Gold Box SSI's Gold Box Series Thread

[Jo498]

Can anybody confirm my recollection that at in the AMIGA versions of the Krynn games one could use premade character icons that were looking more "professional" than the customizable ones (where you can pick weapon, colors etc. individually but everything looks fairly crude)? I do not remember about the Mac versions and the PC ones I recently played of Death Knights and PoR did only have the crude but customizable ones. I like the customization but it would be cool if those were less crude or one had more/different options.

 

[Jaesun]

Yes, on the Amiga version (It may be all of them, or it was just one series) you could draw your own character sprites. I remember doing that as a kid, and what I drew was terrible.

 

[octavius]

When I replayed the Krynn series some years ago I used the Amiga versions just because of the nicer looking character icons.

 

[araan]

If I remember correctly, the Bag of Holding just halves your encumbrance or something like that, you can not put items into it. Where did you find one?

Ah great, did not notice that, I will check it when I get in game. (Would have been more useful to have the extra space for more item slots, though!) Bag of Holding location below the spoiler jump:

Spoiler

In one of the treasure chambers (Silver/Copper) at the top of the pyramid on Sorcerer's Isle.

 

[Null Null]

Ah great, did not notice that, I will check it when I get in game. (Would have been more useful to have the extra space for more item slots, though!) Bag of Holding location below the spoiler jump:

Spoiler

In one of the treasure chambers (Silver/Copper) at the top of the pyramid on Sorcerer's Isle.

Spoiler

It's a randomly generated item then. You got very lucky.

 

[Null Null]

That reminds me of something...[checking old PoD thread]...
It looks like the party could have worked for Arcam, the chief beholder in Mulmaster, and get quests to wipe out his competitors. But with no boats and Mulmaster being the place furthest away from Phlan I can't imagine many players having done this.

But you did go to Mulmaster. Was there any option to work for Arcam?

For your amusement (well, and mine), I did try to run an Arcam campaign.

First he (edit: the Chancellor, not the big eyeball) sends you after Thorne, Manshoon, and Marcus. He will pay you 60 gems each time, even if you initially bargain him up.

Then he sends you after Sasha, Priam, Nacacia, Silk, and Vala. Of course, you can't bring them back, so he just accuses you of failing and tells you the people whose quests you still haven't finished.

When you finish all five, he says 'you worry us' and attacks.

 

[Jo498]

Re: icons. I did not mean drawing one's own icons from scratch (don't remember, maybe this was possible as well), I mean instead of picking from the standard coloration/weapons/heads one could pick from about 2-3 "professional" pre-made icons for each class. I distinctly remember the red mage icon in "Champions". There was also a Ranger who looked a little like an American Football player...

I am sure I never encountered a bag of holding, I was extraordinarily unlucky with random treasure in PoR recently: The trolls in the barn battle gave me two useless +1 polearms and it was similar with the treasure rooms in the Pyramid...
The restricted item slots get a little better in the later games when you can bundle scrolls. Items really are a mixed blessing in the later games because "detect" does not help so much as almost every foe has +1/+2 weapons/armor, so one has to look carefully for extra items and try them out not to miss the +3/+4 stuff.

 

[Kersey]

I've released a new beta version of Gold Box Companion.

- Support for Unlimited Adventures, Buck Rogers: Countdown to Doomsday and Matrix Cubed.
- Automapping for all games.
- Journal entries / passwords can be viewed from a menu.
- Save game editor where you can backup saves, add/replace party characters and edit inventory.
- "Encamp-fix" / restore spells / character editing can no longer be used in combat.

12 games is a big number of titles to support so there are most likely bugs and quirks still left.

Thanks for all the work you've put into this. I played around with it some and I especially enjoy the automapping since it makes playing on the go so much more feasible - and I seem to be on the go almost constantly these days. Speaking of the automap, at least Secret of the Silver Blades really calls for a different implementation if you ever have the time for it. I'm sure you know all about that already but just saying it would be greatly appreciated. Huge thumbs up for turning off the quick option after combat.

Man I really should be getting back to my Pools of Darkness playthrough. Problem is I'm not too keen on the mouse interface for combat and I've been stuck with a laptop with no keypad for ages now. Wonder if there's anything to be done about that. At least PoD has a mouse interface unlike some of the earlier games.

