Gold Box SSI's Gold Box Series Thread

[Beans00]

Wait, you're starting at level 11+?

From memory (if correct):
Fighter max 8
Cleric max 6
Mage max 6
Rogue max 9

I think... level 11 mage? Lordy! I'm not saying it wouldn't be interesting but it won't be like the authentic original as intended.

Or you're saying you will dual in the future sequels?

No, this will go into future games, I imagine I'll be dualing towards the end of curse?

 

[Rincewind]

I can't wait to see that.

First beta of the collection coming out by Christmas.

 

[Beans00]

Completed 3 areas so far

slums
sokol keep
koto's well


I mapped the slums and sokol manually, but used GBC for the minimap after that.

Trolls in the slums kicked my ass, I had to go back and fight them after the other 2 areas.

So far the game is pretty decent. I definitely appreciate limited random encounters. Some of the encounter design is a bit...Iffy. Funny story, theres a massive army at sokol keep, probably like 30 orcs/kobolds. I didn't have sleep memorized so I said fuck it, put on quick combat and went to take a shit. Came back and my party won with 2 left standing, no casualties(4 unconscious). 2 survivors has like 2 and 5 hp.

The UI is absolutely painful compared to gateway.

 

[mediocrepoet]

The UI is absolutely painful compared to gateway.

Well, it is the first one and improved a lot over the various GB iterations. Still though, at the time, it was awesome.

 

[holla_cabezas_de_mierda]

I loved the dragon art.

The art in Treasures is great. I would love to see that exact replica type of art for Knights of the Chalice II

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Can you insert said art into that? I know FRUA and such you can (I keep forgetting the name of that abandoned project that used FRUA, dungeonforge or something), and iceblink engine. ICEBLINK reminds me of Vogel gaming but FRUA is that hybrid FP, overhead continent, and TTB battle we love of gold box. I loved the Bard's Tale Construction set (never tried the BTCK construction kit clone) but it had some severe art limitations. I don't like art being limited on hard drive space. Old disks, yeah but not HDD. Even FRUA had that issue to a degree. How I loved my dos collection of GB assets and tools..... until the virus purged that poor 486 of everything.

Edit.... Dungeoncraft

 

[Dorateen]

I loved the dragon art.

The art in Treasures is great. I would love to see that exact replica type of art for Knights of the Chalice II

It would be exceptional to see more art in the style of SSI's svga graphics, such as from Treasures. In the meantime, I did use a lot of Gold Box artwork for Hearkenwold in Knights of the Chalice 2, including an encounter that features your boat avatar.

Spoiler

 

[holla_cabezas_de_mierda]

I loved the dragon art.

The art in Treasures is great. I would love to see that exact replica type of art for Knights of the Chalice II

It would be exceptional to see more art in the style of SSI's svga graphics, such as from Treasures. In the meantime, I did use a lot of Gold Box artwork for Hearkenwold in Knights of the Chalice 2, including an encounter that features your boat avatar.

Spoiler

oh wow cool-- I played Harkenworld on that other simulator you had it on, I think FRUA maybe, or was it a different one? I forget, I don't have it installed anymore it was a few years ago, I really enjoyed it. I have not played it in knights of the Chalice yet. I should get back to Knights of the Chalice, I bought it when it first came out an played it for awhile and decided to wait awhile and see how it progressed with updates and user created modules. Its been awhile now.

 

[Beans00]

So I just finished POR, I'm aware this is a cult classic seminal game. A lot of people on this thread consider it their favorite. My opinion is a bit mixed.

So for starters I played with a few restrictions.

I did not use the fix command, with the exception of the kobold cave since I got tired of walking out of the cave to heal. I would estimate this added at least 5-7 hours to my playtime. What can I say lol.
I mapped the first few areas of the game by hand. I didn't do this for every area( I mapped up to kuto's well). I imagine doing this manually would add another 7-8 hours to the game.
I did not consult walkthrough except for the pyramid. Teleporter puzzles are garbage, I'm aware they were popular back in the day but I'm not a fan.

Overall I was impressed by the non linearity, and amount of side content. The UI is noticeably worse than gateway/treasures. If anyone hasn't played the game and doesn't understand the little things they improved. POR is much much more archaic than the others and it adds hours to the gameplay

needing to cycle menu lists using '1' instead of arrow keys, aim not manually targeting closest enemies in combat, trainers for every class, ect, little things that add up and put time on the game.

