D&D General Demetrios1453 Plays the Gold Box Games
Demetrios1453
Hero
Pool of Radiance (Part 25): Kovel Mansion (Part 1)
Our mission to the Cadorna Textile House complete, it's time to turn our eyes towards the next commission, the thief-infested Kovel Mansion.
The mansion is in the wealthy area north of the river, along with the Temple of Bane, which is next on our agenda. So we can't get to it by traversing the city, we have to go to the docks and get a boat to the north shore opposite the part of the city we've been exploring thus far.
As we get off the boat, we catch our first glimpse of the overland map, although only in the GBC map window. There's quite a bit of spoilery-ness in it, compared to the unmarked overland map in game we'll be seeing later.
The north entrance leads to the Kovel Mansion, while the southern entrance leads to the wealthy area and the Temple of Bane. So north entrance it is!
(Also that view of the city is... not the best. I know this was 1988, but they definitely could have done at least a bit better).
We enter the block, and move around to the north side to enter the mansion.
We go a few rooms in, and:
(My halfling rogue in BG3 has a blue (well, purple) mohawk too. I wonder if I was subconsciously thinking of these guys when making him? Obligatory BG3 screenshot):
(Anyway, back to a just slightly older turned-based D&D game...)
We decide to chase the two thieves. You actually don't control your movement for the next bit as you chase them from room to room - the game chases them for you.
We'll follow the one going to the south.
Of course, this leads us to an ambush. Although we were expecting it, the thieves get the drop on us with a surprise round.
(By the way, this block, very irritatingly, has a lot of text flash by without a pause at the end. In most cases in the game, you'll get the text to hit Enter to go to the next screen in order to continue to the next bit of text, or it will give you some choice, as in the screenshot above. For some reason, in this area, a lot of the text just doesn't pause in any way and just goes to the next page. This has the unfortunate result of it being hard to catch some of the text at the end before it immediately disappears when it proceeds to the next page. It also has the REALLY unfortunate result of making it extremely difficult to screenshot a lot of the text here - I either screenshot the next page by being too late, or cut off the end of the text by being too early. Even at the slowest game speed, there were multiple times I had to re-do sections over and over because I missed the screenshot. I was literally yelling at my computer when it literally took more than a dozen times to get a decent enough screenshot dealing with some tapestries that will appear in the next post. The upshot of all this is that in this case, I missed the text that I was being ambushed and that they got the drop on me).
As the battle starts, they've moved from two organized lines to flanking me, all during the surprise round. The thieves come in two types, the 1st-level thieves with 4 HP and the tougher, but thankfully less numerous, 6th-level thieves with 28 HP. Also, don't let them get behind you! A backstab, especially by the 6th-level thieves, can be very unpleasant!
Also, why are all the thieves shirtless? I don't know if it's supposed to indicate leather armor or what, but it kind of looks silly. They're all wearing blue shirts in the window illustrations, so why not follow that?
Brother Baltor and Brin are about to even the odds quite quickly though...
Brin gets her spell off first, as hold person has a casting time, while sleep doesn't.
Brother Baltor targets the three 6th-level thieves, but unfortunately, only one fails his save.
Not to be outdone, and because he literally has some foes right in his face, Bragir casts stinking cloud.
A short time later, with most of them down or incapacitated, their morale breaks and they start to run. In many cases, the ones right by my melee are killed due to opportunity attacks, but some do manage, annoyingly, to run across the room.
Bragir takes that one out. Shortly thereafter, there are only helpless foes.
And soon, no foes at all.
Unfortunately, this group of thieves didn't have any decent loot, so we'll search around a bit to see what we can find and clear out any remaining foes here. (The number of foes needed to clear the block isn't counted by number of encounters, but by actual number of foes defeated in battle, and we need to take down 21 in total. This fight alone took down the majority of that, thankfully)
Ever wary of traps and ambushes, we'll have Search on for most of the time. But sometimes not even that will help:
Yeah, these random backstabs get very annoying. But it makes even more enjoyable when you catch one!
He lasts about as long as you would think. And give about as much XP as you would think.
Before we go much further:
This is getting old very quickly.
At least having Search on is helpful in other ways. The text stating that the party found a trap flashed by too quickly for me to screenshot, unfortunately.
Buffy attempts to disarm it. She's going to earn her keep in this section.
We search the room a bit more:
Yeah, we're not going to leave good treasure behind. But best to be cautious and search the area carefully:
And yes, it was trapped. Buffy steps forward again and attempts to disarm.
(And because of the rapidly disappearing text, I missed a few screenshots here and had to go back to my previous save, which was several rooms back. So Brin now has not been backstabbed, but Baroness Bella has. I started saving in virtually every room after this so I wouldn't need to backtrack so far again).
Buffy is successful at disarming the trap, and we get quite the reward! Brother Baltor casts detect magic, and confirms that it's all enchanted!
As we examine them more closely, we find some interesting items
The shield will definitely be helpful (and Baroness Bella equips it for herself), but all we can hope for with that broadsword is that we can dupe the shopkeep like we did with the necklace.
The rest of the items are pretty meh, despite being magical. We already have superior equipment in most cases.
We give Brother Baltor the magical chainmail, which will allow his scale mail to be sold. (He traded all the other items to Bant to carry - I tend to fill inventory from top to bottom as the characters are listed - it's easier to track who has stuff to carry and be sold that way).
We head out of that room, and search around further.
(And I made a bit of mistake by doing so. I should have just not searched for traps with the loot earlier - this would have triggered an encounter with the remaining thieves, and I could have wiped out the rest in one fell swoop. Now I have to catch and take them out one by one. Luckily there are only a few left)
The thieves are still at it though. Sometimes we don't catch them:
And sometimes we do.
We catch the thief who ran to the east after our very first encounter here.
Again, a single thief against the whole party goes quickly, even if he's one of the 6th-level thieves:
(By the way, it says he's using a longsword, but is very obviously holding a dagger in his icon)
A few rooms beyond this, all our searching comes up with something exciting! (The message saying so was one of those that didn't allow me to take a screenshot).
The leather armor is as good as her bracers in AC, so we'll switch out just for RP purposes. Also, we'll let her keep the short sword as well - again for RP purposes, but honestly, even with a +2 instead of a +1, a short sword will just do so much less damage (especially against large creatures - remember 1e had different damage for weapons for large and above creatures) than their current longswords will (and Brother Baltor has a mace +2 anyway).
As it's getting near the upload limit, I'll end this post here. There's still a lot of places to visit here in the Kovel Mansion, and we'll continue the exploration in the next post!
Our mission to the Cadorna Textile House complete, it's time to turn our eyes towards the next commission, the thief-infested Kovel Mansion.
The mansion is in the wealthy area north of the river, along with the Temple of Bane, which is next on our agenda. So we can't get to it by traversing the city, we have to go to the docks and get a boat to the north shore opposite the part of the city we've been exploring thus far.
As we get off the boat, we catch our first glimpse of the overland map, although only in the GBC map window. There's quite a bit of spoilery-ness in it, compared to the unmarked overland map in game we'll be seeing later.
The north entrance leads to the Kovel Mansion, while the southern entrance leads to the wealthy area and the Temple of Bane. So north entrance it is!
(Also that view of the city is... not the best. I know this was 1988, but they definitely could have done at least a bit better).
We enter the block, and move around to the north side to enter the mansion.
We go a few rooms in, and:
(My halfling rogue in BG3 has a blue (well, purple) mohawk too. I wonder if I was subconsciously thinking of these guys when making him? Obligatory BG3 screenshot):
(Anyway, back to a just slightly older turned-based D&D game...)
We decide to chase the two thieves. You actually don't control your movement for the next bit as you chase them from room to room - the game chases them for you.
We'll follow the one going to the south.
Of course, this leads us to an ambush. Although we were expecting it, the thieves get the drop on us with a surprise round.
(By the way, this block, very irritatingly, has a lot of text flash by without a pause at the end. In most cases in the game, you'll get the text to hit Enter to go to the next screen in order to continue to the next bit of text, or it will give you some choice, as in the screenshot above. For some reason, in this area, a lot of the text just doesn't pause in any way and just goes to the next page. This has the unfortunate result of it being hard to catch some of the text at the end before it immediately disappears when it proceeds to the next page. It also has the REALLY unfortunate result of making it extremely difficult to screenshot a lot of the text here - I either screenshot the next page by being too late, or cut off the end of the text by being too early. Even at the slowest game speed, there were multiple times I had to re-do sections over and over because I missed the screenshot. I was literally yelling at my computer when it literally took more than a dozen times to get a decent enough screenshot dealing with some tapestries that will appear in the next post. The upshot of all this is that in this case, I missed the text that I was being ambushed and that they got the drop on me).
As the battle starts, they've moved from two organized lines to flanking me, all during the surprise round. The thieves come in two types, the 1st-level thieves with 4 HP and the tougher, but thankfully less numerous, 6th-level thieves with 28 HP. Also, don't let them get behind you! A backstab, especially by the 6th-level thieves, can be very unpleasant!
