Gold Box SSI's Gold Box Series Thread

[octavius]

I gave my ranger the Sword of Icewind Dale +1, without realizing how awesome that move was. I got attacked by two fire giants, but the ranger made that tough encounter into a bit of a joke. Rangers seem to do double damage against fire giants, and the sword of Icewind Dale also does extra damage against fire-based creatures, so my ranger was doing around 36 points of damage on each hit.

Rangers do double damage against all "giant class" creatures, ie humanoids larger than humans, like Bugbears, Orcs, Ogres, Giants and probably some I forgot. It's quite satisying seeing an Enlarged Ranger doing 50 damage in one swing. And if Hasted, Rangers cut through the Giants like a warm knife through butter. :D
It's like the racial enemy in the IE games, except in the IE games you have to choose one specific monster type to be the enemy.
All in all Rangers are my favourite Fighter type class in the GB games, since they are the easiest to dual and they can even wear full metal armour and cast mage spells when they dual to Mage. Their only disadvantage is that they get their extra attacks later than the other Fighter types.

 

[Deuce Traveler]

I did want to add that you almost do not need a cleric in this game (or at least so far) because of the proximity of inns to most major encounters. I just killed off a bunch of pirate lords by walking in, blowing up their dens with fireballs, then resting at the inn in the same city just so I could go back and kill off a neighboring pirate lord a few doors down from the previous. Even in dungeons with multiple encounters, I rarely used healing spells. Some of the undead are challenging, but a couple of fighters with spare blunt weapons can handle skeleton fighters just fine.

octavius , You got me interested in Magic of the Savage Frontier and I might give it a go later.

 

[Dorateen]

Ah, Gateway to the Savage Frontier. I remember making a triple class character, fighter/magic-user/thief and it took him forever to level up. Also, Krevish getting petrified and being outraged that I had to spend the last of our 2,000 gp to get him fixed up. Finding a shrine to Dumathoin was pretty awesome.

An enjoyable adventure. But the Moonsea tetralogy and Dragonlance trilogy were superior.

 

[mondblut]

All in all Rangers are my favourite Fighter type class in the GB games, since they are the easiest to dual and they can even wear full metal armour and cast mage spells when they dual to Mage. Their only disadvantage is that they get their extra attacks later than the other Fighter types.

Don't forget the druid spells they get. Protection from fire is essential (and it works differently from resist fire - you essentially get a buffer of fuckton hp against fire attacks - so they stack wonderfully).

But they start getting behind on hitpoints later on. 1d8 vs 1d10, and +2 rather than +3 past level 9; that quickly offsets their initial 2d8. Yet 24 hitpoints at lvl 1 is quite awesome.

 

[octavius]

All in all Rangers are my favourite Fighter type class in the GB games, since they are the easiest to dual and they can even wear full metal armour and cast mage spells when they dual to Mage. Their only disadvantage is that they get their extra attacks later than the other Fighter types.

Don't forget the druid spells they get. Protection from fire is essential (and it works differently from resist fire - you essentially get a buffer of fuckton hp against fire attacks - so they stack wonderfully).

Ah, I didn't know that. I guess that explains why the spell never seemed to expire (and I thought the spell was bugged); I still had a buffer of HP left.

 

[Deuce Traveler]

Finished the game. Well, more like gave up at the end. That last series of battles in Gateway to the Savage Frontier was crap. I don't mean that it was hard. The first half dozen or so battles in the series are quite easy, but the game makes you pick an exit on the tactical board after combat is done, and if you choose poorly you fight some trolls and ettins. You can't retreat either, so it seems you are stuck in a loop of trial and error, forcing you to quit, reload and try again.

The last battle was stupidly difficult. They put you against a BBEG (big bad evil guy) who is at least a tenth level fighter with 150 hit points, and the ability to cast 2nd level cleric (like hold person) and magic-user spells (like magic-missile). Oh, and he regenerates and has high magic resistance. He is also supported by half a dozen shambling mounds and a similar amount of spellcasters. Meanwhile your own party is usually maxed at around level 6. I don't mind tough battles, but this one was just stupid. I played the final series of battles in Pools of Darkness over and over again because I felt like the series of combats were exciting even when I became frustrated. This series of battles is just tedious, and you can't just reload and try to grind for levels to make the fight easier because of the level cap. Overall, Gateway to the Savage Frontier has been the first Gold Box game that I felt was bad and a let down.

I could have beaten the last battle. I found out that shambling mounds are effected by stinking cloud, so I could have kept at it until the dice went my way and I won. But I didn't bother. The battle just wasn't interesting enough. It wasn't frustration, it was just that I felt I'd be playing with a complete lack of interest. Instead of a rage quit, it was a bored senseless quit. I watched the ending on a Let's Play on YouTube just to see what happens, and the ending is as stupid as the game.