I understand in 1988 only dungeon master had a better ui, and I may not have noticed it if I played POR first.

I definitely had issues with encounter quality
So for starters, the game started out strong

The slums were good
Sokol keep was cool
kuto's well was good
potol plaza was good
mendors library was good
textile house was good
kovel mansion was solid

After this I went into the wilderness areas, and being honest I legitimately wanted to tear my eyes out.

The nomad camp was fine, but really easy
The kobold cave was the worst area in any gold box game so far
The pyramid was awful, I'm aware some people like teleporter puzzles but I got annoyed and just looked up a guide. After looking it up I became even more annoyed seeing how simple the path through was
The lizard castle was fine but I was friends with them so I didn't really fight anyone
The buccaneer base was awful
The zhentil keep stuff was a neat idea(for the actual game), but again garbage encounter design

After that I went back to finish off the city

The wealthy district/temple of bane were way too easy and pointless
The graveyard was the most annoying part of the game, I appreciate the game for giving me restoration scrolls but I ended up reloading a lot here out of pure fatigue.

this isn't encounter design, this is a waste of my time lol

For that fight, I literally casted hold on the leader(100hp), killed him, pressed quick combat. Went to go take a shit, do the dishes, bother my family and I came back 20 minutes later and

I had 1 guy unconscious, and no one else close to dying.

Legit terrible encounter design, I'm aware I could spam fireball, and I did that. For this fight it was after I used all my spells in the previous encounter. Thankfully most of the enemies were such a joke it didn't matter.

Generally speaking, I reloaded if anyone died except for the 2 characters I'm not planning to bring into COTAB. My dwarf fighter was a beast and didn't die once all game

My F/M/C half elf was down to like 9(from 17 or 18) constitution by the end of the game which is pretty funny.

There were SO many pointless fights like that, where it was more efficient for me to press Q and go do something else then waste my time fighting it out. Sometimes bombing with a fireball or sleep before going afk. Because of how many enemies there were some of these fights were long as fuck too.

I DID really appreciate the limited encounters in most areas. Much better than infinite encounters in the savage frontiers series.


So this leads me to the final area. Which I wasn't looking forward to at all. Thankfully I was pleasantly surprised. Everything from the Stojanow gate, through the end game castle was some of the strongest content in the game. After exploring the 4 areas of the castle, and mapping out most of the hedge maze. I ended up triggering the alarm. By that point I had more or less figured out where the exit was, but hadn't figured out exactly how to get through the maze. So I made a manic dash and got through like 3 walls without dying to make it to the outline of the building with the staircase to the end game.

The result was

I did beat it on the first try, although he did zap half my party to be fair. No one important except my cleric died so I just cheated my rules and used the fix command after since it's late and I didn't feel like redoing the fight.


Game took me 33 hours to beat. The no fix rule added at least 5-7 hours to my playtime.

Overall hard to say, I spent a lot of the last few days bitching to JarlFrank about the dip in quality in the 2nd half of the game. Then the final areas left a really good taste in my mouth, which is rare for rpgs.


Will either do curse next or start the krynn series.

 

[behold_a_man]

For that fight, I literally casted hold on the leader(100hp), killed him, pressed quick combat. Went to go take a shit, do the dishes, bother my family and I came back 20 minutes later and I had 1 guy unconscious, and no one else close to dying.

Did you use custom DOSBox settings? The combat was pretty quick after switching from 3000 to 20000 CPU cycles.

The buccaneer base was awful

In terms of the encounter design? This area gave me more optionality than the rest of the game, and it's nice I could avoid combat altogether by the very end of the game, when experience ceased to matter (which I did if I recall correctly).

The graveyard was the most annoying part of the game

Even with a good/evil cleric? It was the only place where I could use the cleric to his full advantage in the Radiance series, which I appreciated.

 

[octavius]

The problem with the Buccaneer Base and Zhentil Outpost is that the commanders fall so very easily to level 1 and 2 spells like Charm, Hold Person and Stinking Cloud.
These encounters compare very unfavourably with the Bandit Camp in Baldur's Gate, for example.

 

[Beans00]

For that fight, I literally casted hold on the leader(100hp), killed him, pressed quick combat. Went to go take a shit, do the dishes, bother my family and I came back 20 minutes later and I had 1 guy unconscious, and no one else close to dying.

