Completed Let's play Pool of Radiance with one character!

[baud]

Since he is the perfect (half) human specimen, with all 18s, he is clearly the Übermensch , or Overman, because I can't get diaereses on my keyboard.

You can get one with Alt + 129. Not sure if it work with this game thought.

Thanks! The first 8 letters of the character's name go into the filename, so I didn't want to mess around; it's crashed when I tried to load saved games from inside Yarash's pyramid with one character.

You're welcome.
You can get a lot of different characters this way. For example 1-6:☺☻♥♦♣♠

 

[Null Null]

Overman has made it to Kuto's well, and is resting and fighting the small groups of monsters that sally forth to challenge a level 2 C/F/M. We get about 5 kobolds, 2 gnolls, and 1 lizardman. (Who walk into a bar, and the bartender says, "There's a 4th level fighter who'd like a word with you...")
The lizardman is actually the toughest of the bunch, with three attacks per round that lead to us taking a fair amount of damage. Kobolds can be swept, and the gnolls are not nearly as tough as their 2-square icon indicates.
(Additionally, as larger-than-man-size creatures, my weapons do more damage. A longsword held by a character with 18(90) strength will do 1d12+4 damage, which will one-hit kill a 10 HP gnoll about 58% of the time. So the gnolls don't do too well.)
10 random encounters have been fought, and Overman is loaded down with the worthless copper and silver, so back to town to get some money...

 

[Null Null]

I always liked the pic of the clerk wearing armor over her tunic--gives the feeling of a risky frontier town. Even the civilians have to wear armor!

The clerk becomes a bit of a recurring character in the next few games, ripping you off in Secret and becoming a damsel in distress in Pools. But here, she's just a bit player.

I'll wait on Sokal Keep for now. As those of you familiar with the game know, there is a large fight with tens of hobgoblins and orcs that requires some tactical prowess. With one character I'll easily be swamped.

The relevant bit here is that we now have the mission to watch the auction in Podol Plaza. Let's go there!

 

[Null Null]

So I stroll in (disguised as monsters), and listen to gossip. I'm trying to avoid trouble, for the simple reason that, well, there's one of me. Let's wait for the winner....

 

[Null Null]

The bag has been secured by the winner, we're done, we just have to get out of here, and...

Oh crap. "Settlers!"

Monsters are pretty thin on the ground here, oddly enough. My best guess is even with the increased numbers due to blowing cover it doesn't send that many enemies against one 2nd level character.

Well, I'm out alive. Let's train.

(Completists should note it's worth reloading a few times to escape successfully as if cover is blown you can't clear the block afterward. As my time is somewhat limited I opted not to.)

 

[Null Null]

Time to train. Let's see, I could pick up Stinking Cloud to disable enemies who aren't 'persons', or Mirror Image to increase my survivability, but...we're going with Knock.

Knock??? Why on earth would you pick that at 3rd level?

This is where deep knowledge of the game leads to a very counterintuitive choice.

For a single character, high HP are of the essence for obvious reasons. There is one item that can increase your CON above 18 and hence add an extra HP to each of your fighter levels. That is the Manual of Bodily Health, in Mendor's Library. However, you only get the extra HP for levels gained after the manual is used. However, the library is secured by a wizard-locked door, which requires either a higher Strength than we have to open (I've had no luck below about 18(00)) or the use of the Knock spell, which is a 2nd level spell and hence requires a 3rd level mage.

Note for newbies: you have to rest for 30 days to use the Manual of Bodily Health, and you will gain the CON point after 30 days of any resting. Almost nobody knew this and so people would wind up randomly gaining a point of constitution somewhere in the midgame (after their accumulated resting reached 30 days) and have no clue why.

You'll also note that we did not take the 3rd fighter level, which we could have at 4000 XP. We want to train as many fighter levels as possible under the influence of the Manual with the 19 CON. Of course, I've now crossed 6000 XP without training as a cleric, which means it's going to knock me down to 6000 when I train, wasting 3300 XP (since a tirple-class character has to earn triple the XP). Oh well.

