Let's Play Dark Queen of Krynn - The fifth prophecy

[octavius]

There my quest came to an end when we were unable to defeat a large pack of Vampires.

Level-draining enemies are a real pain in the ass and that fight is indeed quite difficult.

Level draining was not the main problem. IIRC the problem was that the vampires were spread out in groups of 3, so neither Fireballs nor Lightning Bolts did much good. Also, there were Vampire Mages who were like less extreme versions (not so well protected) of the Dark Mages.
I recall some very hard battles in my first playthrough of DQK, but this vampire fight was not one of them.

Anyway, it should be interesting to see how your party (preferably unbuffed) handles that situation.

 

[Erebus]

We need to find a way to enter the tombs where the Oracle is to be found. Our heroes start looking for information in the most sensible place : the nearest tavern.

Amis, il faut faire une pau-ause, j'aperçois l'ombre d'un bouchon ! Buvoons à l'aimable Fanchon, chantons pour elle quelque cho-ose !

This is no time to start a singing duet ! Though I guess a few drinks wouldn't delay us too much...

Meet Selias. To use his own words, he's in truth "a foin, a ruffler and an angler". We tell him about our quest for the Oracle.

In exchange for a surprisingly low price, he accepts to show us the way to enter the tomb. But then :

Dragons ? Is that all ? Let's go and kill them. Shouldn't be more than five minutes before we can come back and finish our drinks in peace.

Silas, however, tells us to follow him to a safe place :

Wait, where are the dragons ?

In the sky, smart girl !

This doesn't look promising...

Ow ! Come down here and fight like earthbound reptiles, you cowards !

After us ? The armies of evil probably shouldn't even know that we've reached Taladas. How could they have learned that we'd be in Kristophan right now ?

Maybe Fastillion is secretly an evil wizard and he fed us a bullshit story about an oracle just so he could make us fall into an ambush.

...You know, that would actually make a lot of sense.

Guided by Selias, we reach an old temple.

(If you fail to take the shortest way to reach this place - which is actually quite possible - you'll get hit a lot more often by dragonbreath and may well not survive.)

Selias leads us inside the temple, and then to some stairs :

It'll probably be safer down there, now that dragons have finally figured out how to stay out of dragonlance's reach.

Before reaching the tombs themselves, we need to go through these tunnels.

Selias tries to use his Diplomacy skill, but it doesn't work well :

As it turns out, Selias stole 300 steel coins from their guild and these guys decide to make him pay, not realizing that they should have waited until a time when we weren't with him.

It's always annoying to find yourself in a position where you can't use many of your spells because you'd have to hit your own party.

Still, the fact that this is an easy fight allows me to try some spells I normally wouldn't use :

But I end up being careless : one of the Black Rogue manages to use the one ability that prevent thieves from being useless, backstabbing Elorin for 40 points of damage and reducing her HP to less than 0.

Kundry acts quickly to keep her from dying :

We slaughter the rest of the rogues and then use healing spells to bring the whole party back to maximum HP.

This wouldn't have happened if I had a decent Armor Class like the rest of you guys !

A secret door allows us to leave the room in which we fought the rogues.

Not much farther, we have to deal with some monsters :

Shambling mounds can be annoyingly hard to kill : electricity and fire don't hurt them, and they don't take full damages from weapons. The mages hit them with a few Ice Storms, killing almost all of them before they can reach us. The warriors take care of the otyughs.

Another secret door...

We finally enter the tombs themselves !

The way is blocked on our right. We follow this corridor in the other direction and, before long :

How can huge creatures like this live in such a place ? What do they usually eat ?

Dungeon ecology is a fascinating subject, but there'll be a better time to study it.

(The PCs are on the right.)

Large creatures often get in each others' way. In this situation, for instance, six of the seven worms are completely unable to reach the PCs ! Killing most of them with a few fireballs is extremely easy.

The corridor leads us to some sort of hall. We head straight forward and, after a short while, we find something that suggests we're on the right track :

Under the statue is written : "May the great Oracle of Tengur protect these tombs and those who come to pay tribute to their occupants."

I bet fifteen gems that many of said occupants are now undeads.