Also, why are all the thieves shirtless? I don't know if it's supposed to indicate leather armor or what, but it kind of looks silly. They're all wearing blue shirts in the window illustrations, so why not follow that?
Brother Baltor and Brin are about to even the odds quite quickly though...
Brin gets her spell off first, as hold person has a casting time, while sleep doesn't.
Brother Baltor targets the three 6th-level thieves, but unfortunately, only one fails his save.
Not to be outdone, and because he literally has some foes right in his face, Bragir casts stinking cloud.
A short time later, with most of them down or incapacitated, their morale breaks and they start to run. In many cases, the ones right by my melee are killed due to opportunity attacks, but some do manage, annoyingly, to run across the room.
Bragir takes that one out. Shortly thereafter, there are only helpless foes.
And soon, no foes at all.
Unfortunately, this group of thieves didn't have any decent loot, so we'll search around a bit to see what we can find and clear out any remaining foes here. (The number of foes needed to clear the block isn't counted by number of encounters, but by actual number of foes defeated in battle, and we need to take down 21 in total. This fight alone took down the majority of that, thankfully)
Ever wary of traps and ambushes, we'll have Search on for most of the time. But sometimes not even that will help:
Yeah, these random backstabs get very annoying. But it makes even more enjoyable when you catch one!
He lasts about as long as you would think. And give about as much XP as you would think.
Before we go much further:
This is getting old very quickly.
At least having Search on is helpful in other ways. The text stating that the party found a trap flashed by too quickly for me to screenshot, unfortunately.
Buffy attempts to disarm it. She's going to earn her keep in this section.
We search the room a bit more:
Yeah, we're not going to leave good treasure behind. But best to be cautious and search the area carefully:
And yes, it was trapped. Buffy steps forward again and attempts to disarm.
(And because of the rapidly disappearing text, I missed a few screenshots here and had to go back to my previous save, which was several rooms back. So Brin now has not been backstabbed, but Baroness Bella has. I started saving in virtually every room after this so I wouldn't need to backtrack so far again).
Buffy is successful at disarming the trap, and we get quite the reward! Brother Baltor casts detect magic, and confirms that it's all enchanted!
As we examine them more closely, we find some interesting items
The shield will definitely be helpful (and Baroness Bella equips it for herself), but all we can hope for with that broadsword is that we can dupe the shopkeep like we did with the necklace.
The rest of the items are pretty meh, despite being magical. We already have superior equipment in most cases.
We give Brother Baltor the magical chainmail, which will allow his scale mail to be sold. (He traded all the other items to Bant to carry - I tend to fill inventory from top to bottom as the characters are listed - it's easier to track who has stuff to carry and be sold that way).
We head out of that room, and search around further.
(And I made a bit of mistake by doing so. I should have just not searched for traps with the loot earlier - this would have triggered an encounter with the remaining thieves, and I could have wiped out the rest in one fell swoop. Now I have to catch and take them out one by one. Luckily there are only a few left)
The thieves are still at it though. Sometimes we don't catch them:
And sometimes we do.
We catch the thief who ran to the east after our very first encounter here.
Again, a single thief against the whole party goes quickly, even if he's one of the 6th-level thieves:
(By the way, it says he's using a longsword, but is very obviously holding a dagger in his icon)
A few rooms beyond this, all our searching comes up with something exciting! (The message saying so was one of those that didn't allow me to take a screenshot).
The leather armor is as good as her bracers in AC, so we'll switch out just for RP purposes. Also, we'll let her keep the short sword as well - again for RP purposes, but honestly, even with a +2 instead of a +1, a short sword will just do so much less damage (especially against large creatures - remember 1e had different damage for weapons for large and above creatures) than their current longswords will (and Brother Baltor has a mace +2 anyway).
As it's getting near the upload limit, I'll end this post here. There's still a lot of places to visit here in the Kovel Mansion, and we'll continue the exploration in the next post!
Last edited:
Demetrios1453
Hero
Pool of Radiance (Part 26): Kovel Mansion (Part 2)
We continue to explore the labyrinthine Kovel Mansion. We are now in the southeastern quadrant, and as we enter one room:
Buffy is able to successfully disarm it. We move forward, and find something interesting on the far side of the room
We have Buffy search these for traps. She will look at "A" first.
Buffy picks the lock.
And here are those journal entries. The thieves here have apparently been gathering intelligence on the city leaders:
Hmmmm. Interesting info on Cadorna. The info on Eberhard (who is basically the mayor) is far less important in the long run.
Time to check out cabinet "B"
...ver." This is one of the ones I kept having to attempt over and over to catch as much of the text before it quickly disappeared by going to the next screen, and this is the best I could do. The screen it kept going to was:
15 bags of silver doesn't end up being much on the XP scale. Let's take a look at cabinet "C".
This one is trapped. No worry, Buffy will take care of it!
Well... oops. Hopefully this one will be worth it.
OK, not bad at all!
And even better, that was enough XP to allow some characters to level up!
(Maybe she'll set off a few less traps now).
Not too many good spells too choose from, so Bragir will take invisibility, which is at least semi-useful
But, wait, shouldn't Brin be leveling up as well, since she's the same multiclass as Bragir? Well, the game says it splits XP evenly, but if there's any remainder after the split, a point goes to each character in the order that they are listed on the party screen. So Baroness Bella will slowly build up a bit of extra XP over time, while Brin will slowly fall a bit behind. Just looking at the GBC screen a bit above, you can see her XP bar is just barely short of reaching the level. She is, in fact, just 18 XP shy of leveling up:
It's not a huge deal now, but it does add up fairly significantly over the course of going through a connected series of games. I tend to even out XP via the editor at the start of each game just to keep it fair between everyone.
All the cabinets examined and emptied, we leave this room and head south. The door to it is also trapped:
Buffy disarms it successfully. We go to the southeastern corner of the room:
Enjoy that screenshot. It literally took me about 15 attempts to get it before it disappeared. I swear the stupid game sped up the word "average", since I clicked to take the screenshot over and over again with what I thought was time to spare, but each time it was already on the next screen. And what is the party's reward for all my frustration?
That's darn near useless. I'll pick up one of the fine tapestries to see if it's worth dragging back to a shop.
LOL Even a single one overloads a character.
Nah, they can just stay there and rot.
After having turned down the game speed to its slowest setting in my attempts to get the screenshot, I move it back up. Here's what that looks like:
I usually play on speed 1, which is nice and fast, especially during combat. "0" will make things go by so quickly that combat becomes confusing since it's hard to work out which foe just moved before it's off moving the next one. I've moved it down to "3" for this playthrough, since it allows me to get some good in-combat screenshots, although it's still a bit too fast from time to time for that and I will just barely miss what I wanted to record. I'm moving it here because any random combat I would get into would be at a crawl if I kept it at "9" simply because I wanted to record text. This means I'm saving a lot so I can backtrack if I do miss some text, but that's a huge problem.
Anyway, more exploring the southeastern rooms. A room or two over, and...
...stop and attack you." Yet another one that I couldn't get a good screenshot despite several attempts.
Another battle begins:
They're nothing but 1st-level thieves, so I don't even waste a spell on them.
OK, we've taken them out. I'm sure we've managed to stop the beating in time!
Uh, well, thanks. We try to clean the blood from the papers.
More thief intelligence, apparently. Some actual useful info here, about the Boss and his lair. Surely he's not a metallic dragon! That would be laughable!
With nothing else to see here, we leave this room, and head toward the south-central part of the mansion.
Ouch! We apparently still have at least one thief to kill to reach the amount needed to clear the block.
We go through this room and into a smaller room on the southern edge of the mansion.
Hmm, that list of rumors we just found said something about a maze inside the castle walls...
We move out of that room, and find further info back in the room we just came from (which is actually the room we were ambushed in near the start).
We've met Bishop Braccio; Von Urslingen is another of the town's leaders, but one we've had no contact with as of yet.
Our next area of exploration is the southwestern section of the mansion. Shortly after entering that area:
Finally! Caught him! We deal with him quickly enough.
And, finally, that's enough XP for Brin to level up (even the 10 or so 1st-level thieves earlier didn't provide quite enough)
Brin chooses mirror image, which is definitely the best choice available for her. She does need to get enlarge soon, though, as it will become very helpful in the next game, since at that point my magic-users' caster levels will be high enough to get targets to 19 STR, and even higher, when casting it.
We're nearing the image limit, so I'll end this post here. We'll continue exploring the mansion in the next post!
We continue to explore the labyrinthine Kovel Mansion. We are now in the southeastern quadrant, and as we enter one room:
Buffy is able to successfully disarm it. We move forward, and find something interesting on the far side of the room
We have Buffy search these for traps. She will look at "A" first.
Buffy picks the lock.
And here are those journal entries. The thieves here have apparently been gathering intelligence on the city leaders:
Hmmmm. Interesting info on Cadorna. The info on Eberhard (who is basically the mayor) is far less important in the long run.
