Gold Box SSI's Gold Box Series Thread

[Deuce Traveler]

In Baldur's Gate thieves are quite useful, not just to check for traps, but also to scout ahead for enemies. In the Gold Box games I found them to be nearly useless except in a few cases. Also, you like to use them to backstab, but I like creating shield walls that cause the enemy to build up around, for my casters to lob death onto them. I rarely send a guy out of formation unless I'm worried about dragon breath attacks or to attempt a blocking action against a dangerous flank.

I tried fleeing from encounters, but it rarely worked. I never did find the Kuo-Toa ship. I didn't even know there was one in game.

My cleric often went later in the initiative because of his low Dex, so I more often fireballed and stabbed/bludgeoned the undead before he could attempt to turn.

Oh, and Luzur , I found that there is a Neverwinter Nights mod that you can play solo and does not require an internet. It's an FRUA mod called Neverwinter Nights-Offline by a modder named GoldBoxFan. It can be found here: http://frua.rosedragon.org/modulelist/classic.php

 

[Erebus]

I tried fleeing from encounters, but it rarely worked. I never did find the Kuo-Toa ship. I didn't even know there was one in game.

It's an encounter that can only happen when you're near the river. I knew about it and I still had to walk up and down the river many times before it finally triggered.


DQK is easier if you import a party from DKK (as long as your PCs don't hit a level cap, which can happen quite early if you chose the wrong race/class combos).

The Delayed Blast Fireball will be both your best friend and your worst enemy during much of the game. Don't neglect Resist Fire spells, they can save you from a TPK.

 

[weirwood]

How is Mirror Image an exploit?

DQK is a great game, but despite them trying their best with the underwater level, high magic resistance critters and fire elementals in the late game, it suffers a bit from 'All Delayed Blast Fireballs, all the time' becoming the standard tactic for much of the game. With two single-class mages, it should be a breeze.

Seconding Resist Fire. Just like Enlarge, it should be one of the buff spells you always have running.

 

[octavius]

How is Mirror Image an exploit?

Who said it was?

DQK is a great game, but despite them trying their best with the underwater level, high magic resistance critters and fire elementals in the late game, it suffers a bit from 'All Delayed Blast Fireballs, all the time' becoming the standard tactic for much of the game. With two single-class mages, it should be a breeze.

Too bad you can't mod the spell out of the game. Would have made things more interesting at higher levels. Still if you don't rest too often and try to conserve those DBF's the high level Gold Box games are my favourites.
The difference in usefulness between the lvl 7 spell DBF and the lvl 8 spell Power Word: Blind is staggering.

 

[Bizarro Jimmy Olsen]

Wanting to try some FRUA modules, but I need UAShell to run hacked modules -- and most modules are hacked.

Problem is, UAShell won't run on 64-bit Windows. Is there a way around this? Anyone know?

 

[octavius]

Wanting to try some FRUA modules, but I need UAShell to run hacked modules -- and most modules are hacked.

Problem is, UAShell won't run on 64-bit Windows. Is there a way around this? Anyone know?

Run Uashell.bat from DosBox.
And read Nol Drek's Installation Guide.

 

[octavius]

Classic newbie mistake in Champions of Krynn: promoting your Knight to Knight of the Rose as soon as you can.
Who has done it?

 

[mondblut]

Except where they disabled Area View in some parts of the later Gold Box games, just to make those dungeons more fun and challenging.

Fixed that for ya.

Using grid paper is "challenging" since when? If you can't hold a pen, maybe.

The OP had it right.

 

[Deuce Traveler]

Classic newbie mistake in Champions of Krynn: promoting your Knight to Knight of the Rose as soon as you can.
Who has done it?

I did it, but so far it's working out fine. I noticed that levelling was harder at first, but with the amount of XP in later games it really isn't a huge deal. What's your opinion on it?

The only issue I am having now, is that I can't kill a dragon turtle in an underwater zone. But that's not because my knights aren't hitting, but it is instead because the dragon turtle is so resistant to damage and kills a couple characters before I can bring him down. I may have to resort to haste to get through it intact.

 

[Erebus]

Classic newbie mistake in Champions of Krynn: promoting your Knight to Knight of the Rose as soon as you can.
Who has done it?

I did it, but so far it's working out fine. I noticed that levelling was harder at first, but with the amount of XP in later games it really isn't a huge deal. What's your opinion on it?

In my opinion, it depends a bit on what you want your knights to do. Knights of the Crown/Sword gain levels faster and thus will be better fighters. Knights of the Rose have more clerical spells, which can be nice if you only have a single cleric in your party.

The only issue I am having now, is that I can't kill a dragon turtle in an underwater zone. But that's not because my knights aren't hitting, but it is instead because the dragon turtle is so resistant to damage and kills a couple characters before I can bring him down. I may have to resort to haste to get through it intact.

Didn't you get a dragonlance in DKK ? It should make dealing with isolated dragons fairly easy (unless they get lucky with initiative). Give your ring of free movement to whoever has the lance.