I don't know what we're doing here when we already have a regular oracle in the team !

This is just a regular statue, so the only effect of rubbing it or talking to it will be to make us feel silly.


We'll start looking for the actual Oracle in the next update.

 

[Crooked Bee]

The giant worms look somewhat similar to the Sharruk in Dark Heart of Uukrul:

So you keep getting hit from above as you go? Nasty.

Heh, that's some funny character design. Japanese weird.

 

[Erebus]

So you keep getting hit from above as you go? Nasty.

If you follow the shortest path to the old temple, you probably won't get hit more than once or twice. In fact, I had to reload a few times in order to show you the effects of the dragonstrike, as I kept reaching the old temple without being hit a single time !

When you don't know the game, however, the shortest path isn't obvious. Selias tells us to go north, but, as you can see in this pic, there's a building in our path and we need to go either to its right or to its left. Going right can be a lethal choice.

 

[lightbane]

What?? Dragons smart enough to attack from the air, so that you can't hit them?? Take that, Bethesda!!

I love the party bickering.

 

[Erebus]

There's an important-looking door at the western end of the hall we're in, but we decide to start by exploring our surroundings.

We went through two secret doors just to get here, I'd be surprised if there weren't more.

And indeed, it doesn't take us long to find a secret door in the hall's southern wall.

There are two religions that are especially active in Taladas. On the side of good, the priests of Mishakal/Mislaxa, who bring healing and help to people in need. On the side of evil, the priests of Hith/Hiteh/Hiddukel, who already control the kingdom of Thenol and intend to conquer everything else. Guess which of the two religions these guys belong to !

Since the Minotaur League is constantly at war with Thenol, the religion of Hith is understandably not very popular in Kristophan, which is why the faithfuls meet in catacombs and places like that. Besides, it's probably traditional for evil cults who often have to perform unspeakable rituals.

We're not minotaurs, but the priests of Hith still don't feel like giving us a chance to convert :

Thenol wizards can use the DBF. Thenol priests use spells such as Blade Barrier and Slay Living.

None of them are immune to the DBF, which makes the spell the perfect way to prevent them from casting. However, they're all protected by Resist Fire spells and thus do not take as much damage as they normally would.

The wizards are killed without getting the chance to do anything. The priests try to use their spells, but we keep interrupting their casting and, soon enough, they're all dead.

They look magical.

True, but I'd bet my left lung that they're also cursed, so let's do the smart thing and leave them where they are.

There's nothing else here. The party goes back to the hall and starts to examine the large pillars :

It doesn't take long to find a secret door leading to a portal :

After we've passed through this door, a slab of stone falls down behind us, blocking our exit.

Uh ...what ?

Are we still in an epic D&D CRPG or did we just step in a silly adventure game ?

I wanna see the show !

Well, given how useless money has turned out to be so far, I guess we can pay and save ourselves the fight I'm sure would otherwise happen.

Oooh ! Here come the clowns already !

So far, the undeads of this game look a tiny bit less serious than the ones we faced in Death Knights of Krynn...

Sorry, but we really can't stay : there are still hundreds of idiots on this continent whose only purpose in life is to be slaughtered by us. In fact, I'm sure we'd find your name if we could have a look at the list.

We're faced with five different doors (two of them can't be seen in the above picture, as they're on each side of the party).

Each door has a different inscription. From left to right :
- Trained animals
- Tightrope walkers
- Special attraction
- Seven wonders
- Two heads are better than one

Well, I guess the "special attraction" must be important, but...

I wanna see the tightrope walkers !

The party goes through the door and take a few steps in the room behind it. Then :

Tightrope walkers. Wow. That guy really has an amazing sense of humor.

The spiders are quickly wiped out, with the help of a few spells.

The object turns out to be part of a small statue :

The prophecy we're given is as follow :

"The bright key opens the door to the crypt.
Within, you will find words you should heed.
The find the Book that Amrocar wrote.
Within its pages, words you must read."

Well, that doesn't tell us anything as to what the draconians are planning, but at least we got a clue that'll probably lead us to another quest.

First, I guess we need to find all the other pieces of this statue. They'll probably give us more info.

