Gold Box SSI's Gold Box Series Thread

[Carlos' Bitch1]

You won't get loot up to the same standard in the Krynn series though, apart from two items, one of which is unique to Krynn. The loot and battles in Dark Queen of Krynn are virtually on the same level as Pools of Darkness too.

After that, you will only have the Savage frontier and Buck Rogers series to go. Savage frontier does not allow loot to port (I think) while Buck Rogers does.

 

[jaylittle]

Yeah PoD is fucking brutal. I stopped playing last night and went to bed (@ 2am) after getting hold person/confusion spammed by Drow over and over again under Zenthil Keep. My extensive dual class strategy has left me at odds with the games very difficult battles. That is especially true when it comes to the Drow and their innate magic resistance. Yeah sure you can try to use a lightning bolt or fireball to disable the spell casters, but the odds of it actually doing the job are slim to none.

 

[GarfunkeL]

Gah, I take back everything bad I've ever said about rogues. My thief just backstabbed the end boss in PoR, Tyranthraxus (sp), FOR 52 FUCKING HP!!!
Mind you, it was a dragon.

Turned the battle from challenging into a cakewalk!

Time to go move into CofAB!

 

[Flux_Capacitor]

Gah, I take back everything bad I've ever said about rogues. My thief just backstabbed the end boss in PoR, Tyranthraxus (sp), FOR 52 FUCKING HP!!!
Mind you, it was a dragon.

Turned the battle from challenging into a cakewalk!

Yeah, they can be pretty decent in the right situations. Its possible to do triple digit damage by the end of Curse of the Azure Bonds, with the right equipment.

Well, I finished my playthrough of the FRUA version of Curse of the Azure Bonds. I didn't notice any problems with quests, as I had with Pool of Radiance. The following are the main differences/problems I noticed:

- Some of the optional areas are missing - Hillsfar and Teshwave, from what I remember. Not really a big deal, as I don't think there was much interesting going on at either location.
- The Phlan optional area is available, but there's a problem with the linking of the maps. When you first try to enter the area, you are sent to an empty map. One without an exit, from what I could tell. I edited the module, and the map exists, but the link from the wilderness map takes you to the dungeon map in the list after the correct one, which is empty. Fortunately, I had not saved, and was able to get my party out.
- The Mulmaster Beholder Corps encounter is all but impossible. Dust of Disappearance is in the game, but from what I can tell, it casts Invisibility 10' radius, rather than the original's Improved Invisibility. As soon as a character attacks or casts a spell, they become visible.
- Some creatures had spells, when they didn't have any before, and some spellcasters had access to higher level spells. Dracandros tried to Flesh to Stone one of my characters, and several Black Dragons cast Stinking Cloud at my party.
- A minor detail, but there seemed to be a fair number of spelling mistakes.

By deconstructing some of the Secret of the Silver Blades character save file, I was effectively able to transfer my characters from FRUA CotAB to SotSB. So, I have a few characters with normally impossible race/class combinations, and higher levels than normally available for a demi-human.

I also found a few other interesting things. There are two additional races you can make a character - Tribble and Monster. I'm guessing Monster is used for enemies to determine if they can be affected by spells like Charm Monster/Person and Hold Monster/Person. I have no idea what the differences a Tribble would have.

Also, there looks to have been some work put in for two extra classes - Monk and Druid. Some of the class details are implemented. When I tried modifying their attributes, it seemed correct from what I remember - Druids need Wis 12+ and Cha 15+, Monks need Str 15+, Wis 15+, Dex 15+, and Con 11+. Other than that, there doesn't look to be any functionality. I can't train characters with those classes, Druids can't memorize spells, and the Monk doesn't gain improved AC or damage.

 

[GarfunkeL]

Oh fuck, I sold my Dust of Disappearance since I thought it would only make one person invisibile, instead of the whole party. Bugger me silly. Oh well, let's hope I can find more somewhere (playing the DOS version of Curse, btw).

 

[Flux_Capacitor]

Oh fuck, I sold my Dust of Disappearance since I thought it would only make one person invisibile, instead of the whole party. Bugger me silly. Oh well, let's hope I can find more somewhere (playing the DOS version of Curse, btw).

