Gold Box SSI's Gold Box Series Thread

[The Limper]

Just start over with a viable party. My SF party fave, which is a carry over from Gateway to Treasures:

Human Pally - Off Tank

Elf F/M/T - Sleep!

Human Cleric

Human Fighter 5 dual to Mage

Human Mage

Human Ranger 7 dual to Cleric

I take a similar approach when playing SotSB & PoD.

So I just got a game ending bug.


I had dual classed my fighter and my cleric both to mage. Somehow, I guess when looking at enemies with the GBC my cleric deleted my fighter and cloned herself.

As in he's gone, and now I have 2 characters of my cleric although the name didn't get changed. I was on auto pilot because of all the shit trash mobs in luskan so I didn't notice until I saved over my back up saves.

Probably ragequitting the entire series. Would have preferred not to waste 35 hours of my life but shit happens.


I 100% blame the gold box companions more than the games themselves. Absolute shit software lol.

If your using GBC why not use the Character Editor to change the character back to the race and class that he was….????? Or just create a new character with the same Name/Race/Class and use the Editor to up his level to where it should be. Move the equipment from the bugged character to another party member, remove the bugged character, add the clone and add the equipment to your clone. Takes about 5 minutes…. The SW isn’t shit, especially because its…..FREE.

 

[Cael]

Just start over with a viable party. My SF party fave, which is a carry over from Gateway to Treasures:

Human Pally - Off Tank

Elf F/M/T - Sleep!

Human Cleric

Human Fighter 5 dual t-

 

[The Limper]

Just start over with a viable party. My SF party fave, which is a carry over from Gateway to Treasures:

Human Pally - Off Tank

Elf F/M/T - Sleep!

Human Cleric

Human Fighter 5 dual t-

Lol! Yep I know, but for the SF games it works well as it gives you a bow wielding Mage with lots of hit points and works best for level ‘spacing’ when you are using multiple duals. It helps avoid the multiple duals trap with several weak characters at once. Obviously not recommended for PoR>CotAB>SotSB>PoD.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

POD lvl 39 F/dual to mage hit lvl 40 and sweetness.

Grrrrrrriiiiiinnnnnnndddddddd!!!!!!

 

[octavius]

Most powerful character in the game is a dual Ranger (lvl 15)/Mage. Gets 2 APR, no casting restrictions, and bonuses against giant monsters. And can buff with Mirror Image and other spells.
After the final fight in PoD, he was Last Man Standing.

 

[Cael]

Most powerful character in the game is a dual Ranger (lvl 15)/Mage. Gets 2 APR, no casting restrictions, and bonuses against giant monsters. And can buff with Mirror Image and other spells.
After the final fight in PoD, he was Last Man Standing.

There are good reasons why they restrict you to 3 rangers max per party...

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Only lvl 15? Not lvl 39 then get that second to 40? Ah man!

Them giants just hated ranger parties.

I believe I had one party with mostly dual-classed the 40s were

I could be wrong but i know I had a paladin, I think a rogue/dual mage or was it ranger/dual rogue

Ranger/dual mage
Rangual/dual priest
Fighter/dual mage
Fighter/dual priest

Alt was another fighter/dual mage
And other shit.

One group was original from por with demi-humans (god the issues just getting to pod)

Other was a test group of humans using various cheese/bug exploits. (Tome of health to 25 con), dex bug to get to 19), i swear i used an npc mage or a few alt mages of max casting enlarge on party before a save (probably did this at a training hall) and I can't recall what game but cast it and had a few guys perm 24 str. I damn forgot if it stuck. Sometimes exploits work.

Or you could use UGE (universal game editor) back in the dos days for fun. Now, I guess GBC works.

Only exploit/cheat after beating the game though.

 

[Beans00]

If your using GBC why not use the Character Editor to change the character back to the race and class that he was….????? Or just create a new character with the same Name/Race/Class and use the Editor to up his level to where it should be. Move the equipment from the bugged character to another party member, remove the bugged character, add the clone and add the equipment to your clone. Takes about 5 minutes…. The SW isn’t shit, especially because its…..FREE.

I ended up looking up how long I had left, and just beat it since I was in like the final 80% of the game.

So most of the game was fairly frustrating. cloned character aside there were way too many copy pasted groups of 6 mages that spammed lightning bolt. Almost every battle felt like it was completely decided by rng.

Then the final area was really hard and really shit, and since I was effectively at level cap for most of my characters I mostly just saved and reloaded.

Then the final boss was a complete joke, I beat it on the first try and ended up spam fireballing my party to end the fight faster.

The final battle of gateway was substantially harder than this. As in I could take my level 10-11 party and have a harder time doing the gateway fight again.

I ended up having 3 mages with dual cast, aswell as spam buying wands of ice frost or whatever, so I just nuked every enemy mage group with mass AOE.



