The Dark Eye Advise for noob, going to start Realms of Arkania series.

[JanKrapivin]

Hello! I am not a skilled gamer, especially in CRPG domain. The only "classic" (before 1995) RPGs i have completed are Wasteland 1 (cool), Betrayal at Krondor (excellent) and Dark Sun: Shattered lands (cool). I have a fancy now to play games released 30 and 20 years ago, so i decided to play Realms of Arkania: Star trail (1994). But while reading manual and guide i noticed they are almost identical to Blade of Destiny guides. And there is a possibility to use party from BoD in ST. So, i have a number of questions.

1) Should i skip BoD game? I have read it is inferior in almost all aspects to ST and has some poor game design. Plot is rather generic and doesn't add much to later games.

2) Should i play DOSbox versions or remakes? I lean to original versions. For authentic experience and i find new versions rather ugly anyway.

3) Is this party OK?

Dwarf
Warrior
Druid
Magician
Elf? Green?
Elf? Silvan?

4) How many characters i can import from BoD? 6 or more? How much i need to create myself? As i understand i can switch characters.

5) Should i switch party leaders during the game? From Nature person in the woods to Charisma person in town for example?

6) I lean to Advanced mode. I hope it's not too way hard.

Any other advises for a noob are welcome.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Should i skip BoD game?

Yes. BoD is honestly insufferable and it left me with such a bad taste in my mouth that I never even proceeded to Star Trail which is supposed to be very good.

 

[JanKrapivin]

Should i skip BoD game?

Yes. BoD is honestly insufferable and it left me with such a bad taste in my mouth that I never even proceeded to Star Trail which is supposed to be very good.

What was the worst? I read they fixed smth in Unity remake and it is even not over polluted with bugs now.

 

[Darth Roxor]

The three worst things I remember very clearly were:

1. Banal and copypasted combat encounters
2. Weapons breaking ALL THE FUCKING TIME (some people will say that this can be 'easily avoided' by keeping them in good condition, but this is complete bullshit)
3. Worthless skills and spells with 0 uses in the entire game that were included only for larpy reasons

Also, don't even think about trying the Unity remake. One of the better aspects of RoA (including BoD) is its graphics, while the 'remake' uses stock shit from the asset store.

 

[moleman]

1) Should i skip BoD game? I have read it is inferior in almost all aspects to ST and has some poor game design. Plot is rather generic and doesn't add much to later games.

Matter of taste. I love all of the games in the trilogy. But BoD is my least fovourite. Worst design aspect in BoD is the unwinnable state you can easily find yourself in. If you plan to play it there is no shame in using a guide. As far as I remember there is only one possibility in Startrail where you can get in this situation too. But it is easily noticable.

Spoiler

When you are in Lowangen you can get three favours from your contact in town.
You MUST choose "Show an escape out of City" as one of them or you will forever be trapped there.

It is true that Startrail is better in (almost) all ascpects.

2) Should i play DOSbox versions or remakes? I lean to original versions. For authentic experience and i find new versions rather ugly anyway.

Dosbox for sure. The "remakes" are abominations that should be killed with fire.

3) Is this party OK?

Dwarf
Warrior
Druid
Magician
Elf? Green?
Elf? Silvan?

I would say kick one elf for an additional warrior class. (Warrior, Dwarf or Thorwaler).

4) How many characters i can import from BoD? 6 or more? How much i need to create myself? As i understand i can switch characters.

You can import as many characters as you like and switch between them when you visit a temple.
Don't use premade characters. Make you own.

5) Should i switch party leaders during the game? From Nature person in the woods to Charisma person in town for example?

Absolutely. Put a character with highest "Find traps" skill first in line in dungeons.

6) I lean to Advanced mode. I hope it's not too way hard.

You are correct.

Any other advises for a noob are welcome.

Attic had put all skills and spells from the Dark Eye PnP into the game. Some of them aren't being used in the games at all. "Riding"-Skill for example does nothing in the game, because you will never get in a situation to use it.
Invest in "Swimming" skill for all characters. (Might be more useful in BoD). Get a cloak/coat for every character. They can get sick in rain without one. Have at least one character invest in "cure disease" skill. Have some spare weapons ready. Save often.

 

[Nortar]

Hello! I am not a skilled gamer, especially in CRPG domain. The only "classic" (before 1995) RPGs i have completed are Wasteland 1 (cool), Betrayal at Krondor (excellent) and Dark Sun: Shattered lands (cool). I have a fancy now to play games released 30 and 20 years ago, so i decided to play Realms of Arkania: Star trail (1994). But while reading manual and guide i noticed they are almost identical to Blade of Destiny guides. And there is a possibility to use party from BoD in ST. So, i have a number of questions.

