Cael
Arcane
- Joined
- Nov 1, 2017
- Messages
- 20,505
Cone of Cold is 1d4+1 per level, IIRC. However, it is also area effect, and you don't get swarms of Dark Wizards. I think the 3 in the Luminari Tower is as high as you get and they are bunched up. If you have 2-3 mages, they will take them all down in a round, hopefully before they start casting. Note that GB games don't have the damage caps coded in for blasting spells. That is how you can get DBF damage in the 200+ range at very high levels.
In my experience, Dark Wizards will save against the majority of DBF to the point I never even bother with it, even at the middle difficulty (Veteran?). The rate is far lower than 25%. Enchanted Bozaks fail their saves far more often, but it is still not something I'd rely on, unless I am clearing mooks around it, where it then becomes collateral damage. Whatever numbers people have pulled out of the codes, they aren't borne out by actual play.
MS is pure fire damage in GB games. It is very evident when Enchanted Sivaks explode near Dark Wizards and no damage is taken.
One of the tricks DQK pulls on players is the Fine Longbow. It doesn't show up as magical, so people tend to throw it away. However, it is the single most powerful bow in the entire GB set of games: It adds your Strength mod to its to-hit and damage rolls. Give it to the guy with the Girdle of Giant Strength and you are toting around a weapon that does 2x 1d6+15 at range with a +6 or +8 to-hit. It punctures Beholders something hard.
Fighting Beholders safely is always an exercise in patience. You can always get out of the way of Beholders as you are always at least twice as fast as it. Even if you have to take a hit from attacks of opportunity from the Beholder's mooks, it is worth it to get the hell out of the way of all those rays. One tip is to give the Knight the +4 Platemail you get in DKK. It will increase his speed so that he can get out of the way of things or get right up into the face of something you want dead (e.g., 2 or 4 of the heads of the chromatic dragon while holding a Dragonlance).
I don't recall the egg doing that. I always go into that fight fully healed (because Dragonlance), although it could be that I healed manually beforehand.
Human mages is just to add a bit of variety to the party. There is no reason it can't be elves. 1 human and 5 elves just looks weird from an in-universe point of view, that's all.
I never seem to have a problem with level draining undead in DKK, even in the magic dead Tree where you had to fight half-a-dozen spectres at melee range. They tend to have a crappy THAC0 and could never hit my frontliners.
The training of ranger/cleric is probably because you have stored up two cleric levels while waiting for the ranger to be ready for level up. So you train the guy, he goes up 1 level each, and your XP will drop to 1 less than the cleric needs to level up again. That is a relic of 1E, where you can't level up twice in a row. Your XP will drop to 1 less than what is required for the next level of whichever class is going to level up next. Ranger/cleric, because of the large discrepancy in XP required between the two classes, is where this is most likely to show up.
With a higher level (due to not being triple classed or starting DQK at level 16 triple class), I tend to have very little issues with the game even on the highest difficulty. It is just more boring because of the higher HP making it more of a combat slog. Playing Dave's Challenge might factor into that as you can get multiple copies of +3 Platemail from there, which is a huge boon to elf mages as they can cast in armour (again, something that is not documented anywhere that I recall), leaving your precious Bracers to single-class mages or mage/thieves.
In my experience, Dark Wizards will save against the majority of DBF to the point I never even bother with it, even at the middle difficulty (Veteran?). The rate is far lower than 25%. Enchanted Bozaks fail their saves far more often, but it is still not something I'd rely on, unless I am clearing mooks around it, where it then becomes collateral damage. Whatever numbers people have pulled out of the codes, they aren't borne out by actual play.
MS is pure fire damage in GB games. It is very evident when Enchanted Sivaks explode near Dark Wizards and no damage is taken.
One of the tricks DQK pulls on players is the Fine Longbow. It doesn't show up as magical, so people tend to throw it away. However, it is the single most powerful bow in the entire GB set of games: It adds your Strength mod to its to-hit and damage rolls. Give it to the guy with the Girdle of Giant Strength and you are toting around a weapon that does 2x 1d6+15 at range with a +6 or +8 to-hit. It punctures Beholders something hard.
Fighting Beholders safely is always an exercise in patience. You can always get out of the way of Beholders as you are always at least twice as fast as it. Even if you have to take a hit from attacks of opportunity from the Beholder's mooks, it is worth it to get the hell out of the way of all those rays. One tip is to give the Knight the +4 Platemail you get in DKK. It will increase his speed so that he can get out of the way of things or get right up into the face of something you want dead (e.g., 2 or 4 of the heads of the chromatic dragon while holding a Dragonlance).
I don't recall the egg doing that. I always go into that fight fully healed (because Dragonlance), although it could be that I healed manually beforehand.
Human mages is just to add a bit of variety to the party. There is no reason it can't be elves. 1 human and 5 elves just looks weird from an in-universe point of view, that's all.
I never seem to have a problem with level draining undead in DKK, even in the magic dead Tree where you had to fight half-a-dozen spectres at melee range. They tend to have a crappy THAC0 and could never hit my frontliners.
The training of ranger/cleric is probably because you have stored up two cleric levels while waiting for the ranger to be ready for level up. So you train the guy, he goes up 1 level each, and your XP will drop to 1 less than the cleric needs to level up again. That is a relic of 1E, where you can't level up twice in a row. Your XP will drop to 1 less than what is required for the next level of whichever class is going to level up next. Ranger/cleric, because of the large discrepancy in XP required between the two classes, is where this is most likely to show up.
With a higher level (due to not being triple classed or starting DQK at level 16 triple class), I tend to have very little issues with the game even on the highest difficulty. It is just more boring because of the higher HP making it more of a combat slog. Playing Dave's Challenge might factor into that as you can get multiple copies of +3 Platemail from there, which is a huge boon to elf mages as they can cast in armour (again, something that is not documented anywhere that I recall), leaving your precious Bracers to single-class mages or mage/thieves.