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Gold Box SSI's Gold Box Series Thread

What are your favorite Gold Box games?

  • Pool of Radiance

  • Curse of the Azure Bonds

  • Secret of the Silver Blades

  • Pools of Darkness

  • Champions of Krynn

  • Death Knights of Krynn

  • The Dark Queen of Krynn

  • Gateway to the Savage Frontier

  • Treasures of the Savage Frontier

  • Buck Rogers: Countdown to Doomsday

  • Buck Rogers: Matrix Cubed

  • Forgotten Realms: Unlimited Adventures (FRUA)


Results are only viewable after voting.

Jaesun

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So made it to the final battle in Gateway. I got so fucking lucky and landed a Hold Person on Vaalgamon. Killed him, just so I could get his gear. I tried to last as long as I could in that final battle, and finally ran.

I bet Treasures is going to take away my fucking sweet sweet +5 Long Sword and +5 Shied.......

;_;

EDIT: Yep, they take the +5 Sword and +5 Shield. Farewell -12 AC BLOBERT. :(
They DO let you keep that +3 Stonecutter Sword.
 
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Null Null

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So made it to the final battle in Gateway. I got so fucking lucky and landed a Hold Person on Vaalgamon. Killed him, just so I could get his gear. I tried to last as long as I could in that final battle, and finally ran.

I bet Treasures is going to take away my fucking sweet sweet +5 Long Sword and +5 Shied.......

;_;

EDIT: Yep, they take the +5 Sword and +5 Shield. Farewell -12 AC BLOBERT. :(
They DO let you keep that +3 Stonecutter Sword.


DEX 18 (-4) + Bracers AC 2 (-8) + Ring of Protection +2 (-2) + Cloak of Protection +2 (-2) + Belt of Protection +2 (-2) + Shield +2 (-3) + Helm +2 (-2) = AC -13. No +5 stuff, though.
 

Jaesun

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11579.png


And it begins...........



This is a REALLY good game. I am quite surprised Treasures of the Savage Frontier does not get better praise for it.
 

octavius

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Yeah, it's much better than Gateway.

But the funny thing is that I gave it up in disgust first time I played it on my old Amiga, due to being attacked by a large clan of Fire Giants on the road between two cities early in the game. With all spells used up and hardly any hit points left after defeating the Fire Giant, my party would attempt to rest, only to be attacked again by yet another large clan of Fire Giants. In the end I gave up in disgusts. Weirdly enough, nothing similar happened to me when playing the DOS version. So either I had extremely bad luck first time, or else there were some design differences bewteen the versions.
 

Jaesun

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heh that quite amusing, in that my first time on the overland map in Gateway (at level 2, and not using a boat, actually walking) Our FIRST encounter was some Hill Giants...

We all died. I was like WHAT IN THE FUCK IS THIS SHIT! :argh:
 

Deuce Traveler

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Grab the Codex by the pussy Divinity: Original Sin Torment: Tides of Numenera Shadorwun: Hong Kong Pathfinder: Kingmaker Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture
I loved those hill giants. When your magic-users get to level 3, have them memorize stinking cloud. Save your game, then go out and scum for hill giants. When you encounter them put down some strategically located stinking clouds. Have your melee fighters form a defensive wall and guard. Kill off the giants that fall to the stinking cloud spell with missile weapons, then have everyone gang up on the one or two hill giants that somehow shrugged off the magic. Collect the loot and XP, go back to town and rest, rinse and repeat until everyone is level 5 and your magic-users can cast fireball, then tear through the rest of the game.
 

Null Null

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11579.png


And it begins...........



This is a REALLY good game. I am quite surprised Treasures of the Savage Frontier does not get better praise for it.


Did you make Jaesun a female character? If they actually let you have a gay romance in 1992 in a mass-market game, I'd be pretty surprised...
 

TigerKnee

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Did you make Jaesun a female character? If they actually let you have a gay romance in 1992 in a mass-market game, I'd be pretty surprised...
He did. He got the female adventurer romance the first time because 1st slot gets romanced and so decided to just change that character gender
 

Jaesun

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Yeah, I thought about hex editing my character to Male after I got the Male NPC, but was afraid that might screw stuff up. But I would *assume* there is only a one time gender check.
 

Null Null

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Theoretically I guess you could write a FRUA mod if you wanted a real gay Gold Box romance. ;)

I'd actually think about dropping the option into my next FRUA mod, but the community's pretty much dead. :(
 

Jaesun

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Theoretically I guess you could write a FRUA mod if you wanted a real gay Gold Box romance. ;)

I'd actually think about dropping the option into my next FRUA mod, but the community's pretty much dead. :(

The FRUA Modding Community is still quite active. It is not exceptionally prolific, but there is still people making new modules all the time (like the new Judges Guild conversions, which I though were really good).
 

Monstrous Bat

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Finished Champions of Krynn. Great game, enjoyed it much more than PoR. The combat got a bit stale in the late game, but all the monsters with cool abilities (mostly draconians and death knights) made it remain interesting until the end. Not to mention you get to ride a dragon. :dgaider:

I'll probably start Death Knights of Krynn after I'd finished Fantasy General.
 

Jack Of Owls

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Calling all audio/MIDI experts! Been playing FRUA and I have the Munt ROMS installed and configured as "MIDI Device = 1" in DOSBox settings, and while it usually sounds a whole lot better than the default Microsoft Soft MIDI Synth at device "0" (which is usually aurally awful), it can be overwhelming or "off" at times. When I uninstall the MUNT driver, I then lose all MIDI music on device "1." How do I get the Gold Box games sounding the way the developers & FRUA module authors meant for their MIDI music to sound?
 

