Gold Box SSI's Gold Box Series Thread

[Beans00]

Way too many medusas and baselisks which turn you to stone which is pretty annoying.

You can use mirrors to avoid petrification - which was remarked about in the manual for Pools of Darkness, though it was already possible in Pool of Radiance if I recall correctly.

I used them in POR, I don't recall finding any in sotsb.

 

[Dorateen]

Secret of the Silver Blades has silver shields, which also reflect a medusa's petrification gaze.

 

[octavius]

Is there a video guide to getting gbc/gold box games to run on dos box?

I've never really used dosbox or dos. I sort of got it working today with tacgnols help but the characters I made for buck rogers CTD weren't saving so I couldn't make my party.


If there's a quick guide I'll do it, otherwise I'll start pools of darkness soon. I looked into the sega genesis version of BR CTD and got it running quickly, but theres less classes and apparently other changes so I'm not sure if it's worth playing.

The next step is to install FRUA and the modules from The Realm. They are excellent translations of classic modules, especially The Lost City. You won’t encounter any frustrating fights in those, as far as I can remember . http://frua.rosedragon.org/pc/modules/

I've played half or more of of them.
My favourite was Keep on the Borderlands.

 

[Butter]

Way too many medusas and baselisks which turn you to stone which is pretty annoying.

You can use mirrors to avoid petrification - which was remarked about in the manual for Pools of Darkness, though it was already possible in Pool of Radiance if I recall correctly.

I used them in POR, I don't recall finding any in sotsb.

Pretty sure they're available in the town shop. I don't remember a single fight in that game being tough enough to bother though.

 

[Cael]

Way too many medusas and baselisks which turn you to stone which is pretty annoying.

You can use mirrors to avoid petrification - which was remarked about in the manual for Pools of Darkness, though it was already possible in Pool of Radiance if I recall correctly.

Mirrors (used as shields) actually reflecting medusa gazes back on them with no save is in Treasures.

 

[Radiane]

Way too many medusas and baselisks which turn you to stone which is pretty annoying.

You can use mirrors to avoid petrification - which was remarked about in the manual for Pools of Darkness, though it was already possible in Pool of Radiance if I recall correctly.

I used them in POR, I don't recall finding any in sotsb.

Pretty sure they're available in the town shop. I don't remember a single fight in that game being tough enough to bother though.

Some (few) fights involve quite a lot of creatures which can turn to stone, which can get a bit critical if the party fails some of their saves and ends up with a couple of stoned chars in the first rounds... I didn't use any mirrors either, and there were situations where my party headed back to the city after a fight for healing because both mages in my party ended up being petrified.

 

[Beans00]

I'm around 6-7 hours into POD (like 5-6 maps cleared) and am enjoying it so far. Some hard fights but I find it much better than dark queen of krynn as far as epic levels go.

 

[Beans00]

So I beat pools of darkness. I'm probably going to catch a few more eyebrows, but overall I think this was the best gold box game. Which was a surprise to me, because after my experience with DQOK, and other epic level games(throne of bhaal ect) I expected to hate POD.

Overall I thought the game was challenging enough to be engaging, but not so challenging to be frustrating(until the final boss, and daves challenge which I'll get to).

Unlike the auraks and other exploding lizard fuckers in the krynn games, there was a really nice variety of enemies. Which brings up a question. I've seen in this thread where people bitch this game is over the top, and my only conclusion is they didn't actually play POD.

There are very few dragon/beholder fights in the game, most of the fights are against humanoid enemies, or later special enemies from the different dimensions(spiders, minions of bane ect), drow, ect.

Frankly, this game would have blown me away if I played it back in the day. I feel like it captured the high stakes epic feeling so well, and how it felt in contrast to the other GB games.

Even the gimmick with needing to find new equipment in every dimension. I thought it was a cool idea and gave some extra challenge, my only complaint was re equipping my guys being a pain in the ass afterwards.


Going area by area

The cave system
temple of tyr
farmhouse
taydomes keep
hill giant/fire giant
dragon aerie
thornes dimension
small keep
zhentil keep
ruins of myth drannor

All those areas felt very high quality and enjoyable. The dragon aerie opening fight(which is obviously where you fight the most dragons in the game) was hard, I got wiped probably a half dozen times at least.

Manshoons tower was ok, but it lead to my last favorite part of the game

I wasn't a fan of kalistes dimension, I thought fighting drow for that long was tiresome. Probably my least favorite part of the game.


