D&D General Demetrios1453 Plays the Gold Box Games

[Demetrios1453]

Curse of the Azure Bonds (Part 25): Dracandros' Tower (Part 6): Dracandos' Tower completed!

Rested up, it's time to head back down to the first floor and deal with Dracandros once and for all!

Nothing exciting happens the whole way down to the Level 1, as we've cleared out the remaining patrols.

We pass the sliding stair trap and poke about in the northern rooms of the level. Not much going on - it seems that Dracandros has decided that it's time to get as far away as possible from us as he can...

We head towards the southern section of the level, to where we entered from the caves and then were unceremoniously teleported to the roof. But as we go through one door...

Six wyverns!

I'll just have my magic users launch fireballs. Although the big battle with Dracandros is imminent, as we'll see, fireballs will be pretty much useless there. So might as well cast them now!

Buffy might not have fireballs as such, but she does have something close...

Eh, not terribly exciting. Let's see what Bragir and Brin can do...

Bragir starts softening them up...

Akabar also wants in on the action...

Brin's spell goes off..

But before Akabar can get his spell off...

And he was only a few XP away from retirement leveling!

It wasn't the actual damage that brought him down, but the poison. Poison in 1e, being an insta-kill if you failed your save, was ridiculously overpowered!

Well, unpleasant, but not unexpected. At least we only have two wounded wyverns left to take out, and then we can patch him up.

Bant takes down the last one (I was a bit slow on the screenshot, unfortunately), and with the battle over, it's time to tend to Akabar.

This brings him back with 1 HP, which is slightly less than what he normally has.

Although it's tempting, we can't have him going into the next battle with that low amount of HP, so Brother Baltor casts cure serious wounds on him.

Still not the best. Then I remember there's a healing resource I've been passing over in these situations.

I choose "Heal" here for Baroness Bella's Lay on Hands ability.

That tops him off nicely!

And a good thing too! We cross the room to the door to the level 1 courtyard, were we entered the tower quite a bit ago. Beyond lies Dracandros and his remaining minions!

But before we open it, it's definitely time to buff up! And this time, passing over haste is not an option!

After casting our buff spells, here's what everyone's statuses looks like:

All buffed up, it's time to confront Dracandros himself!

Tough talk for someone who's very evidently fleeing from us, dragging whatever possessions he can carry, from his own tower!

And everyone ages. No one but Baroness Bella cares.

Dracandros stands across the courtyard, with six efreet and four drow warriors. Those aren't too tough, despite their resistances and invulnerabilities - after all, we've taken down dozens of them so far, and, even in increased numbers, they won't be too much of an issue. Dracandros, on the other hand...

First of all, normally when moving the cursor over someone, there should be an option for "Target" along with "Center" and "Exit". But in this case, Dracandros is invisible, and can't be targeted at range. But that's just the first problem. He actually has a whole slew of buffs he's cast upon himself to make this fight particularly tricky!

He also has protection from normal missiles and minor globe of invulnerability cast on him, which would stop us from targeting him with ranged weapons anyway even if we could see invisible, as well as making spells under 3rd level useless against him (which is why I said using up the fireballs in the last fight wasn't an issue). Thankfully, we have ice storms and cones of cold to help there. Finally, he and his allies are on the far side of the courtyard, which would usually mean he (and his allies) would get a full free round to damage us at range before we got to them. That's why haste is so crucial in this battle!

That all explained, it's time to deal with him once and for all!

Baroness Bella zips across the courtyard and ensures he doesn't start casting anything nasty at us...

Brother Baltor moves up and takes out the leftmost drow, while Brin also runs across and sets up for a cone of cold...

While she's casting, Bant makes his move...

Well, that's the main threat dealt with! We just have to take down the remaining efreet and drow now.

Brin gets off her spell (which I didn't get a screenshot of), and Bragir moves down to duplicate her actions...

Akabar helps with an ice storm (since they're no longer all nicely lined up any more).

With doubled attacks each round, my melee is carving through them like hot knives through butter. Buffy gets in a particularly nice attack on one of the drow...

Bragir shoots off another ice storm...

And soon the last efreet goes down!

Battle won! Dracandros is dead, and Hap is forever free of his tyranny! Plus he won't be able to place sketchy and potentially plagiaristic tattoos on unsuspecting adventurers any more!

We get a good amount of XP for the deed...

And Akabar can level... for what it's worth. He's going to leave here shortly, and his new level will never come into play for us...

We split some gems and jewelry, and then pull up the real treasure...