Time to check out cabinet "B"
...ver." This is one of the ones I kept having to attempt over and over to catch as much of the text before it quickly disappeared by going to the next screen, and this is the best I could do. The screen it kept going to was:
15 bags of silver doesn't end up being much on the XP scale. Let's take a look at cabinet "C".
This one is trapped. No worry, Buffy will take care of it!
Well... oops. Hopefully this one will be worth it.
OK, not bad at all!
And even better, that was enough XP to allow some characters to level up!
(Maybe she'll set off a few less traps now).
Not too many good spells too choose from, so Bragir will take invisibility, which is at least semi-useful
But, wait, shouldn't Brin be leveling up as well, since she's the same multiclass as Bragir? Well, the game says it splits XP evenly, but if there's any remainder after the split, a point goes to each character in the order that they are listed on the party screen. So Baroness Bella will slowly build up a bit of extra XP over time, while Brin will slowly fall a bit behind. Just looking at the GBC screen a bit above, you can see her XP bar is just barely short of reaching the level. She is, in fact, just 18 XP shy of leveling up:
It's not a huge deal now, but it does add up fairly significantly over the course of going through a connected series of games. I tend to even out XP via the editor at the start of each game just to keep it fair between everyone.
All the cabinets examined and emptied, we leave this room and head south. The door to it is also trapped:
Buffy disarms it successfully. We go to the southeastern corner of the room:
Enjoy that screenshot. It literally took me about 15 attempts to get it before it disappeared. I swear the stupid game sped up the word "average", since I clicked to take the screenshot over and over again with what I thought was time to spare, but each time it was already on the next screen. And what is the party's reward for all my frustration?
That's darn near useless. I'll pick up one of the fine tapestries to see if it's worth dragging back to a shop.
LOL Even a single one overloads a character.
Nah, they can just stay there and rot.
After having turned down the game speed to its slowest setting in my attempts to get the screenshot, I move it back up. Here's what that looks like:
I usually play on speed 1, which is nice and fast, especially during combat. "0" will make things go by so quickly that combat becomes confusing since it's hard to work out which foe just moved before it's off moving the next one. I've moved it down to "3" for this playthrough, since it allows me to get some good in-combat screenshots, although it's still a bit too fast from time to time for that and I will just barely miss what I wanted to record. I'm moving it here because any random combat I would get into would be at a crawl if I kept it at "9" simply because I wanted to record text. This means I'm saving a lot so I can backtrack if I do miss some text, but that's a huge problem.
Anyway, more exploring the southeastern rooms. A room or two over, and...
...stop and attack you." Yet another one that I couldn't get a good screenshot despite several attempts.
Another battle begins:
They're nothing but 1st-level thieves, so I don't even waste a spell on them.
OK, we've taken them out. I'm sure we've managed to stop the beating in time!
Uh, well, thanks. We try to clean the blood from the papers.
More thief intelligence, apparently. Some actual useful info here, about the Boss and his lair. Surely he's not a metallic dragon! That would be laughable!
With nothing else to see here, we leave this room, and head toward the south-central part of the mansion.
Ouch! We apparently still have at least one thief to kill to reach the amount needed to clear the block.
We go through this room and into a smaller room on the southern edge of the mansion.
Hmm, that list of rumors we just found said something about a maze inside the castle walls...
We move out of that room, and find further info back in the room we just came from (which is actually the room we were ambushed in near the start).
We've met Bishop Braccio; Von Urslingen is another of the town's leaders, but one we've had no contact with as of yet.
Our next area of exploration is the southwestern section of the mansion. Shortly after entering that area:
Finally! Caught him! We deal with him quickly enough.
And, finally, that's enough XP for Brin to level up (even the 10 or so 1st-level thieves earlier didn't provide quite enough)
Brin chooses mirror image, which is definitely the best choice available for her. She does need to get enlarge soon, though, as it will become very helpful in the next game, since at that point my magic-users' caster levels will be high enough to get targets to 19 STR, and even higher, when casting it.
We're nearing the image limit, so I'll end this post here. We'll continue exploring the mansion in the next post!
Last edited:
Demetrios1453
Hero
Pool of Radiance (Part 27): Kovel Mansion (Part 3) - Kovel Mansion Completed!
We continue exploring the southwestern and western areas of the mansion. As we enter another room:
Thank you Buffy!
A few rooms onward...
Of course we examine it!
Buffy's been doing pretty well with the traps recently, especially after her level up...
I spoke too soon. At least she's still good with lockpicking.
That portends some nice stuff! What did we get?
Very nice indeed.
Well, the armor isn't anything exciting. But let's check those scrolls out!
Remove curse is always good to have around, as well as an extra hold person (if I remember that I have it on a scroll while in combat that is!). Prayer is useful as well, especially if I have a use for it before next level when it will be a regularly memorized spell (and I will likely have occasion to do so, knowing what fights are coming up!). The rest are... not all that exciting in game terms.
But Brother Baltor has, or will have, access to all these spells. Let's see what those four magic-user scrolls have on them!
Well, Brin just taking mirror image was a bit of a waste, as she could have just scribed it from the scroll. But other than that - wow, very nice. That first scroll is worth its weight in gold, especially. I now have two haste spells on scrolls (one for each magic-user to scribe), and three fireballs now (one for each magic-user to scribe, and an extra one that can be cast whenever, and I have a few fights coming up before I can scribe/cast fireball at 5th level that could very well constitute that "whenever"). My magic-users tuck away the scrolls, ready to start scribing what they can when next they rest.
We move along the western edge of the mansion, until we reach a small room with some interesting info in it:
Another section of the castle maze, it appears.
We head back south and enter one of the last rooms we've yet to explore:
Man, thief-infested buildings sure can be irritating! But at least there's exciting stuff in here to make up for the annoyance of yet another trap!
Of course it's "search a casket" time!
And somehow does no damage, which is lucky.
Just some random coinage in this one. On to the second casket!
Buffy successfully disarms this one.
That may not seem like much, but jewelry, while having a large range in gp value, usually come out in around the 2000s gp.
On to casket three!
Buffy does not successfully disarm this one.
Eh, OK. Not sure if these really are worth all the traps going off left and right though...
Buffy fails to unlock the fourth casket, so it's time for more direct means:
And just some more random coinage in this one.
So... there doesn't look to be much more to explore. We head back to the entrance.
We haven't had any random thief attacks in a good long while, so it's likely we've cleared the block. I guess we'll find out when we speak to the City Clerk!
We board the boat and head back to the civilized area. We arrive just before 00:00 hours, so we march around town a bit in "Search" mode to advance time to where we can enter the city hall to speak to the clerk.
Cool, we did get all the thieves!
Eh, that seems a bit light after all the traps and backstabbings we just went through. We'll still take it though.
The clerk then goes through available commissions, mentioning the nomads and kobolds again. But there's a new one available now that we've completed the Kovel Mansion commission:
Hmm, not much info there. But at least that should be easy to find just by following the river upstream. And that, as well as the other two commissions, are for the future anyway, since we are going to do the mission from the bishop to clear the Temple of Bane next anyway.
(If you missed the mention of the polluted river, go back a couple of dozen posts ago, to just before the party entered the Slums. They were walking near the river and there was text stating how polluted it was. I said then we'd be getting to it eventually!)
Anyway, off to the store! We have a lot of nice, but extraneous, magical loot to sell!
Oh well, it was worth a shot.
As I went through everyone's inventory, I realized I had made a minor mistake:
I had given that to Brother Baltor back when he didn't have magical armor, but now that he does (and he's had some for awhile now), that ring is fairly useless to him (some rings of protection in the game give bonuses to both AC and saves, but this one doesn't). However, it could be very useful for someone else.
Instead of wearing the leather, if she goes back the bracers and uses the ring, Buffy's AC will go down by 1.
Time to start selling! I move some of the armor and shields around my front three to optimize AC and movement, so there's even a bit more to sell than what I picked up in the mansion. That's not to say that the stuff from the mansion doesn't sell for a pretty penny (pretty platinum?)
Brother Baltor's old scale mail goes for a small fortune.
While Buffy's old leather goes for even more!
Sadly, the random items from the mansion tend not to be very valuable:
(This is exactly what I would have gotten if I had dragged those stupid tapestries back). The best item from the mansion was this:
After everything is sold, arrows are bought, and coin is consolidated, here are our current funds:
Welp, close to the 5000 pp needed for a fine longbow! Let's head to the silver shop, sell some gems, and pick another one up!
We had Buffy the gems:
Bleh.
And that is what we needed. Only needed to appraise two!
And another fine longbow is ours! Since Buffy now has 18 (00) STR from the gauntlets of ogre power and can make full use of the bow, this one is hers.
Buffy trades the shortbow +1 to Baroness Bella (and Bragir trades his to Bant, since I forgot to do that earlier and it's been sitting in his inventory ever since we got the first fine longbow).