 

[Null Null]

All right, back to Kuto's Well, oh crap, walked into the kobold ambush. It's more of a nuisance at this point...let's go back and train.

(I'm told Codexers enjoy seeing the deaths, but I actually deleted all those since I figured everyone was hoping for a walkthrough. I will say I tried to attack Norris before my time and was swarmed by his minions and killed. One sleep spell is not enough, and neither is two sleeps and three hold persons--they surround you and hit too much to fight back effectively. I did save this pic of myself facing down norris and his lizardmen. We'll be back.)

 

[Null Null]

So Our Anti-Hero is going back to get all the stuff in the Slums he missed. First order of business, now that we have multiple sleep spells and a few hold persons to boot, is to get some of the magic items from the Orcs.

"How dare you invade our home!" Well, I do want your stuff. Wait, isn't that a home invasion? "Are we the baddies?" Well, hey, I am Chaotic Evil, right?

EDIT: Ha, I died. Sadly I have no nice pics of the death.

 

[Null Null]

Back to town. My 'success' at Podol is noted (Yes. I blew my cover and had the monsters after me, and I can tell you it's either a Wand or a Staff. Big whoop.)

Oh look, Cadorna wants to talk to me. Don't worry Porpy, I'll get your box. But first, to Sokal Keep...

 

[Null Null]

All right, here we are at Sokal Keep. Of course I know the passwords by heart, but there's an elf with an old scroll that has the words in Espruar runes over to the west.

As an aside, the ruined keep is quite well done. Descriptions convey the feeling of decay and abandonment, there are vast areas of empty space, and the monsters are scavengers like frogs and scorpions. There's the real feeling of something that used to be important a long time ago, but no longer is. I've always had a thing for ruins.

 

[Null Null]

So we grab our stuff from Sokal Keep, including a Chain Mail +1 and Shield +1, which gets my AC down to -2. Now that most of the key party strength-scaling areas have been cleared, I'm a lot less worried about having a low AC (which also helps survivability).

You'll notice the somewhat nonstandard choice of a Mace +2 as melee weapon--the extra plus helps hit and it does about as much damage as a broadsword anyway (2-7 vs 2-8).

My XP is also back over 6000, so I can go and get my 4th cleric level and 3rd fighter level. With 31 HP and AC -2, we'll see if we can finally teach those orcs a lesson...

 

[Null Null]

All right, now we can finish our murderhobo work with the orcs. As you can see (kind of), a mix of Sleep and Hold Person spells helps deal with the large numbers of orcs swarming you. Generally, I toss a sleep spell behind the first row of orc leaders to keep them from arrowing me and then use Hold Persons to surround myself with invalid Orcs I can sword.

The loot is actually not that great at this point, though a Flail +1 will be better than a Mace +2 against larger than man-size. And the extra Chain Mail +1 is good to sell.

 

[Null Null]

So before I try anything tougher I want to get to 10,000 XP so I can get a 4th level mage and finally learn Stinking Cloud. Let's go find some other minor errands to do. Ah yes, Ohlo and the Potion. With all the random encounters dead, it's safe to march into the Rope Guild and grab the elixir of youth for the old mage. You get 1 random magic item for your trouble. I've gotten wands of magic missiles and even a necklace of missiles (which throws fireballs for the uninitiated), but today I get...

A Guisarme +2. For the record this does about as much damage as a broadsword (2-8 small/1-8 big) but requires 2 hands, so it's mostly for resale. But there is something wonderfully 1st-ed about a Guisarme +2.

Gary and his polearms. The dungeon dressing from the DMG actually pops up in a few places later on in the game.

 

[Null Null]

So we are back, and ready to learn Stinking Cloud. Gosh, I'm carrying around a lot of extra +1 crap, and I've got some Gems and Jewelry. Maybe I can pick up the only item worth having...

