Gold Box SSI's Gold Box Series Thread

[KeighnMcDeath]

Those trolls are so progressive esp for the time (and kinky?).

Those monkeys....... yup! Downright dangerous.

 

[Joonas]

Pools of Darkness shirt? Had to google that.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

One thing that bothered the fuck out of me was Pool of Radiance and the bullshit advertising on the back of ALL boxes (except NES).

I should scan a 1:1 image.

I liked the game, but pics 1 & 3 NEVER EVER EVER HAPPEN. I figured, when I had a cd64, that those two pics were for the IBM. Guess what? The IBM didn't have those either. I thought, AMIGA? Eh, Never saw them on the amiga either but I only have a ROM image for emulation. GRRR!!!

As your party approaches the tower, a hungry Displacer Beast is there to great each and every one of you . . .

A party of 5 Lizard Men threaten your travel . . .
"Leave us your treassss-shures you Fools, or each of you will DIE!!

And jesus fuck look at those HP Boots at 340 hp, Geishar at 175, Maze at 230. Bah I can't tell since its all fuzzed up.
er wait hold on...

* Faweta Boots AC -3 HP 340
Ranger Geishar AC -3 HP 145 (injured it appears)
Kyle Kingfish AC -2 HP 180
* Skull Crusher AC -1 Hp 87
Yactavius AC 4 hp 90 (injured ??)
Tucker Maze AC 0 HP 170
Bizaro Bolthor AC 7 Hp 67
Mercedes Hodge AC 9 (apparantly always unconscious or dead).

* NPC? I know Skull Crusher was. Ah yeas it say so.

Move Search Heading Pic PC Esc.


Never found that shit. its lik the back of the box of Elder Scrolls: Arena. Damn false advertising. Makes the game utter shit right there! I should have chucked the box at the store salesman's face and yelled. RAWR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Incendax]

I'm making a Kender Knight because why the fuck not. Seems like a neat combo of abilities.
Started with a Human Knight, GBC turned him into a Kender.

 

[Cael]

I'm making a Kender Knight because why the fuck not. Seems like a neat combo of abilities.
Started with a Human Knight, GBC turned him into a Kender.

You won't be able to level him normally, and will need to rely on GBC.

 

[Ladonna]

Never found that shit.

I never connected the dots on that one. Early PC version mockup?

 

[DaveO]

I don't think it was intentional false advertising. This is an issue with a LOT of SSI releases. Take Eternal Dagger. The box art shows them crossing over with weapons. Not possible. I am fairly certain all shots on the back are from development so of course things will be dropped or changed.

 

[Dorateen]

I'm making a Kender Knight because why the fuck not.

Kender Stew from the Reign of Istar anthology

A kender becomes a Solamnic Knight (almost)

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

I wonder if anyone on FRUA made those encounters?

 

[Null Null]

You can’t make a character with more than 255 HP, even through hacks-the variable is a character (8-bit).

As for the other stuff, I haven’t seen it, but who knows? I haven’t played every mod.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

I never tried the Ironworks/Dungeoncraft or whatever addition to FRUA. The utility looked pretty good. I wonder if you can break the hp limit there.

FRUA Community Forums
Look at that archive
Good Archived Site

 

[Cael]

You can’t make a character with more than 255 HP, even through hacks-the variable is a character (8-bit).

A max HP dwarf level 40 Fighter is in a bit of trouble...

 

[Erebus]

I once had a ranger with 255 hp in DQK (may have been a bug). I could no longer level her up, or her hp would suddenly drop to single digit.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Good lord this vid:

 

[pjs]

[Lots of discussion on Krynn series snipped..]
For your FR run:
You can have a maximum of 3 Rangers in the party. I don't think this is actually documented anywhere, but the limit is there. Remember also that Ranger/Mage duals can cast spells in armour. I can't recall if this is mentioned anywhere either.

You will need a Cleric for healing purposes. It is practically mandatory. While the Paladin can take over later with his spells, he won't be getting those until level 9 and it would take a lot longer before he gets enough to be useful, by which time you will be dualling him to mage or what have you.

One way of playing is to use 1 Paladin, 3 Ranger, 1 Cleric, 1 Mage. Get to whatever level you are comfortable with and dual the Paladin and Rangers to Mages. The Mage and the Cleric should dual together or close together and exchange roles. That should keep you covered with firepower and healing at all times.

A small writeup on reflections of Curse and SSB (POD still pending, I don't expect much surprises on that front):

I ended up skipping Pool of Radiance, because it does not offer paladin or ranger as an option, and I didn't want to resort to hex-editing the characters to a different class in Curse.

So I started Curse with 1 paladin, 3 rangers, 1 mage and 1 cleric. Dual-classed one L10 ranger (after Zhentil Keep) to mage and did some grinding so the mage obtained L11. The rest I left to be dual classed in SSB.

The most significant consideration when doing dual-classing is the timing. Section 5.4 of this https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/564786-curse-of-the-azure-bonds/faqs/78365 really excellent guide discusses this. You need to avoid too many characters being too weak at the same time. You also want to to use up the experience in each game with level restrictions in mind (Curse provides about 500K, though I grinded to 900K, and SSB about 2,5M additional xp without heavy grinding). So a lot of SSB xp gets wasted when transferring to POD unless you dual class in SSB. Also the typical level cap in SSB being 15, you need to switch at the latest at L14 if you want to get the old abilities back already in SSB. And you probably want at least some of them towards the end.