Our party funds now, after the purchase:
There's probably enough in the gems and jewelry to get another bow, but, then again, it may not be if I'm unlucky in the appraisals, so I'll just wait until we're near the 5000 pp again to get the next one.
So, off to the inn to scribe and memorize spells! But I've hit the maximum upload limit again, so that will be for the next post, where we will also start to clear the Wealthy Area next to the Temple of Bane, and then the Temple itself!
We continue exploring the southwestern and western areas of the mansion. As we enter another room:
Thank you Buffy!
A few rooms onward...
Of course we examine it!
Buffy's been doing pretty well with the traps recently, especially after her level up...
I spoke too soon. At least she's still good with lockpicking.
That portends some nice stuff! What did we get?
Very nice indeed.
Well, the armor isn't anything exciting. But let's check those scrolls out!
Remove curse is always good to have around, as well as an extra hold person (if I remember that I have it on a scroll while in combat that is!). Prayer is useful as well, especially if I have a use for it before next level when it will be a regularly memorized spell (and I will likely have occasion to do so, knowing what fights are coming up!). The rest are... not all that exciting in game terms.
But Brother Baltor has, or will have, access to all these spells. Let's see what those four magic-user scrolls have on them!
Well, Brin just taking mirror image was a bit of a waste, as she could have just scribed it from the scroll. But other than that - wow, very nice. That first scroll is worth its weight in gold, especially. I now have two haste spells on scrolls (one for each magic-user to scribe), and three fireballs now (one for each magic-user to scribe, and an extra one that can be cast whenever, and I have a few fights coming up before I can scribe/cast fireball at 5th level that could very well constitute that "whenever"). My magic-users tuck away the scrolls, ready to start scribing what they can when next they rest.
We move along the western edge of the mansion, until we reach a small room with some interesting info in it:
Another section of the castle maze, it appears.
We head back south and enter one of the last rooms we've yet to explore:
Man, thief-infested buildings sure can be irritating! But at least there's exciting stuff in here to make up for the annoyance of yet another trap!
Of course it's "search a casket" time!
And somehow does no damage, which is lucky.
Just some random coinage in this one. On to the second casket!
Buffy successfully disarms this one.
That may not seem like much, but jewelry, while having a large range in gp value, usually come out in around the 2000s gp.
On to casket three!
Buffy does not successfully disarm this one.
Eh, OK. Not sure if these really are worth all the traps going off left and right though...
Buffy fails to unlock the fourth casket, so it's time for more direct means:
And just some more random coinage in this one.
So... there doesn't look to be much more to explore. We head back to the entrance.
We haven't had any random thief attacks in a good long while, so it's likely we've cleared the block. I guess we'll find out when we speak to the City Clerk!
We board the boat and head back to the civilized area. We arrive just before 00:00 hours, so we march around town a bit in "Search" mode to advance time to where we can enter the city hall to speak to the clerk.
Cool, we did get all the thieves!
Eh, that seems a bit light after all the traps and backstabbings we just went through. We'll still take it though.
The clerk then goes through available commissions, mentioning the nomads and kobolds again. But there's a new one available now that we've completed the Kovel Mansion commission:
Hmm, not much info there. But at least that should be easy to find just by following the river upstream. And that, as well as the other two commissions, are for the future anyway, since we are going to do the mission from the bishop to clear the Temple of Bane next anyway.
(If you missed the mention of the polluted river, go back a couple of dozen posts ago, to just before the party entered the Slums. They were walking near the river and there was text stating how polluted it was. I said then we'd be getting to it eventually!)
Anyway, off to the store! We have a lot of nice, but extraneous, magical loot to sell!
Oh well, it was worth a shot.
As I went through everyone's inventory, I realized I had made a minor mistake:
I had given that to Brother Baltor back when he didn't have magical armor, but now that he does (and he's had some for awhile now), that ring is fairly useless to him (some rings of protection in the game give bonuses to both AC and saves, but this one doesn't). However, it could be very useful for someone else.
Instead of wearing the leather, if she goes back the bracers and uses the ring, Buffy's AC will go down by 1.
Time to start selling! I move some of the armor and shields around my front three to optimize AC and movement, so there's even a bit more to sell than what I picked up in the mansion. That's not to say that the stuff from the mansion doesn't sell for a pretty penny (pretty platinum?)
Brother Baltor's old scale mail goes for a small fortune.
While Buffy's old leather goes for even more!
Sadly, the random items from the mansion tend not to be very valuable:
(This is exactly what I would have gotten if I had dragged those stupid tapestries back). The best item from the mansion was this:
After everything is sold, arrows are bought, and coin is consolidated, here are our current funds:
Welp, close to the 5000 pp needed for a fine longbow! Let's head to the silver shop, sell some gems, and pick another one up!
We had Buffy the gems:
Bleh.
And that is what we needed. Only needed to appraise two!
And another fine longbow is ours! Since Buffy now has 18 (00) STR from the gauntlets of ogre power and can make full use of the bow, this one is hers.
Buffy trades the shortbow +1 to Baroness Bella (and Bragir trades his to Bant, since I forgot to do that earlier and it's been sitting in his inventory ever since we got the first fine longbow).
Our party funds now, after the purchase:
There's probably enough in the gems and jewelry to get another bow, but, then again, it may not be if I'm unlucky in the appraisals, so I'll just wait until we're near the 5000 pp again to get the next one.
So, off to the inn to scribe and memorize spells! But I've hit the maximum upload limit again, so that will be for the next post, where we will also start to clear the Wealthy Area next to the Temple of Bane, and then the Temple itself!
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Demetrios1453
Hero
Pool of Radiance (Part 28): The Wealthy Area & Temple of Bane (Part 1)
Off to the inn! The magic-users split the scrolls and start scribing:
None of the spells scribed are anything spectacular, but do help fill out the spellbooks! Now with some extra spell slots, their memorized spells look like this:
Everything scribed and memorized, and all healed up, it's time to pick up Dirten and head off to the Temple of Bane.
Yes we will. Let's see what he brings to the table:
Not terribly exciting - he doesn't even have a shield, which, combined with his lack of of an AC bonus from DEX means that he's not going to be very useful (or long-lived) in the front line. He does, however, have a pretty decent list of spells memorized:
A lot of those will come in handy here soon, especially prayer. But we do have to get him some better gear. We'd go to the store, but it's just after sunset, so we'll have to go the inn and rest until daylight and store operating hours.
(I have a feeling that poor, sheltered, probably-raised-in-a-monastery Dirten had quite the eye-opening evening with the party in the common room of the inn!)
With the sun's rising, we head to the store. I'm sacrificing some coin for temporary benefit here by getting him some better gear (as the gear will be lost to me once he leaves the group), but we do have sufficient cash and I don't want him to be a total liability out there.
One banded mail and shield later:
Not the best, but at least somewhat passable. And by far not the worst NPC we'll encounter in these games (we get a true doozy of an NPC with just awful stats in the next game).
So, off we go to catch a boat to the other side of the city.
We take the south entrance this time.
We enter the so called "Wealthy Area", which is to the south of Kovel Mansion, but east of the Temple of Bane. The only way to the latter is through here. It's very like Kuto's Well in that it's a mainly way to get to other places, but does have a few encounters and things to find here before we proceed onward. I've turned "Search" on for the next couple of buildings to find treasures here that we might otherwise miss.
We enter the door on the left:
10 orcs for us at this level is a breeze. I'm not even going to waste sleep spells on them (although that's mainly because I'll need a bunch in the Temple area).
Buffy gets to test out her new bow (once the ones in front of her go down to allow her to use missile weapons).
And soon they are all dead.
Buffy's positioning is going to be an issue. I'd like to keep her in the back with her bow, but she's got a much better AC than poor Dirten, and we need to keep Dirten alive to complete the Temple mission. So she's temporarily front line, switching between sword and bow as the situation warrants.
After the fight is over:
Of course we do.
Slightly richer, we head through the door directly ahead of us:
We're not going to kill surrendering slaves, so we let them go.
Good to know. Hopefully we can find some of those symbols soon!
We backtrack and head through the right door in the room where we fought the orcs.
Again, we sure do!
Looks good! Let's see if they're worth anything.
Unfortunately, a ring of feather falling is utterly useless in this game. The only place that you can take falling damage is climbing down the well to the thieves in the Cadorna Textile House, and we're done with that section (even if we go back to clear the block, there's no reason to go down the well again). As for the rest, a healing potion is always nice. And let's see what's on that scroll.
Nothing terribly exciting. But something that is exciting...
Baroness Bella has gained a level!
We continue heading west through this building. In the next room...
Why do they even ask?
With all this jewelry, we may very well be able to get Brin her fine longbow when we get back to town.
We move forward a step, and...
We could parlay here, but these orcs (a) will be easy to take care of, and (b) have something we need.
A quick fight later:
Ah, the Bane holy symbols the goblins had mentioned! We'll keep those tucked safely away in order to gain easier access to the Temple here shortly!
