Hi, Im currently going thru the gold box games and similar, since I missed them back in the day. I enjoyed PoR, CotAB, SOSB the had up and downs but i got thru them and enjoyed, but Pools of Darkness, while I was looking forward to high level play like Throne of Bhaal (one of my fondest rpg experiences) and I did enjoy it for a while but know im about lvl 25ish and I have had enough. The game turned into a boring slog and im struggling to summon the will to sit and play it anymore my main complaints:

- Too damn long with too many battles that the outcome depends on which side goes casts spells first. Makes every single dungeon a slog to go thru and I started loathing encountering enemies, specially randoms.

- Treasure and looting becomes irrelevant very soon. There is no powerful items to be on the lookout for and no use for money other than youth pots or arrows +1

- Meaningless advancement after certain point. Like being able to cast one more or less D. Blast Fireball or Meteor Swarm doesnt make any difference anymore

- Awful gimmick having to rearrange the whole inventory each time you travel to a plane

Im giving up on PoD cant bring myself to play it anymore. But im still interested on the rest of the Gold Box. Started Champions of Krynn and its nice, but im afraid that Dark Queen, being high level also becomes as boring and annoying as PoD. Please tell me none of the other games are like PoD.

I too played through the series and experienced the same disappointments with POD. The inventory shuffle got to the point of sapping any fun that may have been left. I made it all the way to the final stronghold and found out that for the final battle you lose the ability to use magic. I stopped right there and didn't complete the game being fed up with the whole bullshit concept that the developers obviously felt was amusing.

I found the Krynn series to be much more enjoyable and satisfying.

If you want to skip the inventory shuffle, you can download a mod for it from here:
http://gbc.zorbus.net

Limbo-mod for Pools of Darkness. Your items won't be destroyed when moving through Limbo.

(podlimbo.zip in the downloads sections)

Some background on the hack here:
https://forums.goldbox.games/index.php?topic=3601.msg51696#msg51696

Just starting PoD myself.

Dark Queen of Krynn runs into challenges keeping high level play relevant, but it mixes things up pretty regularly IMO. Other than the don't-go-there section of the last dungeon, most places shut down or limit DBF spam for one reason or another (it doesn't function, magic resistance, fire resistance, it's impossible to rest). Also the Krynn series is much more friendly to multi-class mages so if you're keen on them it's going to take you longer to get so many spells because the third game is where dividing multi-class experience really catches up to you.

Quite a few encounters *are* DBF+archery spam. The Demo battle is a good preview of what you'll be worried about. Not a very good preview IMO of how strong you'll be at the time you face it.