In SSB (played with Champion difficulty) I switched the mage to cleric, and cleric to mage when both hit L14. This was relatively early. I think they were about L8-L9 when the paladin got to L13 (two attacks) and I switched it to mage. A little bit further on I switched the remaining two rangers to mages when the rangers reached L15 (so I could get two attacks eventually in POD). 5 simultaneous second class developing characters can be pulled off in SSB because the NPC Vala is a decent warrior and completemented my 1 ranger that had been unlocked in Curse with this in mind. Very few monsters in SSB are magic resistant so 4-5 characters throwing fireballs and ice storms compensated for the weak spot in warrior capacity. Towards the end (during Castle dungeons) my paladin/mage got L14 mage and unlocked the paladin capabilities and rather soon both mage/clerics got unlocked as well. In the end L15 rangers had obtained L14, close to L15 as a mage. This way when I start POD I will have unlocked or will soon unlock all dual-classed abilities and continue to develop as 5 mages and 1 cleric. (Mages are very useful as a second class due to having huge amount of HPs and fighting capability from the first warrior class, and getting more deadly DBFs towards the end game.)

After completing SSB I noticed I needed to get some equipment for the two upcoming ranger/mages from the vault, but after completion, everyone was already in victory celebration. So I may need to reload before the final fight to obtain the equipment and maybe also do some additional XP grinding for POD. There are many spots in SSB where you can get 10-15K xp by fighting giants and such battles are over very quickly (a fireball or two and then autorun with quick). Maybe I'll do some because I don't recall how easy it is in the beginning of POD (need to get some 400K XP to unlock the final two ranger/mages).

 

[octavius]

Sounds like you're squeezing all the challenge out of the games. The only really difficult part is the final battles in PoD, where I found that otherwise normal characters will need 18 DEX. Part of Curse is pretty diffucult too; I wished I had more than just one Fighter/Thief when battling the Drown in and under Hap.

And not playing PoR because no Paladins or Ranger??? Just use some multi-class Elves/Half-Elves and ditch them at the start of Curse.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

I often felt like ditching my characters in each game. In POD I used fighter classes til lvl 39 (switching out shitty temp mages/priests). Then, I ran the dual classing to lvl 40. Mind you, this was later play throughs. I have used original party but what a damn slog. Lvl 39/40 bastards are where its at. I could get a group of hobbits too far.
Hey! Maybe GBC hobbit/gnome/kender if possible.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Do you all think scouting and thieving was done better in Wizard's Crown/eternal dagger or Gold Box. I liked the actual hide option. I never cared too much for the gold box backstabbing. Chuck in a flim-flam rogue skill to get better prices... lol... ahahahaha... like you won't have millions or billions of gold/platinum and magic items. Your bank will overflow and mules will cry.

 

[Ladonna]

I ended up skipping Pool of Radiance, because it does not offer paladin or ranger as an option

So you missed out on the best Goldbox game because of a couple of character classes? You could have sent a couple of people on holidays and replaced them for curse. Or you could actually win all of the games with just using fighters or fighter/clerics instead of having a ranger and paladin. Your loss.

 

[Sinatar]

Imagine playing a paladin over a fighter cleric in 1st or 2nd edition dnd.

Imagine being that guy.

 

[Desiderius]

Man seeing that box again still gets the old blood flowing. That was some groundbreaking shit! Couldn't wait to get home to get the shrink wrap open and start diving into the manual.

 

[Desiderius]

Sounds like you're squeezing all the challenge out of the games. The only really difficult part is the final battles in PoD, where I found that otherwise normal characters will need 18 DEX. Part of Curse is pretty diffucult too; I wished I had more than just one Fighter/Thief when battling the Drown in and under Hap.

And not playing PoR because no Paladins or Ranger??? Just use some multi-class Elves/Half-Elves and ditch them at the start of Curse.

I remember getting lost in Moander's Body for what seemed like forever and having to fight a random battle every other step. PoD in general brings up sloggy memories.

 

[octavius]

Ah yes, Moander's Body; now that was some seriously spongy stuff <shudder>.

 

[pjs]

Sounds like you're squeezing all the challenge out of the games. The only really difficult part is the final battles in PoD, where I found that otherwise normal characters will need 18 DEX. Part of Curse is pretty diffucult too; I wished I had more than just one Fighter/Thief when battling the Drown in and under Hap.

And not playing PoR because no Paladins or Ranger??? Just use some multi-class Elves/Half-Elves and ditch them at the start of Curse.

I have already played PoR probably about three times (and it's a very good game, certainly better than SSB with all the huge mazes). The idea here was to see how you could optimize and develop the same party through the FR games. PoR does not quite fit with that idea.

As noted here on another post and in the guide above, another strategy for developing dual-class characters is having one or two multi-class characters as support in the party and replacing them as the game progresses with a new set of dual-class characters. But I didn't feel like doing that.

 

[Sinatar]

Such a great concept for a dungeon, but man is it annoying to get through. Hey lets make every encounter a mix of super shambling mounds and iron golems.