Lots of useless drow items (they're all going to evaporate soon), but those last three definitely look interesting!

The quarterstaff is nice, but those last two are definitely among the best treasure we've seen so far in this game!

I was originally going to give both to Buffy, but that moved her AC down to lower than anyone but Baroness Bella, so, since it can be used with non-magical armor, I gave the ring to Brother Baltor, and then swapped shields between him and Bant to even out the ACs a bit up front. Buffy's old bracers were the same as banded mail, so they went to Bragir, which will increase his movement and lower his encumberment while keeping the same AC.

After all the equipment shuffling, this is what the party looks like now...

Bant has a slightly worse AC than his other two front-line melee, but as a pure fighter, he'll often have more hit points.

After closing out the treasure screen, a brief message passes across the screen that we find the Helm of Dragons on Dracandros' body, but it flew by so quickly and without a "Press <Enter/Return> To Continue" prompt that I was unable to get a screenshot. This is an important quest item, as we'll see later, but doesn't show up in anyone's inventory (thankfully!).

Presumably the Helm was in the heavy bag Dracandros was dragging, as we find additional treasure along with it!

Even more XP than before!

We quickly split the gems and jewels, and then sort through the good stuff.

Again, some very nice loot!

The ring of wizardry is the big find here, as it's the type that will double all 1st, 2nd, and 3rd-level spells. Obviously that's extremely useful, as there are lot of spells of those levels that my magic-users simply don't have the slots to memorize without having to forgo even more vital spells. In fact, I'd say that it's the best version in all the Gold Box games, as all the other rings of wizardry in other games simply double 5th-level spells; while that's nice, as 5th-level is higher than 1st, 2nd, and 3rd, there just aren't that many useful spells of that level in these games. It just becomes a lot of cones of cold instead of more versatile magic missiles and fireballs. The real question is why was it in Dracandos' bag and not on his finger?

The wands will be very useful, and I'll give one to each magic-user. The robe is of course a "gotcha" cursed item, the ioun stone is for INT (but everyone already has an 18 INT, so it's not useful at all), and the scrolls mostly have duplicates of spells my magic-users already have (more on that when we go to scribe what we can later).

I'll give the ring of wizardry to Bragir, along with the wand of ice storm. Brin will get the nicer wand of fireballs and all the scrolls as compensation.

That done, let's head on out.

We actually don't want to head out into the wilderness quite yet, as we have one final task in the caves...

Indeed we are!

Some more nice XP! We get a lot of platinum (much of which is too heavy to carry and which we end up dropping) and some gems and jewelry.

With that, we head out of the Tower, and head back to Hap to rest up and sell items.

Two out of the five foes have fallen! Next time, we start our quest to uncover and defeat the third!

 

[Demetrios1453]

Looking back on it, my question to the game designers for this battle would be: Why did you put Dracandros on the front line? If you switch Dracandros and the drow warrior below him, it would have made it a tougher battle as the party would need to defeat that drow or one of the neighboring efreet in order to get to him, as he's protected from ranged attacks (and the bottom edge down there is a hard border - you can't move past it and go around to their rear). He'd almost certainly have gotten off a spell or two instead of my melee going down there and taking him down early in the first round!

 

[Demetrios1453]

Curse of the Azure Bonds (Part 26): Return to Haptooth Village

First, maps of Dracandros' Tower, since I forgot to put them in the previous posts:

As we prepare to leave the tower, let's level Akabar for fun, even though it's meaningless.

Not bad - he went from level 5 to level 9 in just his time with us. Pity about his horrendous stats though. At least his HP went from awful to tolerable...

We head up from the cave to the courtyard.

We'll head to the wilderness this time.

We'll head back to the village. We have stuff to sell and need to rest up after that last battle.

We head to the store to sell what we can.

Let's see what we can sell...

He's no fool. As much as we praise its workmanship and that it's really, really not going to evaporate here shortly, he's not taking our word for it. I guess with a drow city somewhere not too far below, he's seen drow items before and knows what befalls them...

On the other hand, we can fool him here and get some decent cash for a cursed item.

As I'm selling, I swap some items around since our nice drow items are shortly going to disappear.

Bant gets the dragon slaying sword, since it will be a bit more useful than his axe. He grumbles.

Bragir gets Buffy's old bracers and sells his banded mail. It ends up being the same AC, but his encumbrance and movement will be much improved.

Brother Baltor gets the gauntlets of dexterity that have been floating around. He doesn't really need the 19 DEX, but it's still nice anyway.