1) Should i skip BoD game? I have read it is inferior in almost all aspects to ST and has some poor game design. Plot is rather generic and doesn't add much to later games.

2) Should i play DOSbox versions or remakes? I lean to original versions. For authentic experience and i find new versions rather ugly anyway.

3) Is this party OK?

Dwarf
Warrior
Druid
Magician
Elf? Green?
Elf? Silvan?

4) How many characters i can import from BoD? 6 or more? How much i need to create myself? As i understand i can switch characters.

5) Should i switch party leaders during the game? From Nature person in the woods to Charisma person in town for example?

6) I lean to Advanced mode. I hope it's not too way hard.

Any other advises for a noob are welcome.

My party was pretty much the same:
1. Dwarf (tank, slash and blunt, axes)
2. Warrior (2-handed swords)
3. Rogue (rapier and throwing weapons)
4. Druid
5. Sorceress
6. Silvan Elf (Bow)
Dwarf was leading the group in dungeon, Rogue in the cities and Druid during the outdoor travels.

Play HD versions, start with BoD and get the "Magical herb pouch" as your first quest from "the mage who needs directions".
It's such a QoL changer I can't imagine playing without it.

 

[VerSacrum]

Absolutely do play in Advanced mode because the other one does your levelups for you, leading to terrible builds.

Party sounds good. The RoA trilogy is combat-wise pretty easy so you can make anything work. Having at least 2 melee specialists will make life much easier.

 

[jaekl]

The first game is actually better than the second one because you're free to adventure rather than being constantly handcuffed to tight, confusing time limits. The second game is also always stealing all of your equipment from you, including magical artifacts which is much more annoying than having a few cheap rapiers break in the first game.

If you want to import your party from the first into the second game, there's a bug that turns all your character portraits into a little boy which you can only fix by hex editing your character files.

 

[Dorateen]

If you want to import your party from the first into the second game, there's a bug that turns all your character portraits into a little boy which you can only fix by hex editing your character files.

Back in 1994, before the internets, you had to contact SirTech and they would mail you a 3.5 floppy disk with a fix for that bug. I remember when that disk arrived, I was so excited so I could finally start playing Star Trail.

 

[grimer]

i recommend including a witch in your party. devs really put a lot of thought into that class

 

[Radiane]

An interesting aspect is that the various classes are absolutely not balanced against each other, so some classes are clearly more powerful than others. Magicians are super powerful, the other casters kind of pale in comparison. In a certain way one can regard this as some kind of "challenge" option, try playing the game with weaker classes the next time etc.

Weapons breaking in this game follow a certain formula, some weapons are more prone to break than others. But don't carry too many spare weapons with you, the additional weight will reduce your action points in battle. Having one archer character like the elf pound at the enemies with arrows is very effective, cause ranged weapons make a ton of damage and don't break as long as the char using them doesn't get attacked

Advanced mode is the way to go, if only because leveling up is one of the highlights in this game, and where is the fun if you let this do the computer by itself?? Also I think in beginner mode you can't even access the skill list of your chars so you don't really know how they got distributed

Regarding certain unused skills, it may be bit of a letdown, but then again, you don't really know which of them are useful or not, (if you don't look it up somewhere, but that prevents you from having an interesting experience with these type of games) so it kind of adds up to the tension. Also, other games had this "issue" too, like the Buck Rogers games.

And I consider BoD to be the best game in the trilogy because of the free approachable world map and the main quest you have to fulfill. Startrail is also very good in this regard, maybe even better, but it doesn't have as many interesting dungeons and places like BoD has. Quite many of them are optional, and that really does create an unique sense of adventure.

Don't know about the "modern" version, I'm referring to the 1990s dos version

 

[JanKrapivin]

Thanks for all your advises! I have recently started Blade of Destiny. Only at the beginning. clearing the Academy Tower in Thorwal. 2500 exp.

I have now some new questions

1) Do i need Strength to better attack with missile, throwing and pointed weapons? Being used to DnD i left Rogue with 8 STR. Throwing stars are THROWING weapon, right? It seems the only stackable throwing weapon.

2) I missed the necessity of Intuition for casters, thinking it is only a Perception skill, and left my Druid with 8 INT. He is rather useless now in magic, i bought him a Longbow, is he viable and i can just level-up him or should i replace him?

3) I raise money mostly by cheating/pickpocketing, but its not very good for my roleplay, are there any other good income methods except collecting herbs? If any.

4) Is there a way to get details of a weapon/item inside the game? Puting item on an... eye just gives me the name.

5) When level-up should i convert skill increase attempts to AP and "magic increase attempts"? At 1 lvl a number of available spells is rather scarce.

6) How to use a whetstone..?

7) What of items do i need during the game? I have to carry a lot now, not knowing what can be useful, ropes, shovel, fish hooks, crowbar etc

Thx!

