Gold Box SSI's Gold Box Series Thread

[Flux_Capacitor]

I tried the Nintendo version of POR once. Its really not great. Unlike CtD, you can really see how the limitations of the system affected gameplay. I think you were only allowed 3 characters, there usually weren't a whole lot of enemies in combat (but then, I didn't play very long), and combat was exceedingly slow. I strongly suggest skipping it, unless you *really* want to see what its like.

well on the pic on the back of my box theres 5 chars in the party and it looks really JRPG'ed with like Dragonquest lookalike sprites for the battlestages.

You're right; you are allowed 5 characters. I just booted up the emulator version and tried it out. The game comes with 3 pre-made characters, and when I originally tried it, I just added them to the party in order to jump into the game quickly. I figured that if the game provided a set of pre-made characters, then it would have provided enough to fill out the party. I guess not.

 

[Jaesun]

A progress report on my run through:

PoR
2 Human Clerics
1 Dwarf Thief/Fighter
1 Elf Fighter/Mage
1 Human Mage
1 Human Fighter

Finished

Curse:
(Dumped the Elf F/M and Fighter, made a Paladin and a Human Ranger/Mage)
2 Human Clerics (Import)
1 Dwarf Thief/Fighter (Import)
1 Human Mage (Import)
1 Human Paladin
1 Human Ranger/Mage

Finished.

Secret of the Silver Blades:
Imported the characters from Curse. So far having a blast. Jebus this is Magic Item City! haha! At least they included a sink hole for all the massive accumulated wealth you get (The 100 gems to ask the Pool of Wisdom). Not that it is required, but a good game mechanic.

The only shitty thing with a pure human Mage is depending on the battle, I have to have them run the fuck out of combat, ASAP! heh. Like say in Curse with those MUTHERFUCKING Rakshasas. Fuck I hate those things.

 

[mondblut]

I tried the Nintendo version of POR once. Its really not great. ...I strongly suggest skipping it, unless you *really* want to see what its like.

I wouldn't touch it. Remember what I said about virulent plague?

I'm thinking I confused it with the Genesis Dungeons and Dragons game, which had both FPP and isometric views.

Warriors of eternal sun? Yea, it was pretty decent one.

Like say in Curse with those MUTHERFUCKING Rakshasas. Fuck I hate those things.

That's why they conveniently place some blessed bolts wherever rakshasas are encountered. Kinda predictable

 

[made]

Out of curiosity, could you mention how long it takes you to finish each game? I'd like a basic idea of what time investment I'm looking at if I decide to replay them some day.

PoD was one of the few I've finished and it was quite a lenghty affair iirc, with tons of optional areas/free exploration.

 

[Luzur]

Warriors of eternal sun? Yea, it was pretty decent one.

but hard, never got trough the kobold caves.

 

[Jaesun]

Like say in Curse with those MUTHERFUCKING Rakshasas. Fuck I hate those things.

That's why they conveniently place some blessed bolts wherever rakshasas are encountered. Kinda predictable

True, but those bolts do not automatically hit 100%. If you miss, you better hope you are not standing next to a wall. And since you only have 12 of them, you have to decide to use them on the 10 random encounters (so that you can finally fucking rest) or use them in the bar encounter.

 

[jaylittle]

Like say in Curse with those MUTHERFUCKING Rakshasas. Fuck I hate those things.

I hate them too. The only thing I hate more are level draining creatures. That status effect will never cease to piss me off. As for Rakshasas' they make Myth Drannor in Curse a real bitch. However according to the cluebook, once you defeat ten patrols of them (or something like that), they will no longer randomly spawn. The trick here is to find a nice little one square room, face the back wall and start to rest. Within a few hours of game time you will trigger a random patrol, but because of the positioning there are only a couple of Rakshasas' to contend with instead of a normal patrol worth.

This allows you to quickly dispatch the few that are there and get another notch on the bedpost so to speak. Once you work through the random encounter quota, you are free to rest whenever and wherever you want. This makes other non-random battles with Rakshasas much easier to prepare for and recover from.

 

[jaylittle]

Okay replaying PoD with my party from Secret. I've just dispatched Thorne and I've already started dualing my characters. This started happening prior to when I originally planned for it but I realized at some point that waiting until level 25 - 30 to dual would mean that I would need to do a lot of grinding before I could get full use of my dual characters.