We continue on to the next room.
That tells us it's worth nothing, so, like its counterparts in the Kovel Mansion, it can stay here and rot.
This room having been searched thoroughly, we now go through the southern door in this room. As we open the door:
Even adding in an ogre doesn't make this a terribly serious challenge.
(I'll often choose "Done" and then "Delay" for Buffy in these situations in the hope that the orc adjacent to her is dead when she goes at the end of the round and she'll be able to use her bow).
We rapidly win the fight without even a scratch.
Pretty unclear what that list is for. The Boss' current forces? The creatures in the Temple area?
In any case, we've completed our investigation of this building, so we backtrack and leave through a door headed south. As we're moving towards another building, we spy yet another orc patrol.
We initiate combat, and it's quickly concluded. These orcs also have 6 holy symbols (as will all four-orc patrols), but we already have what we need.
The party continues south into another building.
We enter the door on the left, and...
Even with the leaders with ranged attacks, it goes as quickly as the other fights.
We explore further into the building.
Well, might as well search.
Eight orcs are again nothing more than a speed bump. Let's see what they were so zealously guarding!
Ewww. What a waste of time and effort.
We head through the eastern door...
Another four-orc patrol that we take out quickly.
We then move to the room beyond, and find a cryptic message.
According to the cluebook, and people who have tried to find a solution, this message is, in the end, meaningless.
And... that's it for the Wealthy Area. There's nothing more to explore here, so next time we'll travel west to visit the Temple of Bane!
Off to the inn! The magic-users split the scrolls and start scribing:
None of the spells scribed are anything spectacular, but do help fill out the spellbooks! Now with some extra spell slots, their memorized spells look like this:
Everything scribed and memorized, and all healed up, it's time to pick up Dirten and head off to the Temple of Bane.
Yes we will. Let's see what he brings to the table:
Not terribly exciting - he doesn't even have a shield, which, combined with his lack of of an AC bonus from DEX means that he's not going to be very useful (or long-lived) in the front line. He does, however, have a pretty decent list of spells memorized:
A lot of those will come in handy here soon, especially prayer. But we do have to get him some better gear. We'd go to the store, but it's just after sunset, so we'll have to go the inn and rest until daylight and store operating hours.
(I have a feeling that poor, sheltered, probably-raised-in-a-monastery Dirten had quite the eye-opening evening with the party in the common room of the inn!)
With the sun's rising, we head to the store. I'm sacrificing some coin for temporary benefit here by getting him some better gear (as the gear will be lost to me once he leaves the group), but we do have sufficient cash and I don't want him to be a total liability out there.
One banded mail and shield later:
Not the best, but at least somewhat passable. And by far not the worst NPC we'll encounter in these games (we get a true doozy of an NPC with just awful stats in the next game).
So, off we go to catch a boat to the other side of the city.
We take the south entrance this time.
We enter the so called "Wealthy Area", which is to the south of Kovel Mansion, but east of the Temple of Bane. The only way to the latter is through here. It's very like Kuto's Well in that it's a mainly way to get to other places, but does have a few encounters and things to find here before we proceed onward. I've turned "Search" on for the next couple of buildings to find treasures here that we might otherwise miss.
We enter the door on the left:
10 orcs for us at this level is a breeze. I'm not even going to waste sleep spells on them (although that's mainly because I'll need a bunch in the Temple area).
Buffy gets to test out her new bow (once the ones in front of her go down to allow her to use missile weapons).
And soon they are all dead.
Buffy's positioning is going to be an issue. I'd like to keep her in the back with her bow, but she's got a much better AC than poor Dirten, and we need to keep Dirten alive to complete the Temple mission. So she's temporarily front line, switching between sword and bow as the situation warrants.
After the fight is over:
Of course we do.
Slightly richer, we head through the door directly ahead of us:
We're not going to kill surrendering slaves, so we let them go.
Good to know. Hopefully we can find some of those symbols soon!
We backtrack and head through the right door in the room where we fought the orcs.
Again, we sure do!
Looks good! Let's see if they're worth anything.
Unfortunately, a ring of feather falling is utterly useless in this game. The only place that you can take falling damage is climbing down the well to the thieves in the Cadorna Textile House, and we're done with that section (even if we go back to clear the block, there's no reason to go down the well again). As for the rest, a healing potion is always nice. And let's see what's on that scroll.
Nothing terribly exciting. But something that is exciting...
Baroness Bella has gained a level!
We continue heading west through this building. In the next room...
Why do they even ask?
With all this jewelry, we may very well be able to get Brin her fine longbow when we get back to town.
We move forward a step, and...
We could parlay here, but these orcs (a) will be easy to take care of, and (b) have something we need.
A quick fight later:
Ah, the Bane holy symbols the goblins had mentioned! We'll keep those tucked safely away in order to gain easier access to the Temple here shortly!
We continue on to the next room.
That tells us it's worth nothing, so, like its counterparts in the Kovel Mansion, it can stay here and rot.
This room having been searched thoroughly, we now go through the southern door in this room. As we open the door:
Even adding in an ogre doesn't make this a terribly serious challenge.
(I'll often choose "Done" and then "Delay" for Buffy in these situations in the hope that the orc adjacent to her is dead when she goes at the end of the round and she'll be able to use her bow).
We rapidly win the fight without even a scratch.
Pretty unclear what that list is for. The Boss' current forces? The creatures in the Temple area?
In any case, we've completed our investigation of this building, so we backtrack and leave through a door headed south. As we're moving towards another building, we spy yet another orc patrol.
We initiate combat, and it's quickly concluded. These orcs also have 6 holy symbols (as will all four-orc patrols), but we already have what we need.
The party continues south into another building.
We enter the door on the left, and...
Even with the leaders with ranged attacks, it goes as quickly as the other fights.
We explore further into the building.
Well, might as well search.
Eight orcs are again nothing more than a speed bump. Let's see what they were so zealously guarding!
Ewww. What a waste of time and effort.
We head through the eastern door...
Another four-orc patrol that we take out quickly.
We then move to the room beyond, and find a cryptic message.
According to the cluebook, and people who have tried to find a solution, this message is, in the end, meaningless.
And... that's it for the Wealthy Area. There's nothing more to explore here, so next time we'll travel west to visit the Temple of Bane!
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Demetrios1453
Hero
Pool of Radiance (Part 29): The Wealthy Area & Temple of Bane (Part 2) - Wealthy Area & Temple of Bane Completed!
We head out of the Wealthy area and into the Temple of Bane block.
Oddly, we don't run into any patrols. Usually in my runs, there are the typical four orc patrols swarming the zone before you get to the entrance to the Temple itself. But we walked all along the southern end of the Temple and reached the front door before encountering anything.
Ewww. But that's why we kept the holy symbols.
Yeah, about that. We'll see how supreme he is after what we do to his temple (and thus start him being really annoyed with us and thus kicking off the plot of the entire rest of this series of games)
We enter the Temple. We need to have "Search" on to find any treasures here.
It's oddly quiet as we search every nook and cranny of what is supposed to be a sacred site. Weird.
Open it is!
Some very interesting items there!
Wand of magic missiles! That will come in handy when we absolutely have to interrupt an enemy spellcaster. Not that there seem to be any around in this almost suspiciously empty temple. We'll give that to Brin.
The potions get scattered about the inventories of the various members of the group.
Dust of disappearance. Basically the most over-powered item in the game, even more than the fine longbows. Use it, and the entire party is invisible and can even attack without losing that invisibility. It's a one-shot item though, so it's going to be saved for an important fight ( :cough:finale:cough: ).
One treasure cache down, we continue our search of the empty temple. I can only assume the staff are in a meeting or out for lunch.
Yes, narrator, we do. (Who should we imagine the narrator to be? The snarky BG3 narrator, perhaps? OK, I'll formally refer to the narrator as "Lady Narrator" from here on out)
Lots of magical weapons, but when we examine them, they are all just +1, and none of them are any better than weapons we already have. These are earmarked for a quick sell once we get back to town.
However, this discovery gave Brother Baltor enough XP to level up!
Unfortunately, there's nowhere to rest up so he can use those new spells and spell slots.
We continue our exploration. But, as we move around the northwestern area of the temple, Dirten feels that it might be time to cast a few preparatory spells, just in case. Heh, he must have heard some mice moving or something, because there's obviously no one in this very empty temple! We humor him and let him cast some spells.
Spells cast, we move forward a step.
Yep!
Oh nice. Let's take a look at...
Wait, what was that noise?
Oh dear...
Even worse, the half-orc cleric (whose name is Mace) starts to cast a spell before we can damage him to stop the casting - in 1e rules, if you get hit and take damage before you cast a spell in a round, you would be unable to cast a spell for the rest of the round. Luckily, his spell takes time to cast, so if we can hit him before he can complete the spell, it will fizzle.
And, luckily, Brin goes while he's casting.
(Later games will have "Casting" under the target's stats in the upper right).
Magic missile doesn't miss, and Mace loses his spell - very likely hold person, which would likely have been disastrous in this situation.