Did you use custom DOSBox settings? The combat was pretty quick after switching from 3000 to 20000 CPU cycles.

The buccaneer base was awful

In terms of the encounter design? This area gave me more optionality than the rest of the game, and it's nice I could avoid combat altogether by the very end of the game, when experience ceased to matter (which I did if I recall correctly).

The graveyard was the most annoying part of the game

Even with a good/evil cleric? It was the only place where I could use the cleric to his full advantage in the Radiance series, which I appreciated.

I used the default settings, I don't know how to run dosbox beyond getting like 3 games set up for the bare minimum. I also played it via the steam version.

The buccaneer base was a cool idea, but yes the encounter design was bad. 5 consecutive long trash mob fights, also to add insult to injury. The buccaneer captain ran away before I could kill him so I missed getting his +4 longsword, so I missed the 2nd best weapon in the game. I only found this out looking at the weapons list on gamebanshee after I beat the game.

Generally I hate level draining effects. I had 2 clerics, sometimes turn undead wiped them, a lot of the time it didn't. It worked far more reliably in the savage frontier series. I had the efriti(spelling lol) help me kill the vampire. A lot of reloading for me when I ran out of restoration scrolls though.

 

[behold_a_man]

I used the default settings, I don't know how to run dosbox beyond getting like 3 games set up for the bare minimum. I also played it via the steam version.

https://www.dosbox.com/wiki/Special_Keys
Ctrl+F12 moves cycles up, Ctrl+F11 down. Ctrl+F10 for capturing/freeing the mouse and Ctrl+F5 for taking screenshots also come in handy.
If you want to make settings permanent, somewhere in the game folder there will probably be a file like dosbox{game_name}.conf with settings.

Generally I hate level draining effects. I had 2 clerics, sometimes turn undead wiped them, a lot of the time it didn't. It worked far more reliably in the savage frontier series. I had the efriti(spelling lol) help me kill the vampire. A lot of reloading for me when I ran out of restoration scrolls though.

Now that you mention it, the game is bugged, and two subsequent level drains will drain the character permanently. So yes, reloading is preferable.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Wanna hear a game where level drain really could fuck a game with save-scum? Warriors of the eternal
Sun.

Save before attack. Get stuck by a wight that damages you minimally. That is the perm hp it takes. Do this until level 1. Then, LEVEL UP. Save scum before you level to roll max hp. Fire giant cave in the beastman valley is best after you get a few levels. I literally had a mage at like 250 hp but something broke. It seems they'd all just die from 1 hit. I thought maybe it was that 255 mark but a few were well below this. Still, you could do it a few times and have some spare hp. I never got the second dev cheat screen to work on WOTES because of the fucky two controllers tight button sequence shit. First cheat screen was tricky enough but #2 is a bitch. If i ever crack that i will savestate and preserve it for ALL.

 

[Beans00]

Started curse of the azure bonds, rock solid so far except for the world map being on rails. Done about 3-4 areas I think.

 

[Beans00]

Finished curse of the azure bonds, best game in the series by far so far.

A lot less to nitpick about, but a few things.

The optional areas generally sucked.

The whole game was pretty high quality, nothing except the beholder caves and end game pissed me off, and thats just because they were hard.

I really liked the beholder caves but I felt it was a huge difficulty spike, but good fights that weren't tedious.

I didn't like most towns being menus, feels like a dip in quality.


The end game was. Well the buriel glen sucked, spiders suck and i hate them in these games.

Myth drannor was cool

The ruined temple was a cool area, but the difficulty felt artificial. I guess it's a pretty straight shot but not being able to rest is annoying, especially if you were an inquisitive player doing this back in the day, would end up fucking you over. thankfully most of the encounters were pretty easy except the final boss because, the final boss was WAY harder than any other fight in the game. Thankfully I had a shit ton of AOE, 8 fireballs(ring of wizardry), wand of fireballs, wand of ice storm, and a wand of lightning.

It took 6 attempts to beat the final boss, only the end boss in gateway has taken more. Also I feel like I got super lucky during the final fight and it could have taken me another 5-10 attempts, because the first few weren't competitive at all.


The game was definitely on the short side, only took me 17.5 hours. Wish it was a bit longer if anything. Easily my favorite game in the series so far.

Going to take a break from the main series and go champions of Krynn next, if anyone has any party suggestions for those games I would be interested in what the new races/classes are. octavius (sorry for the ping).

