the ones that preserve some level of challenge), you get items with weird names because GSF and TSF use extra strings Curse and Pools don't anticipate. But, yes, you can cast Globe of Invulnerability and ignore the Hosttower Mages' Ice Storms, spam the Shambling Mounds in Ascore with Ice Storms and Cones of Cold you memorize yourself, and countless other things I haven't thought of yet. You can even, if you can find a game order that retains some challenge, run the same party through all six games.

Re Death Spell: it doesn't work on enemies level 9 or up, but that doesn't include Drow Priests and Priestesses in Pools, where you can actually build up enough levels to overcome their MR. It was a nice way to save some Fireballs when looting Kalistes' Parlor.

Also, this isn't really a cheat, but single-classed mages can build up enough levels to overcome draconians' magic resistance in Dark Queen of Krynn due to the linearization of the XP curve.

 

[Ruhfuss]

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).

Shame on me, I was totally wrong with that. So far, GSF, TSF, Curse and Secret have Ice Storm dealing cold damage. Unsure about the Krynn games and Pools, though. At least in some of the Gold Box games, Ice Storm deals magic damage.

I hate it when I'm wrong. Or when I misremember. Which happens far too often.

EDIT: I've just found again who I think was the first one to share that GSF and Curse use compatible versions of the game engine. It was Kirben, top posting on page 101 of this thread.

 

[Ruhfuss]

You can even, if you can find a game order that retains some challenge, run the same party through all six games.

This should be the sensible working game order if one intends to play the same party through all six FR games:
Pool -> (Curse) -> GSF -> Curse -> Secret -> (Pools) -> TSF -> Pools

Not much, if any, character progression will happen in the Savage Frontiers games, but it's a way to get better equipment for the next game in the chain.

Re Death Spell: it doesn't work on enemies level 9 or up, but that doesn't include Drow Priests and Priestesses in Pools, where you can actually build up enough levels to overcome their MR. It was a nice way to save some Fireballs when looting Kalistes' Parlor.

Will try that when I get this far in Pools.