The Dust of Disappearance is arguably the best item of the game, possibly of all the Gold Box games. I can't remember if its usable once, and affects the entire party, or if it only affects one character at a time, but has six charges. Either way, it makes them invisible for pretty much an entire combat encounter (and then some, possibly). I imagine it would make the final encounter incredibly easy.

The Mulmaster Beholder Corps is an entirely optional encounter, and also one of the coolest. But, as I said, impossible without the Dust of Disappearance. There's something like 15 beholders, 10 drow lords, 10 high priests and a half dozen rakshasa. Offensive magic is nearly worthless. Two or three beholders is difficult enough without anyone getting killed (or worse), and drow lords and rakshasa can be hell.

 

[jaylittle]

Oh fuck, I sold my Dust of Disappearance since I thought it would only make one person invisibile, instead of the whole party. Bugger me silly. Oh well, let's hope I can find more somewhere (playing the DOS version of Curse, btw).

That was dumb

That dust is pretty much the only way you have to finish MulMaster in Curse. Optionally it can also be really useful if you decide to fight all of the dragons at the top of Draconis' tower.

 

[Severian Silk]

I just found this.

Dungeon Craftis an adventure creator that is based on the AD&D gaming system. It mimics the features and functionality of SSI's Forgotten Realms Unlimited Adventures. While FRUA is DOS based, DC is Win32 based and currently runs under Windows 95/98/ME/2000/XP/Vista using DirectX 7 and higher. Check out the minimum requirements on the downloads page.

While this is an attempt to recreate the functionality of the original FRUA/Gold Box as closely as possible, some improvements have been made. Most notably:

* supports 16/24/32 bit color
* supports BMP, PCX, TGA, PNG, JPEG, WAV, MIDI, MP3, MOD, and AVI file types
* 640x480, 800x600, and 1024x768 screen sizes during game play
* Editable items, spells, and monsters
* Increased capacity for maps, events, quests, special items, and text
* Each design is self-contained, the editor is not required to play the game
* All art can be customized
* Area view can be configured to auto map, display the whole map, or no map.
* Text events can use scripted conversations, Ultima style
* Map walls/blockages can be altered at runtime

Plus, new features and event triggers can be added as desired to future releases.

It would be cool if you could load the GoldBox data files and play the game using this newer engine, kind of how UFO 2000 works with X-COM.

 

[Saxon1974]

I just configured Game Base Amiga to run the WHDLoad of "Gateway to the Savage Frontier" on the Amiga. It eliminates disk swapping which is nice.

Never played the amiga versions before but I think I like it better than the DOS version. The sound is better for sure.

Anyone else play the Amiga versions of these games? Impressions?

 

[Luzur]

reworked graphics and better music?

 

[Saxon1974]

reworked graphics and better music?

Yes it appears so. The graphics are similiar but do look better than the DOS versions, especially enemy combat models.

There is added sound in some places, a little tune plays when entering combat and after victory.

There is a staleness to the feel of the DOS versions I never liked, but playing the C64 version while I love them is a bit of a pain due to the emulation and interface issues.

It appears the amiga versions are the right ones for me, but havent played much yet.

 

[Flux_Capacitor]

reworked graphics and better music?

Yes it appears so. The graphics are similiar but do look better than the DOS versions, especially enemy combat models.

Screenshots? I just finished Gateway to the Savage Frontier (DOS version) a couple days ago, and I'd be interested in seeing some of the differences. I've looked around some for Amiga screenshots of the game, but found very few. And, none really of combat.

 

[Luzur]

reworked graphics and better music?

Yes it appears so. The graphics are similiar but do look better than the DOS versions, especially enemy combat models.

Screenshots? I just finished Gateway to the Savage Frontier (DOS version) a couple days ago, and I'd be interested in seeing some of the differences. I've looked around some for Amiga screenshots of the game, but found very few. And, none really of combat.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUsZD2njyC8 gateway

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqWG1iohFPY treasures

 

[jaylittle]

So....

I finally beat Pools of Darkness on Monday night. Holy fuck. None of my parties ever made it through the first battle, much less all three, but this party was more than up for the challenge. First lets hit the difficulty level:

So I went through with Normal difficulty. Now let's check out each of my characters prior to the final battle:

Keep in mind that the displayed XP amounts only include XP gained for each characters 2nd class. So there are millions of XP not even included in that number that were required for the their original class levels. You'll notice that the characters have varying levels of experience in their second class. That is because I dualed two characters at a time and waiting until the last two could hold their own in PoD with the party rather than turning my whole party into a bunch of n00bs that could get killed by a few Orcs.

