Chipping through the Ice

My recollection of the ice crevasses was that it was a boring section of the game, with long treks full of random encounters that can be avoided if one wants to trek a bit more in the crevasses. Turns out, I'd misremembered because the crevasses were actually a bit interesting.

The starting point is finding the Black Circle with some members of the Dread Legion. The legionnaires finally provide some challenge with their 157 HP, -7 AC, and some actual combat skills. I cannot really compare the legion wizards with the BC ones, since I never let them cast any spells that would show a significant difference. They have a few more HP, though, so maybe they are a bit more powerful, too.

Chasing the Phlan clerk and then following her isn't that much fun but I figured I'd get the teleporter there. Of course, that teleporter is somewhat out of the way and it would probably be more expedient to just head directly to the frost giant village. But at least it provides some XP and gems (the latter of which I don't really need; I currently have almost four thousand of them).

The frost giant village I didn't remember that well. I had thought it was pretty much enter, talk to the leader, fight Black Circle, get free access. But it took a long walk to get to the leader and there was combat and thrown ice blocks all through it. I figured it wouldn't be possible to rest so I saved up my spells and mostly hacked my way through the frost giant guards. I have never attacked the frost giant leader so I don't know what would have happened then. Still, the village was a positive surprise for me.

As were the crevasses after that. There's much less trekking between the battles and the random encounters aren't avoidable any more. The first time I got attacked by frost giants, my reaction was pretty much "Crap, they have dragons too!" And then right after got attacked by a few ancient dragons. Luckily, the white dragons have so few HP that killing them isn't hard and even if they manage to breathe, it's not that bad. Now, the couple red dragon fights, ...

And after the village I also encountered the dread guards. They seem somewhat less tough than the legionnaires, though. I'm not sure but I think the castle is just them and not legionnaires. The fights in the north-south direction where the crevasses turned were pretty interesting because the enemy was in two straight lines and fireballs couldn't hit very many without hitting my own party (once Vala went stupidly to hack at the distant enemies; I had to hit her with a few fireballs that I was using to take out the wizards). The battles are getting tougher: there have now been a few where I've lost a member of the party, usually the one who gets to be in the point, with five enemies around her or him.

Having delayed blast fireball is nice because of its zero casting time: it's possible to take out enemy wizards for certain when Daenerys or Ardhiel get a turn instead of hoping that they don't manage to do enough during the regular fireball casting time. And of course, the extra point of damage per die is useful too; the only problem is that there is only one of them per magic user in this game. I have a few of them on scrolls but I tried casting a fireball from a scroll and it didn't do even as much damage as a fireball from a wand, so I doubt I'll be using the scrolls.

It looks like there's a bug in this game. Andreas is now a 14th level paladin but still getting only three attacks per two rounds instead of the two per round that he's supposed to. It might be that his low fighter level is interfering and the game isn't seeing his paladin level. I don't remember this being a problem before, but I'm not absolutely sure I've done a fighter dual-classing into another fighter-type class.

But anyway, clearing out the castle gates wasn't very tough because I'd been saving fireballs and stuff, so now it's on to the final leg of the game:

Up the Stairs We Go

Time to head back up, from the lowest level of the mines through the dungeon into the ice crevasses. The dungeon is at least somewhat interesting but I was a bit disappointed at how few battles there turned out to be. And it looked like it was possible to rest pretty much anywhere, so even discounting the teleports that happen to be there, it's not too much of a challenge.

As has become my habit, I didn't bother to answer the riddles but instead just fought against the iron golems. To be honest, I'm not sure which is the better strategy XP-wise because I think you get XP for answering the riddles correctly too, and I haven't yet bothered to measure the amounts.

The new monsters, hydras, iron golems, and purple worms, that start appearing in the dungeon are at least some upgrade to monster difficulty. Mostly, though, a couple of fireballs followed by hack-and-slash finishes up combats well enough. Except, of course, against iron golems where I usually blasted as many of them as I could with wands of lightning to slow them down and then hacked.

So now I'm at the crevasses, of which I have bothered to draw only an approximate map showing the road forks and battles because mostly it's just long corridors without the chance to turn anywhere. There doesn't seem to be anything very interesting there before the frost giant village.

Mining Expedition

Time to head underground:
Actually, there's not much to say about the mine. The battles are few and far between. I have sufficient maps of all the levels that I can head directly to the pieces of the staff of Oswulf, or any other treasure I care to pick up. And the fights that happen are not very challenging; I usually went through several levels before heading back to the temple for a rest.

At one point the game said that the party's thief noticed a trap in the floor. All well and good, except I don't have a thief in my party, since Ardhiel's dual class hasn't yet activated... On the same level, there might have been an actual use for a thief because there were trapped treasure chests where a failed disarm triggered an explosion that destroyed all the contents. On the other hand, I managed to disarm one of the traps with a non-thief. Then, that was the treasure that contained that level's staff piece so maybe the disarm couldn't fail.

The only mildly interesting part is the bottom level, with its entrance to the dungeon. Heading towards the dungeon, there are all the medusas and basilisks to kill. Well, I just peppered them with fireballs from afar and was not in any danger at any point, not even in the final battle at the dungeon entrance where there are more of them and they start closer. So the mine is now done and it's time to head upwards:
The dungeon, as I recall, is at least a bit more interesting. But after that, there are the crevasses...

Slaying Dragons... and Wizards

Blades is now well on its way. Compared to the other games in this series, the plot is just railroading from start to finish. In the other games, it was at least possible to pick the order in which to complete the intermediate tasks, and in Curse and Pools there are also side tasks that are not necessary for completing the game. Here, on the other hand, there's a pretty strict sequence of events, and there aren't really any true side quests.

I began by cleaning the Well of Knowledge area (well, actually, I began by traipsing around the ruins to get XP for Ardhiel, but the Well was the first quest item I did). That's a good place to start because the Well is the main railroad track in this game. Also, it gives a safe place to rest: I don't know what's wrong with the game now but I was never able to rest at the mayor's place without at least on Fire Knife attack.