 

[octavius]

Classic newbie mistake in Champions of Krynn: promoting your Knight to Knight of the Rose as soon as you can.
Who has done it?

I did it, but so far it's working out fine. I noticed that levelling was harder at first, but with the amount of XP in later games it really isn't a huge deal. What's your opinion on it?

In my opinion, it depends a bit on what you want your knights to do. Knights of the Crown/Sword gain levels faster and thus will be better fighters. Knights of the Rose have more clerical spells, which can be nice if you only have a single cleric in your party.

Knights of the Sword and Rose get the same amount of spells, but Rose get better leadership bonus.
So IMO promoting to Sword is a good idea (but not too early), but to Rose is a bad idea (at least before lvl 17/18 when you max out on THAC0 and saving throws).

 

[Erebus]

Knights of the Sword and Rose get the same amount of spells

You're right, I was mistaken.

The differences in speed as far as level advancement is concerned are pretty steep : with 3 million XP, a Knight of the Crown would have reached level 18, a Knight of the Sword would be level 15 and halfway to the next level, while a Knight of the Rose would have just reached level 13.

 

[weirwood]

It mostly depends on your fighter:cleric ratio. In a balanced party, you want your knight to get (and keep) the higher number of attacks from levels 7/13 ASAP. If you're short on clerical spellcasters, promoting to Sword can make sense earlier. Promoting to Rose before you have the XP to stay at level 18 (should happen late in DQK) just gimps your knight, considering that THAC0 and saving throws keep improving up to that level.

 

[Deuce Traveler]

The only issue I am having now, is that I can't kill a dragon turtle in an underwater zone. But that's not because my knights aren't hitting, but it is instead because the dragon turtle is so resistant to damage and kills a couple characters before I can bring him down. I may have to resort to haste to get through it intact.

Didn't you get a dragonlance in DKK ? It should make dealing with isolated dragons fairly easy (unless they get lucky with initiative). Give your ring of free movement to whoever has the lance.[/quote]

I did get the Dragonlance and it helped, but my knight missed the first two times I tried this battle, and the Dragon Turtle breathed each time before going down, killing some characters and forcing me to reload as there isn't a temple available right now and I don't want to lose a Constitution point with Raise Dead.

I'm still in the underwater city, which is pretty awesome. I love the swimming fish effects. I really wish SSI had stuck with the Gold Box engine for a couple more years because this game really is gorgeous compared to Pool of Radiance, and each game seemed a large improvement over the last. I didn't find the controls for the engine they used in their Dark Sun games to be as intuitive or the combat as fun, but I only tried it out for an hour or so.

Anyway, I slowed down because this underwater area is huge and it took me awhile of doing the quests before I got a notice to attack the castle down south. I did so, beat some enemies, but can't figure out what to do next. I found a pocket of air that let's me travel upwards, but when I reach those chambers I begin to choke and die since I have been altered for water breathing and can no longer breathe air. So for the last week I've been goofing around, exploring, and taking it a half hour at a time while I try to figure out what to do next.

 

[Erebus]

Anyway, I slowed down because this underwater area is huge and it took me awhile of doing the quests before I got a notice to attack the castle down south. I did so, beat some enemies, but can't figure out what to do next. I found a pocket of air that let's me travel upwards, but when I reach those chambers I begin to choke and die since I have been altered for water breathing and can no longer breathe air. So for the last week I've been goofing around, exploring, and taking it a half hour at a time while I try to figure out what to do next.

Strange. If you've been told to go south, you should have been given the means to breathe air again.

What happened exactly before you went there ?

EDIT : Are you sure you were not supposed to go to Lyzian's palace ? In which case, you should have gone north.

 

[mondblut]

You are given something to enable you to breath air again. Beats me at which point exactly, but whenever I arrived at that place I was given an option to enable whatever thing it was.

 

[Erebus]

Very minor spoiler :

Spoiler

After the attack of the city by dragons is over, you meet Lyzian (the sea elf prince) again. He asks you to go to his palace and find Daenor, who was left in the prince's chamber. Once you bring Daenor back to the prince in the safe halls, Lyzian will tell you to go south and give you the crylokon, which can be used to breathe air again.

 

[grayavatar]

Hi guys,

I'm new to these forums. I noticed there was a new Might and Magic game being released on Steam and this got me thinking about old games that I haven't played in a very long time. One of my favorites (from memory) is Buck Rogers Countdown to Doomsday which I played on Amiga about 20 years ago now.
I have figured out how I can use dosbox and got the game from abandonia and have been playing over the last few days. At first I cringed at the graphics and sound but quickly got into the story anyway and I like it.
What I have found interesting is that there are still many people around who are currently playing this game and yet there is very little info about the game to be found when doing a google search. The existing FAQs seem to be based on the sega version.
What I have been looking for is details on easter eggs, tips, gear locations etc. One detail I have not forgotten about the game after all these years is that there is a Lunarian Heat Gun to be found in the desert runner village. I thought I was losing my mind when I couldn't find it even though one of my characters has a high notice skill. I remembered it was in the north west area so I kept going round in circles and after many passes of the battle point I received the "Booty!" message (there is also a fun little event that occurs after this). I guess I could have just stood on the spot and clicked LOOK over and over? I know this item exists and I could have missed it if I hadn't focused on looking for it, which makes me wonder how many other such items and events might exist in the game that I don't know about.
This thread is one of the very few places that I have found on the entire internet that has any current discussion on the game so I'm hoping that maybe some of you would be willing to share some other secrets from the game.

