Interesting strategy, dtgreene.

Cluebooks: thank you, I already consult them. I wanted to play without for having a real own experience but I guess then the games would not be medium difficult as I see them currently but kind of harder due to missing XP and magic items.

Enemy Mages: now some ranting, chatting and tips exclusively about them and magic in general.

Yes, they already have their protection spells when the battle starts. They save some rounds. Wait a moment. They are cheating!!

Okay, one could say they prepare for battle as the party does. But they also have active spells when the party surprises them!

I think I was able to dispel "Fire Shield", at least I guess it was "Fire Shield". When attacking melee, the fighters "get zapped" with double the damage they deal. And after I cast "Dispel Magic" it stopped happening.

It is really annoying that the game does not show every spell effect. It is the case with "Stinking Cloud" or "Hold Person", where it says "helpless" but it does not say "stunned" after a successful "Power Word: Stun", so I have to remember whom I targeted.

And you said, there might be a chance that "Dispel Magic" (or another spell, I guess) does not work, but the game does not tell. It says "monster is affected" but when I attack I still get zapped. Would it have been so hard to program "casting failed" instead.

Oh, and my tactics to use the fireball staff for keeping mages from casting won't work when they have a globe of immunity for lower spells as "Fireball" is only level 3. Okay, then maybe the Ice Storm (level 4) staff.

What good are spells when everyone seems immune? I used "Silence", but it did nothing. Also, the mages were not interested in dying by "Disintegrate". Are we supposed to run around just with "Delayed Fireball"?

And again confusion: "Silence" is supposed to be 15' Radius, but the game only tells me "not affected" for one or two enemy characters, not for all that are adjacent to the target. What is going on here with the game engine.

Sometimes you get lucky. Just now I fought a Thenol mob and the Aurak exploded while in the middle of its own people. Yeah. And it goes on. The cleric casts "Blade Barrier" but not at my folks' feet but at his and his companion, both did not survive it. Those are the stories that make up for frustrating moments :o)

Oh, just now that I write this, maybe "Blade Barrier" is good against enemy casting, as it is sixth level, have to try that. Although memorizing that would be a tough call, as it is the same spell level as "heal" and at level 6 the slots are few.

The darts (+3) work for getting rid of some of the mirror images, but not all. I did not use the hornets so far, as they are rare and I might have better use for them in mandatory battles.

I'm not sure why you have to cast Dispel Magic before spells like Power Word, Stun or Silence 15' Radius.

Otherwise I also dispel my stun or silence spells.

Hey again.

Regarding the Potion of Speed (I forgot to address this last time): it is supposed to age the user just like a Haste spell. If it didn't, that's a bug.

Well, sure, the enemy mages start with prepared spells. That's supposed to be part of the challenge for the player. (This is my opinion, but I have long held that it is a mistake to expect the experience of playing an RPG video game, particularly single player, to be identical to playing a tabletop RPG. They are simply too different. For one thing, you can save and load in most video games. And we shouldn't expect computer controlled enemies in a video game to always be following the same rules as a human player.)

Yeah, the amount of information gold box games give you can be minimal. I believe you may be able to learn more by playing with Gold Box Companion, but, for me, full screen is too important for me to want to make much use of GBC (though I do back up my saves).

With Dispel Magic, a single casting will attempt to dispel any spell on the target. And I believe each spell in question is checked for separately. With the aforementioned minimal information, it is not possible to tell which spell has been dispelled.

I too prefer playing full screen, for one because of the better experience, but also my screen is not very big.

I already thought about not mapping with pen & paper but in excel like the CRPG Addict does, but for the above-mentioned reasons I chose not to, so far.

In the Steam version of Gold Box Companion, you can undock the HUD and the map and move them on another display. That way you can have the game in fullscreen on your main display. Requires of course a second monitor, but an option at least.

Vampires turn and level drain themselves :o)

Testing whether "confusion" works on vampires, I casted it against the vampire mob in New Aurim. And boy, did it work.

A vampire cleric was "turning undead" (!) and even had success, one of his mates went down. Another one attacked his companion and level-drained him, to the extend of collapsing.

Grinding

So far, grinding was not really possible because mostly there are minimal XP for random encounters. But in New Aurim it works. When trying to enter the palace without disguise and pass, the party is attacked by draconians worth about 15,000 XP. Yeah. And it worked at least half a dozen times so far, not ending in sight.

Also here the enemies attack themselves: sometimes I manage to kill the sivaks when they are still far away, so they explode and hurt their adjacent fellow draconians without the explosion reaching my party.

Magic Shop

After helping the New Aurim rebels, their magic shop is available. No arrows though but darts of hornets' nest!

Love that story about Confusion! You know, the greatest virtue of Confusion may be that it not only can force large numbers of enemies into a variety of unpredictable actions, but when they do switch sides they create diversions for other enemies who attack their former comrades instead of you, as noted in the case of that vampire. Charm Person and Charm Monster have similar benefits, but, of course, they only allow one target. (I guess no one at the time considered whether undead should be immune to level drain.)

Good thing you can handle such large draconian fights. I got the impression they could be tough.

By "sivaks," I assume you are referring to enchanted sivaks. Ordinary sivaks don't have death throes that can be really applied in gold box combat. In tabletop Dragonlance, dead sivaks assume the shape of their killer, which dovetails with their general shapeshifting abilities, something you have noticed in the plots of Champions of Krynn and Death Knights of Krynn. Enchanted draconians are unique to The Dark Queen of Krynn (I think; someone, dtgreene perhaps?, correct me if I'm wrong.)