I do not recommend playing this one unless you plan to do all the Gold Box games, like I am doing. There are mods that were made that were tons better. Onto Treasures...

 

[octavius]

Finished the game. Well, more like gave up at the end. That last series of battles in Gateway to the Savage Frontier was crap.

What the...? The last battles were the highlight of the game IMO, and the only time I needed to buff, use potions and wands, and use clever tactics in the whole game. But they were definitely nowhere near as hard as some of the battles in PoD.
When I played it last time I first fought the Trolls and Ettins, then the Shambling Mounds and some Zhentil mages, and then the final battle against Vaalgamon. Since Vaalgamon is like a souped up version of the Drow Lords in Curse of the Azure Bonds, the key to killing him is to -BACKSTAB!- him. My Enlarged and Hasted (you did buff your characters, right?) Fighter/Thief killed with four backstabs. When I played the Slow spell was the only spell that affected him, but I guess I got lucky with that one. But Slow is definitely handy against the Shambling Mounds, since you have no Ice Storm, Cone of Cold or Hold Monsters spells, and Fireballs and (IIRC) Lightning Bolts are useless against them.
But note that you are not even supposed to kill Vaalgamon! You are supposed to head right for the statues in the plaza. At least that is what I conclude from the end sequence.

But I agree that overall it's a poor Gold Box game. Only Matrix Cubed was worse, IMO. Fortunately Treasures is much better, and Dan Daglow really improved the encounter design in the areas he designed.

 

[Deuce Traveler]

The last battle would be fine, if you didn't have to fight six battles of trash mobs consisting mostly of goblins right before. Like I said, those battles weren't tough at all. They were boring, then having to walk out the right place in order to end the fight correctly so you could enter the next part of the sequence was also pretty lame and the part that sucked the energy out of me. I got pretty far in the effort I made against him and I didn't even buff, killing the Zhentarim support and half the shambling mounds before going down. I could have gone back and tried and won after a few efforts and buffs, but I have no desire to because the game itself was joyless.

The start of Treasures of the Savage Frontier has been much more fun so far.

 

[octavius]

The last battle would be fine, if you didn't have to fight six battles of trash mobs consisting mostly of goblins right before. Like I said, those battles weren't tough at all. They were boring, then having to walk out the right place in order to end the fight correctly so you could enter the next part of the sequence was also pretty lame and the part that sucked the energy out of me. I got pretty far in the effort I made against him and I didn't even buff, killing the Zhentarim support and half the shambling mounds before going down. I could have gone back and tried and won after a few efforts and buffs, but I have no desire to because the game itself was joyless.

Well, I still think the end battles were the only truly innovative part of the game and I liked that part. But you don't need to explore the whole maze. I just headed straight north, which meant only three battles, although they are probably the three hardest ones.
Why didn't you buff?

 

[Deuce Traveler]

My magic-users never learned Enlarge, and Haste only lasts a few rounds. I went through an eternity of battles the first time since I just kept going south, and my spells were exhausted by the time I fought the last battle. The second time around I went east and north, fighting a total of six battles, but had plenty of spells. I figured I'd have one more chance to rest and rememorize spells before the final fight, but that didn't happen, so I didn't have Haste prepared. By the time I fought and lost the last battle the second time I just stopped playing. The thought of trying to figure out what exits to use in which order on the tactical screen felt like it would be a grind, and the game had simply exhausted my give-a-shit points by that time and I just wanted to be done with it.

 

[Dorateen]

But I agree that overall it's a poor Gold Box game. Only Matrix Cubed was worse, IMO. Fortunately Treasures is much better, and Dan Daglow really improved the encounter design in the areas he designed.

Reading about Treasures, fine adventure that it is, always leaves me with bittersweet memories, it being the final AD&D Gold Box game I played.

 

[mondblut]

Reading about Treasures, fine adventure that it is, always leaves me with bittersweet memories, it being the final AD&D Gold Box game I played.

It was the final goldbox game to be made, newsflash. Give or take DQK.

It was damn hard to find in Soviet Piratia, I have to admit. I had to rent the Wizardworks' 9 goldbox games compilation cd in 1996 to finally get my hands upon it. Everything else was easily available on all the pirate compilation cds and arvid videotapes, but this one happened to be extremely elusive.

