KeighnMcDeath
RPG Codex Boomer
- Joined
- Nov 23, 2016
- Messages
- 13,062
Some other videos: pc-98, DOS in 4 colors, MAC, appleII, NES
I did not get a VGA monitor until Pools of Darkness, which was the seventh Gold Box game I played and it was glorious. The previous games I played were these versions. Those cyan/magenta graphics bring back a lot of memories.
I did not get a VGA monitor until Pools of Darkness, which was the seventh Gold Box game I played and it was glorious. The previous games I played were these versions. Those cyan/magenta graphics bring back a lot of memories.
I was in the same boat as you were, except that I had a black & white monitor with a composite input to go with my CGA, so instead of sickly shades of magenta, I got a lot of shades of gray...which made everything look a lot better. I had played "Pool of Radiance," "Curse of the Azure Bonds" and "Champions of Krynn" on the C64 before switching to a PC, so thank goodness I didn't have to see "Death Knights of Krynn" or "Secret of the Silver Blades" like this.
You really can't do much with four colors.
IBM designed the Personal Computer for the business market, meaning word processors and spreadsheets that didn't require much in the way of graphics, and therefore correspondingly designed CGA to be adequate for these purposes, not for gaming. IBM PCs didn't make substantial inroads into the home market, as opposed to the business market, until the release of EGA in 1984.It was always mysterious to me when PC gaming felt like a step backwards because of CGA. It was so hideous and games on the C64 looked better. It was a relief when I was finally able to get an EGA computer. I hated CGA then, I have a really hard time with it now. Even monochrome looks better imo.
Secret of the Silver Blades is really trying my patience with its encounter rate. No joke, I've probably had 150 encounters just crossing the glacier before the castle. This makes Wiz 7 look restrained by comparison. It's fortunate that GB combat is good.
Pool of Radiance has that. I think they didn't want finite encounters once they added the dual-classing option in.Need a big can of bug spray. I couldn't remember, so there are areas that don't exhaust their encounters?
Secret of the Silver Blades is really trying my patience with its encounter rate. No joke, I've probably had 150 encounters just crossing the glacier before the castle. This makes Wiz 7 look restrained by comparison. It's fortunate that GB combat is good.
Well now I want to test that. What I liked about poolrad was your party number, gear, and level (maybe stats) could affect the encounter. Say you use uge or w/e and give yourself top stats 25-30 and oh +3 gear (probably overkill) the bugbear is leading a lot troops in the slum and other areas. I never quite figured out all the numbers there and to what degree.
I don't recall Curse and beyond doing that.
None of the GB games have a difficulty scaled loot/XP system. This is actually contrary to what the manual says, but there you go.I heard the difficulty setting doesn't affect xp or treasure; which sucks.
I found the scaling in Pool of Radiance a great incentive to keep myself from choosing uber-powerful humans. Of course, the set encounters ignore this as far as I could tell. To my knowledge it is a shame it doesn't continue effectively in any of the other Gold Box Games. It is almost as if the developer in latter editions expected everyone to modify their stats to 18 for the party. I never stuffed around with the difficulty settings so it is interesting to see what effect changing the difficulty level does.Secret of the Silver Blades is really trying my patience with its encounter rate. No joke, I've probably had 150 encounters just crossing the glacier before the castle. This makes Wiz 7 look restrained by comparison. It's fortunate that GB combat is good.
One way to get around this is to turn the difficulty level all the way down to minimum (and it really does have to be all the way). You can then get away scot-free from many random encounters.
Whether that's cheese or not depends on the person. Arguably, SSI intended it as part of normal gameplay, as combat XP does actually scale to combat difficulty. But that scaling isn't by much. It's like deliberately fighting extra kobolds in the Slums in Pool of Radiance -- the extra XP does exist, but is likewise a drop in the bucket.
Well now I want to test that. What I liked about poolrad was your party number, gear, and level (maybe stats) could affect the encounter. Say you use uge or w/e and give yourself top stats 25-30 and oh +3 gear (probably overkill) the bugbear is leading a lot troops in the slum and other areas. I never quite figured out all the numbers there and to what degree.
I don't recall Curse and beyond doing that.
Statistics do affect number of monsters in Pool of Radiance, but the only two stats that have a strong direct effect are Strength and Dexterity. Current hit points matter, so Constitution has an indirect effect; and so do caster levels, so Intelligence and Wisdom specifically for single-classed magic-users and clerics respectively also have a slight indirect effect.
High levels, and powerful magic weapons and armor, cause much more of a boost than your statistics do, though.
Curse does do this scaling -- in like three places, and just barely. You'll likely never notice a difference if you are not stunt-running the game (i.e., either playing with fewer than 6 characters, or are speedrunning).
Other Gold Box games generally don't scale at all to your levels, statistics, or gear. I think that's because all other Gold Box games have difficulty levels, which typically affects both how likely it is you can evade a random encounter, and how likely you'll be disturbed when resting. (In the Buck Rogers games, skilll checks also sometimes matter a lot for this.)