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.