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.