The Well area isn't very hard to clean but it's somewhat interesting. In the Banite-Black Circle fight I fought both groups but separately. The hatchling and adult dragons I did in a single run but one of the adults got a breath attack in so I needed to go recuperate before tackling the ancient one. (Well, I would have done that anyway; fighting an ancient dragon with a combat-weakened party isn't my idea of fun if there's a rest opportunity.) I came in from the north, the dragon was nicely next to a wall so I bounced lightning bolts off the walls, had Gabrielle pull a flame strike and the fighters hack it to pieces. It got in one breath attack but I don't even remember who was hit (they made their saving throw).

After that I've just been following the Well's instructions. So, first I went to kill the other ancient red dragon. (On my first time, I tried the hatchling fight at the Well and got creamed, so then I thought I'd see if the map in the journal was accurate; it was, and I began the game by killing that dragon instead.) Same tactics, except this time Gabrielle didn't make her save against the breath attack. I was very disappointed that the temple in Verdigris doesn't have resurrection, only raise dead, but losing the constitution point isn't a disaster so I let it be. Then I killed the adult dragon up north in the ruins.

The Black Circle headquarters was at least some work to clean. I began with the commander's room so that I got access to the Well teleport, cleaned out the readily-accessible part, and went into the secret area. I didn't really take much care in the secret area and needed to come back once to rest. Otherwise it was just mostly fireballing our way through the fights: with three magic users it's pretty certain that every enemy magic user gets killed on the first round, unless they manage to escape the area of effect before all the fireballs hit. According to my maps, the next step seems to be the mines, but I haven't yet gone to the Well to verify that.

And after the BC headquarters is cleaned, they start sending their groups to attack Verdigris. The fire giant groups I like because each fire giant has 2000 platinum, which translates into A) XP and B) gems traded from the vault. I now have about 400 gems, so I don't think there will be a problem getting the Well to speak anymore.

The game itself is beginning to devolve into pure hack-and-slash. Apart from spreading the party out against the dragons and bouncing the lightning bolts I haven't needed anything that could be called tactics. And as I recall, that's pretty much par for the course throughout the game. I think it's because the party is getting to be high enough level that they can do hack-and-slash and the fight difficulty hasn't been increased accordingly. In previous games, the party was so weak that positioning the members and using spells effectively was much more important, and in Pools the combat difficulty gets turned up into eleven. But this one falls in between and kind of fails to be interesting. Also, the teleports back to the Well area are so frequent and available that there's little need to plan any part beforehand to save up on spells and HP.

One thing I didn't actively realize about Ardhiel dual-classing into a magic user: he's advancing in levels very fast and learning one new spell per level but there aren't that many scrolls around and the ones that are there mostly have high-level spells, so Ardhiel's spell selection is kind of poor. He has the basic combat stuff but when the going gets tougher, it's better to know some protective spells too. I'm also not sure anymore about the idea of having Eugene dual-class; my fighter power isn't that great with Janna's low HP. I'll need to think about it some more.

Why Should We Help?

Time to get started on the next game. Having removed all the characters from the party when they were still under the spell effects from Curse's final fight, their strengths are pretty ridiculous. The gauntlets of ogre power that the citizens of Verdigris provide went to Daenerys because she was the only one with strength less than 20. Other ability scores are also affected by the ioun stones and whatever. But the correct scores are stored in the characters files, and as I recall, going through a pool of darkness will return them back to the originals. That's in the next game, though. I don't really have the inclination to go and edit the character files again; if a bug in the game is to my advantage, I'll let it be.

As partial compensation for all the extra damage the party can inflict, I've set the difficulty level to Champion, now that there is such a setting. Well, I would have done that anyway, since I've found that provides an appropriate challenge; I've never played on a level lower than Adept (except for the final fight in Pools, which I really needed to make easier...). I don't think the difficulty level affects anything other than monster hit points: they go in proportions 2:3:4:5:6. With all the dragons flying around, the differences can really be a matter of life and death.

Blades also seems to be the first game where the party is not out for themselves. In Pool, the council was paying for all the missions, and in Curse, the sigils are a curse to get rid of. But here, I don't think any reward was mentioned and the townies are certainly not giving any for helping them. They give some stuff in the beginning (but very little, considering that it's their fault all the old stuff went missing) and provide free training and healing, but that seems to be it.

Ardhiel also dual-classed to a magic user. He was a 12th level thief so it's going to take quite a while before he gets to use those abilities. No matter really, a thief isn't that useful anymore in the game. (I hope there aren't any spots where a thief is necessary that I just don't remember because I've always had a thief with me...) Otherwise the party composition remains the same. I'll need to see how the party is arranged in combat to see what is the proper ordering. I'll want to keep Janna off the point position because of her low HP, and think carefully whether Ardhiel or Daenerys should be the most protected; Daenerys because of her lower HP or Ardhiel because Daenerys needs space to move to more advantageous places for casting spells. Well, I don't usually spend inordinate amounts of time worrying about those kinds of things.

The interface is slightly more annoying than in Curse. In Curse, the movement keys were always available and the menu was key-controlled. Selecting the active character was done with keys other than the cursor keys. Here, these two are separated and it's always necessary to select Move to move around and exit from that when you want to do something else. The same in combat, in Curse just pressing a direction key started moving without the need to select Move explicitly, but not here. And the biggest annoyance that I found out in one of my first combats: manual targeting does not allow centering. Targeting those fireballs and ice storms just became a bit more difficult.

Die Already!

There are two ways into Tyranthraxus's temple. Previously I've come in through the grate in the ruins, which leads to some back chamber of the temple. There's some loot and some fighting there, but this time I went in straight through the front door so I don't remember what all there is. Tyranthraxus of course starts gloating right away:

One thing I didn't remember from before: the sigils don't let the party rest at all in Tyranthraxus's temple. I figured it might be possible, so I got a bit too happy with the fireballs in the random encounters. And there were a lot of those: in the large hall after the entrance room I was fighting on almost every step. Luckily they were mostly just hack-and-slash with no spell-casters or just one.