Yes, with "Confusion" and "Charm" you can take more enemies out of the game than just the targeted one. I rarely use them though, because there are no XP for charmed or fled enemies. And the journal says the "Confusion" area of effect is 4x4 but how in relation to the target? Recently I cast and two of my own chars were confused. A further example of poor documentation. I don't know whether the designers wanted us to experiment, thought of only D&D insiders playing or just forgot.

Enemy groups: actually, those draconian groups don't make much trouble, beside the exploding. The mages/clerics/fanatics/warlords mob was rather more challenging but I won without trying too often, using much buffing and taking mages out with two "Delayed Blast Fireball".

After that some normal fireballs and the fighters hacking through. I was also a bit lucky, the clerics abandoned "Blade Barrier" casting, maybe because the enemy and the party was mingled too close. The one that did cast the spell did it on his own mates.

I guess it might get harder in areas with restricted resting, but so far - as much as I complain about enemy mages - it is okay, though due to the mages definitely harder than CoK and kind of harder than DKK (more level draining there instead).

But "Hold Person" again only worked like against 10% of the targeted enemies. Maybe it is just too low-level now.

Yes, I mean the enchanted versions of draconians.

Magic Stuff

Does someone know whether there is a difference between the Staff of Missiles and Necklace of Missiles according to damage? The number of charges might be random with both. And the necklace can be used by any class, I worked out this at least.

Are the staffs I can buy now different than the ones I still have from CoK and DKK?

Hmm...higher ranking enchanted draconians---i.e. bozaks and especially sivaks and auraks---are supposed to have powerful attacks, most notably spellcasting. Was their AI not implemented properly? (You haven't said whether you've faced a lot of enchanted auraks yet.)

Hold Person is resisted with saving throws, like many other spells (and magic resistance, of course, if a given enemy has it). At the levels you're dealing with, enemies are obviously going to have good saves. Another thing that has occurred to me, many if not most enemy mages at this point are going to start with Minor Globe of Invulnerability or (full) Globe of Invulnerability already up. This will make them immune to Hold Person, a 2nd level spell. I think those "globe' spells may also themselves be immune to Dispel Magic. Beyond that, I can't think of any reason why a low-level spell like Hold Person wouldn't work on high-level enemies. Do note that some high-level spells have penalties to the saves (I think).

I really don't know much about the magic items you're asking about. In terms of charges, in Pool of Radiance preset magic items come with a set, constant number of charges. However, randomly determined items may come with a random number of charges. I'm not sure; all I know a random Necklace of Missiles CAN come with a huge number of charges in that game, but I don't think that happens very often. The one preset Necklace has only seven charges. There is no Staff of Missiles in that game. I don't know how things may have changed between Pool and The Dark Queen of Krynn.

I guess it's worth pointing out that the gold box ability to achieve good pseudorandom is fairly limited. I've always been terrible in math and my computer programming knowledge is nil, but an important development in pseudorandom known as the Mersenne twister wasn't invented until well into the 1990s, several years after gold box development ended.

Does that mean there might be a way to manipulate the RNG in these games?

Here's a challenge:
* In Pool of Radiance (chosen for its lower levels and age), get a Fighter to max level with max HP rolls.
* You must save after each level up, and may not reload to a point before the level up. If you get less than the max HP roll, then you have failed.
* No emulator save states or similar are allowed.
* RNG manipulation is allowed.

Is this challenge realistically possible?

As I think I indicated in my post, dtgreene, I would truly have no idea. (At least I know what an RNG is.)

I'm also not sure what the point would be. My post was merely to respond to some frustrations that Brtannia47 was having.

The "Scroll of Prot Dragon Breath" bug occured again (changing name to "Scroll of Prot" and working like an armour). Though, there is no bank in New Aurim, must have been another reason.

Fortunately, I still have a savegame from arriving in New Aurim with the scrolls intact. So all of this area all over again, including grinding - I know there are quite some dragons and challenges to come, so I don't want to pass on either the scrolls (by just playing on) or the grinding experience (by just loading the arrival game and playing only the story).

Well, so I get to see if the vampires turn and drain themselves again...

Hoipe there is no joke on me if I use the scrolls, the game confirms it ("fighter uses scroll", so far I tested it) but to no effect (at least it is not shown in the camp / magic / display menu but I guess that is no bad sign, as it is a special effect and no spell).

Grinding battle: weird, so far the draconians always were directly below the party. Now I changed from DOSBox-X to DOSBox and they are above, in some distance. Suits me better, so I can cast the big fireball straight into the group.

How much AC does it provide?

The scroll lowers AC by 8 (AC 6 without gear, AC -2 with wearing the scroll), so it does not beat Plate +4.

It allows using a ring of protection but without effect. Not usable by mages.

Magic shop supplies: does someone know whether they are limited or infinite?

While this "Scroll of Protection" is obviously a bug---it sounds like it's trying to replicate magic armor---you should know that Rings of Protection aren't cumulative with magic armor in general. They do "stack" with nonmagic armor and with Bracers of Protection. Regardless of armor class, the rings are also supposed to add the bonus to your saves, but some of the rings are bugged in gold box and don't do that. (I know the rings bug is ubiquitous in Pool of Radiance and still fairly common in Curse of the Azure Bonds. It may have been at least partially fixed in later games, but I'm not sure.)

I never heard that magic shops, like pretty much any other shop, ever run out of supplies in gold box games.