Pool of Radiance (Part 7): The Slums (Part 3)
Back to the Slums we go! Does that alarm ever get turned off? It's like when your neighbor's car alarm goes off in the middle of the night and no on turns it off until the morning. No wonder the monsters are so cranky here...
Our goal is to get back the the goblin set encounter room we've been using a lot for rest, and now continue on to the west to explore the northwestern quadrant of the Slums. I sort touched on this briefly in the last post, but maps in this game are almost always on a 16 x 16 grid (you can see onscreen that my current coordinates are 0 , 4, facing west), and from my earlier foray I've ventured about halfway across the map towards the western edge. This 16 x 16 rule is going to make up about 90% of the maps in all the Gold Box games, so we'll be seeing that a lot. Later games, however, most notably
Secret of the Silver Blades fudged around with the format in order to make long corridors (basically, you invisibly teleport on the map coordinates while it looks like you're just traveling more or less straight onward), while
Death Knights of Krynn really goes hog-wild in one city, creating a wacky non-Euclidean space where in several spots you can wrap around to the other side of the city without knowing it.
So we march back the same pathway as before, and almost make it our goal when we run into yet another random patrol of orcs.
Like usual, a
sleep spell and some hard fighting take them down:
We finally defeat them, but, ouch, they got some hits in!
Luckily, we're just a few steps away from the safe spot, and we can heal up (and re-gain that
sleep spell).
We go out of the goblin set encounter room we've been basically using as a hotel, turn right (west), and go down the corridor (I'll have a map here soon) until we reach a doorway.
Buffy fails her Pick Lock check, so we Bash it instead. Given my party's Strength scores, this will work about 99% of the time in this situation (but I still tend to choose "Pick" anyway when possible just for variety)
Beyond the door is a nicely wood-paneled room that apparently has seen better days:
We go through the door on our immediate right, and:
Hmm... Are these messages telling us something? So let's do something new here - choose the "Search" option down there in the bottom menu. What this does is makes you move more slowly, going forward a square in 10 minutes instead of the normal 1 minute. This will have the unfortunate effect of making random encounters more likely while you have Search turned on. But it has the definitely fortunate effect of finding otherwise hidden things like doors or treasure. So, we turn on Search...
(Note the "Search" next to the time). We turn to the left and move forward a step or two...
Success! Yes, we will definitely open that bag!
That's a lot of experience! We've usually been getting XP in just double digits for each encounter, even for large groups of monsters, so this is quite on another level! And here's why: in 1e, you received XP based on the value of any treasure you find, on top of what you gain for defeating foes. In fact, a lot of the time, both in the tabletop game, and here in these games, treasure XP will make up a substantial percentage of the total XP gained. And, a bit of a pro-tip, when you get large amounts of XP, that usually means magical treasure! So let's see what we got, we have Brother Baltor cast
detect magic, and...
A magical bow, and some magical arrows! Let's see exactly how good they are:
Buffy is definitely equipping that bow - even if it's just a shortbow with less of a range than the longbow, that +1 more than makes up for it. The magical arrows, on the other hand, we're saving for tougher encounters. No need to waste good magical ammo on random kobolds when there are more important foes to save them for.
Looking good for just a level 1 fighter/thief! And everyone's experience received a nice bump from finding this treasure. Bant's getting close to 50%.
So, you might have noticed by now that not everyone is advancing at the same rate. That's because 1e and 2e had different advancement rates for each class. And beyond that, four of the characters are multiclassed and advancing in two classes simultaneously, so they'll be dragging behind because of that. Conversely, my two single-classed characters gain a 10% bonus to XP because the have high enough stats in their primary stat(s) to earn it. So the level advancement bars will be all over the place as everyone is going to be moving upward at different rates (other than the two fighter/magic users).
We'll turn "Search" off, and head out that door in front of us, turn right (north) and then right again (east). We go through a door and...
A set encounter, so not a huge number of kobolds to deal with. We all know how this goes:
And soon they're all dead. But the experience page tells us something interesting:
That's a lot of XP for just some kobolds! They must have something interesting...
Brother Baltor's
detect magic unfortunately just wore off, but, another pro-tip, interesting magic items tend to be at the very bottom of treasure lists. Let's check out those bracers.
Indeed they are more than meets the eye! Magical bracers in 1e came in a wide variety of AC types, instead of just giving a flat bonus.
Bracers AC 6 will set the wearer's default AC to 6 instead of 10, before Dex or anything else is factored in. Normally, we would be giving these to one of our magic-users (as there is no
mage armor - or as it was known at the time
armor - spell in the game), but our magic-users already have better armor with their banded mail, so these will go, yet again, to Buffy. We trade them to her, she equips them, and her AC goes down yet again!
We go back out the door, head back west, then south, then west again until we get to another door (map shortly!). We explore around in the building, until we enter a room and...