Preparing for the final battle, I was lucky to have enough healing potions to get everyone up to full HP. (Well, actually, I had way more than I needed.) I cast every preparatory spell I had, which is getting to be quite a lot already at these levels. Pro tip: remember to save the globes of invulnerability to the end so that the magic-users get the benefits from all the other spells (not too hard to guess why I'm giving this tip...).

My tactic in the battle was to get off fireballs from Daenerys and Janna to damage the high priests and to clean out the margoyles. Then Andreas and Eugene run through the formed gaps straight to Tyranthraxus and start hacking him to pieces. If they get their turn before the fireballs, haste on them gives enough movement so that they can circle around the enemy formation into position. Resist fire on both allows further fireballs to keep the priests damaged. Tyranthraxus dies in a round or two from the hasted, enlarged fighters; especially Andreas with 24 STR and a two-handed sword +2 does a lot of damage to a large-sized enemy. After Tyranthraxus is dispatched, Andreas and Eugene can focus on the remaining high priests; after the fireball bath they've had, one or two hits usually gets them. Daenerys and Janna provide any necessary cover fire, and Ardhiel and Gabrielle focus on hacking the high priests on their side that are out of reach for the fireballs.

The plan didn't go entirely without a hitch. Daenerys got off the initial fireball, which left nice gaps into the margoyle ranks, but I made the mistake of not getting her to proper safety. When Tyranthraxus threw a lightning at her, it then bounced back from the wall behind her. One failed saving throw, one dead magic-user. Also, Janna got hit by the bounce before she could get off her fireball on the first round. Still, the rest of the plan worked as above. Eugene went a bit low on HP since I used him to hunt down the high priests, so he got some margoyle hits when disengaging.

Now in the final sequence there is nothing surprising. Tyranthraxus admits his defeat and dies as he should:

The final bond fades:

And as usual, after the party has on their own defeated the Big Bad, the cavalry arrives and the game ends. I think I'll take a few days off before getting started with Blades.

Once More unto the Breach

Time to head back to the Standing Stone to meet the hooded figure who has been advising me. Surprise, surprise, it's Tyranthraxus:

Myth Drannor isn't at all a boring area to explore. What I like about it is that most random encounters are avoidable, the thri-kreen by saying Tyranthraxus is your master, the rakshasa patrols by adopting a haughty tone. This latter I discovered by accident; I had begun by being nice, and the patrols took some money but didn't fight. Then once I pressed Return when the cursor was still on haughty and they left me alone completely. So yay!

The fights at the graveyard area are pretty trivial and I didn't bother to go through all of them. I'm not sure of all the places where it's possible to rest; one sure place is the elf queen's ghost's tower, so I always went there.

The ruins were much more fun, with all the rakshasa fights, especially the one with multiple rakshasas. There I just disengaged Eugene who had the crossbow and blessed bolts and started picking them off one by one. The party got hit with a few lightning bolts but nothing serious. Also, it's very worthwhile to pick up the treasure at the northeast corner; there's a girdle of giant strength there.

Into the Wilderness

For Curse, I have so far been writing only about completing the quests, but after defeating the second “master”, there is an option to search areas around towns, which gets the party into a cave or ruins or something with monsters to look for. From what I've seen of them, there seems to be some kind of special thing that you can do in each of these, in addition to the random encounters.

The reason I haven't been writing about doing these places is that I just don't see much point in doing them, so usually I just run through the main quests without bothering to get sidetracked. This time, I've had a couple of times where a character has been close to the next level after a quest, so I've searched around Phlan and Hillsfar, running around in the place until that character has enough XP. So, after Zhentil Keep, I went and got enough XP for Andreas to level up too, and now his dual classing activated too (though 8th-level fighter isn't a very useful addition for a paladin).

One place that I find interesting is the Tower of Oxam at Dagger Falls. That feels more like a properly-designed quest than a random cave. And of course, that has one of the classic battles, against the Beholder Corps. I have never even tried to win this battle for real; after the first time I've just stayed away. Apparently using the Dust of Disappearance is a useful thing to do, but I've never used the Dust either, in any battle. Maybe I should save my current game for a later attempt in that battle.

Seek Black to the North

So, off to Zhentil Keep to get rid of the second-to-last sigil. As I recall, it might be possible to get rid of the sigil before seeing any combat, but I haven't gone that route in ages. Nowadays, when Olive appears in Zhentil Keep, I just keep going towards the temple and fight all the guards there. The fights aren't very hard and, as always, they give some more experience, as well as let one loot the temple treasure.

Meeting Dexam for the first time, Fzoul got killed and the sigil disappeared. Anyone else get the feeling that the sigil removal just happens, without much input from the party itself?

Dexam's cave isn't too bad. I noticed it's not a good idea to stay in the main hall where Dexam's troops are fighting Fzoul's because the party gets caught in the crossfire way too much. But elsewhere in the caves resting is usually possible, though there might be random encounters every now and then. There is one place with treasure and a partial map of the cave. The treasure isn't really worth a detour but it's not like it takes much out of the party, so I went and got it.

One thing I noticed the last time I was playing is that the Dexam battle doesn't happen in a specific square but when the party leaves a specific square. Since that square happens to be in front of a room, I'm now going into the room for the battle because the enemies are much better positioned for fireballing there. Eugene was hit pretty much immediately by the medusa's gaze, so I was reduced to five characters for the rest of the fight and the rest of the cave running.

