D&D General Demetrios1453 Plays the Gold Box Games

[Demetrios1453]

Pool of Radiance (Part 16): Kuto's Well (Part 2) - Kuto's Well Completed!

We rest up after taking out Norris the Gray. Now able to scribe 2nd-level spells, Bragir scribes knock from the scroll found a back in the Slums:

The magic-users make use of the new 2nd-level spell slot to memorize stinking cloud.

Time to climb up out of the Well and explore around a bit. We rapidly run into another group of lizardmen:

Time to see what the new spell can do!

Unlike sleep, stinking cloud has a short range (3 squares) and a small radius (only affecting 4 squares). You aim at the upper left corner of the area you want to affect - this was learned the hard way back in the day after quite a few times catching my own party within the AoE.

The creatures within must make a save. If they make it, they will merely be "coughing" and have a negative to their AC. If they fail, they "choke and gag with nausea", causing them to be helpless, and thus susceptible to insta-kills.

Well, then, you might be thinking it's just a very inferior sleep, with a smaller range, AoE, and actually needing a save. However, it does have its uses. Firstly, it affects creatures with enough HD where sleep would be ineffective. Secondly, the affect lingers for a few rounds (only a few right now, but increasing at one round per caster level as we level up), and foes are very reluctant to enter it. This makes it very helpful in managing the battlefield, especially in blocking entryways as well as shoring up your flanks. With the stinking cloud there in this battle, any foes will have to walk a long way round to get to my backliners, which is very helpful when you have an open flank like this. I won't be casting it every time, but definitely will once my back line is in threat of being flanked.

Bragir does the same thing, and shores up the right flank:

As we can see, that particular lizardman is now helpless, and Buffy and Bragir can safely move back and use their ranged weapons again (in the game, weirdly, you can't use ranged weapons when any foe, helpless or not, is in a space adjacent to that character. This makes sense for active foes, but it's irritating that it occurs with helpless foes as well, forcing characters to move away even then).

Soon, the battle is over, although Brother Baltor took some damage.

Having blown a lot of spells just to show off what we can do, and to heal up, we'll head back down the Well to rest up:

Back out, we explore the ruins a bit more, until we find a group of kobolds:

We'll parlay and see what they have to say

They gave us some nice info, so we'll let them go. We keep hearing rumors of this pool; I wonder if they have any basis in reality? And what does it have to do with this mysterious "Boss", if anything?

Hopefully that wasn't just the kobold equivalent of a middle finger...

And... actually, other than the remaining random encounters, that's it for Kuto's Well. Let's head back to town.

Or we will once we can get past these gnolls. And there are a decent number of them this time:

But they fall with minimal issues. Time to leave the block:

And after the long walk through the Slums, we're back in town:

I wave to them sarcastically as they glare.

As it's night, it's off to the inn to pass the time until dawn (we actually didn't use any spells against the gnolls).

We sell off our excess stuff at the store, including quite the haul for Buffy's old bracers:

Our funds after this visit:

Getting close to be able to afford our first fine longbow, 5000pp = 25,000gp. I might even have enough with the gems and jewelry, but I'll wait until I'm close because if I get them appraised and they aren't quite enough, I'll be lugging around the heavier cash as a result.

Off to City Hall:

Woohoo!

Nice.

Beyond that, she now has a new commission available (since the previous disappears once we speak to Cadorna):

"Summoned"? That sounds a bit important, maybe even ominous. So we head over to the Temple of Tyr, over by the boat dock.

(They mean Ilmater. They spell his name in several different and incorrect ways in the game).

That sounds nice, but you're now several quests down on the list.

(As a side note, Dirten is an NPC mentioned in the RoA module, in a list of other gnome NPCs, all of which, hilariously, have earth-based names: Dirten, Soilish, Eartha, Dustin, and Groundla. The module for some unknown reason gives such bizarrely patterned names to NPCs of all races: for example, half-elves are all named after gemstones and half-orcs are all named after weapons - which will come up here in a bit in the game. Also, gnomes technically can't be clerics as per 1e rules, but as an NPC, Dirten is allowed to be an exception).

We say no for now. There's no reason to worry that we'll miss this quest since Dirten is content to sit here until you agree to go with him.

So, we head back out of the settled parts of the city. With Kuto's Well cleared (although we still have a few random encounters that we might bump into; six more if I counted correctly), we continue our search for this mysterious library and what we may find inside.

(Maps of Kuto's Well and the catacombs beneath):

Next time; Mendor's Library, and the horrors contained within!