Jaesun

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The MIDI for the most part was terrible in FRUA. Using General Midi is the better music option. They don't even use a custom bank for the MT-32, so the Sound Canvas/General Midi music is better.
 

Null Null

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Theoretically I guess you could write a FRUA mod if you wanted a real gay Gold Box romance. ;)

I'd actually think about dropping the option into my next FRUA mod, but the community's pretty much dead. :(

Not here it isn't. We'd play it. Just don't forget us heteros.

Hm. May get back to work on Reverse Pool then. ;)

I'm a Kinsey 0 myself, but I'm all for giving everyone an option in games, where really anything is possible. It occurs to me you could do something like FF7 where you get to pick who you wind up going out with by making choices in the game, and if I had a lot of gay players I'd drop an option for that in.
 
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RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In
I've been thinking about starting Pool of Radiance, so I've got a question. How necessary is it to spend infinity rolling a character or modify them to godlike values. Would a fighter with 16 strength and condition and 14 dexterity be all right or is it necessary to roll/modify him in order to get 18/00 str or bullshit like that.
 

Monstrous Bat

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Real men play Goldbox games with 14 strength fighters.

All these games all pretty playable with first-roll characters. Having spellcasters with high dexterity helps a lot though.
 

Fowyr

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I've been thinking about starting Pool of Radiance, so I've got a question. How necessary is it to spend infinity rolling a character or modify them to godlike values. Would a fighter with 16 strength and condition and 14 dexterity be all right or is it necessary to roll/modify him in order to get 18/00 str or bullshit like that.
If you don't like modify button, just take first passable rolls. It's not a Wiz7 after all.
I don't think that kobolds in the Slums take your 18 charisma into consideration. :lol:

Having spellcasters with high dexterity helps a lot though.
Also this. Bonus to initiative.
 
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I've been thinking about starting Pool of Radiance, so I've got a question. How necessary is it to spend infinity rolling a character or modify them to godlike values. Would a fighter with 16 strength and condition and 14 dexterity be all right or is it necessary to roll/modify him in order to get 18/00 str or bullshit like that.

Pool of Radiance plays decently without a party of statistical ubermenschen. In fact, the game "penalizes" players who utilize party members that have improbably high stats with far larger random encounter numbers. The scare quotes are used because more enemies doesn't significantly raise the level of challenge, but does confer a sizable bonus to experience acquisition. I still view it as a penalty though, as some mid/lategame random encounters have the potential to become extremely tedious.

HP rolls, however, you may want to modify to the maximum in character creation and save scum/edit to not be below EV. There are at least a couple encounters in Pool of Radiance that dish out unavoidable damage to the party beforehand, often enough to kill a character with poor HP rolls (less than ~18 HP).

The later you progress into the Realms tetralogy, the more that the games become balanced around powergaming. Curse of the Azure Bonds will likely play out fine without min/max'd characters, though certain extra encounters may be far more difficult. But come Secret of the Silver Blades or Pools of Darkness, powergaming is mostly expected as many enemies will easily one-shot even frontliners with poor HP rolls and low attributes will become an impediment to rolling well for initiative, being able to dual-class, or even being able to cast higher-level spells.
 

Sceptic

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Divinity: Original Sin
I've been thinking about starting Pool of Radiance, so I've got a question. How necessary is it to spend infinity rolling a character or modify them to godlike values. Would a fighter with 16 strength and condition and 14 dexterity be all right or is it necessary to roll/modify him in order to get 18/00 str or bullshit like that.
As Edward said, normal/reasonable rolls are fine in POR and Curse. If you plan on importing all the way to POD, save yourself the trouble and set all class stats to max, including 18/00 STR for all fighters.
 

octavius

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The only stat you need to max out is Dex, and that is only for the most difficult battles in Pools of Darkness.
Once your mages reach about lvl 10 Str can easily be pumped up to 22-23 with the lvl 1 Enlarge spell. On higher levels it lasts for hours if you don't have Search on. There's also Gauntlets of Ogre Strength and Girdles of Giant Strenght that helps.
 

Null Null

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The only stat you need to max out is Dex, and that is only for the most difficult battles in Pools of Darkness.
Once your mages reach about lvl 10 Str can easily be pumped up to 22-23 with the lvl 1 Enlarge spell. On higher levels it lasts for hours if you don't have Search on. There's also Gauntlets of Ogre Strength and Girdles of Giant Strenght that helps.

HP is also an issue, though. This was one of the major reasons my Pool-to-Pools party had more trouble than average, despite starting with substantially better stuff and slightly higher levels than the group I made straight out. And I savescummed my HP in Pool for exactly this reason, but didn't have the time to reroll 10 times at each level--I just went with it if I got at least expected value (10.5--yeah, I gave them max CON and DEX). So yeah, I thought ahead and it wasn't exactly enough--I kept getting wiped out by Blue Bane Minion breath. I did manage to win both the regular game and Dave's Challenge though.

Mods: Library of Segrob and Vanilla Dungeon--I started late. (There are no PC romances of any sort.) Some of you might like them, one of the complaints about Vanilla Dungeon was it was too hard.
 

Gozma

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Replaying DKoK atm; fuck skeleton warriors. They are highly magic resistant undead HP sponges with 0 AC that cannot be turned that also compel you to navigate gold box menus over and over to switch back and forth between maces and your good +2/3/4 swords. Also, using autofight switches to the highest bonus weapon in inventory, so if you want to autofight them you have to swap all your good edged weapons to a mule character and swap them back when you get to whatever non-skeleton warrior enemy. And they are by far the most common enemy in the game. Fuck
 

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