There is an underhanded way of winning in battle against creatures like medusas and beholders (dragons too) that have nasty special abilities and not nearly as powerful melee attacks. Namely, a character that acts before them runs next to them and then moves away. The creature takes a melee attack of opportunity (or whatever it is called), which forfeits its actual turn, so it cannot use the special abilities. A hasted fighter-type with light armor can disable a lot of enemies this way, especially since it's possible to hit Esc to cancel the movement without cancelling the lost turns of the enemies (doesn't cancel the damage either, but the point is that the melee damage is much less than getting hit with the special abilities). This does feel like cheating to me, so I try to limit its use, but occasionally I do use it (like this time against Dexam).

After finishing Dexam's cave, everyone except Andreas leveled up. Janna's dual classing activated, giving her some magic user spells. In this game, an 8th level magic user is still a combat power and as a dual ranger she can cast spells wearing armor, so I gave her some combat spells, but I'm also preparing by having her memorize caster-range protection spells. Later on, she'll probably just have as many protection spells as is reasonable and then some combat spells for the cases where maximal damage is not needed.

Seek Green to the Northwest

The next stop is Moander's Pit in Yulash, and stopping the attempt of Mogion to bring Moander back to the Realms.

When getting to Yulash, I befriended the Red Plumes by defeating the Zhentarim that came bursting out of the door. I think that on some previous occasions I've helped the Zhentarim, but killing the Zhentarim means the Red Plumes don't bother me, and since they control the town, I think it's better to do it that way. There is one combat with Zhentil Keepers and another against some shambling mounds (which nets a wand of defoliation), but otherwise Yulash doesn't really have anything in it.

Moander's Pit is pretty much combat-free. There's one battle with the cultists dragging around a giant slug, but otherwise it's possible to just run to the temple proper. It was even possible to get some rest, but I'm not sure if there are any safe resting places or I just got lucky when I tried. I did get some random encounters when trying to rest near the temple, so maybe there are safe areas.


The sigil gets removed as Mogion summons Moander, so when the sigil isn't controlling the party anymore, it's time for battle. The Mogion battle wasn't that hard. Just fireball the priests all the time and hack the shambling mounds to pieces. The wand of defoliation, stinking clouds, and magic missiles are very useful. Also the cold spells, ice storm and cone of cold, though I'm rubbish at aiming the latter. Stay away from fireballs and especially lightning bolts. More than once, Alias and Dragonbait got a bit annoying, but I rarely care about the NPCs, so if they happen to get in the way of a spell's area of effect, I just let them have it.

After the Mogion battle, the bits of Moander are a real pain. 140-HP shambling mounds aren't really a picnic for a party at this level. The same advice as before applies, but I had to try this a few times before I managed to finish it without unacceptable losses. My basic tactic was to move the characters into position so that the bits were arranged nicely for area spells and then just blast away. I have no idea how I ever managed to survive this battle on my first play-through when I had a pretty crappy party and wasn't really using pre-battle spells at all.

There's still one battle in the Pit before escape is possible. It's mostly just vegepygmies, but there are some cultists there and hold person is a really nasty spell (when the enemy has it, that is). Still, I managed to find a place to rest, heal, and replenish the spells, so there wasn't much of a problem here.

Bugs in the System, Take 2

Sorry about the lack of updates. I've been kind of distracted all summer and not playing that much. I'm posting now a couple of things I did before the hiatus and intend to continue playing now.

I posted before about the buggy character transfer routines. Back then, I tried to do the minimum amount of character file editing to get the characters be somewhat sensible, but it turned out that my estimate was too small. The skinny is that in Pool, all characters have their stats just once, but Curse (and I suspect, from then on) stores both the original stat and the current stat. And it looks like the character transfer routines don't really take this file format change properly into account.

Why I really needed to figure things out is that if there's something wonky with the original stat, any magic items that affect stats don't actually have any effect. And with all the ioun stones floating around, that's something you don't want to happen in Curse. So you need to edit the file to make sure the original stats are correct. I'd recommend unreadying all stat-affecting magic items because then both stat sets should be the same. And of course, fighter-types have slightly different file structure because of the need to have the percentile strength in there. But the file structure isn't too hard to figure out, and if you just make sure you don't add or remove bytes from the file, it doesn't seem possible to break anything.

Seek Red to the South

I'm doing the three middle tasks in the order that the "figure" at the Standing Stone advises them. So first, heading to Hap where Dracandros has his tower.

Hap is pretty easy to clean: just walked around so much that no more dark elf patrols appeared, then went into the barn where there were only two mages and two clerics with the efreeti. Mages are not really a problem as long as they stick to lightning bolts and not stinking clouds, but the hold persons that the clerics throw around can be an annoyance. What I usually do is disengage from the melee with my fighter types and run to bash the enemy spellcasters.

The caves are pretty cool. There's lot of fighting and they're not at all boring. The dark elf barracks are nasty: 12 clerics in one, 12 magic-users in another. I discovered that stinking clouds are not useful when tossed around willy-nilly because they can block my own fighters from engaging too, so careful planning is the key with them. The magic resistance of the dark elves is annoying but usually enough of them get hit by fireballs or ice storms to avoid a total defeat. The dracolich was almost tough but it never breathed on the same person twice, so I managed to defeat it without casualties. An ice storm had no effect but a flame strike did and finished it off. I suspect it was just luck of the draw and nothing inherent in the spells.

In this task, the sigil gets removed right in the middle, when Dracandros took the party up to his tower with the dragons and all:
After that, there's a choice. In more recent playthroughs, I've started attacking the dragons. It's a lot of XP and it's possible to win. Just slapped enlarges on the best fighters, and haste, bless, and prayer on everyone. For some reason, the dragon slayer sword that was in the caves functioned only in a couple of attempts and not my final one. Still, the final attempt was successful, with only Andreas getting killed, and even then, a raise dead actually increased his hit points, even though his constitution suffered. I have no idea why, but these games seem pretty buggy.

Going down the tower, the dark elf lord at the first stairs is the only interesting battle. I actually didn't manage to hit him once except when the thief got a backstab or when a magic missile went through his magic resistance. That's how I've always beaten this guy: arrange four characters to hack at him, have the thief circle in the remaining four places to backstab on every round, and have the magic user cast spells just in case one goes through.