In fact, that's exactly what we will do:
Bragir joins in with a helplessness-inducing spell of his own:
(Bragir doesn't use one of the fireball scrolls since we'll actually need it more in a fight coming up relatively soon rather than here, where sleep will do just fine).
And Dirten gets into the action as well:
By this time, the majority of the orcs have been rendered helpless. Which is good, since the remaining bowmen (boworcs?) are peppering my group with arrows, with Brin and Dirten notably taking some damage, so much so that they will find it difficult to get off any spells after this point.
We've been focusing on Mace, because his spellcasting is the most dangerous threat in the battle. After a few hits, Buffy finally takes him down.
Brother Baltor tries another hold person, but only gets two out of the three:
We take down the foes in the top area, and start clearing out the few remaining active enemies.
And then take out the remaining helpless ones
And then there were none.
Whew, that was a pretty intense battle, with all the ranged weapon foes, before we got things under control! We did take a bit of damage in this one!
Let's see if there is any decent loot after all that.
Mace had a mace, it seems, and a magical one at that. The party will take it, top off their arrows, and just leave the rest.
The graveyard is worrying everyone, it seems.
Farewell! Thanks for the couple of spells you cast. Enjoy your shiny new armor that barely even got scratched.
Yeah, I have a paladin and LG cleric. That thing's not going to survive.
(In later games, this would likely have garnered a separate XP award, but sadly not in this one).
And that is that for the Temple of Bane. We head back towards the civilized area to claim our rewards.
We make it back through the Temple district and the Wealthy Area without any further encounters.
Back to town, and off to see the City Clerk!
Nice! And what do we get for clearing the Temple itself?
That and the friendships we made along the way as well, I suppose. Well, it is a fairly substantial amount of loot.
She then repeats the same three commissions as last time (nomads, kobolds, source of pollution) since this commission was from the Bishop and not her. With that, we take our leave and head out to sell our extraneous items.
But that's for the next post. We've pretty well explored the ruins of Old Phlan, other than the graveyard and the area immediately around the Boss' castle... which are problems for a time in the more distant future. So next time, we head out of the city and onto the overland map for the first time, to meet up with these mysterious nomads!
We head out of the Wealthy area and into the Temple of Bane block.
Oddly, we don't run into any patrols. Usually in my runs, there are the typical four orc patrols swarming the zone before you get to the entrance to the Temple itself. But we walked all along the southern end of the Temple and reached the front door before encountering anything.
Ewww. But that's why we kept the holy symbols.
Yeah, about that. We'll see how supreme he is after what we do to his temple (and thus start him being really annoyed with us and thus kicking off the plot of the entire rest of this series of games)
We enter the Temple. We need to have "Search" on to find any treasures here.
It's oddly quiet as we search every nook and cranny of what is supposed to be a sacred site. Weird.
Open it is!
Some very interesting items there!
Wand of magic missiles! That will come in handy when we absolutely have to interrupt an enemy spellcaster. Not that there seem to be any around in this almost suspiciously empty temple. We'll give that to Brin.
The potions get scattered about the inventories of the various members of the group.
Dust of disappearance. Basically the most over-powered item in the game, even more than the fine longbows. Use it, and the entire party is invisible and can even attack without losing that invisibility. It's a one-shot item though, so it's going to be saved for an important fight ( :cough:finale:cough: ).
One treasure cache down, we continue our search of the empty temple. I can only assume the staff are in a meeting or out for lunch.
Yes, narrator, we do. (Who should we imagine the narrator to be? The snarky BG3 narrator, perhaps? OK, I'll formally refer to the narrator as "Lady Narrator" from here on out)
Lots of magical weapons, but when we examine them, they are all just +1, and none of them are any better than weapons we already have. These are earmarked for a quick sell once we get back to town.
However, this discovery gave Brother Baltor enough XP to level up!
Unfortunately, there's nowhere to rest up so he can use those new spells and spell slots.
We continue our exploration. But, as we move around the northwestern area of the temple, Dirten feels that it might be time to cast a few preparatory spells, just in case. Heh, he must have heard some mice moving or something, because there's obviously no one in this very empty temple! We humor him and let him cast some spells.
Spells cast, we move forward a step.
Yep!
Oh nice. Let's take a look at...
Wait, what was that noise?
Oh dear...
Even worse, the half-orc cleric (whose name is Mace) starts to cast a spell before we can damage him to stop the casting - in 1e rules, if you get hit and take damage before you cast a spell in a round, you would be unable to cast a spell for the rest of the round. Luckily, his spell takes time to cast, so if we can hit him before he can complete the spell, it will fizzle.
And, luckily, Brin goes while he's casting.
(Later games will have "Casting" under the target's stats in the upper right).
Magic missile doesn't miss, and Mace loses his spell - very likely hold person, which would likely have been disastrous in this situation.
In fact, that's exactly what we will do:
Bragir joins in with a helplessness-inducing spell of his own:
(Bragir doesn't use one of the fireball scrolls since we'll actually need it more in a fight coming up relatively soon rather than here, where sleep will do just fine).
And Dirten gets into the action as well:
By this time, the majority of the orcs have been rendered helpless. Which is good, since the remaining bowmen (boworcs?) are peppering my group with arrows, with Brin and Dirten notably taking some damage, so much so that they will find it difficult to get off any spells after this point.
We've been focusing on Mace, because his spellcasting is the most dangerous threat in the battle. After a few hits, Buffy finally takes him down.
Brother Baltor tries another hold person, but only gets two out of the three:
We take down the foes in the top area, and start clearing out the few remaining active enemies.
And then take out the remaining helpless ones
And then there were none.
Whew, that was a pretty intense battle, with all the ranged weapon foes, before we got things under control! We did take a bit of damage in this one!
Let's see if there is any decent loot after all that.
Mace had a mace, it seems, and a magical one at that. The party will take it, top off their arrows, and just leave the rest.
The graveyard is worrying everyone, it seems.
Farewell! Thanks for the couple of spells you cast. Enjoy your shiny new armor that barely even got scratched.
Yeah, I have a paladin and LG cleric. That thing's not going to survive.
(In later games, this would likely have garnered a separate XP award, but sadly not in this one).
And that is that for the Temple of Bane. We head back towards the civilized area to claim our rewards.
We make it back through the Temple district and the Wealthy Area without any further encounters.
Back to town, and off to see the City Clerk!
Nice! And what do we get for clearing the Temple itself?
That and the friendships we made along the way as well, I suppose. Well, it is a fairly substantial amount of loot.
She then repeats the same three commissions as last time (nomads, kobolds, source of pollution) since this commission was from the Bishop and not her. With that, we take our leave and head out to sell our extraneous items.
But that's for the next post. We've pretty well explored the ruins of Old Phlan, other than the graveyard and the area immediately around the Boss' castle... which are problems for a time in the more distant future. So next time, we head out of the city and onto the overland map for the first time, to meet up with these mysterious nomads!
Last edited:
Demetrios1453
Hero
I've been inadvertently skipping the area maps after clearing the last few blocks, so here are the Kovel Mansion, Wealthy Area, and Temple of Bane maps:
Demetrios1453
Hero
Pool of Radiance (Part 30): The Nomad Camp (Part 1)
Having gotten our reward for clearing the Temple of Bane, it's time to visit the shop and rest up before going to find the nomads. First stop, the weapons store:
Come on! Authentic symbols of Bane, directly from the temple! Surely someone would want that as a collectors item!
Not bad.
Huh, I guess wooden holy symbols have a better market than leather.
Buffy has a nice selection of useless weapons for us to get rid of and earn some nice gold.
After selling our weapons, here are our funds:
Hmm. I was hoping for more by now.
Wait a moment.
The four scrolls at the top are just 2 copies of restoration each, which are very handy. The other ones, though, don't have particularly useful spells for the most part. I bet they will sell for a pretty platinum, as well as clearing out a lot of Brother Baltor's inventory space (if you hadn't figured it out by now, each character only gets this one page for inventory).
I'll keep this one, as it does have useful spells. Cure disease can be very useful when we fight a certain type of undead in the graveyard. And an extra prayer can't hurt.
Looking through the rest, they can go. And, yes, they do sell for some very good cash.
A couple of more scrolls sold, and our funds look much better.
Again, we're close to the 5000 pp, so it's off to the silver shop to get another fine longbow!
We'll just cut to the chase and appraise some jewelry this time.
After selling a couple of pieces, we're ready to get another fine longbow.
This one is for Brin. She trades her shortbow +1 to Brother Baltor (who, despite using a blunt weapon in melee, can use any weapon with his multiclass).
Now back to the inn to scribe some spells!
Not terribly exciting, but, as you can see, I'll have lots of exciting spells ready once the magic-users hit 5th level and can scribe 3rd level spells.
Speaking of 5th level, Brother Baltor's memorized spell list is looking pretty nice now!
A quick look at the party as we head out to search for the nomads.