Goldbox games have a serious problem in the midgame and later dealing with the accumulation of loot--apart from paying for training there is no good place to spend it. Pool of Radiance has no magic shops (those would come in with Curse) but did have one nonmagical item, the Fine Composite Long Bow, that applies your strength bonus to a missile weapon. This is a huge advantage in ranged combat as the strength bonus adds to damage as well as making a hit more likely. The FCLB is probably the closest thing to a magic item for sale, and about the only thing to do with your money is to accumulate enough to buy one. Toss our Guisarme +2, and a few other things, and we have the 5000 platinum (25000 gold) we need. I also decided to toss the Flail +1; blunt weapons are mostly useful against skeletons, and there is only one larger-than-man-size skeleton in the entire game.

Let's go learn Magic Missile.

 

[Null Null]

The scroll with Magic Missile on it is behind a room full of goblins, with a whole slew of goblin archers. Going down here without a lot of HP is pretty dangerous; even with a Sleep spell there are still multiple archers who can wear you down with arrows. Getting to 4th level as a fighter also means you can sweep half or more of the goblins surrounding you at any time. So the strategy here is to use two (or three) sleep spells on the archers just to get them off your back and sweep the goblins as they rush you. By the archers wake up you can be on them.

Note that this is merely a challenging fight for 1st or 2nd level parties which will have multiple sleep spells as a consequence of having multiple mages. (Hold Person can be useful too.) However, with one character it becomes a tough fight requiring a 4th level character who can take multiple arrow attacks and throw enough sleep spells to keep from getting arrowed to death.

Though, of course, if it only hit you in the knee you could always become a town guard.

 

[Null Null]

Time to work on our AC. It's one of the oddities of the goldbox games that some items keep showing up over and over; Pool of Radiance has lots of suits of Chain Mail +1 and Plate Mail +2 but only a single Banded Mail +1. Well, mercifully it's close by, so we can go get it. It's guarded by a lizardman and a bunch of giant lizards. Three sleep spells is more than enough to sleep all the lizards and break down the door and get to the Banded Mail +1, getting us an extra point of AC.

The next order of business will be to pick up a little more XP. We're going to want to have a 5th level cleric to take advantage of one of the unique features of Pool of Radiance. So let's go to the place where there are a couple of humans with magic goodies that will give us XP: Yarash's Pyramid.

 

[Null Null]

Yarash's pyramid has a maze section you can wind up in by mistake, full of all kinds of monsters. Earlier here we can see an encounter with displacer beasts that almost ended badly. However, I then had an encounter with three 7th level dwarven fighters.

Pool of Radiance, based on a pen and paper mod as it was, had lots of monsters that show up once and never again, and whom you may never encounter at all. The Giant Mantis in the Western Wilderness, the Phase Spiders in the Eastern Wilderness, and the Quicklings in the Western Wilderness come to mind. Phase Spiders would return many times, from the Myth Drannor Burial Glen in Curse, to Kalistes' Web Dimension in Pools, and in the usual mix of random places in Secret. But we never saw the Giant Mantis or the Quicklings again.

We don't ever see dwarven fighters carrying Lucern Hammers +1 again. The utter specificity of it--making a weapon that only occurs once for a monster that only occurs once--is very Pool of Radiance. Practically speaking, though, magic weapons mean XP on discovery, so we're now past 13,501 XP and ready to make a 5th level cleric. This is as far as our Overman will get in the religious arts, thanks to Gygax's hatred of nonhumans. But it does let us do one thing that we won't get to do again--cast Animate Dead.

 

[Null Null]

Kovel Mansion is the best place to get lots of money and XP with relatively little risk in this game--just bring enough healing spells to get past the wimpy traps and you don't even need a thief. There are a few 1st level thieves who pop in and try to backstab you, but at AC-3 Overman doesn't get hit all that often. Even less often after looting the items cache in the northwest corner, where I ignore the random items (Scimitar +1? Not with 16 slots on one guy) and go for the Shield +2, bringing my AC to -4 (Banded Mail +1, Shield +2, 18 DEX).

I adore the handlebar mustache. I'm sure they thought nothing of it at the time but the thief looks so 80s now.

The only somewhat tough fight is that with the 3 6th level thieves, and the 15 1st level thieves at the south end of the mansion. as you can see, you get surrounded by thieves, and given that they can backstab you for double damage (or triple in the case of the 6th level thieves) you can get TPK'ed. The smart thing to do is to Hold Person the 6th levels (even if you don't get all of them you will usually get 1 or 2) and Sleep any aggregate of 1st levels. Once their numbers are down somewhat, and the dying ones have died (this takes a few rounds), you can help things along with Animate Dead.