 

[Deuce Traveler]

I'm about a third of the way through Treasures of the Savage Frontier and it is a huge step up from Gateway to the Savage Frontier. The encounters are tougher than they were before, and I've actually had to reload a couple of times when a character was level drained or when a dragon killed three of my characters. It's funny how stinking cloud is so poorly balanced as a second level spell, as my magic-users killed the dragon on a reload with one hitting it with stinking cloud, and the second one throwing a weak little dart into it to finish the creature off.

It looks like there is an NPC romance blooming with my paladin, which surprised me as I hadn't seen anything like that coded into previous Gold Box games, and the graphics have also leapt forward, though this is less a surprise. All in all, I'm having a blast. I was afraid for a moment there that maybe it was me and not Gateway that turned me off, and that maybe I needed a break from the engine. But nope. I'm having trouble putting this one down.

A good part of this is an old-fashioned quest for revenge as the Zhentarim have screwed up my characters by framing them for a crime they didn't commit... we're a fantasy A-team.

 

[Deuce Traveler]

Ok, just finished Treasures of the Savage Coast and it was an excellent game, though the random encounters every three or four steps in some areas annoyed the hell out of me. I liked this better than Curse of the Azure Bonds, which is saying a lot, especially after my huge dislike of Gateway to the Savage Frontier. There are some new innovations in this game that were a lot of fun.

I liked the set-up better than in Curse of the Azure Bonds and it reminded me of the background plot of Baldur's Gate. You're trying to stop an invasion, and a plot to weaken several nations for the profit of an evil organization working behind the scenes. The sidequests are a lot of fun, with me helping to liberate a penal colony and have the people officially recognized as citizens with rights. Even if the penal colony people were a bit insane. The crown that tells you where to go next is a great help on what area to examine next, without leading you by the nose. If I have any complaint, it is that the constant random encounters and easily reached level cap discouraged me from exploring more of the world map, and I stuck to the roads and rivers closely. The crazy cleric you meet was fun to drag around, and the designers of the game must of had a thing for hot blonde warrior-maidens since there are two in the game that were on my team at one time, mowing down squishy enemy wizards.

The last battle was pretty tough, and I had to reload several times, despite Haste, Prayer, Bless, and Globe of Invulnerability buffs. You start off surrounded and eventually the dual-classed spellcasters took me down. Finally, I got the bright idea to use marine tactics in the same situation: punch a hole through one side, pop out the other, regroup in a defensive position while firing area of effect weapons down the passage containing the rest of the pursuing enemy. When all are dead, go to the bar for a drink and a chance for a lay.

The NPCs and their interactions are the best I've seen out of the Gold Box games thus far. There is a character romance, but it is handled subtly and isn't in your face. In fact, gameplay changes due to the romance. If one character goes down, then you lose control of the other as they rage. When you lose control either due to fright or them going beserk, the characters you control will redo their inventory. Traveler, my paladin, fell in love with one of the NPC warrior-maidens. At the very last battle, the final boss took some damage before dropping her with a ranged attack. She didn't die, but was bleeding out. I lost control of my paladin as he went beserk, switching from longsword and shield to his two-handed sword, and killing the Big Bad Evil Guy with two massive swings. After that, the party grabbed all the gold they could carry, healed up themselves and the fallen NPC, and the last scene was of him and her looking down upon the city they saved. Definitely my favorite moment in a Gold Box game so far. As this was the last Savage Frontier game, I like to think they happily retired and had a bunch of little steely-eyed melee fighting killers.

I would vote this way, just because I like the plot, NPCs, game altering political choices and consequences, and end battle better:

Pools of Radiance>Pools of Darkness>Treasures of the Savage Frontier>Curse of the Azure Bonds>Secret of the Silver Blades>Gateway to the Savage Frontier

Should I stay with the fantasy genre and knock out the Krynn series next, or take a break and do Buck Rogers?

 

[octavius]

Ok, just finished Treasures of the Savage Coast and it was an excellent game, though the random encounters every three or four steps in some areas annoyed the hell out of me.

It's only a problem in the last half of the game. The encounter design of the first half of the game was by Dan Daglow, and I think it was a dramatic improvement on his work in Gateway. The last part is done by Mark Buchignani, and again the game suffers from having to fight the same random encounters over and over again. Incidentally Buchignani is also one of the designers of Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor...

The last battle was pretty tough, and I had to reload several times, despite Haste, Prayer, Bless, and Globe of Invulnerability buffs. You start off surrounded and eventually the dual-classed spellcasters took me down.