I thought the red tower and phalan were good, which lead into my favorite part of the game

I thought Tanetals dimension was the most epic of any area in the gold box games. Good encounter design, good difficulty, interesting body horror type of setting/atmosphere. Obviously the area peaked going through the gods heart. One of the best areas I have ever experienced in any game.

Then Mulmaster was fine, and so were the beholder caves. Oddly enough the beholder caves probably had less than 5 beholders in them.


So getting to Dark Phalan and Gothmenes palace, I thought the areas themselves were ok. Some hard ish fights but nothing so unfair by that point in the game. Until I got to the final battle

(all my characters are full hp because I fix cheated at that point)

Now, I'll be doing some bitching here.

I have beaten all these games on champion(normal default) difficulty. I have no problems with the final bosses being hard

The end bosses in

gateway
curse
death knights of krynn
As well as a few non end boss fights in DQOK and treasures have taken me lots of attempts. Sometimes as many as 7-8.

I tried, on champion difficulty to beat the end game of POD 24 times.

In those 24 times, I made it past the opening battle 9 times(and that's with fix cheating my zapped character for like 7 of those wins)
I made it past the beholders 4 times
I had zero successful attempts in the actual end boss.

There were too many things to go wrong, so much instant death, way too many high dps enemies.

So after exactly 2 dozen attempts, with zero avenues for success I gave up and followed gamebanshees instructions

"Note: The final trio of battles required for defeating Gothmenes is stupidly difficult. There are just way too many one-shot things that can go wrong, including stoning, poison, death, and disintegration -- none of which can be corrected while you're in battle -- that your odds of finishing the battles successfully is exceedingly low. After failing dozens of times to complete the battles, we finally got frustrated enough to switch the game difficulty to "novice," where we were finally able to succeed (but even that took a few tries). You can change the game difficulty in the "encamp" menu."


I dropped the difficulty to notice and beat the whole thing on the third try without fix cheating. Minions of bane only have 22 hp on novice so they can't survive a delayed fireball.


This rubbed me the wrong way, beating the game on easy seemed like too much of a bitch move. So I tried again on champion, 2 more attempts unsuccessful.

So I bumped it down to squire, the 2nd difficulty and beat it on the 4th try

There are people probably better at this game than me rolling their eyes in this thread, but at least I can say I beat it on squire.




Daves challenge was kind of a meme. The actual dungeon wasn't really that hard except for 3 fights

1 against these

There was another fight at the fighter bond against like 5 dragons that took like 15 attempts until I got lucky, luckily for me if they wiped me it was always in under 3 minutes. So it didn't take that long.

There was another fight against like 20 vampires that was kind of annoying, took like 3 attempts.


For the end fight I took 1 look at it and figured it was impossible. I tried 3 times and never came remotely close to winning.

So I cheated and won by editing all enemies health down to 1.

I don't have a problem with daves challenge being a meme since it's an optinal end game bonus area.


Game took me 42 ish hours to make it to the final boss, 6.5 hours or so to beat the final boss(lol) and like 2 in daves challenge or something

For a total of 50 hours

No complaints except the drow dimension being repetitive and the final boss being too hard.

Pools of darkness (50h)
curse azure bonds(18h)
por (33h)
gateway sf(19h)
death knights of krynn (21h)
Secret of the silver blades(24.5h)
champions of krynn (15.5h)
treasures sf (23h)
dark queen of krynn (38h)


Really enjoyed this one, wish I could have beaten the final boss on champion difficulty.


If I can figure out how to get dos box working I'll try the BR games.

 

[octavius]

I'm surprised you liked Tanetal's dimension. To me that was definitely the most frustrating part.

Did you have max DEX on your characters? Getting Initiative is imperative in the final fights, and is more important than max HP.
For the first fight you really need to open with two DBFs.
These fights are made more difficult by the Ring of Lightning Immunity not working correctly in the DOS version.
The Beholders are easy as long as you can keep your distance. Haste + Enlarge and Fine Longbows are very efficient.
And Ranger/Mages with Mirror Image have the highest probability of surviving.

 

[Cael]

What level were you at the end boss? Usually my DBF hits for over 100hp by the end game of DQK. I was wiping entire screens of dragons with them. The dragonlances were pretty superfluous.

 

[Beans00]

What level were you at the end boss? Usually my DBF hits for over 100hp by the end game of DQK. I was wiping entire screens of dragons with them. The dragonlances were pretty superfluous.

At the end of POD I was high 30s, 40 on my cleric.

At the end of DQK I was low 20s I think, I had mostly dual/triple class characters which may have made things harder for me. I only had a single class knight.