Dracandros's cohorts are standard fare, but Dracandros himself is something else. I think he has mirror image, minor globe of invulnerability, and fire shield on at least. But it turned out, he had tuned the fire shield against fire, so an ice storm did double damage. In the end, I just disengaged both Andreas and Eugene from the efreeti and dark elves, and had them hack Dracandros down. Eugene got zapped by the fire shield, but it's not like a magic user has enough hit points to take down a fighter with a fire shield. Plus, Dracandros has all sorts of stuff useful to a magic user, so that's one reason why this task is good to do first.

And of course, even though I had taken a female into the party, gotten the assignment from Silk, and killed the dragons and taken their hearts, I forgot to go back to the caves to take the hearts to Silk. Oh well, it's not like I needed more XP anyway. Despite coming back to train in the middle, Andreas and Janna still went over their limits again. But both are now 8th level, which means 3 attacks in 2 rounds, so now my fighting strength is beginning to be at the normal level.

Getting out of Town

The first task in Curse is by far the easiest. I think there are only four mandatory combats and those are all against regular humans. Of course, as with anything else in these games, it's better to fight more than just the minimum.

I didn't run quite straight to the training hall in the sewers after getting into the thieves' guild. Maybe I should have; Andreas and Janna both had too much XP when I first got there. On the other hand, I didn't have the energy to go back all the way to the thieves' guild so I looted that completely before entering the sewers.

The training hall makes for a nice base of operations. It's worth it to clean out the sewers because there's a lot of XP to be had. Andreas and Janna both managed to get a few levels before the main fight. The sewer fights were also a lot tougher than any of the Fire Knife fights. Especially that one room with a large number of otyughs proved to be quite a challenge, but I managed with very few casualties. Janna, due to her low hit points, is all the time in danger, but there was a Girdle of the Dwarves somewhere in this first task, which increased her constitution and HP, so she's no longer quite so weak.

The hideout fights are not really interesting at all and there's very little treasure to be found. Looking around, one can get enough journal entries to figure out that one of the bond creators is indeed Tyranthraxus, but well, it's not like the journal entries are ever necessary to complete these games. The final fight is nothing for a party that's gone through Pool of Radiance; even a fifth-level party that starts in Curse makes short work of the Fire Knives. Unlike in the other tasks, it takes winning the fight before the sigil disappears:

Waking up in Tilverton

Well, I went ahead and transferred my party to Curse. Turns out, even though the strength stats were all wonky in Hillsfar, they transferred properly to Curse. Well, not quite properly: Andreas and Eugene still have 18(100) strength. But I didn't have to use a hex editor to get them fixed from completely absurd values.

Something I'd also forgotten: Items and money transfer from Hillsfar. So all of my characters had more money than they knew what to do with (all of them were burdened to the maximum), a wand of magic missiles (Rod of Blasting), ring of vulnerability (knock ring), and potion of healing. So a good start, even though most of the money mysteriously disappeared when I went to buy equipment. None of the party had picked up enough XP in Hillsfar to advance, though, which wasn't really that surprising. I had hopes for Janna and Daenerys, but no luck there.

My theory on hit points might have been right: both Eugene and Andreas are at 95, and Janna and Daenerys at 46, which is also about the maximum they could have.

My biggest problems now come from the dual-classing. Andreas and Janna are both now only 1st level, which means their THAC0 sucks, and Janna doesn't even have percentages in strength (in fact, her strength is only 17; she'll be the first one to get any strength-enhancing magic item). Also, Janna has only the 46 hit points. As a ranger, she'll get two more HD rolls, and after that it's just the constant 2, so she won't get very much HP in the end.

There's a training hall in the Tilverton sewers, which eases the dual-classing in this game because there's no need to complete the full first task before having an opportunity to train. Still, I think some XP might go missing because there are a few mandatory fights and some treasure before the training hall. I guess I'll just run to the training hall as fast as I can and then pick up the monsters in between after that.

A Boring Interlude

Hillsfar I've never really liked that much, mostly because it's so repetitive. Funny, considering how repetitive the other games also are in principle. But in the other games, at least there's some progression toward harder tasks; in Hillsfar, it's pretty much all the same throughout.

It took me about an hour to complete each task, so about six hours total, but divided over several days, as I didn't really have much time to play continuously. The thief task was perhaps the most interesting, probably because I haven't done it very often: I've never had a single-class thief so I don't think I always picked the thief task with the multi-classed thief character. Also, the thief task had maybe the largest amount of having to decide where to go next.

I found a good FAQ with a walkthrough that I used to make sure I was always on the right track. I've completed this game so many times that I didn't want to bother with sorting out false trails. Of course, the game is practically always so straightforward it's impossible to go astray.

Some of the subgames are at least somewhat interesting, others are boring or get so really quickly.

• Riding: This is probably the most boring part of the entire game. There's little challenge in it and there's so much of it in every task. I never lost my horse. I seem to recall that if you have the Rod of Blasting, the obstacles are harder, but there wasn't anything that would have required the Rod.
• Archery: Just pick the dagger as a weapon (a cleric doesn't have to go target shooting), practice once to find out which target is the best score-wise, and then just hit that in the real shoot. You can get better points by trying for the mouse or bird, but there's little point: shooting at the normal targets is always enough to get the necessary information.
• Arena: This is pretty easy. Every opponent has some sort of a tell on when they are striking and how, and they're vulnerable just before or just after they strike. Previously I've observed the tells better and used the blocks but this time I just attacked at the right times, not caring whether they hit me. I got caught a few times, sent to the arena a couple of times, but never had to fight to the death.
• Lock picking: A slow way to open locks, but with a little practice it works pretty much every time, except when the last tumbler is something that cannot be picked (like in the jail or the castle). Non-thief classes can also do this by hiring a thief, but that's just a waste of money; bashing and knock rings are much better than picking.
• Maze running: The first couple of times this is interesting, but with the amount of maze running you have to do in this game, it gets extremely boring. I usually just ran around, opened as many chests as needed to get the quest item and preferably some loot, including the switch to show the teleport traps. Then, if I was in a place with a secret room, I went there, and otherwise went to stand in the upper-right corner waiting for the exit to appear. Of course, the latter tactic failed whenever the guards were sent in long before the exit appeared. Mostly, you just get thrown out, but as I recall, at least from the jail and the castle it's pretty much a sure bet you get thrown to the arena.