 

[see]

I note that once the slums are cleared, you can safely rest anywhere there. Which means that a real penny-pincher can save a platinum piece each time by ducking through the gateway to the slums before resting, rather than going to an inn.

 

[Demetrios1453]

I note that once the slums are cleared, you can safely rest anywhere there. Which means that a real penny-pincher can save a platinum piece each time by ducking through the gateway to the slums before resting, rather than going to an inn.

True, but by that point you should have thousands of platinum, so it's no issue to just go to the inn when you are in town. It's kind of an RP thing anyway, letting the party stay somewhere nice instead out in some abandoned ruin elsewhere...

 

[Demetrios1453]

Pool of Radiance (Part 17): Mendor's Library (Part 1)

Back we go, through the Slums, until we get to Kuto's Well again. Our goal is to go through the southeast corner of that block to get to the entry of the block before it, hopefully to find this mysterious library. But a short time after we enter Kuto's Well:

It takes a short time, but we down our foes:

But Bant has taken a lot of hits. It was really weird just how many times he was hit. I checked it out later, and lizardmen in the game have a THAC0 of 16, which means, with his AC -2, they had to roll an 18 or more to hit him, and he was just hit over and over. He's not wearing cursed armor or anything, but it was really strange how much damage he took in this fight. Baroness Bella took fairly significant damage as well.

We march ahead, and only a few steps beyond this last fight:

We win the battle fairly quickly, but Bant and Baroness Bella have taken yet more damage. Bant's down to nearly 1/3 HP!

So, we'll do an about-face and head to the Well to rest and heal up. We thankfully make it there with no further encounters.

While resting, Brother Baltor receives a premonition and changes out one of his spells:

Rested up, we leave the Well and head south again. We are literally one step away from the southern exit to the zone, when:

OK, this is getting tedious. Time to deal with this quickly and brutally:

That takes out enough of them that we can conclude this battle quickly, and this time with minimal hit point loss:

We finally get through the door and enter a quite different area. It's one large walled-in area, with a large, imposing building in the center. Could this be our mythical library? (Spoiler from the post title: it is). We quickly reach the front door:

The door is magically locked, so Buffy can't pick the lock. Good thing we memorized knock! (although the party still had a good chance of bashing it open)

(Note the option to use knock which only appears when you have it memorized)

Once inside...

That seems much nicer than the other places we've been. Unfortunately, that feeling of peace will soon be gone, replaced by annoyance and frustration.

We turn left (east) after going through door, and reach the library stacks. We go left again (north) into the first room of books:

Ah, history! That's the sort of book we were told to search for. Dutifully, we turn on "Search" and start moving around the large square room full of books.

We march around.

... and around

and around... and around... and around. Welcome to your world for the next 20 minutes or so of game play time. No, seriously, it takes forever to find anything, with those same two text blocks repeated over and over each time (each of which takes a couple of seconds to scroll out every time). It's apparently a 1 in 12 chance you'll find anything useful. Finally, after awhile, we actually hit pay dirt!

Journal Entry 21:

Another interesting clue on what is happening here. The spirit in Sokal Keep also mentioned this "Tyranthraxus".

The game asks if you want to take this (and any subsequent) book you find here, for which the answer is obviously "yes", since the City Clerk specifically stated you'd be rewarded for it.

We march around and around again, interminably, until we find another book that catches our attention:

This nets us some nice maps of Phlan and the surrounding area!

And round and round we go, until:

(Yes, we've been going around that same square for like 10 minutes at this point).

Another reference to a glowing spring or pool.

And, finally sick of searching here, we head out and cross the hall to search the room to the south. (Game-wise, there are only three books to find in the History section, so no further need to keep going here).

So, philosophy this time, eh? We start our search...

Shockingly, on our very first step (note that the time changed 10 minutes, which is what a step while searching takes):

Tyranthraxus again...

Now the search begins in earnest, and we start to march around...

Indeed it is.

After a bit, we find a second book in this section:

More stuff about this mysterious "Pool of Radiance"

We continue to search this section for a bit, but find only items of minor interest:

None of these have any journal entries. There are actually 5 of them, but they're so unimportant that I bailed after finding the third. It's just not worth the endless time searching.

By this point, everyone is so annoyed from searching for hours among the books that we need to take a breather and go explore the non-book areas of the Library. When we came in, there appeared to be a passage that went straight forward - so we'll head that way and see what else this library might hold! We'll continue with that in the next post.