I'm surprised you liked Tanetal's dimension. To me that was definitely the most frustrating part.

Did you have max DEX on your characters? Getting Initiative is imperative in the final fights, and is more important than max HP.
For the first fight you really need to open with two DBFs.
These fights are made more difficult by the Ring of Lightning Immunity not working correctly in the DOS version.
The Beholders are easy as long as you can keep your distance. Haste + Enlarge and Fine Longbows are very efficient.
And Ranger/Mages with Mirror Image have the highest probability of surviving.

I just thought the moander god dimension was good stylistically, and most of the fights weren't frustrating. at any point you can just wander back to limbo to rest, the only part that really started to attrition me to death was the later parts of the heart with the running around looking for the guy. I thought the fights were fine for the most part.

Yes all 18 dex

Even doing that, I wasn't killing enough of the minions of bane and they were shredding me. Not to mention the skeletal dragons and moander things

I was wondering about the ring. It works but you need to unequip it and re equip it after every fight.

The beholders are just rng, but the first fight fucked me up so hard I was on fumes most times I made it through round 1.



I look forward to trying to get the BR games running, too bad I am terrible at dos box.

 

[Cael]

What level were you at the end boss? Usually my DBF hits for over 100hp by the end game of DQK. I was wiping entire screens of dragons with them. The dragonlances were pretty superfluous.

At the end of POD I was high 30s, 40 on my cleric.

At the end of DQK I was low 20s I think, I had mostly dual/triple class characters which may have made things harder for me. I only had a single class knight.

Then I don't know why you cannot clear 44hp of damage with a single DBF. You should be wiping those guys out by the screenload.

 

[Beans00]

Good news, I got BR:CTD working.


Does anyone know an easy way to get the GBC working with the BR games since they dont use steam or gog? The guides on the GBC website are only for gog.

 

[Joonas]

Does anyone know an easy way to get the GBC working with the BR games since they dont use steam or gog? The guides on the GBC website are only for gog.

When you click a game in GBC that hasn't yet been set up, following text is shown in the text box:

Instructions:
- Select the game from the list on the left.
- Set the game folder if not already set (for GOG-versions click SETUP GOG).
Note: for the GOG-version of Pool of Radiance, select the POOLRAD folder.
Note: for FRUA, select a design from the dropdown -list.
- Start DOSBox and the game or click START GAME (GOG-versions only).
- Load a saved game.
- Begin the game.
- Click the saved game slot button (A - J).
- Click SEARCH.

So pointing GBC to the game's folder with the SET FOLDER button is often enough.

Joonas / GBC

 

[Beans00]

I got an older version of GBC working, the newest version I get this error

• Trying to solve base address by searching for 1st ID starting at $1000000...
  • ERROR: Could not solve base address. 1st ID not found! Try increasing the latter address range value and click search again. Incompatible DOSBox / game version / soundcard settings might cause this. Press Control + R for a read test to see which memory locations can be read. Click HELP for more info.

 

[Cael]

I got an older version of GBC working, the newest version I get this error

• Trying to solve base address by searching for 1st ID starting at $1000000...
  • ERROR: Could not solve base address. 1st ID not found! Try increasing the latter address range value and click search again. Incompatible DOSBox / game version / soundcard settings might cause this. Press Control + R for a read test to see which memory locations can be read. Click HELP for more info.

I get this with DQK as well. That is why I am using a much older version of GBC than the latest I have (which is 252, I think?)

 

[Beans00]

Ok, so I either need some assistance or I'll be quitting Buck Rogers CTD.

So for starters the game is pretty shit, but that hasn't stopped me before.

I did the first two areas, the beginner mission, and the derelict ship without any issue aside from fighting boredom. To be fair the 2nd area actually had a pretty decent atmosphere for a GB game and I did enjoy it a bit.

I then went to ceres asteroid, which was system shock engineering tier of awful. 50 x 50 of confusing samey corridors, and no working map. The old version of GBC also didn't have a map. Eventually I got fed up and used a walkthrough on gamefaqs. Don't care lol.

So I rescue the kids and make my way out. I go back to earth and the guy tells me I need to go to ceres. I go back nothing happens. I read the walkthrough and apparently I'm supposed to be ambushed by someone named talon and captured. Then escape. This isn't happening for some reason.


Does anyone have a solution? If so I'll try to beat it and see if it gets better. Otherwise this is getting deleted later today or tomorrow since the game is pretty trash anyways, and I'm not very invested.