Actually, it's a bit odd we haven't run into hobgoblins before, as they're among the types of monsters encountered in the random patrols. There are only five of them, so they go down quickly...
Let's see what they were arguing about!
Well, that's hardly a "pile of gold"! Let's turn Search on.
Well, that's more like it! Likely to be some good stuff here!
Nice. We give the
shortbow +1 to Brandir. The
ring of protection usually pairs well with the bracers we just found, but I'm going to give it to Brother Baltor for the time being as he's wearing non-magical armor and can benefit from the extra protection.
But I noticed something interesting during that combat, as well as on the GBC map:
(The arrow is where the party is now, the room with the hobgoblin fight. The kobold fight was in the room that's 3 squares up and 7 squares over in the north-central portion of the map, while the room where we found the first magic shortbow is 1 up and 5 over)
There's a doorway into what looks to be a room in the very northwesternmost corner of the map. But when we passed by, there wasn't one! I could see this in the combat screen as well, there was a doorway where I hadn't noticed one earlier. Let's go back and see...
Looks like just a wall to me. Even "Search" turns up nothing. Perhaps it's an illusion? We step forward and...
Secret treasure room! And some good stuff too, since that XP award is a magnitude better than what we've seen all game!
While a lot of it is gems and jewelry that get split between everyone by hitting "Share" when the treasure screen comes up (I've been doing this routinely, so I've acquired a lot of cash alongside all the cool treasure items I've been highlighting), there are still some (presumably) magic items here as well:
I give them to Brin, and she equips the magical shortbow. All three of my backliners now each have a
shortbow +1, which is very nice for 1st level characters. Well... not all 1st level characters any more...
All this nice XP from these magic items and other treasure I've been picking up have put Bant and Buffy over the top! Their XP bars are now filled up and turned yellow, telling me they can each gain a level. The "Level Up" option on the GBC bar when I mouse over this is now, for the moment, not grayed out! Let's level up!
(GBC leveling also gives you max HP per level. Which saves time loading and reloading to get a good roll if you had instead leveled up in the training hall. Buffy is multiclassed, so she only gets half of the HP she would normally get when she levels up. And, as I said previously, with the GBC leveling option, I don't have to return to the training hall, which, since the gate to the civilized part of town is literally on the other side of the map, would have been a real pain to get to).
I unfortunately can't screenshot it, but a character's icon in the GBC bar does a cute little dance when they level up. In fact, all the icons do it each time they win a battle.
That looks a lot better. Bant actually is a good part of the way to level 3!
Characters reaching level 2 in the Slums is a game-changer. They now have more substantial hit points and are much less fragile, and THAC0s going down from leveling and magic items makes killing off foes much easier. And the good news is that Baroness Bella and Brother Baltor aren't far from leveling now as well! Also, note that only Bant's THAC0 went down - THAC0s decrease at different rates for different classes, and while warrior-type classes have THAC0 go down by 1 each level, thief (and the other classes) go down at a slower rate.
We leave the secret treasure room (and finding it in the way I did by noticing things on the maps is actually a time-honored method, or otherwise you'd be banging your head against every wall trying to find secret doors), and wander about the hobgoblin building a bit. We find a small room with this message:
This sort of message is a subtle hint that a room like this is safe to rest in. You'll see this a lot in higher-level games in areas where it's particularly difficult to find places to camp. (I obviously peeked in here before the level up)
Anyway, we head out of the building and head south through another doorway...
Is that a shop here in the middle of the Slums? We move forward to investigate, and just outside the door...
Random goblin patrol.
We deal with them easily, although Bant takes a point of damage. But, speaking of Bant, he has a new ability which flashes by so quickly that I can't get a screenshot of it in time. In 1e, warrior classes would gain the ability to "sweep" enemies of 1 HD or less, meaning they could attack as many of those enemies in range as the character has levels. So Bant is able to attack two goblins each time here, as long as there were two within melee range. It's really neat when it happens, especially later in the game when you're sweeping like 5 at a time, but sadly, it's only useful mainly against kobolds and goblins - even hobgoblins and orcs have too many HD for it to work.
So, goblin patrol taken care of, we turn to the left and enter the shop.
Odd that she has a shop in the middle of the monster-infested Slums. Supplemental material states that the monsters are in such awe of her that they leave her alone. And if you choose "Attack" here, she'll call upon them to protect her. So we choose "Pay".
Yeah, thanks. Barely worth the few coppers.
We leave and go to the doorway immediately to her north. Unfortunately we're not welcomed in...
This one is actually tough for a set encounter, as there are at least a good dozen orcs in the room, all lined up over to the left
I actually wait a round or so until some move so I can use a
sleep spell to good effect:
Which forms a sold block protecting my flank around Brother Baltor (and he needs it, as he again takes some hits during the fight). After a few rounds we've dealt with them and the battle is over.
Another nice XP reward! There must be some good stuff to find in the loot!
(To be continued here shortly, as I've reached the max image upload limit for the post)