Now as for the battle. Holy fuck. What a battle. Well there are three of them actually. The first battle varies in size and is by far the most "fair" of all three. Depending upon your actions, the number of enemies you face can vary. Essentially right before the battle you can choose to have a character use an item (with a random degree of effectiveness) that drives off up to half of the enemies that you would otherwise have to fight. Truthfully, although I didn't try the first battle with all of the enemies, we are talking about 10 Bits of Moander, 10 Pet Spiders, 10 Dracoliches and 10 Blue Bane Minions. This can be a very tough battle. Needless to say my extreme levels of spell prep (haste/pray/bless/mirror image/fire shield/globe of invulnerability) combined with the fact that every single one of my characters was able to cast level 9 mage spells, pretty much rendered this battle easy as pie this time around.

Now in prior attempts to beat this game, I had never made it through the first battle except a few times by dumb luck. In the five or so tries it took me to best the final series of battles this time around, I nailed it every single time. Having massive amounts of spell power makes all of the difference. Fireballs kill Pets and Minions. Ice Storms/Cone of Colds kill Dracoliches and Bits of Moander. In addition, haste is very important for all three battles because the first order of business is to get out of the room you start in. Essentially for each of the three battles, you start in the middle of a very large room surrounded by multiple groups of enemies. All of your characters need to have at least 18 movement slots in order to make this happen. You will also find that while the spell effects carry over between battles, they will wear out so you need to be prepared to reapply them (preferably at the end of the second battle).

As for the second battle, I don't know if it's size is affected by the choice I described earlier, but we are talking about 7 or 8 beholders. One Elder Orb, Four Beholders and Two Death Tyrants. This is a diffcult battle namely because all it takes is one successful slow spell to really kill your plans here. Typically my guys move out of the room to the northern exit and line up against the longer bit of wall with the rangers/mages closest to the door. That way occassionally one of those orbs will roll through and you can gang bang it good. Once you are down to three or if you are lucky four orbs remaining (assuming your haste effect is still active), you can send your characters out there to clean up the rest of the garbage pretty quickly with minimal risk. My success rate on this battle was 80%, as there was one time the Beholders got the best of me (i.e. expired spell effects that I wasn't aware of).

The third battle. Fuck. Me. This. One. Sucked. This namely due to the fact that between the second/third battle you lose all of your magic skills. Fuck. Me. Anyway this battle consists of the final boss, Gothenmes, 8 Blue Bane Minions, 2 Green Dragons and 2 Bits of Moander. This biggest issue here are the Blue Bane Minions as they have an electrical version of a Fire Shield on them so melee attacks against them do double the damage back to you. Every member of your part NEEDS a missle weapon in order to finish this battle. You must start off the battle by leaving the center of the room through the west exit, proceeding down the hallway, around the corner, and up into the room at the far end of the battle field. This is where your characters and their missle weapons must make their stand. You can get one guy down and draw one or two of the enemies into the room and pelt them to death. The only exception to this is Gothenmes who will need to be gang banged rather quickly by your tanks/fighters in order to avoid the possibility that he'll insta-kill one or more of your characters by beheading them. Not to mention the fact that he move 34 spaces in a single turn, so missle weapons simply don't have enough opportunity to take him out before he makes mincemeat out of your ass. You'll need to try to avoid melee combat with the Bits of Moander as the two in this battle seem to have an increased tendency to turn you to stone which of course is VERY bad.

Once you finish the third battle, you get a decent enough ending sequence. Here are some highlights:

Three words: Asshole. Cliche. Cunt.

I didn't take any screenshots during the battle, but I'll do so tonight as I attempt to run through it once again just for the hell of it.

 

[Thrasher]

What do you think? Is Pool of Radiance buggy?

One of my characters became permanently unmoveable during combat after being hit with a mantis or stinking cloud or harpy. Not sure.

I had to go back quite a way to an earlier save.

Are there any other game killing bugs I should be aware of? Or at least some online docs that describe them?

This game seems to be near the outer edge of web consciousbess and ready to fall into the abyss...