 

[Demetrios1453]

Pool of Radiance (Part 18): Mendor's Library (Part 2)

So, sick of searching for books, we go back down the hallway west, and then turn south at the main intersection. Going into the first door on our right:

We get the same message when entering the room directly across the hallway.

So we move further down, and go through another doorway on the right:

Doesn't sound like a fun place to go explore (and it isn't, there's green slime in the swampy area). So we head back and continue looking inside the building. We enter a larger room to the south:

And, again, go through the doorway on the right:

Hmm, it may be time to search those remains.

Three healing potions. We'll give one to each of our frontliners in case of emergency.

And that gives us enough XP for some leveling!

With some new spell slots available for Brother Baltor, we'll rest.

Topped off with HP and spells, we cross the main room and go through a doorway to the east.

OK, we'll be nice. (One thing I do like about these games is that there are times where it's better to talk than fight, which was fairly uncommon back at this point in CRPG history).

(Oddly enough, this isn't a map of this area, like they claim, but of the Cadorna Textile House one zone over. It will still come in handy in the relatively near future).

After letting the kobolds go, we leave the room and move to the southeastern corner of the main room. Oddly, we didn't notice something the whole time we've been going back and forth through it:

We click "Parlay" a few times, and get some mad ramblings in return:

Well, perhaps there's some kernel of truth buried in all that, concerning whatever drove him mad?

Um. No.

And off he goes. And good thing too, since if you let him join you, he has zero morale in battle, and then will start attacking random people once you get back to the city. Best he goes now.

We go into the door on the left.

Let's search a bit.

I mean, we've seen lots of books here. But sure, if this one is being specifically pointed out...

Oh, it's a special book!

A very special book indeed! This is the CON raising book, and it's the only permanent stat-increasing item in all the games (why they didn't scatter one more or even a few in some of the higher level games is beyond me, as they would have fit nicely there, but that was their prerogative). I'm not going to do anything with it now, as successfully using it is a bit tricky and time consuming, so we'll come back to it once we're safely back in town.

We search around a bit more:

How exciting! 0 XP!

I guess we'll take it.

Well, the central area fully explored, it's time to go to the western stacks and see what we can find there!

After a few circuits, we give up on this section (and for good reason, there's nothing to find here), and head to the fourth and final book room. Perhaps we'll find something exciting there?

Rhetoric. Doesn't sound particularly exciting, or with high potential to find something interesting. However...

Uh, this was not the excitement we were looking for! Approaching it doesn't improve its mood...

And, oops, I forgot to get mirrors from the shop (I remembered about halfway through the Slums and just decided to push forward, even though knew this was coming up). We'll just have to brute force it - there are six of us, and just one of it.

Whew, lucked out there. It would have been no fun dragging a stone statue back to one of the temples.

That much XP means likely magic!

Not bad. I originally give Buffy the cloak...

...but decide that Brother Baltor is the one who was getting hit a lot, so he could benefit from the lower AC, being in the front line. Baroness Bella keeps the giant strength potion, while Buffy gets the healing. As for the scroll...

Hmm, that's very powerful for such low levels. Could the game be trying to tell us something here?

We move around the Rhetoric section, but we don't even get a snarky message about how boring it is:

There's obviously nothing to find here, so it's time to head out and hopefully get our well-earned reward.

Surely there's nothing more to worry about as we head back to town!

Oh-oh...

(But that battle is for next time!)

 

[see]

True, but by that point you should have thousands of platinum, so it's no issue to just go to the inn when you are in town. It's kind of an RP thing anyway, letting the party stay somewhere nice instead out in some abandoned ruin elsewhere...

Mm-hmm. No wonder you kids these days can't afford a fine longbow for everyone in the party, what with your insistence on staying at inns that serve avocado toast.

 

[gban007]

In the second to last play post, it appears journal entry 21 was provided twice, and journal entry 19 missing? I liked reading the entries and it felt a bit deja vu

 

[Demetrios1453]

In the second to last play post, it appears journal entry 21 was provided twice, and journal entry 19 missing? I liked reading the entries and it felt a bit deja vu

Oops. That's been corrected.

 

[Demetrios1453]

Pool of Radiance (Part 19): Mendor's Library (Part 3) - Mendor's Library Completed!

Luckily right before meeting the spectre, Brother Baltor had a premonition of the danger to come:

Thus prepared, we return back to where we were last time:

And the real problem is that 1e spectres are immune to non-magical weapons. And even regular arrows shot from magical bows don't count.

