I was inspired to dig through my old games and pull out Darklands. I patched it up, and it runs flawlessly through DosBox.
Now, it’s been so long since I’ve played it, I have no idea how to go about starting out. No one wants to give me any jobs… and all the rumors of jobs are so far away I inevitably die trying to walk there.
Should I just stick around the first city and beat up bandits in the streets at night? What else should I be doing in the beginning?
Yeah. This is a problem. You do basically just want to start walking the streets and running into bandits. I think this eventually raises your fame enough in the city to get a mission from one of the bankers or something.
It’s been about 3-4 years since my last playthrough though :)
Holy crap! I loved this game.
Now I wish I could remember specifics. But if I remember correctly, YES…beat on bandits. Get money and better gear. And balance your party. Geez…standard advice for pretty much every computer RPG invented. Bandits = Rats.
Ack…I’ll have to break out my old hint manual, with all the charts of saints and potions…goes rummaging through attic
It’s been a long time, but IIRC bandits are an easy first step. It will give you some money and equipment , and in the beginning your characters stats grow fast.
Man what a great game it was. Damned shame that its sequel never came.
Maybe hardcore (semi-)realism is just around the bend on the fad train!
I can’t offer any help but to say, “heck yeah!” I loved this game and was never any good at it.
Maybe someday Bethesda will make a Darklands-themed reskin of Oblivion…
At least do it right.
Perish the thought.
The hours and hours I spent smacking bandits and kobolds and witches around in this game. Yet, as in so many others, I never managed to complete the game.
How is is holding up both play-wise and gui-wise, flyinj? I’m half afraid to ruin my rose-tinted memories by actually looking at it myself.
I still dig out my Darklands manual for some bed time reading from time to time. I only wish there was a fan made remake that would give the over land travel and combat graphics a face lift as they’re very dated. The static artwork is still awesome though.
Darklands was difficult for me. I’m not sure how anyone beat the end game dungeons without cheating. Characters age in the game rather quickly, and age does affect stats. Once your characters have everything squared away to enter the Fortress Monastery, that’s going to be a problem. I have beaten the game, but only by periodically editing character ages back down to 30 years.
I installed it on my EEE pc recently. Dear God that opening cinematic was bad.
The game actually holds up amazingly well. I think that is partly due to the fact that there has never been a game like it that has come out since. It’s Pirates!, but an RPG.
I can’t stop playing this damn thing. I have so many questions:
Is there a way to increase your reputation in a new town, other than waiting until night and banging on lowbie thugs in the streets? It seems like that’s the only thing that will trigger merchants asking you for help… or getting missions from the leagues and the government of the town. This really sucks when you’re fairly bad-ass and rip through the guys in one to two hits each.
How do you use a horse? Is just the fact of having it in your inventory enough? It doesn’t seem to do anything…
Is there any way to increase virtue and religion other than paying out the nose to study them in the inn? What determines whether a saint can be used or not by a player, the virtue or religion stat?
You can wait for several bells in the park…that way you can hurry up to the next bandit encounter. You’ll want to carefully (I think it’s illegal to be in the streets at night) wander around the city (aka the menus) to find the bandits.
I think you can also go to the small hamlets outside the cities and look for work. The game starts a bit slowly admittedly.
I think that if everybody in your party has a horse then you travel faster on the overland map…can’t quite remember. Check the faq…might have something.
You may be able to find work as a scribe which might raise religion…can’t remember.
Given that Darklands is my favorite game of all time I wish I remembered these answers better :P
I have no problem getting bandit encounters to work. The issue I’m having is that my guys are all awesome, and I don’t want to have to grind 15 bandit encounters just to get my reputation high enough for people in the town to want to give me jobs. I was hoping there was another way to get reputation once your party is too good for killing off lowbie bandits.
Man, it’s been a while since I touched this one, but here it goes:
If everyone in your party has horses it also increases the chances of you escaping in a number of encounters. There’s also a fairly rare encounter where you can joust a knight if you have a horse and pole arm.
I’m pretty sure religion only dictates how many saints you start with. If I’m remembering right once the game starts you can use as many saints as you can afford to buy. Although now that I think of it I think there are a few that you have to be female to use.
I’m pretty sure you can raise religion and a few other skills at the university. I seem to remember talking to someone at the university, and then being able to train up certain skills from the inn.
My usual strategy was to kill bandits and do easy missions for a while to build up some money and then to try and kill a raubritter at first chance. The first one can be tough, but that will guarantee you some decent weapons and armor for you main fighters, and once you can beat one you can make a good amount of money traveling around killing others. With any luck too you can also get a mission to kill a raubritter and that usually adds a florin to your haul along with the gear you get from the knight.
Frankly, killing city thugs is the way to do it. What I would suggest is if killing thugs to raise your local rep is getting tiresome, just do the quests that don’t require an audience with a merchant or lord. Go find some evil lords, raid some witches covenants, do some mines, etc.
How do you use a horse? Is just the fact of having it in your inventory enough? It doesn’t seem to do anything…
I’ve never noticed a difference when traveling with a horse. The main benefit is sometimes you will get extra options during interactions. For instance, sometimes you can flee bandit encounters on horseback, and obviously you can’t joust without a horse.
Is there any way to increase virtue and religion other than paying out the nose to study them in the inn? What determines whether a saint can be used or not by a player, the virtue or religion stat?
Killing evil lords, taking down witches covenants, and stuff like that will raise your virtue. It takes a lot of dead lords and witches to raise your virtue even a couple of measly points, though. I’ve never even gotten close to using those 90+ virtue saints.
Religion I think determines how much divine favor you recover when praying. I’ve never found a quick and easy way to increase it, since I would just pray a couple extra days and not worry about it.
Edit: How did I not see Sepiche’s post? Anyway, I’d echo his advice on Raubritters, and add that if you solicit quests at different cities near the Raubritters keep, sometimes you can get paid twice to kill the same guy.
Ah, so the random events of finding bandits on the road, killing witches, etc near a town will increase rep in the town itself? Good to know.
Is it a good tactic to press “F7” on the worldmap to do an “ambush” right outside a town to get rep in that town by completing the random encounters that result?
I can’t remember ever actually ambushing something when I tried it, but in general yeah, just visiting villages, castles, or certain encounter results can help raise your reputation nearby. As your global reputation rises I think it also helps your local reputation in towns you haven’t visited.
Usually I was so fixated on beating a raubritter to get that early boost of items and money I generally just traveled around until I got a mission to kill one.
I should probably note that I was probably about 14 the last time I played much Darklands though so this advice might not even be very good advice. ;)
Also I think if you have horses in some encounters you have additional options. Like try to escape some ambushes by breaking through/riding bastards down, or something like that.
Man, this thread is tempting me to fire up darklands again. :) Especially considering that I’ve never completely finished the game. ( I think I fulfilled 2 out of 3 main game quests)