 

[Jo498]

Can't you somehow reassign the keys to some you have on your keyboard? Maybe there is a keyboard reassigning tool that would allow you to map the arrow or numberpad keys to some of the standard keyboard keys.

 

[octavius]

If it runs through DOSBox you can reassign keys.

 

[Kersey]

I know I can reassign keys in DOSBox but it didn't really cross my mind as an answer to this particular problem. The games make extensive use of hotkeys and in some I even need to fiddle with passwords and other keyboard inputs so fudging up the keyboard doesn't seem like such a good idea. As for a key setup with say diagonal directions on another part of the keyboard than the main four directions, that's not something I'm willing to put up with.

Some of the games seem to have fairly workable mouse interfaces though. I can't remember exactly what my beef with PoD was exactly but with my latest fiddling around with FRUA I thought the combat there plays kind of well with the mouse. For the older games I might have another look at the Amiga versions, I seem to remember them being designed around the mouse a lot more than the PC versions. I'll most likely just try some FRUA adventures for now to scratch the Gold Box itch.

 

[Jo498]

Screen shots in DOS Box are with Alt F5, right? But where does the program save them? I cannot find them...
(Finally finished PoR, I had postponed the Castle for some time. And I had to look up some maps for the maze.... this is enervating with teleporters as well. The battles are not that hard, though. I still wonder whether the final battle was not split up (bunch of high lvl fighters + big T) in the AMIGA version. In my recollection they were all together which should be considerably harder because T is fairly immune to magic so one has to focus on him with the physical attacks)

 

[octavius]

Screen shots in DOS Box are with Alt F5, right? But where does the program save them? I cannot find them...

They are in a folder called Capture.

 

[Arulan]

It's CTRL-F5 to take a screenshot.

 

[octavius]

And CTRL-ALT-F5 to make a movie.

 

[madrigal]

Got inspired by this thread so just finished another playthrough of pool of Radiance, I set all the attributes to their minimum values to up the challenge a bit.

The game is fairly forgiving with its dice rolls and it was nice when getting attacked by stirges in the wilderness that there was only one.
I noticed a few things that I hadn't on previous playthroughs.

Encumberance seemed to be bugged with 3 strength, if I tried sharing loot it would cause a ridiulous amount of jewelery to be given to everyone and I was unable to take or transfer platinum to anyone because they were overloaded, so I had to drop and ignore all money and gems and make enough to train by selling magical equipment.

Low strength also made range weapons more useful because they did not suffer from a strength or dexterity penalty.
Ring of feather falling doesn't prevent dying when falling down wells.

Manual of bodily health makes a big difference when you only have a few hitpoints.

Cloak of elvenkind is rarely useful, on a rare occasion wearer will outlast everyone and monsters will not attack, but usually it would just prevent anyone else from casting healing spells because they can't be targeted.

Bracers of AC 2 are worse than Bracers of AC 3 by 1.

Princess Fatima stayed with me after leaving kobold caves, maybe the game felt sorry for my pathetic party.

I thought Tyranthraxus was completely immune to magic, but I hit him once with a wand of magic missiles.

All in all perfectly playable with minimum stats, although some areas are a bit harder to survive.

 

[octavius]

That was a refreshing read compared to the GOG subforum, where every message that is not about how to transfer parties, is about how to abuse glitches and game mechanics to make the game as easy as possible.

Got inspired by this thread so just finished another playthrough of pool of Radiance, I set all the attributes to their minimum values to up the challenge a bit.

The game is fairly forgiving with its dice rolls and it was nice when getting attacked by stirges in the wilderness that there was only one.

Probably due to low stats.

 

[Jo498]

The 63999 or so jewels seems to be a bug of the game. I remember that I encountered that when I played it 25 years ago on Amiga.

 

[Arulan]

The 63999 or so jewels seems to be a bug of the game. I remember that I encountered that when I played it 25 years ago on Amiga.

If I do encounter it, it's usually after visiting a shopkeeper. I believe it has something to do with the Pool/Share commands. I usually just make sure to save beforehand.

I finished the Pyramid the other day. Here is my map (I couldn't scan, so this will do). While auto-mapping was generally a positive feature, there is certainly something that was lost.

