SSI Gold Box Games

[Sir Slash]

Curse of the Azure Bonds had some brutally tough fights for me. The Red Wizard at the top of the tower beat me so many times I rage-quit the game for awhile. Also a Drow fighter on the way to the top of tower. But the one I never could get past was the Mulmaster Beholder Corp. I don't think the battle was ever intended to be winnable by whatever sick bastard came up with it. I'd like to stick a +3 Longsword up his ass.

[Rayfer]

Ok...took the plunge and started playing Pool of Radiance.  How the hell do exit a game? LOL...what am I missing? I can get a game going but can't get out of it.

[Greybriar]

Ok...took the plunge and started playing Pool of Radiance.  How the hell do exit a game? LOL...what am I missing? I can get a game going but can't get out of it.

Camp. Save the game. After saving you are given the option to exit.

That's the most painless way I've found so far.

[jamus34]

Curse of the Azure Bonds had some brutally tough fights for me. The Red Wizard at the top of the tower beat me so many times I rage-quit the game for awhile. Also a Drow fighter on the way to the top of tower. But the one I never could get past was the Mulmaster Beholder Corp. I don't think the battle was ever intended to be winnable by whatever sick bastard came up with it. I'd like to stick a +3 Longsword up his ass.

Not sure if mulmaster BC was azure bonds or secret of the silver blades but I remember one of those games having an optional room with storm giants and beholders. There was a trick to the fight though, dust of disappearance  :D

[JasonPratt]

My guess is Mulmaster Beholder Corps was in Azure Bonds because (1) that seems like something way too uber for the party in Radiance; and (2) I remember it being kind of near the end of the game, but we had to abandon SecretSilver due to the aforementioned gamekilling bug. (Which I suppose didn't affect everyone.) So we never got near the end of SecretSilver, much less did we even start the grand finale game Pools of Darkness (though I see that's part of the collection, yay!)

I do think we played through all three of the Krynn trilogy, though. And both Buck Rogers games.

I don't think we ever played the Savage Land duology, though I recall hearing good things about it.

I do recall trying to make an adaptation of the epic Slaver/Giants/Lolth trilogy on FRUA (which also comes with this set -- FRUA I mean), but I got frustrated trying to figure out how to make the plot in Slaver work properly.

We did play a lot of SSI's adaptation of the Krynn strategy boardgame, the name of which escapes me at the moment. Dragonlords of Krynn maybe. A very good adaptation considering the limitations -- we had played the 'hardcopy' boardgame a lot, too, and appreciated being able to run a full campaign over a couple of weeks easily like this. And if one of us got too far ahead, well, it was easy to concede and then start again when our disappointment ended and/or we wanted to try a different strategy.

Too bad SSI never got around to doing Red Arrow, Black Shield with that strategy engine -- it should have worked great. Fortunately, the longest program I ever wrote was a BASIC epic code for taking RABS battle factors and generating results, so we could play it somewhat faster and more effectively that way. But the map and chits were still more inconvenient than would have been true on computer.

(Strictly speaking, SSI did do a RABS game, sort of, though not by that name; Fantasy War perhaps? The battle mechanics were a lot simplified, partly in order to allow a goofy real-time action resolution which was a terrible arcade game. Eventually we just skipped those battles, since they could also be easily gamed to frustrate each other; but we also stopped playing the main game after a while when we realized that ginning up large amounts of elite catapults would win any battle on the map.)

[BanzaiCat]

Since it's a DosBox application, you can window the screen by pressing ALT +  ENTER, and then close the window with the red X in the upper right corner.

However, if you close it that way, you're not saving your game. The method Greybriar mentions is the best way to ensure you don't lose your progress!

[Bison]

The Mac version has a sound volume, so I can turn down the effects and listen to music.  I cannot find the same feature on the PC version. 

[Rayfer]

Never played the Gold Box games before. Started a game of Pool of Radiance.  Suggestions for new players like myself: Your  created characters start the game with no weapons, armor or memorized spells at all. Don't go in any tavern right away, they frequently break out into a brawl between rival thief gangs, you'll get caught in the middle with no way out. I did and it didn't go well. Thank goodness I had a pre-entry save. Save often! Also, print out the area maps from the hint book. Especially the first starting area. It lists map-locations by number. Go to the shops and buy weapons and armor (you do start with a decent amount of gold). Then head to any inn #'d 19, you can rest and memorize spells safely in those. Those #'d 20 are where the brawls happen. Once armed, armored and with spells....take on a tavern brawl!

[Sir Slash]

From what I remember about Radience, camping after each fight was the key to survival early on until you pick-up some hit points and decent AC. Anytime I tried to take on a second fight, I usually got creamed. It got a little old after a while because the only really safe place to camp was in town so... back and forth, back and forth. So I cast my first Goldbox Fireball since the 90's and landed it too close and hit most of my party with it, but luckily only killed one guy. Gonna need some target practice with that one.

[Bison]

Most all of the areas once you clear out roaming patrols you can rest anywhere, but before then if you clear out a room with a door you usually can rest at will there.  Occassionally you'll be interrupted but at a minimum you should get your spells back and a few days rest.  Also if you cast cure lt. wounds and them memorize the spell and rest it makes it easier because you are only resting for a few hours or days and not a dozen days.

[BanzaiCat]

I know for sure in the Phlan Slums, if you defeat a set encounter (not a random one), you can immediately camp in that cleared set encounter locale and rest without fear of interruption. In my AAR, I made the mistake of stepping out of a cleared location and then resting, which got me ambushed three times. I retreated back into the cleared locale and rested without a problem...but I think that was luck.

Low-level spells cost you about 4 or so hours, and once your mages/clerics are high level it goes up to about 8 hours, IIRC. Wounds heal at a rate of one HP per day, I think.

I had forgotten how obnoxious the cost is to level up low-level characters...1,000 gold is crazy expensive. All the memories of grabbing literally everything that monsters dropped and selling it for scraps of copper or electrum in the hopes of piling up enough cash to level up one character...they're all coming back to me. :)

[Bison]

Yes 1 hp/day resting. 

There is a piece of jewelry early on that sells for 10K+  :)  It's in the slums.  Look harder slacker.

[JasonPratt]

AD&D 2.0 is a harsh, bitter mistress. 

[BanzaiCat]

You guys should read The Order of the Stick if you have not. It's a D&D-themed webcomic, with 999 strips so far. It pokes fun at the entire D&D system but also revels in it.

[Nefaro]

I've tried to install and play these games through DosBox before, and the only issues I had were my PC making the characters move way too fast and it would sometimes lock the game up. I can only assume and hope they've fixed all that for this release. Otherwise I know what I'm getting into...you must buy it, Bison.

This was a problem with numerous old games running in DOSbox, since the processing power needs to be throttled.

Not sure if you guys have discovered this yet, but DOSbox has hotkeys for throttling it up and down.  Ctrl-somethingFuctionKeys IIRC.  I recall having to use it with the original Silent Hunter, along with entering a cd loading command that was a pain to get working.

I would imagine that the good people at GOG set DOSbox to run these games at a more appropriate processor throttle speed for modern PCs so you may not have to worry about it.  Of course, you can still adjust further after looking up the specific hotkeys.


I'm debating picking some of these up before long.  May have to just start with one set at a time, however.  I just picked up WH40K: Chaos Gate not long ago and I'm still in the middle of that.  Still - I'm really looking forward to these, especially the Eye of the Beholder-engined ones since I didn't play those very much back in the day but really enjoyed them.