Another tip. When leaving the asteroid base that you are blowing up make sure you set the max timer. After you defeat the ambush don't move just click LOOK and you will be attacked again. These enemies carry Martian Needle Guns allowing you to outfit your whole team.

 

[Deuce Traveler]

grayavatar , I don't know about the walkthroughs, but some Let's Plays may help instead. I found them to be pretty funny, and was one of the reasons I was looking forward to playing the Buck Rogers games.

I found this one to be pretty funny when I read it a couple years back: http://lparchive.org/Buck-Rogers-Countdown-to-Doomsday/

Also there are some others on YouTube, but I found them kind of boring. A lady called DOSBoxMom plays some of the Gold Box games, and the most entertainment I heard was from her relatives interrupting her playing. Now that I think about her, I remember wondering where she got her information because you can hear her flip through a book of cheats. Sure enough, if you google manuals for the game you'll find that the Buck Rogers games had Cluebooks they sold to the frustrated. This is when companies could make profits doing such things. Try to avoid them unless you get stuck as the game can be beat without most of the hidden stuff:

http://www.replacementdocs.com/download.php?view.1452

 

[grayavatar]

I've already flicked through that let's play but noticed they didn't find the Lunarian Heat Gun. I did find another let's play (below) where they did find the heat gun but as it is in an image it isn't google searchable and so it was very difficult to find. Unfotunately that guy lost his save games and quit the story before he could go to venus
http://kevplays.wordpress.com/2011/11/07/episode-11-get-your-ass-to-mars/

I've watched bits of pieces of youtube videos from DOSBoxMom, Jwend392 and auldragon. None found the Lunarian Heat Gun. I watched some of their later videos to see what gear they were carrying and a couple of them seem to need advice on gear more than I do. No signs of any gear higher than +1 on most of them.

I have the clue book from replacementdocs and the whoever scanned it had placed an x on the map very close to where you find the gun. I flicked through the rest of the maps in his book but didn't find any more markings.

I had a couple of questions about gear. Dumping 2 items from each character would sure clear up a lot of inventory space.
Are Breathing Masks useful? All the armor is described as having "contained atmosphere spacesuit capabilities".
If you have Battle Armor w/Fields does using ECM package still do anything?

 

[octavius]

grayavatar, I just checked my last save of my Buck Rogers game from over a year ago, and one of my characters does have a Lunarian Heat Gun.
For some reason it made me think of the village in the swamps on Venus. Is it possible you are misremembering and that it was not in the desert runner vilage on Mars you found it, but rather in the village on Venus where you rescue the kid?

 

[grayavatar]

No. I actually did find it in the desert runner village. I am actually wondering about any other items that have been hidden in a similar manner that can be overlooked if you are not looking for them. What other items do your characters have that are higher than martian quality please? I think all i have so far that is high = Lunarian Heat Gun, Lunarian Smart Suit, Mercurian Cutlass.

I'm currently at the swamp village. I'll play it tomorrow and let you know if I find anything special there.

 

[octavius]

What other items do your characters have that are higher than martian quality please? I think all i have so far that is high = Lunarian Heat Gun, Lunarian Smart Suit, Mercurian Cutlass.

Mercurian Microwave Gun, Mercurian Needle Gun, Mercurian Polearm.

 

[grayavatar]

Was given Mercurian Polearm and Venusian Heavy Body Armor via the storyline in the Lowlander Village. Notice skill hasn't uncovered anything special.

Also found Mercurian Microwave Gun and Venusian Bolt Gun in medical closet.

 

[TigerKnee]

For some reason I decided to play Treasures of Savage Frontier.

First thing I noticed is "Oh, this is where a lot of Codex avatars are from"

Second thing I noticed is that DhoUukrul has kind of spoiled me, for some reason GB and D&D rules feels so... primitive to me now.

Having a bad time because I used a fresh party and made some really bad character creation choices. I took Haste as my starting 3rd level spell for my single class MU and now I'm thinking I should have taken a DD spell. Should I even care about the 1 year of aging from Haste? the first town/dungeon is so annoying. Fuck Driders.

Is Cause Blindness/Bestow Curse as a Cleric even worth using? They never succeed for me.

Party set up so that everyone can point and laugh:
Human Fighter (will Dual to MU at 7)
Elf MU
Elf F/MU
Half-Elf Cleric/Ranger x 2
Dwarf F/T