Spoiler

 

[octavius]

You're even more oldfag than me. Nowadays I take screenshots instead of jotting down everything.

 

[Jo498]

They really made use of the code wheel. Fortunately the runes used in game are fairly easy to decipher. There are a few I never got right when asked at the start of the game because the pixelated shape is so hard to identify. But I was really angry that after lengthy deciphering of two passwords I got in the Castle outskirts I could not use it because I had somehow triggered an alarm that would never go away, everyone would attack on sight and I simply had to breach the gate to the maze (taking some damage from boulders thrown at me but no battle).

Gateway is really costing me nerves. This really is by far the worst game of the series I played. (And I now remember that I probably got as far as I am now when I played it in the early 2000s) Most battles so far were fairly and usually boringly easy but now for the last statue some are hard in a stupid way (Medusas).
The mechanics is also broken. I found two cloaks of displacement before entering that section but they do not work. Neither does a potion of invisibility help against the medusas gazes (and the saving throws of lv 5-6 characters are extremely poor, so I have now been trying that battle for three times...) Shouldn't the Medusas be unable to target a displaced or invisible character with their gaze?

 

[octavius]

Invisibility is broken in FRUA (I made a thread at the FRUA forums),and evidently also in Gateway (it's hard to keep track of how everything works from GB game to GB game).
What you need is Mirrors (or even better - Silver Shields) to reflect their gaze attacks.

But note that the targeting part only applies if you haven't already performed an action that round.

 

[PunchBarkeepInFace]

Yeah the medusa battles are insanely easy if you know you are going to be fighting medusas. Just buy mirrors at any Adventurer Supply Shop and equip them. The gaze gets deflected back and can turn the attacker to stone.

Cast Prayer before entering into any combat that you think is gonna be tough. It improves your rolls, including saving throws. I just played through Gateway and Treasures last month. If I remember correctly, Prayer was broken in Treasures such that it didn't really work in combat. It only effected the caster. Or maybe that is how it is actually supposed to work. So it's better to cast it before combat begins.

Treasures was better than Gateway.

Now I have been playing FRUA. Unfortunately I cannot play "hacked" designs because I can't get UAShell to work. I have been playing a series of "vanilla" modules though and they are really good.

 

[Jo498]

Yes, I know about the mirrors. I do not think there are silver shields in that game (I think one can acquire two in Pools of Darkness)

But how can I suspect that some mountainous eyrie has lots of medusas? I expected griffins and dragons and there were two black dragons who immediately became nauseous in a stinking cloud. That was the easiest battle in the whole game. The "boss" was also ridiculously easy, she could not do anything and had less hp than her bloody medusas.

I think "prayer" is broken in several games and only affects the caster when cast in combat. Bless does work if the party members are close together and all work finde pre-combat.

So invisibility only hides before doing anything? I probably should have known that. But should not displacement work in the opposite way, that is like "blink" making targetting impossible after a combat action. Or am I confusing something again because there is some subtle difference between displaced and blinking? Someone who is both invisible and "blinking" should be impossible to target directly but will of course be affected by area spells or if a melee attacker "moves" directly into the character.

 

[Null Null]

Yes, I know about the mirrors. I do not think there are silver shields in that game (I think one can acquire two in Pools of Darkness)

But how can I suspect that some mountainous eyrie has lots of medusas? I expected griffins and dragons and there were two black dragons who immediately became nauseous in a stinking cloud. That was the easiest battle in the whole game. The "boss" was also ridiculously easy, she could not do anything and had less hp than her bloody medusas.

I think "prayer" is broken in several games and only affects the caster when cast in combat. Bless does work if the party members are close together and all work finde pre-combat.

So invisibility only hides before doing anything? I probably should have known that. But should not displacement work in the opposite way, that is like "blink" making targetting impossible after a combat action. Or am I confusing something again because there is some subtle difference between displaced and blinking? Someone who is both invisible and "blinking" should be impossible to target directly but will of course be affected by area spells or if a melee attacker "moves" directly into the character.

Invisibility and blinking work quite nicely together, as you stated. I think there is (in FRUA) a 1/10 chance of monsters being able to launch ranged attacks on you because you act in the same segment, but I'm not sure how to disprove that.

Ceptienne's a sorceress, she likes to have magical monsters around, particularly other girls. At least that was how I explained it to myself.