Everything sold, we head across the street to the inn.

The innkeeper is going to find quite the treasure when we leave, since we are far too encumbered with all our coins from selling everything.

Now unencumbered, it's time to memorize spells! Bragir especially is looking forward to this with his new ring of wizardry!

I give all the scrolls to Brin to see what was on the new scrolls we acquired from Dracandros and what can be scribed.

Well, she scribe a two spells. At least they are reasonably useful ones.

After passing them back to Bragir, he can scribe one spell.

That's... slightly less useful.

So, we rest - healing, scribing, and memorizing.

With that, it's time to say farewell to Haptooth Village and head on to our next destination, wherever the third of our foes may be hiding out.

Yeah, no need to go back to those caves.

Well... that was rather abrupt. Farewell Akabar! May you roll better stats in the future!

And there they go, as we knew they would, and as abruptly as Akabar. Pity, they were more useful than he was.

The party camps immediately after leaving Haptooth Village, before heading out across the world map. With so many changes of gear over the last little bit, here are screenshots of what everyone is carrying:

I'm hanging on to those crossbows for one very particular reason that will come up much later in the game.

And here is a quick overview of the characters as we head out into the wilderness:

Next time, we move quite a bit around the world map, headed to the lair of our third foe!

 

[TheHand]

Thanks again for taking us on another adventure down Gold Box memory lane!
The tower was probably my least favorite dungeon of Curse. It felt very claustrophobic and the drow were kind of repetitive. I think that was further hampered by Akabar, who I remember being more detrimental than helpful. It might be either the version I played on, my faulty memory, or maybe your Goldbox helper fixed it, but I recall him being fully computer controlled and casting Stinking Clouds or Fireballs on my party. It was best to just get him KO’d.

 

[Demetrios1453]

Thanks again for taking us on another adventure down Gold Box memory lane!
The tower was probably my least favorite dungeon of Curse. It felt very claustrophobic and the drow were kind of repetitive. I think that was further hampered by Akabar, who I remember being more detrimental than helpful. It might be either the version I played on, my faulty memory, or maybe your Goldbox helper fixed it, but I recall him being fully computer controlled and casting Stinking Clouds or Fireballs on my party. It was best to just get him KO’d.

Yeah, NPCs used to have less player control before the more modern versions. The Dragonlance games still have this if you don't have a knight character, and it takes (a slow leveling) Knight of the Rose to make sure you have 100% control. I held off changing my Knight to Rose in the last game as long as I could, until I had 2 NPCs that would charge forward towards exploding advanced draconians (and not prudently running away like all my other characters would) and they would get previously wounded or outright killed in the explosions.

 

[Demetrios1453]

Curse of the Azure Bonds (Part 27): Yûlash (Part 1)

This section done, it's time to move on. As the map doesn't continue further south (into what would be Sembia), we head back north, to Essembra.

Yeah, not much choice here.

(A quick look at the GBC overland map, which is labeled, since I wasn't always able to get the blinking cursor indicating which location the party is currently at)

We actually do enter the city, even though it's not necessary, to top off on arrows. We used quite a lot of them, and even though we were able to grab some while looting, we're getting a bit low. The general store in Haptooth Village didn't sell any, annoyingly.

I get everyone at or near 255 arrows, which is the max (almost certainly since 256 is 2^8, which made it the highest number available in these early CRPGs), and then head onward north out of town.

Back to the Standing Stone it is!

But not before another Monty Python-esque copy protection check! With the code wheel protection deactivated in the current iteration of the games, you don't have to do anything but hit Enter for each of his three questions.

With that, we continue towards the Standing Stone.

Our mysterious stranger from the last time we were here!

We thank him for the info.

Well, all our options to the northwest are through the forest. We'll take the road to Hillsfar to the east, and then double back on the road along the south shore of the Moonsea.

To Hillsfar it is!

Those Fire Knives just won't give up, it seems!

Since we were ambushed, they go first, and shuffle around a bit trying to get angles to shoot at us with their crossbows, since (as you will see), this outdoor map is pretty full of trees and other obstacles.

Brother Baltor moves up, but his movement allowance ends right next to his target, making him unable to attack with his mace. Well, he has other things he can do!

Both fighters near him are held! (he couldn't target any of the others due to the trees)

Even though Bant can't quite make it to the main group, he can definitely deal with the unfortunate victims of the spell...

Brin takes a much more direct approach after moving forward to get a better view.

This leaves the remaining foes badly wounded, and, once my melee get up there, they make quick work of them.