It was interesting how the classes had something class-appropriate to do: the fighter quests required target shooting and arena combat, a magic-user has to charm a barmaid at some point, and a thief has to pick the lock on the castle door. The cleric didn't have anything appropriate to do, though, and the cleric was also the only class that didn't have to do target shooting or arena combat, too.

The hit point gains varied really wildly. I don't know how they are determined, but Daenerys got only 3 HP more, while Gabrielle got 30 and Eugene almost 30. If there's really so much possible variance that isn't caused by something else (another guess I had is that the hit points get raised to approximately the character's possible maximum at that level), it might be worthwhile to do the save-reload trick to get a really good number of extra HP. I don't bother to do that, though; it's a bit too much cheating for my tastes.

And finally, pictures of the quest endings, which I intend to show for each of these games.

Cleric:


Fighter:


Magic-user:


Thief:

Bugs in the System

There are some bugs in the character transfer routines. Some are beneficial, others not so.

The well-known one is that when you transfer characters from Pool to Curse or from Curse to Blades, they lose all their items but any changes in stats caused by magic items or active spells remain. So when I transferred my party from Pool to Curse, both fighters had natural strength 18(100) because that was what the Gauntlets of Ogre Power gave them. And it's even better with the next transfer, with all the ioun stones and Girdle of Giant Strength.

But at least my version of the games has a bug when transferring from Curse to Hillsfar as well. Namely, the strength of all the characters goes completely wacky. All my non-fighters had strength of 50 and my fighters had 100. This might have done some good in Hillsfar; at least the arena combat seemed a lot easier than I remembered. But as I recall, when transferred to Curse, these stats are actually pretty poor; I'm guessing the thing wraps around at 25 or something.

So what I'm doing now is to make a backup of the Curse save files, transfer my characters with their weird stats into Curse, figure out the file structure and use a hex editor to change the stats to what they're supposed to be. I figure I'll set them to their original values, not the bug-caused 18(100) values. After all, I'm trying to be mostly honest here.

Twisting by the Pool

Time to assault Valjevo Castle itself, then. Things weren't going as I remembered them from before. I couldn't find the cart or whatever it was that let you disguise the party at Stojanow Gate, so I had to do a frontal assault, killing one group of bugbears and breaking through the gate to meet the ettins and humans. Ettins pack quite a wallop, but fireballs made short work of that group.

In the castle, I just went and picked up the Flametongue sword and Cadorna and then entered the castle proper. Cadorna was helpful by providing the password, and I didn't have to fight once in the castle. This time, I hadn't bothered to find the maps from Kovel Mansion because my maps from before are good enough. To my surprise the fake Tyranthraxus wasn't in the room that leads to the real Tyranthraxus; I wonder what caused that.

The final fight was nasty, as usual. I remembered getting good results against the fighters with lightning bolts, so I had prepared with them. Not really a good idea, since that exposed my magic-users, and even though I won, the party was in no shape to fight Tyranthraxus after that. On the second try, I instead peppered the air with stinking clouds and hold persons, with enlarged or ogre-gauntleted characters hacking at the fighters that weren't paralyzed. The result was pretty good, with only Ardhiel getting hit:


Tyranthraxus itself would have been really tough to defeat if he hadn't been so darned stupid. I managed to get my group around him and away from the wall so his lightning breath would only hit one person once. He began by breathing on Ardhiel, who was predictably killed (he failed his saving throw, so healing him at the end of the first fight wouldn't have helped). But then on later rounds he just kept breathing at Ardhiel's corpse, which of course had no effect. I just thanked my luck and hacked him to bits:


I still remember the first time I defeated Tyranthraxus. When I got to this stage, I got pretty scared about what was going to happen:

But of course that didn't last long, and soon my party was in the civilized section of Phlan:



A bit unfortunate that Ardhiel lost a point of constitution because resurrection wasn't available at the temple, just raise dead. And of course it's ridiculous that all the characters now have something like 160000 XP when Gabrielle, Janna, and Daenerys maxed out their levels at around 40000.

Into the Wild ...for Real This Time

The city area of Phlan is clear (again, except for the two that get done at the end), so it's time to go do some tasks in the surrounding areas. Mostly, they are boring, with one or two set-piece battles, or sometimes not even that. The nomads and lizardmen I've never liked all that much. With the lizardmen, there's even not that much to do, and with the nomads, fighting kobold hordes at this level is mostly an annoyance. Yarash's pyramid isn't very interesting, either, but it's good to do before going to see the lizardmen (I've always done it like that, so I don't know how things would turn out without the password).

The kobold cave is a nice and hard task. I went in through the large entrance, killed the wyvern there, and had the drunk kobold just outside the wyvern's cave take me to the king's throne room. That's the easy way to avoid all the random encounters in the cave, at least before leaving.

Now both of my magic-users were sixth level and both also had one fireball on a scroll, so I used two fireballs per fight, and it was pretty easy. Also, my fighters were both seventh level, so they got three attacks in two rounds, which fells trolls very nicely, especially with a two-handed sword that Andreas is carrying. In the last fight in the king's quarters, I used a wand of lightning on the trolls that were nice enough to arrange themselves into a straight line. Saving potions of extra healing is useful, though, since you never know when one of the group is knocked out and one cleric doesn't have that many healing spells.