Glitch aside(you can see my cloned character above) I enjoyed gateway more. I found treasures to be even more repetitive and tedious.



Beat it in 22.5 hours, so a bit longer than gateway which took me ~19.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Congrats on the only person I know who had a clone in the game.

ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED!!!

 

[octavius]

It's the penultimate battle that is the hardest one in Treasures. Maybe it was a joke on those who think it means "even more ultimate".
It's made even harder than it has to be when for some reason on this particular GB game you can't use Dispel Magic to dispel Hold Person, and those mages in the penultimate fight love to spam Hold Person.

 

[Beans00]

It's the penultimate battle that is the hardest one in Treasures. Maybe it was a joke on those who think it means "even more ultimate".
It's made even harder than it has to be when for some reason on this particular GB game you can't use Dispel Magic to dispel Hold Person, and those mages in the penultimate fight love to spam Hold Person.

I wouldn't call it easy but it definitely wasn't that hard. Maybe if you didn't get a bunch of dwarfs as fodder but I killed every enemy caster with aoe spells before they even had a turn.

Beat it on the 2nd try with zero casualties.

 

[octavius]

Hmm...I found it quite difficult when the enemy mages had high initiative, making it difficult to prevent or disrupt their spell casting. I beat it on 2nd try too, but don't remember how many casualties.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

I loved the dragon art.

 

[The Limper]

Jump over to Krynn next…. It has much better race/class combos and higher demi-human level caps and no dual classing.

CoK isn’t a terribly hard game, but has a nice mix of enemies. Knights are a nice warrior class addition.

DKoK is a great game and you can bring your CoK party along for the ride without issue…..Or you can adjust the party as it adds the Pally as a class choice with some non human allowances for Pally.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Play AOL Neverwinter Nights.

 

[Beans00]

I'll probably do POR next, although I'll be consistently using 6-7 saves.


After por I might hop over to the krynn trilogy or continue into cotab.


I also might do the heirs to skull krag in FRUA, can anyone comment on it's quality?

 

[The Limper]

HtSC is …..short... there was a guy who created a lot of the old AD&D modules as playable Scenarios in FRUA. You can download them all via GBC. There are some Ravenloft modules converted as well.

 

[Rincewind]

Man, I'll do my grand playthrough of all the Amiga versions of all Gold Box games one day. They're all included and pre-configured to be played from an emulated HDD in my upcoming Amiga game collection. I don't even care about those minor Amiga port bugs... I saw the advert for Secret of the Silver Blades in a German computer magazine back in the day when I only had a C64. Man, I was floored by those SotSB intro screens! So yeah, it's an emotional/nostalgic thing for me, and the sound is the best in the Amiga versions (at least for the first 2/3 of the series).

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

I can't wait to see that.

 

[octavius]

I also might do the heirs to skull krag in FRUA, can anyone comment on it's quality?

It's very bad.
You are better off with the best of the user-made modules. Unfortunately most of the designers were storyfags, not combatfags. But many of the classic p&p modules have been converted (a bit too faithfully maybe). Of the original creations I think Ben Sanderfer's modules capture the Gold Box feel the best.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Man, the Ultima III mod my pa started and I later worked on that included Dungeons of Magdarr was a huge combatfag adventure.

 

[Butter]

The guy who did the Wizardry 6 remaster got access to the CotAB source code and has been modding the hell out of it, including new classes, new spells, quality of life features, and bug fixes. He said he's planning to release it by Christmas. Not sure if this is going to affect any other GB games in the future.

 

[Beans00]

I started POR, I only played it for like an hour. I explored the civilized district and did a few battles in the slums.(maybe 5% of the map explored).

Too early to say if it's good or not. I will say the UI is much harder to work around than gateway.

To keep authenticity I'm trying to avoid using the GBC. No fix command is annoying but not really a deal breaker. For the mini map, I've done my own but I'll be completely honest I'll probably get bored of mapping after the slums or maybe 1 additional area.

My party is

human fighter, will dual to mage at level 11
human cleric
human mage
human thief, will dual to mage or cleric at level 11-15 or something I need to do some reading
half elf fighter/cleric/mage, will be dropped for human ranger in curse
dwarf fighter, will be dropped for human paladin in curse

 

[octavius]

Multi-class characters rule in PoR. Can't get too many Sleep and Cure spells.
The character level limit will hurt the single class Cleric (but you really need one).

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Wait, you're starting at level 11+?

From memory (if correct):
Fighter max 8
Cleric max 6
Mage max 6
Rogue max 9 or was it 10?

I think... level 11 mage? Lordy! I'm not saying it wouldn't be interesting but it won't be like the authentic original as intended.

Or you're saying you will dual in the future sequels?