Dark Sun: Shattered Lands is fucking great

[Tse Tse Fly]

By the way, which SSI's rpgs are worth checking out in the first place? Is it safe for a newfag to start with this one?

 

[Dorateen]

By the way, which SSI's rpgs are worth checking out in the first place?

All of them, but especially the Gold Box games, which include the AD&D collections. Exploration is done in first person instead of top down perspective, and you have a larger party of up to eight characters to control. But Pool of Radiance is always a good place to start.

 

[octavius]

Phantasie 1 is also a good start. Atari ST version is recommended.

 

[Darth Canoli]

By the way, which SSI's rpgs are worth checking out in the first place? Is it safe for a newfag to start with this one?

I'm not sure, how new are you to the genre ?
Could be a cultural shock, it's a great game but it looks its age.

Fantasy General is great if you like A good tactical/strategy fantastic game with some management and the music is something else.

By the way, how do i rest after the arena ?
I'm in the sewers and i'm expecting someone to die any minute, luckily, the half giant gladiator is holding his ground but i'm not sure for how long.

Nevermind > manual > camping ring > and i found one ^^'

 

[RNGsus]

3/4 view is the best view.

 

[zapotec]

Pay attention to this bug, this will cause the final part of the game to not show up:

Laussa's quest (the ssurran south of Teaquetzl).
Once you've convinced her to go and join the tribe to the west, she starts to leave.
Naturally you'll want to teleport away, but if she doesn't get to leave the area completely she locks up the Final Battle.
Let her walk off the screen and disappear completely, and you're good.

 

[visions]

Also what Sceptic said earlier in the thread. Maybe some people reading this thread now won't check the pre-necromancy posts so I'll quote it here.

Endgame bug is there in patched game too. Once it triggers there's no way around it, final battle won't spawn, or your party won't, in any case you're stuck and can ever actually start the final battle. I think the most likely culprit, from various reports over the years, is the letter you find near the corpse and the bullette as soon as you enter the map, after leaving Draj. Presumably, if you leave the letter there and don't pick it up, it prevents the final battle from starting. I've never been able to test the theory though.

Some people on the GOG forum think that certain behaviour in the fight against Wyrmias can also cause the endgame bug:

https://af.gog.com/forum/dungeons_d...s_final_battle_does_not_trigger?as=1649904300

Apparently you either have to let Wyrmias go without damaging him or you'll have to kill him, if he gets to leave after you've damaged him, you might be fucked.

 

[Sceptic]

If my multiclass fighter/thief/psionicist wears non-leather armour does it interfere with his backstab ability? The manual says thief's abilities are limited when he does so but multiclass casters don't seem to have any penalties for wearing armour that is inappropriate for their caster class, so I'm wondering if the thief is penalized for wearing non-leather armour even if he is multiclass? Also, does this apply to all armour slots or only body armour?
From anecdotal experience I didn't manage to get any backstabs in even when only wearing a metal helmet so I'm guessing my multiclass thief should wear only leather items.

Multiclassing negates any and all weapon and armour restrictions. A Fighter/Thief multiclass can backstab even when wearing Metal armour (I've done it before). Same with Fighter/Preservers casting in armour, same with Fighter/Druid using forbidden materials for their sphere.
If your backstabbing isn't working you might be getting the positioning wrong. Alternatively try using leather armour anyway, just in case I really really misremember how this works...
Incidentally Sacred82 mentioned pickpocket and pick lock, I never noticed penalties to these due to armour either (I don't think any of them ever failed, come to think of it)

Another question. Do non-magical helmets do anything? I remember in IE games helmets prevented critical hits

It's supposed to do the same here, though I never actually tested it out.

Also I have a weird bug, I picked the elemental sphere of fire for my thri-kreen ranger/cleric/psionicist but she gets spells from earth sphere instead of the fire sphere. On her char sheet, cleric and ranger are both red, indicating she should get spells from the fire sphere but she doesn't. I guess it's not a big deal, earth sphere is also okay and there doesn't seem to be anything I can do about this bug.

Odd. I never tried this multiclass but it does look like a bug. Maybe picking the same sphere twice is what causes the problem, and picking different spheres for the Ranger and Druid would've given you both.
EDIT: never mind if it was a one-time thing.

Pay attention to this bug, this will cause the final part of the game to not show up:

Laussa's quest (the ssurran south of Teaquetzl).
Once you've convinced her to go and join the tribe to the west, she starts to leave.
Naturally you'll want to teleport away, but if she doesn't get to leave the area completely she locks up the Final Battle.
Let her walk off the screen and disappear completely, and you're good.

It's generally a good idea to let scripts run all the way through, there are a lot of places where the game can bug out if you don't. Same for trying to break sequences by attacking an NPC that's trying to trigger an auto-conversation - don't do that. The game is generally quite good at giving you multiple solutions, but if something seems weird or broken, at least keep a save just before, just in case you find out later that you did break the game.