So my original party was:

3 Human Rangers
2 Human Clerics
1 Human Mage

Once all them hit level 18. I dualed one Ranger and One Cleric into Mages. They are now level 13 mages. Once the dualed mages hit 13, I dualed another Ranger and the Mage to a Mage and Cleric respectively since my two other mages could now hold their own in a battle (level 6 spells).

Once the first two dualed characters hit level 19 (at which point they can use the abilities of both classes) I will begin to dual the last two characters, the Ranger and the Cleric to Mages. I figure I need at least one heavy hitting fighting character to support the party in situations where bosses are immune to most magic (i.e. Thorne the dragon was one of these bosses).

The reason for choosing to dual at level 18 is simple. After examining the charts, I realized that after level 18: a) all classes no longer receive any massive HP bonuses when they level up and b) the THAC0 for Rangers doesn't appear to go down anymore when the level for the character advances after this point. Plus all Clerics/Mages have full access to every spell level at this point.

The real trouble I'm having is resisting the urge to level up the non-dual characters. It is taking some restraint, but if I continue to level them up I'll end up having to level their mage alter-egos until hell freezes over for a pay off. The remaining Ranger is at level 19 while the remaining Cleric is at level 20. Must not level up. Must not level up

 

[Jaesun]

What were the Flask of Oil for in the first 2 games? I'd *assume* you can throw them at Trolls for fire damage?

And I finally figured out Mirrors you equip as shield when fighting Medusa and Basilisks etc... *slaps forehead*

And I know the Canary is for finding bad air in the Mines.

Man, there is sooooooooooooooooooooooooo much fucking magic items. It's like I'm playing a Bioware Game. Bioware must have used Secret of the Silver Blades as a reference when making BG/BG2. heh

 

[Luzur]

What were the Flask of Oil for in the first 2 games? I'd *assume* you can throw them at Trolls for fire damage?

if i remember correctly you throw that at something and then use a firespell.

And I finally figured out Mirrors you equip as shield when fighting Medusa and Basilisks etc... *slaps forehead*

never seen that old movie about the golden fleece?

And I know the Canary is for finding bad air in the Mines.

yep

 

[mondblut]

What were the Flask of Oil for in the first 2 games? I'd *assume* you can throw them at Trolls for fire damage?

At anyone. Just a throwable missile that causes fire damage.

I assume holy water is the same but for undead only.

Now, what the holy symbols in POR are for? And stakes (must be for vampires, but how exactly?). And silver plate armor?

 

[Jaesun]

What were the Flask of Oil for in the first 2 games? I'd *assume* you can throw them at Trolls for fire damage?

At anyone. Just a throwable missile that causes fire damage.

I assume holy water is the same but for undead only.

Now, what the holy symbols in POR are for? And stakes (must be for vampires, but how exactly?). And silver plate armor?

Ahh ok. And yea, I never did figure out the Holy Symbols or the silver armor. Maybe it would have made the Grave Area (The Later one) easier? Since you have fucktons of money.

 

[MisterStone]

I have a sudden urge to play the Buck Rogers game again... if I want to do a LP, should I just post stuff, or separate thread?

 

[Wyrmlord]

Don't put a commitment on yourself.

Whatever you find interesting, just post that in this thread whenever you want to.

 

[Flux_Capacitor]

And I finally figured out Mirrors you equip as shield when fighting Medusa and Basilisks etc... *slaps forehead*

never seen that old movie about the golden fleece?

Clash of the Titans?

Now, what the holy symbols in POR are for? And stakes (must be for vampires, but how exactly?). And silver plate armor?

Are they leather holy symbols? I think they're used to enter the Temple of Bane. The stakes seem to be just for flavor, as far as I can tell. Same for the silver plate armor, except I think I recall it having different encumbrance.

Well, I finished an ironman run through of the FRUA version of Pool of Radiance. Tyranthraxus was a pushover; a group of hasted, prayered, Gauntlets of Ogre Powered characters managed to take him down before he even got a chance to act. It also helped that my characters were all around level 7/8.

I did notice some differences between this version and the original. Some seemed to be bugs, which were annoying, but I managed to edit the maps to fix the worst of them. From what I could tell, the main differences were:
- no lizard man castle in the wilderness
- no Efreet bottle in the Kobold caves. Strangely, you can still talk to the Silver Dragon about it. However, when I tried editing the maps, I couldn't find it in the Kobold cave, nor mention of it in the encounter with the vampire

The worst bugs that I recall were:
- unable to access the thieves hideout in the Textile House area
- unable to find Cadorna in the Valjevo Castle area

There's also a FRUA version of Curse of the Azure Bonds, which I'm going to try. I've transferred my characters over, but had to drop everything, as it isn't handled automatically.