 

[ShaggyMoose]

I tried the BoD remake and didn't make it past about four hours. The whole thing was just a fucking chore (and I love the Gothic games).

 

[I eat frozen vegetables]

I highly recommend using the PC Gaming Wiki to see what else you can do. Start from the link I posted and keep going. Make sure to dot your I's and cross your T's as well.

 

[pm_675]

Thanks for all your advises! I have recently started Blade of Destiny. Only at the beginning. clearing the Academy Tower in Thorwal. 2500 exp.

I have now some new questions

1) Do i need Strength to better attack with missile, throwing and pointed weapons? Being used to DnD i left Rogue with 8 STR. Throwing stars are THROWING weapon, right? It seems the only stackable throwing weapon.

2) I missed the necessity of Intuition for casters, thinking it is only a Perception skill, and left my Druid with 8 INT. He is rather useless now in magic, i bought him a Longbow, is he viable and i can just level-up him or should i replace him?

The Dark Eye, RoA system, is not DnD. It's german therefore complicated and I always forgot how exactly works for each game but you roll under three stats. Wich ones depends on what talent or spells are you using.

Tl;dr read the manual to know what to do

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

The Dark Eye is basically german DnD, but at the same time, germans couldn't help themselves and included gigantic doses of autism in the ruleset, which Hnekel and co. tried to implement in their game and this means a lot of stuff makes no sense or is kinda unuseful, even more so than your usual crpg.

There's plenty of classes like jester or dancer that are better for pnp roleplaying purposes than old school crpg gameplay. There's no reason to not go dwarf rogue. Ice elves are the best kind iirc.

Don't just read the manual. You will need a guide if you're an absolute beginner, because even as a somewhat seasoned crpg player you'll be overwhelmed by the autism in this game's systems.

 

[Nortar]

There's no reason to not go dwarf rogue. Ice elves are the best kind iirc.

In DSA, like in the first edition of D&D, the dwarf is a dwarf.
You don't pick a class for dwarf, he's in a class of his own, which is, indeed, a fighter with a few "rogue" skills, like pick-locks.

The biggest difference, DSA depends on 3 attributes to govern all the skills and combat checks, which makes it more flexible than D&D.
You can have a competent archer with low(-ish) Dex stat, for example.

 

[Nortar]

Thanks for all your advises! I have recently started Blade of Destiny. Only at the beginning. clearing the Academy Tower in Thorwal. 2500 exp.

I have now some new questions

1) Do i need Strength to better attack with missile, throwing and pointed weapons? Being used to DnD i left Rogue with 8 STR. Throwing stars are THROWING weapon, right? It seems the only stackable throwing weapon.

2) I missed the necessity of Intuition for casters, thinking it is only a Perception skill, and left my Druid with 8 INT. He is rather useless now in magic, i bought him a Longbow, is he viable and i can just level-up him or should i replace him?

3) I raise money mostly by cheating/pickpocketing, but its not very good for my roleplay, are there any other good income methods except collecting herbs? If any.

4) Is there a way to get details of a weapon/item inside the game? Puting item on an... eye just gives me the name.

5) When level-up should i convert skill increase attempts to AP and "magic increase attempts"? At 1 lvl a number of available spells is rather scarce.

6) How to use a whetstone..?

7) What of items do i need during the game? I have to carry a lot now, not knowing what can be useful, ropes, shovel, fish hooks, crowbar etc

Thx!

I played HD version, and most of the answers are available in the UI already.
When you mouse-over a stat or a skill, it highlights the skills it governs of the stat it depends on.
Most of the time it's the summ of 3 stats divided by 5. In some cases, usually with spells, some stats counted twice. Like (2 x Intuition + Cleverness)/5.

1. Base Ranged value is (Int + Dex + Str) / 5

So you can get by without high Str, if your Dex and Intuition are decent enough.

2. I only used magic occasionally as it's a pita to recover mana.
My druid had Obsidian Dagger to boost his herb-gathering. My sorcess used a Sling with "free ammo", to not worry about pellets.
You can make rituals to upgrade caster's staves, orbs and daggers with some additional properties. Like inbue them with light spell or make staff turn into a rope at will.

3. There's also Gambling and Dancing. My dorf gambled all across Aventuria.

4. Mouse over and right click works in HD version.

5. It all depends on what you want the most. If all your skills are either covered across the party or already at high enough values, you can focus more on magic.
But given how cumbersome mana system is, I ended up only using a select few spells, with majority of them being just a waste of points.