We leave the room and head straight for the "Special Attraction", ignoring the other doors (they'll only lead to pointless fights ; "Trained Animals" pits you against Umber Hulks ; "Seven Wonders", against hydras ; "Two heads are better than one", against two-headed trolls).

Move aside, Bozo.

After a few more steps, the special attraction turns out to be :

...This could suck.

The death dragons are much more serious threats than the dragons we've fought previously. Their AC is insanely low ; even our two main warriors don't have much more than a 50% chance of hitting them.

Acting early in the first round, Silivrin reaches the nearest dragon and hits it with one of her two attacks :

Hey, what gives ? Shouldn't you die instantly when I hit you with a dragonlance ?

Death dragons have 120 HP, one more than Silivrin !

Death dragons have three attacks per round, which usually inflict around 40-45 points of damage. Their breath weapon is much more devastating and I always shudder when I see that one of them is about to use it.

Our three mages throw all the Delayed Blast Fireballs they can at the dragons, in order to kill them as quickly as possible.

It's fortunate that the five death dragons get in each other's way. If they'd all been able to attack the party right from the start, they would have had a decent chance of wiping it out.

The damages inflicted by dragonlances are equal to the HP of the user. By the time the third dragon has been destroyed, Kundry and Silivrin have taken serious wounds that wouldn't leave them much chance of killing the last two. We could use Heal spells, but a different approach turns out to be quicker :

We were fairly lucky. The fight could have been much more difficult if the dragons that were able to attack us had used their breath weapon instead of their claws and fangs.

After the fight, we discover an unusual object that will probably turn out to be useful in some other part of the tombs :

Looking around, it doesn't take us long to find a way out :

But before we can use it :

There you are ! I want a refund ! Your show sucked !

(This fight required me to reload once. The first time, Kundry got disintegrated just as we were about to win.)

Liches are able to use the Delayed Blast Fireballs. Vampire mages are protected by Fire Shields and can use Disintegrate. Ghasts (the green things) would have to be really lucky to manage to paralyze one of the PCs. Zombies weren't even a threat in Champions of Krynn.

Liches have more HP than a normal wizard, but they're not protected by a Fire Shield or even Mirror Image. This one was stupid enough to put himself right next to our warriors, who won't leave him a single chance to cast anything throughout the fight.

Turn Undead is fairly hit-and-miss. Sometimes it can be super-effective (I've seen it work on liches). Other times, it completely fails to work. In this fight, it does nothing special : Faerlin manages to turn the ghasts and, a bit later, Melandris will destroy the zombies with it. It completely fails to turn the vampire mages, who are the real threat.

As many enemies protected by Fire Shields, vampire mages never seem to take any damage from DBFs. We target them with Ice Storms and Magic Missiles.

Even when they're wounded, vampire mages remain a nuisance because of their level-draining powers. Fortunately, their Thac0 isn't too good and they fail to hit any of the PCs.

The lich doesn't get a break : Kundry and Silivrin will keep hitting him until he's destroyed.

A few more spells take care of the surviving vampire mages.

Once the fight is over, the party goes through the secret door and uses the portal hidden behind it. It brings them back to the hall :

Okay, we have one piece of the oracle and we probably need to find three or four more. Let's start looking around for more secret doors and magical portals.

I have a feeling we're far from done. These tombs have way too many inhabitants.

 

[octavius]

They look magical.

True, but I'd bet my left lung that they're also cursed, so let's do the smart thing and leave them where they are.

IIRC they are Eyes of Charming, and not Cursed. Although it is possible I'm mixing them up with some other eyes...

 

[Crooked Bee]

The game just keeps on surprising me, in a good way. Wackiness is a weakness of mine, I appreciate it when a game doesn't take itself seriously, so I enjoyed the, um, undead show quite a bit.

 

[lightbane]

Indeed. For being a trope old as shit (I mean ancient tombs filled with monsters/undead), what happened on the update was both hilarious and refreshing.

 

[Erebus]

There are some comical elements here and there in the game, though not in excessive number. As far as I remember, the other undeads we'll meet in these tombs will be serious.

