Desiderius
Found your egg, Robinett, you sneaky bastard
- Joined
- Jul 22, 2019
- Messages
- 14,828
Just when I'd blown my sweet co-op job to go overseas so couldn't afford the hint line too.
Not to mention Moander is a rotting garbage heap, not a forest titan wannabe.
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.
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.
PoR is a great game, and also the only one (AFAIK) that has an open world —eventually.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.
Gateway to the Savage Frontier
But Dark Queen I just can barely stand, not only is every major battle more or less dependant on your mages casting the (delayed) fireballs as quickly as possible, the maps also seem to drag on forever. The first caves with all those draconians and other strange creatures I felt was too long, but then the underwater levels immediately afterwards... omg, it felt like forever to get past these. I mean it´s a good idea and such.. but really just tooo long imo... When my party finally arrived at the world map, I entered the light house (as that seems to be the place the player should investige next) but, once again, endless battles against samey enemies and the lighthouse itself kinda felt just too mazey.. Don´t remember why exactly, but I lost all interest to play futher when I stumbled somewhere in the light house.
I tried Gateway and, apart from continous samey enemies at set locations, the game felt pretty solid to me, haven´t really played much further that the first few parts. What I find a bit off-putting is that every step in the outworld takes half a day?! Hmm, I guess the answer is probably no, but still out of curiosity, does it have any bad effects if you walk around for, like years or so? Do the charcters die of old age eventually or something like that?
You can't have undead draconians for obvious reasons...Quite astonished to see that PoR has an actual world map lol, I never made it that far because the game bugged out for me after having played it for about half-way through or so (?) I think the stats of my chars went totally crazy for no apparent reason or something like that, until then it was a very entertaining game and I think it´s pretty sad that the game seems prone to bug out, but I will try another run maybe soon.
Apart from that, from the gold box games I played I consider the first two Krynn games to be definitive favorites. Champions of Krynn is just an all about entertaining game, from the beginning to the end it just continued to be very interesting. Maybe that maze-like place was a bit too much, but that would be quite nitpicky now. And the different dragons are definitely fun, also they aren´t overused too much.
The seond game Death Knights I was a bit disappointed with when I played it for the first time; all the undead enemy types, which some of them being able to level drain, can unnerve you, and I found it bit strange that the draconians seem to have dissappeared for no apparent reasons-except for one type- which just seemed so weird, taking into account that they played such a major role in the first game. Maybe undead draconians should also have been there as an enemy type.?. But when I replayed it later, it just felt kinda better this time, can´t say exactly why. Level design is definitely once again top notch here. I would just take care that some of the fighters in the party get equipped with good blunt weapons so the skeletal warriors become less of a problem.
But Dark Queen I just can barely stand, not only is every major battle more or less dependant on your mages casting the (delayed) fireballs as quickly as possible, the maps also seem to drag on forever. The first caves with all those draconians and other strange creatures I felt was too long, but then the underwater levels immediately afterwards... omg, it felt like forever to get past these. I mean it´s a good idea and such.. but really just tooo long imo... When my party finally arrived at the world map, I entered the light house (as that seems to be the place the player should investige next) but, once again, endless battles against samey enemies and the lighthouse itself kinda felt just too mazey.. Don´t remember why exactly, but I lost all interest to play futher when I stumbled somewhere in the light house.
I tried Gateway and, apart from continous samey enemies at set locations, the game felt pretty solid to me, haven´t really played much further that the first few parts. What I find a bit off-putting is that every step in the outworld takes half a day?! Hmm, I guess the answer is probably no, but still out of curiosity, does it have any bad effects if you walk around for, like years or so? Do the charcters die of old age eventually or something like that?
No consequences that I have seen. Cast Haste as much as you want.
DKK Open World Map makes the game.
Skomp!
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).
Dualling out of fighter types when you get the second attack is optimal. There is no reason to go higher.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).
Just finished PoD with champion. All the mage/rangers, mage/paladin and mage/cleric reached mage level 32, the cleric/mage was 39/14 (mage 14 not very useful offensively but at least it could do self-buffs). I had expected that the game would more difficult (I have previously played with easier difficulty levels), but I suppose the super-optimized characters helped a lot. (DQK is more difficult and requires more care when, for example, most spellcasters come into combat with defensive spells active while in POD they don't.) Even the POD end battles were rather easy (finished it with the first try): when you can buff every character with mage-only buffs (like globe of invulnerability, fire shield, etc.) and almost everyone could cast deadly DBF's, I don't think I even got any significant damage in the first battle (even without running around the corner). The second battle against beholders was also very easy. The last one I should have ducked to cover around a corner and it got somewhat messy. The biggest nuisance there was the shortage of arrows (and I forgot to redistribute most of them to the characters with fine long bows; I suppose I should have brought non-magical arrows along to Bane's realm).
Looking back, the timing and selection of dual-classing seemed to be close to optimal, and I probably would not have changed a thing. I suppose an even more hardcore option would have been to try to run paladin and rangers longer and dual-class them only at the start of POD (at level 17 rather than 13/15 in SSB). But then lots of more XP would have been lost in SSB and the start of POD would have been more difficult, and the characters would not have reached the same mage levels at the end of POD.
Dualling out of fighter types when you get the second attack is optimal. There is no reason to go higher.
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.
You can't have undead draconians for obvious reasons...
Well I may not have thouroghly delved into the lore of the Krynn series, but at first and subsequent glances, I didn´t see any hindrance for this. They are made of blood and bones, after all, so why not..
You can't have undead draconians for obvious reasons...
Well I may not have thouroghly delved into the lore of the Krynn series, but at first and subsequent glances, I didn´t see any hindrance for this. They are made of blood and bones, after all, so why not..
-The Shambilng Mounds towards the end left some strange treasure after defeat. Every one of them left a Plate Mail + 3, an Ioun Stone, a Displacer Cloak, a magical crossbow and I think a Broad Sword + 1 (afair) behind as loot. This felt strange, because this doesnt´t feel intended from the game designers, and even the official clue book doesn´t mention these items....
I suppose it's possible the Shambling Mounds all engulfed identically equipped evil agents who were dispatched to kill your party. In that case, you really screwed up by killing creatures that were trying to communicate in their own way that they wanted to be allies.