Yeah, her attack didn't go anywhere. With only a few magical arrows left in Bragir's possession, Brin and Buffy are going to have to full on melee.

The spectre goes...

[Insert curse word of choice] Bant's been level-drained.

But despite that, we mob the spectre and it goes down pretty quickly afterwards. Luckily, by sheer coincidence no doubt, we have a nice scroll to help Bant recover from his level drain:

And at least he's back to his level, although having lost any XP beyond that.

With that, we'll march out of this place loaded down with books for the City Clerk.

We get most of the way back through Kuto's Well before:

We'll deal with these quickly, as they are nowhere near annoying as the lizardmen here:

And done. The reason why the picture is over here is that the gnolls at the end began to surrender, and the last one to do so was in this room trying to find a way to flank.

This is the seventh of the ten random encounters in Kuto's Well. Next time I come through, I plan on clearing the remaining three so I don't have to deal with this coming through each time from here on out.

Back through the Slums and to the settled area we go...

We eye them suspiciously as we pass.

We go to the City Clerk, and dump a bunch of books on her desk

A good start!

The remaining books that had associated journal entries all have similar monetary rewards.

And as for the ones without associated journal entries:

Yeah, totally not worth it for that. I'm just imagining the huge pile of treasure she's placed on her desk from all our rewards, and at this point carefully placing a single gold piece on top.

After the rewards, she has further commissions for us that we haven't seen yet, after repeating the Podol Plaza auction mission:

Ooooh, one outside the city. In a few more missions, our world will be getting much larger!

Off to the store. Remember those sheets of gold?

Again, not worth it at all.

Our funds after selling loot:

Well now, we're pretty close to the 5000pp we need to get a fine longbow, so let's head over the the silver shop, have some gems appraised, and we should have enough to buy our first bow pretty easily.

We pool funds and have one character take all the gems.

And start appraising:

Well, that's an excellent start. We always "Sell" here, since, as I mentioned a few posts ago, "Keep" will move it from your money screen to your actual inventory, so you'll quickly clog your inventory by keeping after appraising.

Other times, it was barely worth dragging around. But you have no idea until you get them appraised.

After selling a few off, let's see how close we are.

Of course we were just below instead of just above.

At last! A fine composite longbow is ours!

Here is Bragir before and after equipping it:

That drop of 1 in THAC0 is nice, but the gain of 5 damage is what really makes these bows amazing. So amazing that they dropped them for the next game entirely, and only give you access to a single one in the third. It's not until Pools of Darkness, the game that covers levels 17+, that you're able to access multiple fine longbows again (and then, some are magic!). Everyone will be getting one of these in this game, even Buffy with her 17 STR (which, spoiler, won't be 17 for too much longer).

We retreat to the inn to deal with our other magical treasure, the Manual of Bodily Health. Now comes a hard choice. I could give it to one of my elves, who only have 17 CONs right now, but they are not frontline melee, so they don't need the HP as much as others (and there are solutions to this issue coming up in Curse of the Azure Bonds). I could give it to my dwarf, so he would have a 20 CON, and cross the threshold for regeneration; but that's so slow at 20 that it's hardly worth it. So it's going to Baroness Bella, as my other single-classed frontliner.

But, the way the manual is used is very tricky, and unless you actually look it up, it won't work right and you'll be wondering when your character will get that CON boost.

First, put it in the inventory of the character you want to boost. Next, go and Ready it. Then, and this is the part that's not terribly obvious, you have to click the "Use" option, as if it were a scroll. Once you do that, it disappears from the inventory. And then...

You rest for 30 days. After the first day, a message will flash "Baroness Bella is studying." In GBC, it looks like this:

If it weren't cut off, it would tell you how many days are left to study after the "(", like GBC does with all buffs. Actually it might be counting down the rounds, which, for 30 days would be... a lot.

Finally, after our extended vacation while Phlan waits on us to rescue it:

And with that, we have a better CON! Unfortunately, the game doesn't give you retroactive HP which the 1e version of the item specifically did, so I had to go and edit the extra 4 HP manually. But at least they'll show up correctly from here on out leveling.

And with that, all rested up and spells regained, it's time to go check out that auction in Podol Plaza. Good thing they waited an extra month for us. But that will be for the next post...

 

[Sword of Spirit]

I reloaded every time a level drain happened (or a character died). I earned those XP and I was not about to let the monsters take them from me. Take my hp, take my spell slots, take my arrows! But leave my XP ALONE!