All rested up, we head towards the dock to catch a boat.
We'll head east this time.
Hmm, looking at the GBC map, we could have just gone basically straight up from Phlan itself and saved a bit of time. It's not a significant difference, though, so it's not a big deal. We'll walk directly back to town once we've finished with the nomads.
The actual overland map in-game. It obviously shows a much smaller area, which means before the days of GBC, you were having to search around a lot more for destinations. Most are still marked on this map with some sort of icon, so you'll know when you're close to something most of the time.
Also, we have horses?
We head north to reach the nomad camp, wary of random encounters.
Very interesting! This sort of discovery is completely random - it's actually part of the random encounter list, but instead of some wandering monsters, you find a location to explore. As they're not particularly common compared to the monster encounters, it's a nice surprise to get one first. So, let's go in and see what's inside!
We didn't enter here just to turn around! We move forward.
Not a good sign.
Giant lizards aren't terribly tough foes at our level.
We explore the eastern section of the cave, and then move back south to explore the western sections. As we head west...
Two go down twice as fast as the four did earlier.
We head north in the western section of the cave. In one room, we find something interesting!
Nice, let's see how powerful of an item it is!
Meh. All my melee have +1 or better shields already.
We explore this room, and then head to the northwesternmost sections of the cave. As we do...
Oooh, minotaurs! First time we've met them. They will make this fight at least a bit more challenging.
But this battle still goes fairly quickly.
After that, we complete the exploration of the cave, and head out.
We continue north towards the nomad camp.
Yes we do.
We move forward a bit, until we hit a tripwire and the nomads confront the party.
(Which is what this screenshot is supposed to have stated. I swear I had clicked on it and the screenshot had the text, but apparently I was a second too late - and forgot to go back and check, and now I'm far too far along to re-screenshot it).
What will we do? Well, that's for the next post!
Having gotten our reward for clearing the Temple of Bane, it's time to visit the shop and rest up before going to find the nomads. First stop, the weapons store:
Come on! Authentic symbols of Bane, directly from the temple! Surely someone would want that as a collectors item!
Not bad.
Huh, I guess wooden holy symbols have a better market than leather.
Buffy has a nice selection of useless weapons for us to get rid of and earn some nice gold.
After selling our weapons, here are our funds:
Hmm. I was hoping for more by now.
Wait a moment.
The four scrolls at the top are just 2 copies of restoration each, which are very handy. The other ones, though, don't have particularly useful spells for the most part. I bet they will sell for a pretty platinum, as well as clearing out a lot of Brother Baltor's inventory space (if you hadn't figured it out by now, each character only gets this one page for inventory).
I'll keep this one, as it does have useful spells. Cure disease can be very useful when we fight a certain type of undead in the graveyard. And an extra prayer can't hurt.
Looking through the rest, they can go. And, yes, they do sell for some very good cash.
A couple of more scrolls sold, and our funds look much better.
Again, we're close to the 5000 pp, so it's off to the silver shop to get another fine longbow!
We'll just cut to the chase and appraise some jewelry this time.
After selling a couple of pieces, we're ready to get another fine longbow.
This one is for Brin. She trades her shortbow +1 to Brother Baltor (who, despite using a blunt weapon in melee, can use any weapon with his multiclass).
Now back to the inn to scribe some spells!
Not terribly exciting, but, as you can see, I'll have lots of exciting spells ready once the magic-users hit 5th level and can scribe 3rd level spells.
Speaking of 5th level, Brother Baltor's memorized spell list is looking pretty nice now!
A quick look at the party as we head out to search for the nomads.
All rested up, we head towards the dock to catch a boat.
We'll head east this time.
Hmm, looking at the GBC map, we could have just gone basically straight up from Phlan itself and saved a bit of time. It's not a significant difference, though, so it's not a big deal. We'll walk directly back to town once we've finished with the nomads.
The actual overland map in-game. It obviously shows a much smaller area, which means before the days of GBC, you were having to search around a lot more for destinations. Most are still marked on this map with some sort of icon, so you'll know when you're close to something most of the time.
Also, we have horses?
We head north to reach the nomad camp, wary of random encounters.
Very interesting! This sort of discovery is completely random - it's actually part of the random encounter list, but instead of some wandering monsters, you find a location to explore. As they're not particularly common compared to the monster encounters, it's a nice surprise to get one first. So, let's go in and see what's inside!
We didn't enter here just to turn around! We move forward.
Not a good sign.
Giant lizards aren't terribly tough foes at our level.
We explore the eastern section of the cave, and then move back south to explore the western sections. As we head west...
Two go down twice as fast as the four did earlier.
We head north in the western section of the cave. In one room, we find something interesting!
Nice, let's see how powerful of an item it is!
Meh. All my melee have +1 or better shields already.
We explore this room, and then head to the northwesternmost sections of the cave. As we do...
Oooh, minotaurs! First time we've met them. They will make this fight at least a bit more challenging.
But this battle still goes fairly quickly.
After that, we complete the exploration of the cave, and head out.
We continue north towards the nomad camp.
Yes we do.
We move forward a bit, until we hit a tripwire and the nomads confront the party.
(Which is what this screenshot is supposed to have stated. I swear I had clicked on it and the screenshot had the text, but apparently I was a second too late - and forgot to go back and check, and now I'm far too far along to re-screenshot it).
What will we do? Well, that's for the next post!
Demetrios1453
Hero
Pool of Radiance (Part 31): The Nomad Camp (Part 2)
We decide that talking is the best course of action. The chieftain of this nomad group then confronts the party.
("Dirtiest"? If anything, he'd be the cleanest if he's the leader, from real-world precedent. Perhaps nomads in the Forgotten Realms for some reason associate filth with rank? Also, his curly mustache makes him look like some sort of Victorian Era desert explorer)
Sure. I just hope the party doesn't succumb to food poisoning from the apparent lack of personal hygiene in this group.
Well, sounds like a much more fun day than ruthlessly slaughtering this group, even if It's just wall after all of text.
Hmm... we've noticed that pyramid on the map. And it's right on the river. Perhaps a clue to its pollution?
The "evil empire far to the west" are the lands of Zhentil Keep and the Zhenterim, whom we will encounter in the relatively near future.
Well, time to heal up a bit...
We set the rest timer to 6 hours.
But, within a few hours, we're interrupted.
We decide to stay and fight. If we impress this band with our prowess in battle, that should sway them from joining the Boss.
(Is bamboo native this far north in Faerun?)
We set the rest timer again...
And again are rudely interrupted. But this time, it's not the chief dropping by for another chat!
(We're moved automatically out of the hut we were resting in, which results in the amusing transition with the kobolds first appearing like they're on a television on the wall).
That's a lot of kobolds. And a lot of nomad allies. Which results in like 80% of the battle being them trading bow shots that whistle slowly across the screen...
...while I wait impatiently to do anything with my six characters.
The only way to speed things up is to take kobolds out of action. Brin will immediately help out with this.
(If my magic-users were single-classed by now, they'd be 5th level and have fireball memorized, and these fights would go by quite a bit more quickly. But, choosing to multiclass entailed slower leveling, so we make do with what we have. And, while I do have scrolls of fireball available to use, I'm saving them up for the next section, where they will be much more helpful in some particularly tough battles).
I'm going to take care of the kobolds directly in front and to the south, while the nomads can trade shots with the upper group. The good thing is that the nomads are better shots than the kobolds, and have more hit points, so they take out the kobolds at a steady but still a bit annoyingly slow rate. Soon, we've whittled them down significantly. Well, not "soon", as there are long minutes of nomad and kobold action, but soon enough.
And then they are gone.
Well, that wasn't so bad, and the party didn't take too much damage. Time to claim my reward!
Well, maybe not.
This battle looks somewhat similar to the first, but instead of the buildings north and south of us being mostly behind us, they are now mostly ahead, making lines of sight a bit more difficult. However, that hurts the kobolds as much as us, if not worse, since their archers are on the upper and lower flanks (as they were in the previous battle as well), meaning most can't target us, while the party can still easily target the ones directly ahead of them.
Brin repeats her strategy from the first battle.
And again, the party concentrates on the southern group. However, moving forward means the kobold archers in the upper group can now target me, while the nomad archers mostly stand pat and target the ones in front of them. And, again, it takes forever for the kobolds and the nomads to cycle through their intiatives, meaning I have to wait interminably while arrows fly for the characters to take their actions.
Luckily, the fighter-types can sweep the kobolds...
Which means I can take down whole swathes at once. Soon, this kobold army has significantly cleared out as well.
Bant then moves up to the upper group to start taking them out (and stopping them from shooting arrows as he confronts them in melee). We've cleared out the remaining kobolds to the south in the meantime.
And soon they are gone as well.
Great! Now about that reward...
...sigh.
More kobolds? I mean, we aren't getting seriously hurt (only Brother Baltor has taken anything near significant damage), but this is really getting a bit tedious.
