Let's get famous in Darklands!

[Pussycat669]

Index
1. Raubritter
2. Heathens
3. Mines
4. More mines
5. Dragon
6. Sabbat
7. Templars
8. Preparations
9. Dark Fortress & Ending

Man, this takes me back. I still remember that haircut when I first saw it in a game magazine which I had stolen from my brother back in good old 1992. To celebrate the 19th anniversary of this event, I thought it might be time to actually play the game and examine if all the positive feedback holds true for the actual experience. I'll try to keep it brief so this will be more of a 'watch my awesome screen collection' kinda thing with one or two sentences thrown in here and there. You've been warned.

There are four free character slots however and since getting fellow forum members to sign up, arguably by attracting their collective need to project themselves on a virtual character whose wit, courage and/or skills would usually surpass their own, is the latest thing these days, I'll make this the official recruitment call for three brave volunteers. Preferably anyone who wants to share his/her inexperience with the game. My rule of thumb, if there is a surfeit amount of volunteers, would be: the less work for me, the higher the chances for you. So man up, get the game and manual, create the most horribly inefficient character built you can think of and it will still be more appreciated than that guy writing 'I want a guy who talks good'.

Quick tutorial from my first half hour messing around:

After choosing name, nickname and gender, the important part begins with choosing your background, depicted in the screen above. Depending on the background, you get a different amount of experience points (the red goo) which you can freely distribute among the attributes (the usual: Endurance, Strength, Agility, Perception, Intelligence, Charisma. Divine Favor is this game's equivalent of mana from my understanding and is already 99 from the start). According to the manual, this is pretty much your only opportunity to modify your attributes permanently. There are some notable differences, like strength also being health. Please refer to page 22 or so of the manual for a more in-depth explanation about attributes and skills since there is no bloody way I'm going to bloat this further. Another thing of notice are those 1:00, 3:00, etc. next to the skills. These are skill bonuses and training capabilities. After you have chosen your background, you can start to choose professions. Each profession will cost your character five years of his life and raise/decrease some attributes (haven't looked up yet how aging factors in in all of this) while giving you more EP to distribute among your skills only. Coming back to the numbers, let's say a recruit gets a 5:07 for a weapon skill. That means that the skill is automatically increased by 5 points and you can additionally raise the skill for 7 more points using your free EP.

Skills are:
Edged weapons, impact weapons, flail weapons, polearm weapons, thrown weapons, bow weapons, missile device weapons (crossbows & guns)
Alchemy, religious training, virtue, speak common, speak latin, read and write
Healing, artifice, stealth, streetwise, riding, woodwise (=outdoorsman)

Some of the more advanced professions may require a career chain so to speak. My first attempt, Holger 'Ox' Greifenberg, a battle hardened veteran, required him to first become a recruit then a soldier. He may not be the brightest fellow around and he's certainly not likable, but he should hold his grounds in a stand up fight.

That's it for now. Let's see where this goes.

 

[Ashery]

Creating a char now, going for the backup fighter/priest slot (ie your everyday prayers that get used as often as needed, while the primary priest is available for random encounters).

Edit: Ahh...now I remember why I enjoy this game so much. Nothing beats spending nearly half an hour tweaking one character.

Current setup:

Noble
37Str, 33End, 12Agi, 21Per, 19Int, 31Chr

Noble Heir
5WImp, 4WThr, 8Relg, 7Virt, 3Ride, 9SpkC, 4R&W, 1SpkL

Abbot
8Relg, 9Virt, 3WImp, 5SpkC, 3SpkL

Knight
5Relg, 5Virt, 3WThr, 1WImp, 2SpkC

Can tweak it if ya want (If you have another char (eg the alchemist) that also has high Cha/SpkC, min/max even more than I did and max relg/virt every time, bump up riding for the random knight encounter, etc), but the skill setup as is should do well enough.

Edit 2: Oh yea, a name. Anton "Ashe" Nottelein is as good as any.

 

[JagreenLern]

Jagreen Lern, Called "Theocrat"

Nobility
Student-> Alchemist

29 End
25 Str
30 Agl
28 Per
34 Int
20 Chr

15 Edged
6 Impact
3 Flail
6 Polearms
10 Thrown
6 Bow
2 MsD

19 Alchemy
14 Religion
7 Virtue
13 Speak Common
24 Speak Latin
26 Read & Write

9 Healing
9 Artifice
3 Stealth
10 Streetwise
5 Ride
3 Woodwise

Reporting for duty!