 

[Murk]

Anyone willing to do a LP of any of these games?

 

[mondblut]

Are they leather holy symbols? I think they're used to enter the Temple of Bane.

There were various... At least 3 were sold, I think, leather, silver and gold. Or something along these lines. Never featured in any other GB games.

Curiously, most SSI games after goldboxes did feature holy symbols as well, given out to clerics and paladins at the start of the game, but I never found any use for them. You never have to hold them in order to cast cleric spells, for example, although that's kinda logical to do.

The stakes seem to be just for flavor, as far as I can tell. Same for the silver plate armor, except I think I recall it having different encumbrance.

Well, the stakes could be weapons with a paralyze or hold person effect attached, if only said effect could be limited to vampires only, which seems unlikely for the limitations of goldbox engine (in FRUA you could, like, designate vampires as "snakes" and use "charm snake" effect, providing there are no snakes proper in the game :D Since making them the only "monsters" or "persons" for hold person/monster effect is sort of expensive. Then again, hold monster is too high a level for the party, and if it was already coded in the game, it could have been used just for that... That would explain lack of these in the higher-level sequels).

Silver armor could have the same reflective effect as mirrors, or something. And silver weapons effective against undead, or being a kind of +0 magic weapons (i.e. no bonus but able to hit things that can only be hit with +1).

- no lizard man castle in the wilderness
- no Efreet bottle in the Kobold caves. Strangely, you can still talk to the Silver Dragon about it. However, when I tried editing the maps, I couldn't find it in the Kobold cave, nor mention of it in the encounter with the vampire
The worst bugs that I recall were:
- unable to access the thieves hideout in the Textile House area
- unable to find Cadorna in the Valjevo Castle area

This sucks =( I guess I still have to brave the original after all. If the WHDLoad Amiga version wouldn't crash when I attempt to save a created character, I'd already do. I too think of making a proper LP of the series.

 

[jaylittle]

There's also a FRUA version of Curse of the Azure Bonds, which I'm going to try. I've transferred my characters over, but had to drop everything, as it isn't handled automatically.

Which makes sense since at the beginning of Curse and Secret you start with nothing The only FR GB game in which your inventory carries over is PoD. However be aware that as I found the hard way, only the inventory on your character transfers to PoD, your vault contents are lost. I had sixty mage scrolls saved up for my mage dual class strategy, not to mention the 5000+ gems I had converted all of my money in Secret to.

6000 Gems * 100 platinum * 5 gold = 3000000 gold pieces worth of gems. A small fortune.

Oh well. Some things you have to learn the hard way. The good news is that money is easy enough to come by in PoD and rarely used for anything useful at all anyway. The mage scrolls on the other hand... those would've been nice to keep.

 

[sirfink]

Anyone willing to do a LP of any of these games?

What's an easy way to take multiple screenshots of an old DOS game you're playing in DosBOX? Does DosBOX have this option built-in (I doubt it)? By easy I mean: push a key and a screenshot is made and saved (screenshot1.jpg); push a button again and you get screenshot2.jpg, etc.

 

[Elwro]

Ctrl-F5.

 

[made]

This sucks =( I guess I still have to brave the original after all. If the WHDLoad Amiga version wouldn't crash when I attempt to save a created character, I'd already do. I too think of making a proper LP of the series.

Is that on a real Amiga or through an emulator? I gave it a try on WinUAE and it's a bit quirky, but seems to work flawlessly.

 

[mondblut]

Is that on a real Amiga or through an emulator? I gave it a try on WinUAE and it's a bit quirky, but seems to work flawlessly.

WinUAE, the 1.1 version for WHDLoad 16.8. Crashes with guru meditation when trying to save a character, just goes black screen when trying to save a game after loading the save included with the game.

Could you give me your winuae settings? Could be my virtual amiga is too overclocked or something, having no clue of its internal workings I just drag all sliders to the right and pick the bottom options figuring they are latest and most powerful features

 

[santino27]

So far, I've made it to Curse. I'm using DosBox to run the game, because I get issues launching either POR or Curse directly from windows XP. (I have the silver edition archives, as I dumped the original gold box games, about 15 years ago when I moved back from overseas)

I made it through PoR, but then opted to create a new party for Curse anyway, as I'd rather have a ranger and paladin in my party.

New party was:
human ranger
human paladin
human fighterx4

As soon as I started, I dual classed one of the fighters to cleric, as I needed -some- sort of healing for the sewers and fire knives area. Once I finished that area, I dual classed the remaining fighters, into a thief, and two mages, respectively.