(The non-undeads may or may not include a kind of monster even sillier than gas spores or piercers.)

IIRC they are Eyes of Charming, and not Cursed. Although it is possible I'm mixing them up with some other eyes...

There's another set of magical eyes that can be found somewhere in these tombs. I think the eyes of the statue of Hith are the cursed ones (they'll turn the user to stone). I barely ever used (or bothered acquiring) the non-cursed eyes the previous times I played, so I may be wrong.

 

[Erebus]

The mages having used most of their Delayed Blast Fireballs against the death dragons of the previous update, the party decides to rest.

Once all spells are memorized again, it's time to resume our exploration of the hall. Before long, however :

Some zombies and spectres decide to throw away their unlives by attacking the party. Spectres can be annoying because of their level-draining ability, but they're easily killed and Turn Undead is much more likely to work against them than against vampire. The fight is quickly over and the party goes back to what it had been doing.

Another secret door leads us to another teleporter, which leads us to :

While you can't see all of them at once, there are no less than ten doors in this area. Our party opens the first one and finds :

Yay, treasure !

Not extremely impressive, but money's next to useless anyway...
In case you're wondering, gems vary a lot in value : some are only worth 5 coins, while others are worth more than 200 coins. You only discover a gem's value when you sell it in a shop.

All the doors lead to identical rooms. In the third room, however :

AAAH ! MIMIC ! GET IT OFF GET IT OFF GET IT OFF !!!

I wonder what the game will throw at us in the next dungeon. Cloakers, maybe ?

Anyway, let's just shoot all the other chests we find around here full of arrows before opening them.

That'd be sensible, but I don't think the game's going to allow to us to do that.

And indeed, opening the chests is the only way to learn which ones are actual chests and which ones are mimics. While the money and the gems are of no interest to us, we find an unusual object in one of the last chests :

We keep exploring this area, but there's nothing else to be found. After a fight against purple worms and a few hydras, we find another teleporter which brings us back to the hall.

In the north-western part of the hall, we find something that, for once, isn't a secret door or a magical portal :

The ladder leads us to a short corridor :

Inside the room, we find :

We do have it, actually, but... shouldn't you tell us your story first or something ?

It's just a fetch quest and we happen to already have the item to be fetched ; why do you need a story to go with it ? Let's give away the thingie and get our reward.

That was quick, no two ways about it.

Aside from some non-magical equipment, the ghost leaves behind itself :

The prophecy we get this time is :

"Find the realm where Tremor is lord.
Choose the right present to add to his hoard."

And here I thought the first prophecy wasn't very useful... Who's Tremor and where does he live ?

There's nothing else to be found here. We go back to the hall and explore another part of it :

I can sort of understand having secret doors in order to foil tomb robbers, but what's with all the teleporters ?

Dungeon architect is probably not a career for people who enjoy being bound by need or logic.

The teleporter brings the party to a short corridor :

As the party reaches the door :

Talking the ghost make him tell us his story :

"Eons ago, before the minotaurs arrived on the shores of Kristophan and claimed the city for their own, my wife and I were members of royalty. The minotaurs forced us into slavery, and we labored each day with barely enough food to survive."
"With our children starving, my beloved wife stole some crusts of bread. An old cow caught her and we were both quickly sentenced to an eternity of agony. My wife was locked in this cell, where each day she perishes anew from hunger. I was condemned to stand guard at the door, lest anyone try to rescue her from this misery. The only thing that will break the spell is the Heart-Shaped Key, which will unlock the door and unite us again. Alas, the key was hidden ages ago, somewhere in the depths of the Tomb."

We give the key to the ghost.

Well, that was... wait, are you girls all crying ?

No. *snif*

Of course not. *snif*

It's something in my eyes. *snif*

Shut up. *snif*

The ghosts leave behind them another piece of the oracle, which gives us the following prophecy :

"A dragon you'll meet, more mighty than all.
To stop his rampage, seek help from three friends :
The black robed, the winged ones and also the small."

I'm sure there'll come a time when this prophecy makes perfect sense. Probably after the events it predicts have happened.

We go back to the hall. It's time to enter the crypt !