 

[RK47]

Good luck man, this game's pretty incline.

 

[Crooked Bee]

Yay!

This post is reserved for my character build. Lemme just study the manual a bit...

EDIT2. My new build, in which I've tried to take into account Ashery's comments.

Gender: Female
Name: Irene Honeychurch
Nickname: Bee
Family background: Town trades family

32 END
34 STR
14 AGL
31 PER
18 INT
31 CHR

Occupation: Thief
WEdg: 14
WThr: 09
Relg: 07
Virt: 03
SpkC: 11
R&W: 05
Artf: 16
Stlh: 18
StrW: 16

2nd occupation: Thief
WEdg: 22
Artf: 25
Stlh: 33
StrW: 27

3rd occupation: Thief
WEdg: 27
Artf: 34
Slth: 42
StrW: 38

Irene "Bee" Honeychurch's an, uhm, experienced female thief, having already reached the age of 30. She looks, however, very young and beautiful and stuffies.

 

[Ashery]

Yay!

This post is reserved for my character build. Lemme just study the manual a bit...

EDIT. So ... we already have characters with high Intelligence and high Strength. Hmm. I guess I'll go for something stealthy, thief-y, and streetwise.

Actually, all chars save for the alchemist should have high str (And even the alchemist should aim for the high 20's before taking jobs as he'll lose some if he uses a setup similar to mine (Four or so jobs, most of which reduce str)). End is also important (Str + End determine how much you can wear), but should generally remain a bit below Str as you'll want to run out of End before Str in combat (End = knock out, Str = death). Agility, surprisngly enough, ends up being the primary dump stat.

Skill wise, we really need someone with high healing (30+ for 2hp per rest, iirc).

Also, the more chars with high, or even just modest virt/relg, the better.

 

[Crooked Bee]

So, you think my build isn't viable? :/ What if I make my END and STR a bit higher, and AGL, INT, and CHR a bit lower?

 

[Ashery]

With that Str/End, yea, it's not really viable. I don't even start my alchemist that low (As much as you try to avoid it, everyone will be in melee combat nearly every fight, so even your alchemist needs to be able to hold his own), but then again, an alchemist also loses three or four points due to job selection.

The thing is, with your str/end, you'll be overloaded (Not just heavy load, but overloaded) with your basic full plate set, so your agility will effectively be 1 if you go fully armored. You'll also be swinging slow as hell. Sadly, agility fighters as they exist in most other games (BG, etc), aren't really viable in Darklands as you'll be out of commission for a week after a couple fights with the thugs in town.

A thief theme works well enough for the fourth slot, but the other classes need to have their basics covered if you do so (I'd need to change from backup fighter/cleric to pure cleric and max out healing, the alchemist would need to put a fair amount of focus on all speaking/interacting skills (He needs to have at least some, anyways, as he'll be the leader for university/alchemist interaction), and probably a few other tweaks that escape me at the moment.

Actually, even pure fighters aren't really necessary, so there's a fair amount of wiggle room for flavor selections.

 

[Crooked Bee]

Thanks, Ashery! I've changed my build to a pure Thief one, with 32 END and 34 STR (see above). I've dumped Agility; hope it doesn't matter even for a thief. My INT is now really low, too...

 

[Ashery]

Heh, you didn't have to make him a pure thief, I was just using the term "thief build" to refer to a char with high stealth/streetwise/artifice. Half the fun of creating characters is fiddling with career paths.

Pretty much any char build can be made viable provided that (with only one real exception) they have good str/end (>30). The only reason alchemists are an exception is because they need high int (40 at age 15 is ideal), need decent cha for alchemist/university interaction, and lose one point in str/end for every alchemy oriented profession selected.

 

[Crooked Bee]

Nah, I'm fine with a pure thief. At least my Artifice, Stealth and Streetwise are now maxed out.

 

[korenzel]

Here's a priest. I have no idea what stats are relevant so I went with a well rounded character.

Name: Eggehard Kaufmann

Background: Town Trades Family

Initial stats :

End 25
Str 30
Agl 20
Per 24
Int 30
Chr 35
DF 99

1st occupation : Novice Monk

WFll 7

Relg 16
Virt 14
SpkL 11
R&W 15

Heal 10
Ride 4

2nd occupation : Monk

WFll 15

Relg 25
Virt 24
SpkL 15
R&W 20

Heal 20
Ride 5

3rd occupation : Priest

WFll 18

Relg 35
Virt 34

Heal 30

 

[Pussycat669]

@korenzel
Sorry, too late

EDIT: On second thought, Ashery seems to know what he's writing about and Jagreen only posted his results, costing me precious minutes of reconstruction work, so there's still a chance.