6. Right-click, Repair, select a weapon to repair. You need to have a repairable weapon in your inventory.

7. A good question. Ropes, pitons and hammers are nearly a must have when traversing mountains, especially if you carry a bunch of wussies casters with you.
Never used hooks, but I guess it can be used for stocking up on food in wilderness. Crowbars and shovels are needed to make way in mines and dungeons.
So if you can't carry them all the time stock up in a nearest town before moving out.

 

[JanKrapivin]

Thanks again! Yeah, i know that it is not DnD : ) I have read manual, tips from cluebook and some guides, but i was overwhelmed with information. Actually the only big thing i missed is a damage calculation formula.

I play a DOSbox version, so unfortunately a number of advises are not applicable here.

I have read that in BoD you can get in an unwinnible state, so i keep saving... saves in a different folder for the future. I checked that you can reuse saves, if you change its name to the recent one.

 

[Shinji]

I remember the first time I played RoA I just went in blind, and created characters based on how "cool" they looked.
I didn't survive long. I restarted multiple times just to get somewhere, but I had a lot of fun.

I really like the intro of the first one

 

[jaekl]

Thanks again! Yeah, i know that it is not DnD : ) I have read manual, tips from cluebook and some guides, but i was overwhelmed with information. Actually the only big thing i missed is a damage calculation formula.

I play a DOSbox version, so unfortunately a number of advises are not applicable here.

I have read that in BoD you can get in an unwinnible state, so i keep saving... saves in a different folder for the future. I checked that you can reuse saves, if you change its name to the recent one.

The secret to the first game is poison, even if the poison sounds cheap and shitty it will destroy anything in your path. I don't think the fighters can use it though, it has to be a rogue or something.

EDIT: by this I mean, don't bother buying the expensive poison over cheap poison

 

[Old Hans]

somehow I managed to beat the first game and I thought it was very lack luster. it has a cool overland map system, but its totally ruined when you realize all of the nodes will keep replaying the same events every time you visit

 

[JanKrapivin]

Hi! Few more questions.

1) How long poisoned weapon stays poisoned?

2) Is there any use in Agressive/Careful attacks?

3) I have managed to made some weapons magical in the Temple of Ingrimm, but i can't understand what effect it gives. I hoped it won't break now, but... no, it breaks

 

[Radiane]

1) For as long as you land a few hits (like 3 to 5 hits?) with the poisoned weapon. I think even if your poisoned weapon breaks you can land poisonous hits barefisted as long as the broken weapon is in the weapons slot

2) Aggressive attacks increase your attack modifier while decreasing your defense modifier, careful attacks are the reverse. The idea behind this is to use more aggressive attacks with, let's say, a warrior full in plate armor, as that character can afford a worse defense because of his strong armor which can absorb a part of the damage. A character in lighter armor otoh wouldn't want to risk getting hit by increasing his attack at the expense of his defense and thus would rather choose the/some other option.

3) Temples can turn your weapons magical but yes they can still break. Many magic weapons you can find also can break, while some magic weapons can never break. (The magic staff wizards start with are one of those types) Magic weapons (apart from them having better stats than standard weapons and therefore being useful to use throughout) are able to hit monsters who are otherwise insensitive to non-magical weapons. But only a few enemies need such weapons to be hit and in those cases spells also work (or the blunt hit from a wizard staff).

 

[JanKrapivin]

1) For as long as you land a few hits (like 3 to 5 hits?) with the poisoned weapon. I think even if your poisoned weapon breaks you can land poisonous hits barefisted as long as the broken weapon is in the weapons slot

Thanks for your answer! So it is rounds, not even hours?

2) Aggressive attacks increase your attack modifier while decreasing your defense modifier, careful attacks are the reverse. The idea behind this is to use more aggressive attacks with, let's say, a warrior full in plate armor, as that character can afford a worse defense because of his strong armor which can absorb a part of the damage. A character in lighter armor otoh wouldn't want to risk getting hit by increasing his attack at the expense of his defense and thus would rather choose the/some other option.

Yeah, i got it, but i read somewhere that aggressive mode doesn't bring much better number of successful attacks. I also didn't notice any better attack count. It is strange how in this game melee characters almost always miss... And sometimes my Wizard hits with >30hp in close range with wand.

3) Temples can turn your weapons magical but yes they can still break. Many magic weapons you can find also can break, while some magic weapons can never break. (The magic staff wizards start with are one of those types) Magic weapons (apart from them having better stats than standard weapons and therefore being useful to use throughout) are able to hit monsters who are otherwise insensitive to non-magical weapons. But only a few enemies need such weapons to be hit and in those cases spells also work (or the blunt hit from a wizard staff).

As i can't watch item or weapon stat in-game (only attack stats of character) i can't understand if there is smth like 1d8 +~3 +PLUS n* (* - number from magic)

And in BoD you can't use whetstone, right? Only way to repair weapon is to... break and repair by smith, right?