 

[Unkillable Cat]

The only bug I ever came across was that at the end of the game I had 10648064 Gold Pieces and 61000 pieces of Jewlery. Sadly, the money did not transfer over into Curse Of The Azure Bonds.

 

[ElectricOtter]

Poo of Radiance is bugged out the ass. I wouldn't suggest playing it unless you're prepared to start over many, many times.

 

[Flux_Capacitor]

I've played through the game a couple times, and can't recall bugs of any sort, although it has been a few years. You could try the FRUA version, I suppose. FRUA came out on the tail end of the Gold Box engine's popularity, so most bugs have probably been ironed out by that point.

Here's a page I found that describes a couple bugs, a few I had heard of before. However, I doubt many people will see these on a normal playthrough.
http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/P ... ance_(game)

 

[Thrasher]

Thanks. I just should make a habit of saving to a new slot every hour or so. I just hope a decision I make early in the game doesn't kill it much later...

Some ogf those huge battles can take a half hour to get through. And they can be random encounters. Memories of Wizardry 8....

 

[Qwinn]

If you mean that you have no control over the character and it just skips over him during your turns, it's possible that you accidentally set him to be computer controlled at some point. I did that a few times, took me a while of messing around to figure out how to turn that off. I -think- it involved hitting the space bar during that turn, but experiment, you should be able to get control back eventually.

(Note: This may have been during other games of the same series, like CotAB or SotSB. Can't swear PoR has the same feature, but thought I'd mention it.)

Qwinn

 

[Zomg]

I never thought of PoR as especially buggy, although I probably have a relatively high tolerance. Runs fine in DOSBox, and you can get the hintbook on replacementdocs if you want something like a FAQ a current game would get (except better).

 

[Thrasher]

I had control of the character, there's just never a move option during combat. I think she got permanently stuck by a Giant Mantis or something. Even emptied her inventory, but since her movement was shown as 6, I think it was bugged. Tried remove curse, restoration, dispel, etc to no avail.

Yes, I found that hint book on replacement docs. Main use is for mapping. Don't really have the pateince anymmore for getting out the graph paper.

Other useful sites in case anyone else is interested:

http://annex.wikia.com/wiki/Pool_of_Radiance
http://www.rpgplanet.com/poolofradiance/games/por.asp
http://www.gamebanshee.com/poolofradiance/
http://www.the-spoiler.com/RPG/SSI/pool ... index.html
http://www.thecomputershow.com/computer ... cewalk.htm

 

[Carlos' Bitch1]

Poo of Radiance is bugged out the ass. I wouldn't suggest playing it unless you're prepared to start over many, many times.

Wrong Pool of Radiance. You are thinking about Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor. The topic is about the original Pool of Radiance.



As for graph paper, POR's areas are not big enough to warrant the effort. I certainly never needed to map a Goldbox game. The nearest I came to doing it was with Secret of the Silver blades, whose mines and tunnels became a little samey after a while.

I have never came across the bug you mention. What version are you using?

 

[Thrasher]

Right, I am not referring to Ruins of Myth Drannor.

Hmm, this game is so old is doesn't have a readme with a version number. It is the Dos version packaged within the silver boxed "Forgotten Realms Archives Collection".

My party is getting reamed in the 3 wave Kobold cave battle. My fighter mages aren't high enough level to cast fireballs. I may have to resort to scrolls and wand of magic missiles to make it through this one. Trolls are a pain, even with stinking clouds...

 

[Carlos' Bitch1]

Right, I am not referring to Ruins of Myth Drannor.

Hmm, this game is so old is doesn't have a readme with a version number. It is the Dos version packaged within the silver boxed "Forgotten Realms Archives Collection".

My party is getting reamed in the 3 wave Kobold cave battle. My fighter mages aren't high enough level to cast fireballs. I may have to resort to scrolls and wand of magic missiles to make it through this one. Trolls are a pain, even with stinking clouds...

Has your character become "unstuck"?

The battle that you are referring to can be a pain. And without fireball, a further pain. I would have taken all single class characters apart from perhaps a fighter thief (though it is sometimes easier to just hire a thief for the Cadorna Mansion area. The rest of the game does not really need a thief who perhaps comes in handy for a few other areas).

With Trolls, once they go down, get a character to stand where they were standing. I have found this stops them rising again (though this was in the C64 version).