By the time I got to Hap, my thief and (I think) cleric had exceeded their fighter level, while my mages were 5th, and thus had their first 3rd level spells, (which helped out quite a bit against the black dragons... less so against the drow)

The combat is quite a bit harder than I remember, probably because I'm so out of practice. A good 75% of the things I fight die either because of spells or backstabs, so I'm glad I went ahead and dual classed somewhat early. (Having a 5th level mage with ~70 hps is pretty handy for survival, regardless).

 

[Flux_Capacitor]

The stakes seem to be just for flavor, as far as I can tell. Same for the silver plate armor, except I think I recall it having different encumbrance.

Well, the stakes could be weapons with a paralyze or hold person effect attached, if only said effect could be limited to vampires only, which seems unlikely for the limitations of goldbox engine (in FRUA you could, like, designate vampires as "snakes" and use "charm snake" effect, providing there are no snakes proper in the game :D Since making them the only "monsters" or "persons" for hold person/monster effect is sort of expensive. Then again, hold monster is too high a level for the party, and if it was already coded in the game, it could have been used just for that... That would explain lack of these in the higher-level sequels).

The stakes and silver armor weren't available in the FRUA version, or at least I didn't find them, so I'm just guessing from what I recall of the original version. On the module list page that I got this version, it says the module allows characters to reach level 9. I believe Hold Monster is a 5th level spell, so it is possible to get the spell, although my mages only made it to level 8. Also, I found magic-user scrolls that had some higher level spells, up to level 8 - Mass Charm and Otto's Irresistable Dance.

- no lizard man castle in the wilderness
- no Efreet bottle in the Kobold caves. Strangely, you can still talk to the Silver Dragon about it. However, when I tried editing the maps, I couldn't find it in the Kobold cave, nor mention of it in the encounter with the vampire
The worst bugs that I recall were:
- unable to access the thieves hideout in the Textile House area
- unable to find Cadorna in the Valjevo Castle area

This sucks =( I guess I still have to brave the original after all. If the WHDLoad Amiga version wouldn't crash when I attempt to save a created character, I'd already do. I too think of making a proper LP of the series.

I didn't think the missing stuff was too big of a deal. I don't remember the lizard man castle having anything too special, and you can handle the vampire without the Efreet.

I'm pretty sure I went through the correct sequence of events so that those things listed as bugs should have occurred. Neither are particularly game-breaking; really, the only thing you miss out on is some treasure. I didn't spend a whole lot of time looking through the events to make sure everything was set up correctly, but it did seem as though some of the logic was odd. I managed to edit the events so that I could trigger them, but it was a bit of a pain.

There's also a FRUA version of Curse of the Azure Bonds, which I'm going to try. I've transferred my characters over, but had to drop everything, as it isn't handled automatically.

Which makes sense since at the beginning of Curse and Secret you start with nothing

Yeah, that's why I did it. I kept a little cash, since I believe you start with some at the beginning of Curse. The FRUA engine doesn't really have a good way to remove items and money from characters.


I thought the graphics upgrade and UI improvements made this version worth playing. The Fix command and the game's ability to remember which spells you cast so you don't have to reselect them made things a lot smoother. Plus, Paladins and Rangers are nice, and its much more difficult to reach the upper level limits, which always annoyed me in the original. And, you have access to higher level spells. With 3 mages at level 8, I had 9 fireballs and 6 ice storms, which is a quite a bit of firepower for this game.

 

[made]

Is that on a real Amiga or through an emulator? I gave it a try on WinUAE and it's a bit quirky, but seems to work flawlessly.

WinUAE, the 1.1 version for WHDLoad 16.8. Crashes with guru meditation when trying to save a character, just goes black screen when trying to save a game after loading the save included with the game.

Could you give me your winuae settings? Could be my virtual amiga is too overclocked or something, having no clue of its internal workings I just drag all sliders to the right and pick the bottom options figuring they are latest and most powerful features

I use the frontend GameBase Amiga. Easy to install and set up, it handles all the UAE settings and whatnot so you don't have to worry about it. Latest version (1.5+) of WinUAE works fine, but you have to set the path manually. Then you just grab the preinstalled WHDL games from here or here and you're good to go.

It runs most of the WHDL preinstalls that I've tried. The only ones from the Goldbox series that apparently don't work out of the box are COTAB and TOTSF, but I guess it's just a matter of time or configuring stuff manually.