Posted May 23, 2020
The Curse of the Azure Bonds longform walkthrough is finally up!
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/564786-curse-of-the-azure-bonds/faqs/78365
I forgot that GameFAQs can take many days to approve something this long, if it's new. For the record, it's about 50% longer than the actual Azure Bonds novel, which is about 450,000 bytes.
There is a section corresponding to anything that was in the Pool of Radiance walkthrough, plus additional text on plot background (including a novel summary), a brief strategic rundown of every location in the game, and a formalized list of bugs (which didn't quite hit triple digits). I also didn't just skip over scripted mechanics as lightly as I did in Pool of Radiance.
Anything different in Curse of the Azure Bonds should be updated. As normal for the Gold Box games, lots of completely random things don't behave the same and I re-verified everything I could think of. Elves no longer get a bonus with crossbows, for instance (that's the one I always remember offhand, somehow). A few things I thought were different actually do behave the same; for instance, Sleep specifically has logic that prevents it from ever working on 5-hit-dice creatures that are PC races, but can still work on 5-hit-dice ogres (4+4 HD in the tabletop game, but the Gold Box games don't have fractional hit dice).
I expect that I'll soon be making minor factual adjustments before it stabilizes. I'm quite confident this is still far more accurate than the original Pool of Radiance walkthrough I submitted, though.
Pool of Radiance longform walkthrough also updated to v1.31:
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/564785-pool-of-radiance/faqs/73869
I moved references and acknowledgments to the end because it was starting to take up too much space at the beginning, and there is a new version history (retroactive; multiple people asked), but the only change in the actual gameplay writeup is that you can make the hostile magic-user in the Valhingen Graveyard friendly (if you really want to).
I'm planning to eventually either write up Secret of the Silver Blades next, or create unofficial patches for Pool/Curse, but I'm going to take a break from Gold Box for a while -- I'll look at the original Phantasie next.
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/564786-curse-of-the-azure-bonds/faqs/78365
I forgot that GameFAQs can take many days to approve something this long, if it's new. For the record, it's about 50% longer than the actual Azure Bonds novel, which is about 450,000 bytes.
There is a section corresponding to anything that was in the Pool of Radiance walkthrough, plus additional text on plot background (including a novel summary), a brief strategic rundown of every location in the game, and a formalized list of bugs (which didn't quite hit triple digits). I also didn't just skip over scripted mechanics as lightly as I did in Pool of Radiance.
Anything different in Curse of the Azure Bonds should be updated. As normal for the Gold Box games, lots of completely random things don't behave the same and I re-verified everything I could think of. Elves no longer get a bonus with crossbows, for instance (that's the one I always remember offhand, somehow). A few things I thought were different actually do behave the same; for instance, Sleep specifically has logic that prevents it from ever working on 5-hit-dice creatures that are PC races, but can still work on 5-hit-dice ogres (4+4 HD in the tabletop game, but the Gold Box games don't have fractional hit dice).
I expect that I'll soon be making minor factual adjustments before it stabilizes. I'm quite confident this is still far more accurate than the original Pool of Radiance walkthrough I submitted, though.
Pool of Radiance longform walkthrough also updated to v1.31:
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/564785-pool-of-radiance/faqs/73869
I moved references and acknowledgments to the end because it was starting to take up too much space at the beginning, and there is a new version history (retroactive; multiple people asked), but the only change in the actual gameplay writeup is that you can make the hostile magic-user in the Valhingen Graveyard friendly (if you really want to).
I'm planning to eventually either write up Secret of the Silver Blades next, or create unofficial patches for Pool/Curse, but I'm going to take a break from Gold Box for a while -- I'll look at the original Phantasie next.