(Also, I accidentally hit "Q" when attempting to aim - which would have been "A" - with Buffy at the start of combat, which placed her into an automated quick combat mode. So she annoyingly just sat back and threw sling stones instead of advancing and using her bow. This used to be a bit of a disaster in the previous versions of the game, as the only way to get a character out of quick combat was to hit the space bar as they moved, which was often hard to time correctly. And, worst of all, they stayed in that mode permanently until you got lucky enough to hit the space bar just right, so it could be several battles before you regained control of the character. If this happened with a spellcaster, they'd cast pretty much random spells, either useless ones, or not caring if they got party members in the AoE! Thankfully, these days, it's auto-reset after an encounter.)

Meh, not much XP, and no magical treasure. Well, onward to Hillsfar!

We took no damage, and used a single spell. So we'll just journey onward.

We'll head northwest towards Yûlash, although it is interesting to see our old stomping grounds of Phlan make an appearance (it's the city in the far northeast corner of the map).

The Red Plumes are the military of Hillsfar, and they are often at war (as they are at the time the game is set) with Zhentil Keep. Unfortunately, as mentioned previously, one of our magical tattoos is that Zhent symbol. So we have no choice but to fight.

12 this time! This will be a bit tougher than the previous battle.

As they are bunched up together, and this outdoors battleground is much less cluttered than the last, time for my magic-users to do their stuff!

The only problem is that, per 1e rules, fireball has a smaller radius outdoors than inside. So it's only going to have the radius typical of ice storm and not effect as many targets. But Bragir will still get most in the AoE, since they have yet to move and are still nicely bunched up.

Well, that will clear the field a bit!

Only a couple made their saves, with the remaining six within the AoE dying outright. Things suddenly became much easier. Also, my melee have moved as far forward as they can in the meantime, and are set to "Guard", which will mean once any foes move forward to them, they'll get a free attack.

Brin will follow up on Bragir's success...

Not quite as good, but it will knock the ones who fail their saves into single digit HP. With minimal HP left, we just pummel them with melee and ranged attacks, and they swiftly go down.

Again, pretty minimal XP, and nothing in the way of any real treasure.

With that done, we quickly reach Yûlash.

Well, that doesn't sound particularly promising! Next time, we'll enter Yûlash and see what the battle inside the walls is all about!

 

[see]

Brother Baltor moves up, but his movement allowance ends right next to his target, making him unable to attack with his mace.

Actually, he can! With a melee weapon equipped, you can use the Aim action to attack any adjacent square, whether or not you have any movement allowance left.

(Sometime later in the Gold Box series, they fix the Move/Attack code so that it still lets you attack adjacent squares when you're out of movement, but back here in Curse you have to know Aim works for melee attacks, not just ranged ones.)

 

[Demetrios1453]

Actually, he can! With a melee weapon equipped, you can use the Aim action to attack any adjacent square, whether or not you have any movement allowance left.

(Sometime later in the Gold Box series, they fix the Move/Attack code so that it still lets you attack adjacent squares when you're out of movement, but back here in Curse you have to know Aim works for melee attacks, not just ranged ones.)

Wow, I never knew that! I'll have to remember to do that next time it comes up.

But him paralyzing two foes probably made the battle faster in the end anyway.

 

[SteveC]

I just wanted to say thanks for this trip down memory lane. I played these originally on my Commodore 128 and I think this was the last in the series that they made for it. So next game will be new to me!

 

[Demetrios1453]

Curse of the Azure Bonds (Part 28): Yûlash (Part 2)

As we enter Yûlash, we get a sudden surprise.

Our runaway princess and her beau are still out and about, running over innocent characters, it seems.

As we enter the ruined city for real...

Running away is useless, as we'll have to come back here anyway. Fighting makes the one actual faction in the city that can potentially be non-hostile become hostile, so Parlay it is.

Again, fighting and running away are counterproductive, so we're off to see the commander.

We move around a bit on the map, and get to sit in the waiting room.

Nothing happens unless you move around a bit out of boredom. It's a pity that the games at this point don't have much in the way of music (PoR and DQoK both have more music, with the latter actually having battle music!), or I'm sure we'd be treated to typical waiting room/elevator music at this point.

But any soothing thoughts are quickly ended, as after shuffling around the room for a bit...

I'm kind of curious of what the set up for all this is. The spies are coming out of the commander's office, and, as we will see, they aren't an insubstantial force. Was it a botched assassination attempt? If so, how did they get so many so close to the commander? And how were they unsuccessful? There aren't troops pouring out of the office, so either the spies ran away when they had the commander at their mercy, or any troops driving them out just watch as their foes run away, and give no help as we fight them.