You mean the penultimate fight against an army of Blackrobed Mages and Spies? Yeah, that was a tough fight, made even more difficult by the fact that for some stupid reason Gateway is the only (AFAIK) GB game where you can't use Dispel Magic to release Held characters. And those Blackrobed ones spam Hold Person like there's no tomorrow...Fortunately there are lots of magic Cloaks and Rings, so your party will have good saving throws against the Hold spells. But it's quite annoying that there's nothing you can do once of your guys fails his saving throw and is Held.

The final fight against Freezefire OTOH was too easy. He went down in six swings, and only wounded one of my guys.

The NPCs and their interactions are the best I've seen out of the Gold Box games thus far. There is a character romance, but it is handled subtly and isn't in your face. In fact, gameplay changes due to the romance. If one character goes down, then you lose control of the other as they rage.

Yeah, I liked this feature. The reinforcements was also a neat feature, making combats less predictable. Weather effects was a nice idea, but had too little effect IMO.
Too bad SSI didn't refine the Gold Box engine further, but spent too much time developing mostly inferior engines, which ultimately led to their downfall.

Should I stay with the fantasy genre and knock out the Krynn series next, or take a break and do Buck Rogers?

Play Buck Rogers and save the best GB series for last.

 

[Luzur]

yeah i used the same tactics, just punched a hole and ran for that little corridor or tunnel or what is was.

damn those black wizards and that dead dragon.

 

[Deuce Traveler]

I'm looking over the rules for Buck Rogers. Are rogues of any use in this game? Thieves were pretty useless in the other Gold Box games. I was thinking of going with 1 rocket jock, 1 rogue, 1 medic, and three warriors. Or should I drop the rogue and go with two rocket jocks? Two people to fly spacecraft seems redundant, but two medics doesn't seem to make much sense either. 4 warriors, 1 rocket jock and 1 medic wouldn't make a balanced team, I figure, but it's tempting to try.

 

[octavius]

Rogues are useful in Buck Rogers, both for backstabbing and for their skills. Actually they are more useful than in the fantasy games, since they don't need to be dual classed to be useful. One is enough though.
One Rocket Jock is enough, but two Medics may be useful. An Engineer is also very useful.

I completed the game with the following party:
Terran Rocket Jock
Desert Runner Warrior
Tinker Medic
Martian Medic
Venusian Rogue
Venusian Engineer

In the long run, if you plan on importing the party to Matrix Cubed, replacing one of the Medics with a Warrior will be better.

I found that high STR is more important in Buck Rogers than in the other GB games. There are no spells or items to increase it, and you need pretty high STR to be able to carry heavy armour and weapons and be able to move unencumbered.

Also note that there are no opportunity attack rules, which means all characters and monsters can move freely.

 

[Deuce Traveler]

In Buck Rogers: Countdown to Doomsday I was tempted to go with four warriors, a medic and a rocket jock, but then I figured I was probably too focused on breaking the game instead of trying to really play it, especially since octavius beat the game with just a rocket jock and warrior as main combatants. So instead I decided to go with a diverse group in order to learn the game mechanics better. I have the following in the party:

- Desert Runner Warrior
- Terran Warrior
- Martian Rocket Jock
- Mercurian Medic
- Tinker Engineer
- Martian Rogue

The game is a lot different in style and tactics than the other Gold Box games, especially because ranged pistols are a factor and there are no attack of opportunity rules for entering and leaving melee, as stated above. Grenades are also prevalent, which makes the game really interesting. Just got armor upgrades for all my characters, and a rocket pistol for my warriors and rocket pack for me rocket jock. I'm searching a drifting hulk right now and this awesome thing just happened (screenshot from Myabondonware):

 

[Deuce Traveler]

I'm more than halfway done with Buck Rogers Countdown to Doomsday, but I have to admit the game is wearing me down. In Pool of Radiance you knew you had to fight some random encounters, but after a series of them you pretty much wiped out the enemy patrols and could explore dungeons and puzzles at your leisure. Not in this game. It brings back the idea of continuous random encounters that I hated so much in Secret of the Silver Blades.

Also, your characters rely on explosive grenades for the harder encounters, but there are few places where you can restock these supplies. So if I use up my explosive grenades on the tougher random encounters and boss fights, then I find myself at a disadvantage due to my depleted arsenal. This game was a lot of fun at first, but now I feel that I'm going to be happy to be done.

 

[octavius]

The Buck Rogers games do have more random encounters than usual for the GB games. Countdown to Doomsday is not too bad, though (better than Gateway of the Savage Frontier). Matrix Cubed, OTOH...Let's just say it's the only Gold Box game I will never finish.
Are you using the Grenade Launchers and Plasma Throwers (or whatever the BR versions of Ice Storm and Fireball were called) much? They are better than grenades, but you need one round for reloading. You even need to re-equip them after battle if you didn't reload during combat, which gets rather tedious, especially in MC where you need to use them much more.