Earlier in the buccaneer base, I'd always just grabbed the child and run, but then I found out how to get to see the commander, and it's worth it to kill the commander. It's an easy fight: just keep lobbing stinking clouds and hold persons at the commander until he goes helpless. The buccaneer guards are nothing.

The Zhentil outpost was a big puzzle on my first time. I just wandered around the base, getting into random fights, not having any clue what's going on. And then the main forces attacked and all became clear. It's worth it to save the spells for the two battles with the dwarf's and the commander's forces. Fireballs make short work of the forces themselves, and hold person and stinking cloud are good against the special opponents.

One nice thing about stinking cloud on the PC version: it actually stays there, forcing anyone in its area to save every round. On the C-64 it was just an immediate effect that was either coughing or nauseous.

Now there's only Stojanow Gate and Valjevo Castle itself. That is going to have to wait, though; I've already spent way too much time on this.

Into the Wild ...Not!

After the contiguous part, I went across the bay to clean up the three areas there, Kovel Mansion, Wealthy Mansion and the Temple of Bane. All simple and quick hack-and-slash jobs since my maps show where all the monsters to be killed are, and not worth much either.

I thought after that to go look at the kobold cave. Boy, that fight is tough! Three consecutive battles plus one in the king's quarters, with trolls, boars, and evident fighter/magic-users. On the first attempt, I managed to lose in the third one. The second one was going much better, but then the game crashed when a boar got killed by a fireball. It got exactly the 18 hit points damage that it had and then tried to get up, and that's when the game dumped me back to Dosbox with some incomprehensible error message and all the fonts and other settings the same as in the game.

Evidently the game did not want me to mess with the kobolds just yet, and I wanted to get my magic-users to the sixth level anyway, so I thought I'd gather some XP at the graveyard. But the set-piece fights there were so easy (random encounters, not so much) that I ended up cleaning that place completely. One wight got a swing at Andreas, but that's why there are all the scrolls of restoration. I didn't bother to reload as Andreas had just leveled up a few thousand XPs prior.

The last three fights I finished without leaving the graveyard at all. I was all set to leave just before the vampire, but then ran into a magic-user who wanted a piece of the action, so I thought, what the heck, and went to kill the vampire after all. Of course, the magic-user turned out to be a traitor who fought on the vampire's side in that battle... (Well, fought and fought; I finished him off before he got to even act.)

The graveyard is perhaps one of the most interesting tasks in this game. There's a clear progression of the fights getting harder: skeletons, zombies, wights are what you encounter outside. There's a number of battles to win to clean the place instead of just one or two like in some other areas. The spectre and wraith battles in the buildings are too easy, though, with the surprise and all. Pretty much all undead types are present, and with the character levels of this game, it's not just having the cleric turn them. And even so, turning the undead is a bit annoying, since they don't disappear like in the later games, but just start running away.

Mopping Up Phlan

Now I've completed the rest of Phlan accessible on foot from the civilized area (well, not Stojanow Gate or Valjevo Castle, obviously). Sokal Keep is also done. These are much easier than the slums, since there's usually just one major battle.

In Sokal Keep, I just entered the room from the side, formed a defensive line, dropped the archers with sleep, fortified my line with stinking clouds, and kept hacking. No casualties, not even close. Plus, it solved my money troubles, since the reward included some really valuable jewelry.

Kuto's Well is a pain, since it seems not to be actually cleanable. I went and killed the bandit down the well and the other set-piece fight, but I'm still getting random encounters there, and the lizardmen can be pretty tough!

Podal Plaza I kind of messed up. I just went there, listened to the auction, and left. A few times previously, I've at least gotten into a fight there, but I didn't have a recent enough save to start experimenting.

I got really lucky in Mendor's Library. The basilisk fell before it even had a chance to act. And of course I forgot about the spectre and got a bit of a scare when it appeared. But it managed to only try once to hit and luckily missed. And I don't care what the clerk said; what they paid for the books was a real pittance.

My maps show that before I'd gone across the bay first and cleaned the three areas there, and only then did the textile house. This time I went to the textile house first. The random encounters there can get pretty tough, especially since Gabrielle doesn't seem to be high enough level to turn wights. Also, it's a lot more annoying when the turned undead just flee and don't disappear like they do in later games, though I see how it's more realistic in Pool.

The thieves in the textile house were really interesting. After all, I have a Lawful Good character in my party, I had Cadorna's employee with me, and neither prevented me from using the thieves' assistance to loot Cadorna's treasure. Which was worth it: now Andreas has gauntlets of ogre power.

Now I went to see the bishop of Tyr, picked up the priest, and am heading to the other side of the bay. I think I'll start with the two mansions, since I have the extra cleric with me, and only after those go to the temple of Bane.

Initial Impressions

Well, I've cleared out the slums now. It was both harder and easier than I'd expected. Harder because I actually managed to lose one battle (teaches me to pay attention to tactics!) and easier because there are a bunch of tough critters in the slums, but they gave me little trouble.

Seems like it's not just the set-piece fights that have to be won, but also a few random encounters. At least I didn't get the reward for just clearing out the rooms but only after a couple of random battles after that. I think I've spent more time in the slums on previous times because this time I just ran straight to each set piece, but I also got pretty lucky in avoiding the random monsters.

The first few monster rooms gave me a false sense of security. The battles in the north part are all pretty easy and since I tackled those first, I thought the whole thing is going to be a walk in the park. Of course, in the next battle I didn't manage to neutralize the goblin leaders in time, and their arrows tore my party to shreds. Sleep spells are very useful here, even if you don't have time just then to eliminate the helpless enemies.

I tried both ways with Ohlo, completing his mission and fighting him, and fighting gives a lot more XP and a wand of magic missiles, so I say that's the better choice. The battle wasn't even that hard, since he had only two archers (but his magic missiles had a way-too-long range), so establishing a line at the doorway worked well; I didn't even have to run behind a wall to wait for the monsters to come one by one (which is how I first won in Sokal Keep). Again, sleep spells rock.