If the dead don't want to be disturbed, they should lie still in their coffins.

We use the golden key Fastillion gave us to enter the crypt.

After following an extremely long corridor, we finally reach a door :

The party looks around, but, aside from the coffin, there's nothing to be found.

I really don't want to open this coffin, but since we have no other choice, let's buff up and do this !

Aside from the skeleton warriors, our enemies all have level-draining attacks. We use a DBF to kill several of them.

Turn Undead rids us of the surviving (so to speak) wraiths and spectres. It fails to work against the vampires, however. And I'm not sure I've ever seen it work against skeleton warriors.

Several magic missiles rid us of the vampires, leaving only the skeleton warriors.

Skeleton warriors can be dangerous enemies. They can't drain levels or paralyze you or anything like that, but they're decent warriors and they can be fairly hard to hurt : spells seldom ever work against them and weapons inflict limited damages unless they're blunt.

On the other hand, maces of disruption work just as well against them as against other undeads.

Once the fight is over, we examine the coffin :

If the game had allowed me to throw a fireball at this coffin like I wanted to, it would have made things a lot quicker.

Going through the secret door, we reach a larger space :

At least, if he's become an undead too, the missing bones should slow him down a bit.

Searching through the rubble, we find :

The fourth prophecy is as follows :

"You followed the monsters that landed ashore.
They killed and they burned, but they also found friends.
In the men who bring fact to the dire Sharkmen's lore."

Finally something that seems relevant to our original mission !

It would be helpful if we knew who the Sharkmen were...

According to my Lore skill, they're an evil organization trying to control the southern islands.

We'll have to pay them a visit once we're done with this foul place.

The party goes through the door to the north.

 

[lightbane]

With our children starving, my beloved wife stole some crusts of bread. An old cow caught her and we were both quickly sentenced to an eternity of agony. My wife was locked in this cell, where each day she perishes anew from hunger. I was condemned to stand guard at the door, lest anyone try to rescue her from this misery.

Talk about overkill. These minotaurs sure are nasty.

 

[Erebus]

Talk about overkill.

Yes, if they'd done that with everyone convicted of stealing, ghosts would probably outnumber the living inhabitants of the city by now.

We're almost done with the Minotaur League. As we'll see later, they're by no means the biggest assholes on the continent.

 

[Erebus]

We start exploring the caves we've discovered.

Aside from a random fight against some spiders, these tunnels seem fairly empty.

Well, now that you've said that, we're pretty much guaranteed a big fight in the near future.

And something tells me it's right behind this archway. Let's buff up, people !

If you know a big fight is coming, there are a lot of useful spells that you can cast beforehand. The most powerful of them is Haste, but I won't use it unless I simply can't win a fight otherwise.

Resist Fire and Resist Cold last for one turn per caster level, but most of the other buffing spells have much shorter durations and cannot be cast very long in advance.

The party goes through the archway and, as expected :

(This piece of the oracle is clearly supposed to be the last one you find, and this fight to be the climax of your exploration of the tombs. But if you went straight for the crypt instead of exploring the hall, you'd be missing most of the other pieces at this point.)

I'm going to make you sparkle, bloodsucker !

I wonder what Master Sun would say about being completely surrounded at the beginning of a fight.

My guess would be "Avoid such a thing at all costs."

As you can see, there are four small groups of undeads around our party. They're made of spectres, regular vampire, vampire clerics (the guys with a bit of green) and vampire mages (the guys with a bit of red).

Vampire clerics use Blade Barrier and Flame Strike. Vampire mages are protected by Fire Shields and use Disintegrate and Lightning Bolt.

It's DBF time ! Faerlin, Sayali and Elorin each target one of the groups of undeads. The only one we neglect for now is the one right behind us.

The Delayed Blast Fireballs kill most of the spectres and regular vampires. The vampire clerics are protected by Resist Fire and take only limited damages. The vampire mages aren't hurt at all.

Unable to use their spells this turn, the vampire clerics attack the party in hand-to-hand combat. Kundry and Silivrin kill several of them.

Melandris uses Turn Undead, but it doesn't even rid us of the surviving spectre.