 

[octavius]

For me a "good party" is a diverse party to have all classes and races represented, so something like this:

Human Knight
Human White Mage
Dwarf Fighter
Kender Cleric/Thief
Silvanesti Elf Ranger/Cleric
Qualinesti Fighter/Red Mage

The Kender is good in the two first games of the trilogy, due to his Taunts and being able to backstab with a Hoopak (very useful against Skeletal Warriors who take half damage from any other backstab able weapon).

The Knight will be able to lead NPC and use special items.

The Dwarf fighter will probably have the most HP and thus inflict more damage with a Dragonlance.

It depends on your playing style which party is "best". If you rest spam and power game, you naturally go for multi-classed Elf Fighter/Mages and barrages of lolDelayed Blast Fireball. If you limit resting, you focus more on might, and backstabbing, and long lasting buffing spells like Enlarge. And don't forget the Kenders are the only ones immune to Fear. So a Kender with Dispel Magic can be very handy to have around, especially if you also play Ironman.

 

[Cael]

My party:
For Champions:
1x Human Knight
1x Qualinesti Fighter/Cleric of Kiri-Jolith
3x Qualinesti Fighter/Red Mage
1x Qualinesti Fighter/White Mage

You can trade the Fighter/Cleric out for another Knight in Death Knights, if you want. Just keep a suit of Solamnic Armour if you want to go down that route. It is only there to give you a bit of healing until your Knight can take over.

You can also change one of the Fighter/Red Mages for a Fighter/Thief/Red Mage, if you want. There is only 1 area that requires a Thief, and it is only in the second game.

 

[octavius]

Another thing to consider is that the Krynn games are more hard core than the Forgotten Realms games.
Elves can't be Raised or Resurrected, and any character that fails saving throw against Disintegration is Gone. The only cure is Power Word: Load.

And there's no dual classing Human characters.

 

[Beans00]

So just looking at the DQOK manual, the level limits for non humans look much more forgiving. I'll definitely be using a mix of new classes/races.

 

[Cael]

So just looking at the DQOK manual, the level limits for non humans look much more forgiving. I'll definitely be using a mix of new classes/races.

Only Qualinesti Elves need apply (and only because they get to 14th level Fighter). The other demi-humans have limits that are pretty bad (but not as bad as FR).

 

[Beans00]

So just looking at the DQOK manual, the level limits for non humans look much more forgiving. I'll definitely be using a mix of new classes/races.

Only Qualinesti Elves need apply (and only because they get to 14th level Fighter). The other demi-humans have limits that are pretty bad (but not as bad as FR).

What level do you think I'll be reaching by the end of DQOK? Mid teens?

 

[Cael]

So just looking at the DQOK manual, the level limits for non humans look much more forgiving. I'll definitely be using a mix of new classes/races.

Only Qualinesti Elves need apply (and only because they get to 14th level Fighter). The other demi-humans have limits that are pretty bad (but not as bad as FR).

What level do you think I'll be reaching by the end of DQOK? Mid teens?

A single class Thief will hit the mid-late 30s. A single-class Red Mage will be early-mid 30s.

For a double-class, you are looking at mid-late 20s, IIRC.

The thing is, you will lose a LOT of XP in DKK (less so in COK) because of level limits. I get around that by GBC-ing my characters at the beginning of the next game to what levels they should be with their XP score. You will also lose a LOT of XP in the final area of DQK. There are ways around it, even without GBC, though. So, what I am saying is that the level count is not accurate because of that.

A good guide will be the bottom of this page. The guy played it straight without GBC or workarounds, but he used single class characters.

It does vary because DKK's encounter rate is insane, and you can get good XP out of them. And there are a lot of optional fights that net a ton of XP, but really depends on your appetite for combat (instead of just talking your way out of them).

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

I can't recall but wasn't there a few instances where dead or gone members would be restored via some set story instance. Maybe I'm thinking of a different game. One of those "xyz waves its hands and party is restored." No real D&D mechanics like temple or spell... it just happens. Meh, probably my imagination.

 

[Cael]

I can't recall but wasn't there a few instances where dead or gone members would be restored via some set story instance. Maybe I'm thinking of a different game. One of those "xyz waves its hands and party is restored." No real D&D mechanics like temple or spell... it just happens. Meh, probably my imagination.

You are thinking of Temple of Elemental Evil, when you fight Iuz, and St Cuthbert intervened.