I really wonder why they put "Flee" in now? I guess if you're a lower level group and are in bad shape at this point maybe? In any case, we're going to finish this with the headman.
So tune in next time for the thrilling finale of the kobold attack!
We decide that talking is the best course of action. The chieftain of this nomad group then confronts the party.
("Dirtiest"? If anything, he'd be the cleanest if he's the leader, from real-world precedent. Perhaps nomads in the Forgotten Realms for some reason associate filth with rank? Also, his curly mustache makes him look like some sort of Victorian Era desert explorer)
Sure. I just hope the party doesn't succumb to food poisoning from the apparent lack of personal hygiene in this group.
Well, sounds like a much more fun day than ruthlessly slaughtering this group, even if It's just wall after all of text.
Hmm... we've noticed that pyramid on the map. And it's right on the river. Perhaps a clue to its pollution?
The "evil empire far to the west" are the lands of Zhentil Keep and the Zhenterim, whom we will encounter in the relatively near future.
Well, time to heal up a bit...
We set the rest timer to 6 hours.
But, within a few hours, we're interrupted.
We decide to stay and fight. If we impress this band with our prowess in battle, that should sway them from joining the Boss.
(Is bamboo native this far north in Faerun?)
We set the rest timer again...
And again are rudely interrupted. But this time, it's not the chief dropping by for another chat!
(We're moved automatically out of the hut we were resting in, which results in the amusing transition with the kobolds first appearing like they're on a television on the wall).
That's a lot of kobolds. And a lot of nomad allies. Which results in like 80% of the battle being them trading bow shots that whistle slowly across the screen...
...while I wait impatiently to do anything with my six characters.
The only way to speed things up is to take kobolds out of action. Brin will immediately help out with this.
(If my magic-users were single-classed by now, they'd be 5th level and have fireball memorized, and these fights would go by quite a bit more quickly. But, choosing to multiclass entailed slower leveling, so we make do with what we have. And, while I do have scrolls of fireball available to use, I'm saving them up for the next section, where they will be much more helpful in some particularly tough battles).
I'm going to take care of the kobolds directly in front and to the south, while the nomads can trade shots with the upper group. The good thing is that the nomads are better shots than the kobolds, and have more hit points, so they take out the kobolds at a steady but still a bit annoyingly slow rate. Soon, we've whittled them down significantly. Well, not "soon", as there are long minutes of nomad and kobold action, but soon enough.
And then they are gone.
Well, that wasn't so bad, and the party didn't take too much damage. Time to claim my reward!
Well, maybe not.
This battle looks somewhat similar to the first, but instead of the buildings north and south of us being mostly behind us, they are now mostly ahead, making lines of sight a bit more difficult. However, that hurts the kobolds as much as us, if not worse, since their archers are on the upper and lower flanks (as they were in the previous battle as well), meaning most can't target us, while the party can still easily target the ones directly ahead of them.
Brin repeats her strategy from the first battle.
And again, the party concentrates on the southern group. However, moving forward means the kobold archers in the upper group can now target me, while the nomad archers mostly stand pat and target the ones in front of them. And, again, it takes forever for the kobolds and the nomads to cycle through their intiatives, meaning I have to wait interminably while arrows fly for the characters to take their actions.
Luckily, the fighter-types can sweep the kobolds...
Which means I can take down whole swathes at once. Soon, this kobold army has significantly cleared out as well.
Bant then moves up to the upper group to start taking them out (and stopping them from shooting arrows as he confronts them in melee). We've cleared out the remaining kobolds to the south in the meantime.
And soon they are gone as well.
Great! Now about that reward...
...sigh.
More kobolds? I mean, we aren't getting seriously hurt (only Brother Baltor has taken anything near significant damage), but this is really getting a bit tedious.
I really wonder why they put "Flee" in now? I guess if you're a lower level group and are in bad shape at this point maybe? In any case, we're going to finish this with the headman.
So tune in next time for the thrilling finale of the kobold attack!
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Demetrios1453
Hero
Pool of Radiance (Part 32): The Nomad Camp (Part 3) - Nomad Camp completed!
Again, a similar group of kobolds, but this time we only have the headman and two of his guards with us. The good news is that they are relatively high level - and they can sweep just like my fighters can!
Bragir takes his turn with casting sleep
Soon, we're whittling them down again.
Not much longer after this, the kobolds actually start surrendering this time (the text before the battle indicated they had particularly low morale), so the battle is quickly over.
Looks like we've gotten some nice stuff this time!
Well, beyond the trash short swords they had (list not shown), it's just coin, but we'll still take it!
However, the chief now gives us his reward for driving the kobolds off, and it looks to be even better!
Again, a lot of cash, but we'll take it.
Or not...
Something is preventing us from taking all the gold. We have, for the first time, but certainly not for the last time, come upon that bane of the Gold Box games - cash hogging up all the encumbrance allowance.
This is just Baroness Bella, but everyone is at the max encumbrance - for 18 (00) STR - of 4500. So, time to start dumping copper. We choose "Drop" in the bottom menu and choose copper.
We drop all of it, for all 6 characters.
That's a pretty significant drop in encumbrance. It frees up enough for the gold - and any other items the headman is going to give us. Speaking of which...
Nice! Let's see what they are.
We'll give the wand to Bragir (since Brin already has one), and the sword to Brin (since Bragir has the anti-undead two hander).
OK, just unceremoniously kicked out? I mean, I respect your customs, but we are bleeding here!
Oh well, back to Phlan we go!
(We could, since the kobold caves are the next mission, just go a bit southeast and work on that commission, but I'd rather go back to town to heal, rest up, and, most of all, clear out some of this loot and coin so the party will have room and encumbrance to pick up whatever treasure may await there.)
Back south we go. We surprisingly, and somewhat disappointingly (as I wanted to show off some outdoors combat, although I'm sure we'll have that soon enough), don't have any encounters along the way.
We take the boat over. But this time, instead of going to the City Clerk first, we go right to the store. We need to change out our coin and lower our encumbrance to make sure we don't have trouble carrying whatever reward she might give us!
We sell our loot, and old loot we have no further use for.
Our current funds after visiting the store and consolidating our coinage.
That's much easier to carry!
Off to see the City Clerk...
Eh. At least it's light to carry around. And jewelry is often worth quite a bit.
She then runs through the commissions, including the kobolds and the river pollution she's mentioned previously. Now that we've dealt with the nomads, she has a new commission for us beyond those.
And, off to the inn we go to rest up and re-memorize our spells.
(Map of the Nomad Camp)
Next time - off to the kobold caves!
Again, a similar group of kobolds, but this time we only have the headman and two of his guards with us. The good news is that they are relatively high level - and they can sweep just like my fighters can!
Bragir takes his turn with casting sleep
Soon, we're whittling them down again.
Not much longer after this, the kobolds actually start surrendering this time (the text before the battle indicated they had particularly low morale), so the battle is quickly over.
Looks like we've gotten some nice stuff this time!
Well, beyond the trash short swords they had (list not shown), it's just coin, but we'll still take it!
However, the chief now gives us his reward for driving the kobolds off, and it looks to be even better!
Again, a lot of cash, but we'll take it.
Or not...
Something is preventing us from taking all the gold. We have, for the first time, but certainly not for the last time, come upon that bane of the Gold Box games - cash hogging up all the encumbrance allowance.
This is just Baroness Bella, but everyone is at the max encumbrance - for 18 (00) STR - of 4500. So, time to start dumping copper. We choose "Drop" in the bottom menu and choose copper.
We drop all of it, for all 6 characters.
That's a pretty significant drop in encumbrance. It frees up enough for the gold - and any other items the headman is going to give us. Speaking of which...
Nice! Let's see what they are.
We'll give the wand to Bragir (since Brin already has one), and the sword to Brin (since Bragir has the anti-undead two hander).
OK, just unceremoniously kicked out? I mean, I respect your customs, but we are bleeding here!
Oh well, back to Phlan we go!
(We could, since the kobold caves are the next mission, just go a bit southeast and work on that commission, but I'd rather go back to town to heal, rest up, and, most of all, clear out some of this loot and coin so the party will have room and encumbrance to pick up whatever treasure may await there.)
Back south we go. We surprisingly, and somewhat disappointingly (as I wanted to show off some outdoors combat, although I'm sure we'll have that soon enough), don't have any encounters along the way.
We take the boat over. But this time, instead of going to the City Clerk first, we go right to the store. We need to change out our coin and lower our encumbrance to make sure we don't have trouble carrying whatever reward she might give us!
We sell our loot, and old loot we have no further use for.
Our current funds after visiting the store and consolidating our coinage.
That's much easier to carry!
Off to see the City Clerk...
Eh. At least it's light to carry around. And jewelry is often worth quite a bit.
She then runs through the commissions, including the kobolds and the river pollution she's mentioned previously. Now that we've dealt with the nomads, she has a new commission for us beyond those.
And, off to the inn we go to rest up and re-memorize our spells.
(Map of the Nomad Camp)
Next time - off to the kobold caves!
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