Silivrin has given us control of Selias for this fight. We cold-bloodedly move him to the rear, so the undeads behind us will target him instead of our mages.

Aside from the vampire mages, the undeads are now right next to the party. Fireballs no longer being very useful, we start spamming magic missiles.

Faerlin and Melandris are both hit by vampires and level-drained.

The vampire mages have tried and failed to disintegrate any of the PCs. They now start hitting the party with lightning bolts.

The Fire Shields prevent the warriors from attacking the vampire mages with melee weapons. Melandris and Kundry start using their bows. As it turns out, the spellcasting bloodsuckers are also protected against normal missiles : the two rangers of the team have to use magic arrows to be able to hurt them.

Selias has been hit several times, but he still has more than enough levels to keep acting as a meat shield.

Our Magic Missiles kill the vampire mages one by one. The other undeads are easily slaughtered by the warriors, bringing the fight to an end.

Aside from Faerlin (who was hit by several lightning bolts), none of the PCs are too seriously hurt. Faerlin and Melandris have lost levels, however (and they wouldn't be able to use Restoration yet, even if they hadn't).

We pick up the last piece of the oracle :

The final prophecy is :
"I see flames and an egg and a crack and a head,
Then another, and another, and another, and more.
She rises up, the Queen of the Dark,
She conquers and rules, leaving only the dead."

I really don't like the sound of this...

Join the club.

Let's have a look around and then leave these tombs. Our mission just might be a lot more essential than we thought.

The place is a dead end, but there's an interesting teleporter to be found :

After all we've been through, it'll take more than some childish intimidation tactics to keep us away.

The teleporter brings us to a strange place, the Maze of Columns :

(Wandering around, you have a good chance to meet hydras, but we didn't.)

As you might have guessed, some of the columns are in fact hollow and secret doors allow us to get inside them. Most of the time, there's only useless treasure to be found, but there's one very important exception :

And we just happen to have a rusted key with us. Isn't life great ?

Opening the chest, we find a girdle of giant strength !

I take back almost everything I said about that old loon in the lighthouse !

Kundry takes the girdle, which brings her strength to 23. She gives her gauntlet of ogre strength to Melandris, bringing his strength to 18/00.

A little more exploring allows us to find a teleporter inside of another column :

The party is brought back to the hall. We no longer have anything to do in these tombs. Time to leave !

Along the way, we get into a fight against zombies and mummies, and later against purple worms. None of them are any trouble. As we reach the exit :

Well, sure... I don't think there's any point in keeping it, anyway.

Let's just save the next adventurers a lot of time and trouble by leaving the statue right next to this door.

As far as I'm concerned, he can have the stupid thing. What do we care ?

The thing's nearly useless anyway. The few clues it has given us weren't worth our efforts.

The poor guy really ended up working for nothing...

Less than nothing, actually : he's lost at least four levels to those vampires we fought.

We're finally able to leave these tombs :

The dragonstrike is over and, in spite of some damage, Kristophan is back to normal.

We visit a nearby temple to restore the levels lost by Faerlin and Melandris.

As we leave the temple, we're attacked by rogues who haven't yet learned not to mess with us :

Out of boredom, Sayali casts Cloud Kill (a spell that would be very nice if it weren't for its dreadfully limited range).

After the fight is done, we visit the training hall again, and then head back for the Imperial City. One of the prophecies said something about a book written by someone named Amrocar ; since we don't know anything about that guy, we decide to ask questions in a logical place :

The librarian is about as friendly to humans as other minotaurs, but mentioning Amrocar gets a surprisingly strong reaction out of him :

The librarian leaves in a huff, without explaining what made him so nervous. Just after that :

"The book is a worthless text written 100 years ago by the wizard Amrocar. Obsessed with the mysteries of the ruins in Blackwater Glade, it is filled with useless maps and such."

(Blackwater Glade is a huge swamp to the south.)

"It had lain undisturbed for scores of years, when suddenly one of our most trusted librarians, Bovinus, was caught stealing it. A terrible fight ensued. In the end, three of our guards lay dead, and the librarian had disappeared along with the tome."
"That is not all. I just learned that Bovinus' body has been found in an alleyway with his throat slit. But who killed him and where is the book now ?"