The roster is good to go. Last chance to make any changes before departure.

@Bee
The numbers didn't add up in your case for some reasons so I had to make some slight modification. Let me know if it's alright with you.

Is the version from Abandonia already patched by the way?

 

[Crooked Bee]

@Bee
The numbers didn't add up in your case for some reasons so I had to make some slight modification. Let me know if it's alright with you.

Sure, looking swell! Strange that it didn't add up, I must've made a typo or something.

Is the version from Abandonia already patched by the way?

Well, according to README.TXT, it's version 483.07: "This version is a major upgrade. Numerous problems and difficulties have been solved, thanks both to the many contributions and notes from users, and our own continuing testing. This version allows save-games during certain big battles, and makes both loading and saving much more reliable." Dunno if there's a later version.

 

[MMXI]

Damn. Too late to sign up. I'll be following this LP closely. MORE!

 

[Trash]

Been playing this gem since it was released. Shit, I even remember the magazines raving all about it. One of the single best games ever made. Godspeed with the LP!

 

[korenzel]

@korenzel
Sorry, too late Sad

My bad, I thought your initial character was just an example and not part of the actual team.

The game looks interesting, I played a bit and there's a lot of things to do.

 

[Ashery]

Looks like I'll need to modify my char a bit for a pure priest role.

I'd also suggest some changes to the alch, but meh, exerting a bit too much control as is ;p

Edit: Modified my char for healing duties. Was initially designed to go from abbot to bishop (Bishop requires 25per/int/cha), but that would've left me two short of 30 healing, meaning we'd regain a mere 1hp per night of resting. It's possible to train it in game, but you're pretty much fucked early game unless you get lucky and you happen to have a good healer in the first town or find a cheap saint that boosts healing significantly.

Noble
34End, 37Str, 12Agl, 25Per, 23Int, 23Cha

Noble Heir
8Heal, 5WImp, 8Relg, 7Virt, 6SpkC, 3SpkL, 4R&W

Abbot
1WImp, 8Heal, 9Virt, 5Relg, 3SpkC, 1SpkL, 1R&W

Abbot
8Heal, 9Virt, 5Relg, 1SpkC

 

[Pussycat669]

Ok, I'll invest my EPs from healing into something else then. Or does a secondary healer make sense when we don't play in ironman mode?

I wonder how vital clerics and alchemists really are. From the things I could gather on the net, you can pretty much can the entire party if you don't have them on board.

 

[Ashery]

Healing is probably the least useful skill to have on multiple people. Not only that, but you're better off with none at all with it down in the low/mid teens. The only real career paths a healer can take if you want to start adventuring at 30 are either similar to the one my char took or if you go professor->physician for a sort of alchemy/healing hybrid. This is, of course, assuming you want to start with 2str regen per rest. Not recquired, but it certainly makes the early game a fair bit easier.

You could, theoretically, get by without an alchemist if you don't mind burning tons of money on store bought potions (And can you even get the higher quality ones from merchants?) Saintly aid, however, cannot be thrown away as easily as it doesn't have the same direct effect on encounters that potions do. Then again, certain potions can be used in a similar manner, so *shrug*. Not even sure if using store bought potions would qualify as a "no alchemist" group.

Pretty much every char can benefit from having decent viture, though. Nothing like having some spare DF available if you're main "cleric" is low.

 

[Crooked Bee]

So when do we begin adventuring and getting famous?

 

[Pussycat669]

Soon enough, no worries. It's just that I had my first go at the board game adaption of Doom last night and was rather unsatisfied by the game balance, so I'm pondering on some good house rules for a more round experience. I always find strange ways to kill my time. :/

@Ashery
Thanks for the crash course. I put the EPs in virtue and riding instead, I think.

 

[MMXI]

Hey Pussycat669. I just got a PM from JagreenLern asking me if I wanted to take up his spot in your party as he will be away on business for the foreseeable future. So basically, change his character's name to Wolfgang Mmxi, nickname Death.

Cheers.

 

[JagreenLern]

Hey Pussycat669. I just got a PM from JagreenLern asking me if I wanted to take up his spot in your party as he will be away on business for the foreseeable future. So basically, change his character's name to Wolfgang Mmxi, nickname Death.

Cheers.

Bullshit. I sent no such PM.

 

[MMXI]

Bullshit. I sent no such PM.