Well, whatever happened, we don't like the Zhents very much since they've put their mark on us, so fight it is!

There are a good number of them, and they have a cleric and two wizards. This won't be simple fight. (And again, how were they driven off from the commander with such numbers?)

Oh dear, I can't target the wizards directly (there's no "TARGET" option), so they've got some buffs on them.

At least the cleric is right there in the front line, and the top wizard is within reach of my melee. It's that wizard at the bottom that I'm most concerned about!

Brother Baltor looks to help even things up quickly.

While Brin attempts to clear out those foes towards the bottom. Invisibility or protection from normal missiles won't help that wizard against AoE attacks!

The fireball definitely damage the fighters (I actually got a shot of the fire exploding over one of the foes in progress on screen!), but the wizard remains unharmed. Grrr... they must have a minor globe of invulnerability on them as well as whatever is giving them immunity to ranged attacks (I looked it up afterwards, and it's protection from normal missiles).

The bad news is that third level and below spells won't effect them. The good news is that we have quite a few higher level spells available that will harm them!

Meanwhile, Brother Baltor's spell has gone off, and successfully!

That cleric better be praying to (presumably) Bane, as he's not long for this world.

Bragir, seeing the fireball didn't do anything to the wizard, adjusts accordingly...

With satisfying results!

Brin follows suit...

And our wizard goes down (I mistimed the shot, so no skull and crossbones and death notice).

Annoyingly, the remaining soldiers to the south have moved up on Bragir, so he can't use his bow...

But... they are nicely lined up, aren't they?

Bragir has all sorts of spells available now due to his new ring, so let's let one off...

And they get zapped. They were too far away from the wall though for any to get the bounce back which makes 1e lightning bolt so much fun (that is, when it's your enemy that get hits twice - these games definitely like to have foes aim the spell at you when you're next to a wall!)

(As for the other wizard, Baroness Bella has been hitting him consistently, and he goes down right after this screenshot)

With the tides turning against them, they, annoyingly, start to run away.

Well, that won't do! Even though he only has 1 HP left, Brin goes for overkill in order to make sure he doesn't get too far and escapes...

But while he goes down, the other remaining foes also make a run for it. One runs past enough characters to be taken down from behind, but two of them manage to survive and reach this same doorway. Bragir decides to deal with the situation with extreme prejudice...

One goes down, but we still have a runner...

Ugh, he's moving away quite quickly. Bragir follows Brin's earlier idea...

Thankfully, Bant has caught up to him and has taken down a lot of hit points, so the magic missile brings him down...

That was a bit of a rough fight, but we persevered in the end with minimal damage.

And have gained a lot of XP! They must have some nice stuff!

Indeed they do!

Those bracers are nice, but for both her and Bragir, the banded mail +1 are just a tad bit nicer, so they both don the new armor.

I was also going to upgrade Brother Baltor, but he's got a ring of protection +3 which is negated when using magical armor, so he's staying with non-magical armor and the ring instead.

In any case, the Zhent spies now being dead, it's time to meet the commander.

(His name, as revealed in later games, is Priam. He'll go on to be a major NPC in Secret of the Silver Blades and make a short but memorable appearance in Pools of Darkness.)

We go with "NICE". We need a safe area and allies in this war-torn city!

At this point, the game is checking for several things to determine his attitude towards you. As we haven't fought any Red Plumes (in Yûlash at least), defeated the spies, and have been polite to everyone we've met here, he's already predisposed to like us. Baroness Bella being a Swanmay is just an additional point in our favor on top of all those.

Journal Entry 22:

And Journal Entry 52, as mentioned in Journal Entry 22 (recursive journal entries!)

Well, that's pretty helpful, if incomplete. And, apparently, we're supposed to be visiting the Pit of Moander. That makes sense, since the sage way back in Tilverton told us that one of the symbols (the hand with a mouth in its palm) on our arms is that of the deity Moander, and that it was unleashed in Yûlash last time the this magical tattoo scheme was tried. So, to the Pit of Moander we go!

Huh, even after rescuing him from an assassination, we're shown out the back door like the help...

We explore around the safe Red Plumes area a bit...

This basically functions as a tavern, so you can pay to overhear tavern tales here.

As there's not much to see here (no shop/armory, sadly), it's time to rest before we head across the ruined city.

Next time - we explore the ruins of Yûlash, and head towards the Pit of Moander!