The slave adds that the guards don't believe the book to be still in the city.

I don't believe this.

I know, right ? A minotaur named Bovinus ?

I mean I can't believe that one of the few leads the oracle actually bothered to give us already turns out to be a dead end ! How are we supposed to find a stolen book on a whole continent ?

I'm sure the plot will bring it back to us sooner or later. Let's just be patient.

There's nothing left to do in Kristophan. It's time to say farewell to the Minotaur League and to head south.

 

[Crooked Bee]

Well, that was... wait, are you girls all crying ?

No. *snif*

Of course not. *snif*

It's something in my eyes. *snif*

Shut up. *snif*

 

[Crooked Bee]

I can only hope this isn't abandoned or anything. That'd be real bad.

 

[Erebus]

I thank you for all the comments, but I'm afraid this LP is deader than Deionarra. It was taking me too much time and there are much more important things I really should be focusing on.

While I haven't completed this playthrough, I hope I have given a decent idea of what this game is like. I'd say what I've shown amounts to a bit less than 50% of the game.

 

[Crooked Bee]

Aw that's a shame. :/

But yeah, priorities and all that.

 

[Kz3r0]

Aw that's a shame. :/

But yeah, priorities and all that.

Aren't you in a LP spree, just pick up this one if you like it so much.

 

[Crooked Bee]

I wouldn't be able to keep up with the high standard of party banter set by Erebus, sorry. I plan on doing an oldschool party- & turn-based dungeon crawler LP next month, but it won't be Goldbox.

A shame this is abandoned, really; I generally dislike LPs with made-up banter, but this one was totally awesome.

 

[Erebus]

Well, it's always possible that I'll find time in the future to post more updates. But I really can't promise anything.

 

[octavius]

In the Amiga version there is a Dark Wizard in this battle, to the right of the crosshairs.

I don't remember how it was in the DOS version, but I was mightily pissed off with the Amiga version when I discovered that the Wands of Magic Missiles, Lightning and Ice Storm that my non-mages used in Death Knights of Krynn suddenly were restricted to Mages only.

EDIT: Damned, it looks like Fire Shield may be bugged in the Amiga version. I tried the Cone of Cold spell twice on a Dark Wizard but it only did about 26-27 points of damage. The Dark Wizards have a Fire Shield that protects them against Fire (I know since a Delayed Blast Fireball didn't do damage), but they should take double damage from Cold. 27 damage in not much when cast by a lvl 15 Mage.

 

[Erebus]

I think the damages are only doubled when the target fails its saving throw (which may indeed be a bug). The damages inflicted by Cone of Cold on Dark Wizards can be ludicrously high or they can be fairly average.

 

[octavius]

I think the damages are only doubled when the target fails its saving throw (which may indeed be a bug). The damages inflicted by Cone of Cold on Dark Wizards can be ludicrously high or they can be fairly average.

I hope you're right.
In the meantime (before I can test it again) I've found that Cloud Kill is the single most effective spell against the Dark Wizards (I assume Mirror Image will help again Power Word: Kill). It will hurt them every round, preventing them from casting until they die. The downside is that the spell is not cast instantly, so a Wand or Cloud Kill (if such even exists in DQK) would be the best weapons against the Dark Wizards.
Darts of Hornets Nest (I think I brought over 4 from Death Knights) are also very effective, since they get so many attacks per round.

Dark Wizards are annoying, but they are also fun since they require some thinking to get rid of.

 

[Erebus]

(I assume Mirror Image will help again Power Word: Kill).

Mirror Image can indeed help against some spells and magical effects, but I've never seen it work against PWK. As an instant death spell that allows no saving throw, it's by far the surest way of killing a Dark Wizard. The two problems with PWK are that its range is fairly limited (the same is true of Cloud Kill) and that it requires having a single-classed white wizard (a dual-classed wizard would only be able to learn it very late in the game).

Aside from PWK, Cone of Cold and Cloud Kill, I'm not sure any spell can really be useful against a Dark Wizard. I suppose that Desintegrate could work, but the Wizard would have to be fairly unlucky.