The troll fight, which I'd thought of as ridiculously difficult on some previous times, went without a hitch. Magic missiles from the magic-users and Ohlo's wand gave much-needed damage for the trolls and equipping fighters with two-handed swords was a good idea too. Just remember to go stand on the spots where trolls were killed to prevent them from getting back up.

I'm now having money troubles. Training costs 1000 gp for each level and I haven't been getting enough to train everyone as soon as they are ready. I have Ardhiel and Daenerys able to advance, but no money at all. I know the situation changes, and as I recall, there's treasure to be found in Sokal Keep, so I guess that's my next destination (well, I could also tackle Kuto's Well, which is maybe a bit easier).

Forgotten Realms Party

Well, the party for the Forgotten Realms series has been assembled now. I've played this series so many times that I have a pretty good idea of what classes to pick and how to evolve the party composition through the series.

My new party is

1. Andreas, male human fighter
2. Eugene, male human fighter
3. Gabrielle, female human cleric
4. Ardhiel, male human thief
5. Janna, female human magic-user
6. Daenerys, female human magic-user

(As you can see, I don't put too much originality into naming the characters.)

I mostly kept rerolling until I got good enough stats instead of modifying, as has always been my custom. I made an exception for the characters that will dual-class to something non-basic (see below).

I have found that having two magic-users is a good idea in Pool. There are a few mass combats where having double the Fireballs is going to be very useful, e.g., the kobold cave and Zhentil Keep. Also, in the second-to-last battle the 8th-level fighters tend to align themselves nicely for Lightning Bolts...

I intend to play with these same characters through the whole series, so instead of making new characters for new games, I'm going to dual-class to get an appropriate party later on. The usual requirement for dual-classing is 15 in the old class's prime requisite and 17 in the new one's, but this isn't completely accurate. The reality is that the character needs 17 in the new class's prime requisite and any stat that has a minimum requirement, which means that dual-classing into a paladin or a ranger requires five 17's in the stats, so I cheated a bit and modified the stats of such characters.

My dual-classing plan is

1. Immediately after Pool, Andreas becomes a paladin and Janna a ranger (after leveling up in magic-user, since Pool doesn't allow magic-users to get as high as the XP indicates). This is because throughout Curse the enemies are magic-resistant and the characters too low level to overcome it, so a fighting-heavy party is appropriate. Also, it's good to have a paladin for the extra healing and a ranger against giants instead of plain fighters.
2. At the beginning of Blades, Ardhiel becomes a magic-user. At the higher levels, magic-users are really necessary firepower, and it's a lot easier to survive with two than with just one. And having a thief isn't really needed anymore; in previous games backstabbing is still useful sometimes. Wandering through the ruins will provide some initial XP.
3. Somewhere during Blades, or possibly at the beginning of Pools, Eugene becomes a magic-user. I'd like to get him up to level 13 first to get two attacks per round, which should happen during Blades. I've never tried three magic-users in a party, but with the multi-direction battles in Pools it may be very useful (not to mention the insane amount of firepower three high-level magic-users have). The things I'm worried about are the iron golems in Blades and the final battle in Pools, though the fighter and thief levels of the two dual-classed magic-users should help a bit there.

Previously, I've done approximately the same thing, except that I've had an elven fighter/thief, so no dual-classing there. But a multi-classed character is a bit underpowered (especially in hit points) during the later stages of the series, and getting levels in thief doesn't seem very useful at the higher levels. So this time I'm trying with a plain thief in the beginning and an extra magic-user in the end.

The Series

The games this blog covers are divided into three series, with a few games in each series:

• Forgotten Realms

1. Pool of Radiance
2. Hillsfar
   
3. Curse of the Azure Bonds
4. Secret of the Silver Blades
5. Pools of Darkness

• Dragonlance

1. Champions of Krynn
2. Death Knights of Krynn
3. Dark Queen of Krynn

• Savage Frontier

1. Gateway to the Savage Frontier
2. Treasures of the Savage Frontier

Of these, I know the Forgotten Realms series very well, having completed each of them at least twice (I think I've completed Pool five times, but it might be just four). The other ones, not so well, but the general principles on combat tactics work pretty much the same in all of them.

As the number of times I've played these shows, I also like the Forgotten Realms series the most. Well, Hillsfar is extremely boring, but since completing it gives a pretty nice hit point increase, I consider it something to slog through. I'll post more detailed reviews later, but of the individual games I think Pools is the best, followed by Pool, Curse, and Blades in this order. Curse and Blades are hard to put in order because they are such different games: Curse is a group of mid-level characters out of their depth, whereas Blades is a straightforward and not too difficult hack-and-slash, but the backstory in Blades is pretty good.

I don't much care for the Dragonlance series. Mostly the reason is the lack of really epic battles. Even the final battles are somewhat anticlimactic, especially the one in Dark Queen, considering how that is the culmination of the whole series (at least when compared to Pools). Kind of a pity, since the concepts in Dragonlance are nice, and the stories in the games are very well crafted.

I haven't actually played Treasures, but Gateway was, I thought, above average. What I most liked about it was how well the side quests worked, in contrast to Death Knights where I didn't even get to the side quests until after I'd completed the main storyline. But as I recall, combat-wise Gateway was too easy.

The Blog's Purpose

I was a big fan of the Gold Box AD&D games back in the day, I owned all of them, and had completed almost every one, many of them several times. After checking that Dosbox runs them perfectly (much better than running with DOS, which requires fiddling with the computer speed), I decided to begin a playthrough.

Unlike my earlier efforts, the plan now is to complete every series with the same party. (Of course, different series will use slightly different parties.) Previously I played most of these games on a C-64, which didn't get the last game of any series, so I had to play the last games with a party created in that game instead of transferring.

This blog I'm intending to use to chronicle the whole thing. I'll post progress reports, reviews of the games, advice I've found or am finding helpful, and in general anything that comes to mind regarding these games. Comments are welcome.