Apparently you either have to let Wyrmias go without damaging him or you'll have to kill him, if he gets to leave after you've damaged him, you might be fucked.

I've always killed him and have had the bug appear, or not, so even making sure you deal with him properly doesn't guarantee no bug at the end. Unfortunately there are too many variables, the code is too opaque, the game is still buggy even after the patch, and there sadly isn't enough interest in the game to make an unofficial patch or fix.

 

[visions]

Incidentally Sacred82 mentioned pickpocket and pick lock, I never noticed penalties to these due to armour either (I don't think any of them ever failed, come to think of it)

I sometimes failed to pick locks in the slave pens. Seemed like a standard skill check, fail, try again, succeed.

 

[The Avatar]

By the way, which SSI's rpgs are worth checking out in the first place? Is it safe for a newfag to start with this one?

Entomorph: Plague of the Darkfall
World of Aden: Thunderscape

Almost no one talks about that one.

 

[Lonely Vazdru]

Almost no one talks about that one.

It's one of my favourite games but it's 50% rose-tinted glasses. I would not advise to avoid it (like the plague), but I'd hesitate to recommend it. It's for die-hard old-times blobbers dungeon-crawlers lovers only, and even then...

 

[Darth Canoli]

About Shattered Lands, on top of everything else, it's now my second best game, music wise, after Fantasy General.
The intro "electronic" clarinet is really something.

 

[BLOBERT]

BROS I PLAYED IT SHORTLY AFTER THIS

https://rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=210

AGAIN BROS TREDADS LIKE THIS ARE WHY I LOVE THE CODEX

 

[visions]

Speaking of music, I wonder whether the music in Wake of the Ravager was composed with MT-32 or the General MIDI standard in mind? I'm guessing General MIDI since it came out in 1993.

Sceptic Any input on this?

 

[Sceptic]

Speaking of music, I wonder whether the music in Wake of the Ravager was composed with MT-32 or the General MIDI standard in mind? I'm guessing General MIDI since it came out in 1993.

AFAIK Ravager is Sound Canvas. SL is harder to be sure, I think it's MT-32 (specifically, CM-32L, as it uses some of the extra tones) but the Gravis Ultrasound received quite a bit of love too. In GM mode the instruments themselves sound great but some sounds are missing, so I think it's just a conversion from MT-32.

 

[Harry Easter]

What is the highest level you can reach? I think my characters are level 4-5 (with multiclassing). I killed all guards and paladins in the slavequarters, so I should be good?

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

level cap is 9 for each class so with a triple class you can end the game 9/9/9

 

[Dorateen]

What is the highest level you can reach?

Level 9 for individual classes.

 

[Fowyr]

Almost no one talks about that one.

It's somewhat boring and not very interesting. It tried to clone Wizardry 7's combat, but was not very successful. Spells were especially bad. Button "repeat last action" was great, though.

 

[Darth Canoli]

Fuck, level 9 cap ...

I guess i can't pick another class now, i really hate when character progression is capped, i stopped my KotC play-through when my chars reached level 20 ^^'

Something else, i realized i didn't pay attention to characters alignments and as a result, they're all True neutral ...
I hope it's not a problem, is it ?

 

[Harry Easter]

Fuck, level 9 cap ...

I guess i can't pick another class now, i really hate when character progression is capped, i stopped my KotC play-through when my chars reached level 20 ^^'

Something else, i realized i didn't pay attention to characters alignments and as a result, they're all True neutral ...
I hope it's not a problem, is it ?

Good question. Do alignments matter at all? I mean, we have to survive and the world is cruel.

 

[Dorateen]

According to the manual, characters must be of good or neutral alignment, they cannot be evil. People need to remember, although Dark Sun is a harsh setting, the Shattered Lands adventure (and Wake of the Ravager) was written as heroic fantasy.

 

[visions]

Is it normal for psionicists to get only 1 point for psionic powers on levelup from level 6 onwards? Until level 6 I always got 2 points to spend on psionic powers on levelup but now when my mul fighter/thief/psionicist reached level 6 as psionicist, I only get 1 point.

 

[Darth Canoli]

Well, mine is level 6 and got only 1 point as well last level up ...

Also, domination doesn't seem to work very well, seems like charmed chars (surprisingly they're charmed as a result of the domination skill) just hit the closest target, whoever it is.

Tried to kill the templar and his henchmen around the oasis, those morons wouldn't move and just shot eveyone but the gladiator to death, now, there's 3 waiting for me on the other side of the oasis and the gladiator has 3 leftover hp ...
Reload time, it seems.

Also, either the gladiator has an insane amount of HP or multi-classing a warrior is a terrible move, the warrior/druid has half the gladiator's hp or so by now ^^'

 

[visions]

Is your gladiator a half-giant? Half-giants get double hitpoints I think. It's not explained in the manual but I remember reading it somewhere and my half-giant gladiator also has more than double the hp of my mul fighter/thief/psionicist.