Most of you will be too young to remember the D&D Satanic Panic of the 1980s, but in addition to heavy metal music, people were afraid of D&D turning kids to satanism. TSR responded by removing the 'demons' and 'devils' from its games (they were relabeled 'tanar'ri' and 'baatezu') as well as morally dubious characters like assassins. It is thus likely that, in response to this edict, SSI got rid of Animate Dead in Curse.

The spell reanimates the cleric's level of zombies. It only works on humans, not humanoids (unlike Hold Person in this game), but in cases with many low-level human enemies like this one it can help swing the battle. See that 1st Lvl Thief with his name in blue (indicating an ally?). He's not charmed (or resting), he's dead (and animated). Your zombies will add macabre reinforcements to your party, which is obviously useful in a solo situation.

After holding, sleeping, and animating, Overman has just barely survived the fight. However, you have to kill 21 thieves to rest, and between the 15 (the 6th level guys don't count) here, the 5 at the items, and a few in random encounters, that number has been crossed, and with the thieves cleared, he can now rest inside the mansion.

 

[Null Null]

Time for some hardcore looting. Between the caskets, cabinets, and other knicknacks lying around the castle (including a leather armor +4 and short sword +2 that aren't really that useful to our solo dude), we get our XP up to 20,667, but we need 22,501 to get a 5th level mage.

Here is where careful planning comes in. Kovel Mansion's scroll cabinet has most of the remaining mage spells for Overman to learn. However, they're on 4 scrolls, which uses up a quarter of our slots. So it doesn't make sense to pick up the scrolls until we are almost ready to train to 5th level. So if you get here too early, it pays not to open the cabinet and come back when you are ready to scribe the scrolls. We're awful close, though, and the XP from the scrolls puts us even closer. So let's go back, get a little XP, and train.

 

[Null Null]

So the council doesn't care that much about offing the thieves, and we are still short of the XP we need for 5th level. Well, we still have a score to settle with Norris. We've got 3 sleep spells, 5 Hold Persons, and perhaps more importantly, 43 HP to get whaled on by lizardmen. A pair of sleep spells first disables the kobold archers, then the lizardmen stupid enough to swarm me, and finally a Hold Person spell finally takes out Norris (it works on lizardmen and kobolds too!). He's 5th level, Sleep won't do any good.

After defeating the dreaded bandit gang and stealing his stash, we finally have enough XP for 5th level as a mage.

 

[Null Null]

As previously discussed, we learn not the obvious spell, but Lightning Bolt, which isn't on a scroll. So, now you know why we haven't gone to Sokal Keep yet. Sure, we could do the whole tactical-combat thing where we anchor ourselves in the doorway coming in from the east and try to sleep and hold enough of them to keep from dying. But, hey, 5th level, right?

Now we can cast Blink, and keep them from hitting us...

Or we could cast Hold Person, because the mage spell affects four targets...

Or, wait, Slow...

Oh, who am I kidding.

FIREBALL!!!

If you haven't played the game this way, I suggest putting off Sokal Keep until 5th level. All those long hours with Sleep and Hold Person go down in a blaze of glory as you cast the spell that makes D&D, D&D. The spell that turns a mage from a clever targeter of Sleeps and Stinking Clouds into a two-legged weapon of mass destruction. The spell when everything changes, and your wizard finally earns his keep.

 

[Null Null]

Usually dropping a Fireball on the Sokal Keep orcs and hobgoblins causes a morale failure at the end of the round (Pool of Radiance doesn't check morale quite as often as the others), but sometimes you have to Sleep a few surruonding you. Nonetheless you can see them running away soon enough.

Ferran Martinez is willing to tell chat as long as I know the magic word, and the ghosts go away. Sokal Keep is clear and we are free to boat around the area.

