October: Shard of Spring

[Emphyrio]

I think that I just had an unlucky streak of wizard encounters. Fighting wizards fucking sucks.

There must be level scaling though because I've been grinding in the same place and there weren't skeleton wizards before.

This game is a real grind when you have to keep spending all your cash on healing and rez, and your own wizards rez and unbinding spells fail most of the time.

Yea but you get +5 strength and +5 endurance. One of my trolls fighters has something like 18 movement points now, the bonus strength/endurance far outweighs 3 speed on him.

my troll is the best fighter now so I guess they just need to level up a bit to fix the cripple speed.

My human fighter kind of suck compared to my dwarf, he keeps getting intelligence on level up and not a lot of HP...

my humans were getting all the kills at first but they also kept getting int levels. They almost have lower hp than the mages.

[Watser]

Yeah wizards are a pain in the ass. Round one unloading a fully charged column of fire dealing 30-40 damage and then charging you with a knife.

unbinding spells fail most of the time.

The manual has some good tips on unbinding, need to use a roughly equal amount of SP on the unbinding spell as what was invested in the binding spell. Also, I think you can only use melt to counter binding from freeze and break bonds from whatever its opposite is called.

[Emphyrio]

There's something I really appreciate about this game. It's relaxing, it flows. There's no quests, no "c&C", no cutscenes, minimal dialog. Just explore, fight, explore, fight. The exploring and fighting aren't even very good, but it feels better because there's no extraneous distractions you usually get in RPGs.

[rusty_shackleford]

sovl

► Show Spoiler

[Watser]

Two of my mages now has more max HP than my human fighter...

[Watser]

Also spoiler regarding the Terynor tavern rumour
Hint 1:

► Show Spoiler

The rebel refuge is hidden in the hills

Hint 2:

► Show Spoiler

It's literally hidden

Full spoiler:

► Show Spoiler

From Terynor go 11 west 8 south

[rusty_shackleford]

I have completely forgotten what I went into Blackfort for.

[rusty_shackleford]

Really surprised by how well the battle maps represent the actual area you're walking in, down to including walls/doors.

[rusty_shackleford]

Finished Blackfort.

► Show Spoiler

One fighter bound, another at 1HP, and the third carrying the rest of my party. Wizards out of mana for a long time.

[rusty_shackleford]

Also, I think you can only use melt to counter binding from freeze and break bonds from whatever its opposite is called.

Yes, you need to inspect the character and consult the manual for the counter-spell.

[Watser]

I haven't had a character bound yet, here they prefer to simply blast my ass with column of fire. Might be a difference in AI from the two versions. Must admit I'm a bit jealous over not having those neat illustrations for special encounters.

[Emphyrio]

I beat some gargoyles by cheesing them with Chains and got hundreds of gold and a magic item as reward. Bind spells are op. No need for death spells when bind accomplished the same thing.

Still havent done a dungeon yet.

[Watser]

Binding the most dangerous enemies has also been my go to strategy, but it's good to hear the rewards pick up eventually. The XP table explodes above lvl 10 and some items cost upwards of 15k gold so I'm curious what level you end up after beating the game.

[Nemesis]

I got around to downloading this and jumping in.

[Watser]

[rusty_shackleford]

Where did you guys go after Blackfort?

[Watser]

Clearing the dungeons going west to east.

[rusty_shackleford]

My dudes are almost level 6, need to go back and level up my wizards. Got some really good levelups on all my fighters without any savescumming.

You get a higher % chance to hit if you attack from behind BTW, it's in the manual.

[Emphyrio]

My dudes are almost level 6, need to go back and level up my wizards. Got some really good levelups on all my fighters without any savescumming.

You get a higher % chance to hit if you attack from behind BTW, it's in the manual.

Until you level up enough to get your spd up it's usually impractical to attack from behind, and when you've leveled up enough to get your spd up your skl is high enough that it doesn't make much of a difference anymore.

Earlier in the thread when I said Wings of Victory is a strong spell, it is at level 1 but falls off quick.

[Watser]

You can cheese the AI though with tactics + monster lore. If you know which character they will focus and the speed of the monsters you can position in such a way that the monsters will line up for your fighters to attack from behind.

[Nemesis]

You get a higher % chance to hit if you attack from behind BTW, it's in the manual.

If the enemy is turned away from you, to be specific.

[rusty_shackleford]

at the swamp king then figure out where to next

[Watser]

Exploring Islanda. Major difficulty spike compared to the mainland.

[rusty_shackleford]

The constant random encounters makes me only able to play this for 30-45 minutes at a time. I really should look into setting up a dosbox speedup key.

Something I definitely don't miss in modern RPGs is random encounters.

[Watser]

I'm in Tower of Ralith, time to round this up.
I pray I don't have to grind levels to finish this, experience points has been abysmal all game.

EDIT: 37 XP for a large dragon. Lmao.

[Watser]

This has to be the most poorly paced game I have ever played.
Thankfully Siriadne was no match for a 60 SP column of flame straight to the face.

[rusty_shackleford]

Have a feeling I'm quite a bit ways behind where you are @Watser.

Any ideas of what to play next month? I was going to suggest Tunnels & Trolls: Crusaders of Khazan(1990).


Interested in seeing what suggestions you guys have

[Tweed]

What? No Demon's Winter?

UI looks hideous. I would have said like a bad PC-98 port, but I guess there's a port for that too. FM Towns and SHARP look the best, but only if you speak jap or happen to know of a translating lying around somewhere for a mostly obscure game.

[Watser]

Have a feeling I'm quite a bit ways behind where you are @Watser.

From what I can see the only dungeons required for finishing the game is the swamp lair, the keep and the hidden refuge. I am not sure about Blackfort but I guess the royal seal has to be used somewhere so let's count it 4.
Of these 4, only 2 can be considered actual dungeons as the refuge offers nothing but information critical to finishing the game and the swamp lair is so tiny it's completed in 5-10 minutes.
After that, the gatekeeper's tower has to be traversed to reach Ralith Tower where you complete the game. And you have to go through it every time you decide to teleport away to heal up. Not to mention, the encounters in Ralith Tower are so out of sync with the level of your party. You go from fighting trash mobs on the mainland to deathtraps of titans, warrior kings, arch mages, lvl 13-16 characters, and demon lords. It goes without saying that running away is the only viable strategy, and it's by far the largest dungeon in the game.

I am convinced the XP rewards are bugged. Only getting 100-200 XP but 1k-1.5K gold for a battle in the endgame, it's so disjointed compared to the requirements in the XP table that someone must have fucked up when listing the XP for each monster. I found undead to be by far the best bang for my buck as 3x dispel undead would quickly dispatch them and gain upwards of 200 XP.

The game is so close to being fun, but in the end it's just a very frustrating experience.

[rusty_shackleford]

What? No Demon's Winter?

Doing the sequel to the game right after seemed like it would get stale.