 

[Luzur]

In Buck Rogers: Countdown to Doomsday I was tempted to go with four warriors, a medic and a rocket jock, but then I figured I was probably too focused on breaking the game instead of trying to really play it, especially since octavius beat the game with just a rocket jock and warrior as main combatants. So instead I decided to go with a diverse group in order to learn the game mechanics better. I have the following in the party:

- Desert Runner Warrior
- Terran Warrior
- Martian Rocket Jock
- Mercurian Medic
- Tinker Engineer
- Martian Rogue

The game is a lot different in style and tactics than the other Gold Box games, especially because ranged pistols are a factor and there are no attack of opportunity rules for entering and leaving melee, as stated above. Grenades are also prevalent, which makes the game really interesting. Just got armor upgrades for all my characters, and a rocket pistol for my warriors and rocket pack for me rocket jock. I'm searching a drifting hulk right now and this awesome thing just happened (screenshot from Myabondonware):

oh wait, the ghost ship?

 

[Deuce Traveler]

You find out it's not a ghost ship after all, but a recording that was supposed to be projected to people coming on board. As he went to do the recording, he was attacked and killed and this was the result. Pretty cool set-up. The rest of the mission is a frustrating mess, however. Your characters start going crazy one at a time, so you have to hurry and find a cure for them. The problem is that the game doesn't let you know what's going on, so at first I thought some mutant monsters were infecting me with their melee attacks.

Hints about what is really happening are spread throughout the ship, but quite a few levels from where you start, so I spent a long time exploring a section long enough to learn it pretty well, but then having to restart from the beginning of the mission because half my crew was incapacitated. Pretty frustrating.

When I finally slogged through it I soon started another mission where you meet Buck Rogers. Of course he is an amazingly high level compared to the main characters, and he has some advanced equipment that he used to mop up all opposition. It's like playing in a pen and paper session where the DM has a new character he really wants to try out and makes the party take on board, then has his new character be super-awesome at everything while the player characters are treated as second fiddle. I hated that in pen and paper play and I hated it here.

Octavius, I do have those weapons. They've been keeping me alive, when they don't miss and ignite my own party.

 

[Luzur]

You find out it's not a ghost ship after all, but a recording that was supposed to be projected to people coming on board. As he went to do the recording, he was attacked and killed and this was the result. Pretty cool set-up. The rest of the mission is a frustrating mess, however. Your characters start going crazy one at a time, so you have to hurry and find a cure for them. The problem is that the game doesn't let you know what's going on, so at first I thought some mutant monsters were infecting me with their melee attacks.

Hints about what is really happening are spread throughout the ship, but quite a few levels from where you start, so I spent a long time exploring a section long enough to learn it pretty well, but then having to restart from the beginning of the mission because half my crew was incapacitated. Pretty frustrating.

When I finally slogged through it I soon started another mission where you meet Buck Rogers. Of course he is an amazingly high level compared to the main characters, and he has some advanced equipment that he used to mop up all opposition. It's like playing in a pen and paper session where the DM has a new character he really wants to try out and makes the party take on board, then has his new character be super-awesome at everything while the player characters are treated as second fiddle. I hated that in pen and paper play and I hated it here.

Octavius, I do have those weapons. They've been keeping me alive, when they don't miss and ignite my own party.

i am not sure anymore since its been some 20 years since i played these games, but this is the ship with the brain parasites, yes? you got to recalibrate a surgeonmachine to cure your party? it is kinda blurry.

 

[Dorateen]

You find out it's not a ghost ship after all, but a recording that was supposed to be projected to people coming on board. As he went to do the recording, he was attacked and killed and this was the result. Pretty cool set-up. The rest of the mission is a frustrating mess, however. Your characters start going crazy one at a time, so you have to hurry and find a cure for them. The problem is that the game doesn't let you know what's going on, so at first I thought some mutant monsters were infecting me with their melee attacks.

Hints about what is really happening are spread throughout the ship, but quite a few levels from where you start, so I spent a long time exploring a section long enough to learn it pretty well, but then having to restart from the beginning of the mission because half my crew was incapacitated. Pretty frustrating.

i am not sure anymore since its been some 20 years since i played these games, but this is the ship with the brain parasites, yes? you got to recalibrate a surgeonmachine to cure your party? it is kinda blurry.

Yes! This is the infamous brain parasite adventure, created by legendary Dave Shelley (of Dave's Challenge and hardcore dungeon design in other Gold Box games). I know how frustrating and messed-up and downright scary this part was. I loved it, heh.