 

[Null Null]

OK, we can now set fire to mobs of orcs. The next big level-up is a long way off, 7th level fighter at 70,001 XP. That's quite a way away, so let's go after the high-yield missions. We are not going to go after the Nomad Camp or the Kobold Caves, which have three waves of big mobs (remember we'll never have more than two Fireballs to cast, though we could go for the Necklace of Missiles if we really wanted to). Yarash's Pyramid and the Lizard Man Keep pay well (resulting in good XP), and the Buccaneer's Base has the best armor in the game. But first, Mendor's Library; it's quick and easy as long as we can keep the Spectre from hitting us. I still have the Silver Mirror from Kovel Mansion (though you can buy them too), so it's a pretty easy matter to let the Basilisk see his own ugly face and get stoned.

Do not retrieve the potions of extra healing in the scribe's office for a single-player game. You may need them later!

As a bookworm, I often think it would be fun to browse Mendor's Library; Pool of Radiance was the best of the games at giving the sense of looking over the ruins of a lost civilization. Someone built that huge library and then died and left it full of rotting stools and green slime. I often wonder what else was in Urgund's Description of Darkness, or what ridiculous hagiographies were in the History of the North. Of course, it's a literary device from the days when games were short on graphics and had to use words.

Heck, there's even the possibility a couple of my characters did something else in the stacks.

But our boy Overman's by himself, and if he's going to check out books he's got to deal with the librarian. (A certain wry sense of wit lacking in the later games--where else did you fight a spectral librarian?)

Level drain doesn't allow a saving throw, and getting hit means two levels down. The basilisk's Cloak of Displacement drops our AC to -6 (we also picked up a Potion of Giant Strength for later), but a spectre has a THAC0 of 12, meaning he has a 15% chance to hit us each round. Doesn't sound great, but at 8-13 HP a round from our mace +2 it will take 3 or 4 hits to kill him, and we only have about a 50% chance of hitting AC 2. So...6-8 rounds to kill? Plenty of time for our librarian to get a hit in.

OK, what do we do about it? Bless, Prayer, Protection from Evil, Mirror Image, and Haste. Haste in particular doubles our attack rate, and we only have to reload once before making it through without being drained.

 

[Null Null]

All right, off to the pyramid to deal with Yarash. After throwing some stones and teleporting, reading the runes to show we bought the game, smashing the equipment to heal the Stojanow, and taking a detour to free some lizardmen who give us the way to make the Lizard Man Keep so much easier, we face Yarash the Sorcerer and his Mutant Liz-Men.

Yarash looks more like a bureaucrat in the planning department than a mad wizard, to be frank.

Now Yarash has a Wand of Paralyzation (I know, not a word) he uses on us whenever he gets the chance, so it's good to drop Stinking Clouds on him as quickly as possible. The Clouds force him to save every round, as opposed to the Hold Person which is one-and-done. After finally taking him down, we hit a few more of the Mutant Liz-Men with a Sleep spell, and they go down pretty quick. To speed things along, I cast Animate Dead, hoping to induce a few defections of dead Mutant Liz-Men...

Oh wait, it only works on humans. Which means I didn't get zombie Mutant Liz-Men, but did get an undead Yarash, who sat there unprotesting as I whacked him to make sure I got his healing potions and wand.

He's supposed to be 9th level. I shouldn't be able to raise him. Oh well.

Yarash has nine random magic items in his treasure rooms, but I hardly have room at this point, so I just went back to town.

 

[Null Null]

44,000 or so. Well, I can get to level 6 and get another Fireball spell, and level 6 as a fighter and get a few more HP, so all's well that ends well. My AC's almost as good as it's going to get, but gosh, I've got real problems carrying anything around. We'll deal with that, but first let's get some more XP fighting a toy fight with a lizardman.

On my way to the Lizard Man Keep, I run into a wyvern. This is the sort of bizarre non-sequitur encounter at which Pool of Radiance excels--that's half the Kobold Caves, and there it is as a random encounter.

All right, old lizard guy wants the tribal friend-word I learned from his oppressed brethren in the pyramid. Drythh doesn't take too long to kill--I'm twice his level--and before you know it I'm back home and the clerk is giving me more money. I'm at 49,000 XP, still a long way from where I want to be.