I’ve been hearing about this “Helherron” game for a while now. Recently after reading about it once again in another game’s thread I’ve decided to track it down and give it a try.
It turned out to be very intriquing game. For those who haven’t heard about it - it’s very old style RPG (although it was made in 2004).
It is party based RPG, you control 8 party members. (Plus I think you can hire mercs, in addition to summoning monsters in battles) It has very deep and elaborate character development, a lot of skills, spells, et cetera.
Gameplay-wise it is somewhere between rogue-likes and old Ultimas. The combat mechanics are great, and the game is very harcore and challenging. Imagine rogule-like with mutiple dungeons, quests, deep tactical combat, and where you control not just yourself but 8 party members, with a lot of races and classes.
All and all - I’ve only played with this game for few hours, but so far I love it.
However there is a big problem - the game’s author is not around anymore. (as far as I was able to determine he went to Japan some time ago, where he is training to become a budhist monk).
And the game really needs a guide, or FAQ or more detailed manual. It does have some built-in help but it only covers very basic stuff. Unfortunately after more then an hour of searching the net I could not find anything like guide, or game forum, or any other help source for this game. :( (Despite the fact that many people seem to love this game dearly) All links I was able to discover point to the same “excellent Helherron site” and “great John’s Hleherron Guide”, that are not online anymore. :(
So I wonder if there anybody here who has played this game and perhaps has some guide/faq/extended manual in his possesion that he would be willing to share? Or at least maybe there is someone here capable of answering some in-game questions? (mostly about game mehanics and various skills and stats at this point)
I plugged Josh’s site into the Wayback Machine and it doesn’t seem to be able to process it. Maybe it didn’t capture the whole thing, or someone who knows HTML can decipher it.
I’m pretty sure the final windows version of Helherron has a massive bug that can make it a real chore to play. Large encounters will basically crash the game if I remember correctly. The linux version doesn’t have the bug. I think I printed out Josh’s guide a long time ago. I’ll look around later and see if I can find it.
update - I found most of the guide and scanned and ran it through ocr. My original print out was chopped off on the far right side of the page so I tried to fix it up as best I could. If you want it David send me a pm with an email link and I’ll send it to you.
Wow donpachi! Thank you so much man. This guide has been absolutely impossible to find - I’ve spend several hours trying to locate it, or any other source of info on this game - with no results. I’ll send you my email in PM.
And yes, everything I’ve heard confirm what you said - Windows 2.04 version has several bad bugs, including “horde crash” bug, while Linux version is almost(or completely) bug-free.
I’ve just finished downloading Virtualbox and Ubuntu. Going to install it on my PC and then try to make Helherron work under it. Which may be difficult since several people indicated that they were some issues with doing it and I have zero Linux experience, being strictly Windows person. Still I am going to give it a try, since from my limited gameplay experience with it the game seems to be very interesting and challenging and has great combat and char development/magic system.
SkeleTony told me on another forum that there was a guide at some point explaining how to set up Helherron 2.04Linux on Windows computer, but it went dark some time ago together with all other sources of info for Helherron. You don’t happened to have that guide as well by some miracle, do you? Or have any experience with this LinuxHelherron/Ubuntu/Virtual box installation?
I haven’t touched the game since 2005ish, but the Octopus Overlords forum had a few decent threads on the game. There might still be people who know enough about the game to answer some questions.
I remember this game - great but very frustrating. The power curve never seems to be on a favourable angle for the player - every time you gain a little bit of capability it seems you’re up against monsters that are much stronger than you. Still, I got a lot of good gaming out of it. And if you like it, there’s a game by Tom Proudfoot - Natuk, Nahlakh? - which has quite a lot in common with it.
Update: Trying to get Helherron 2.04 bug-less Linux version to run on my computer.
After spending some time messing with configuration I was able to successfully install Virtualbox, Ubuntu and Helherron on my computer. After installing additionally installing stdlibc++5 package (found this tip on another forum) I am now able to run Helherron 2.04Linux on my machine.
However I have a problem with it - Helherron in my setup plays with no sound. (I have sound in other applications in my Ubuntu setup)
I have Ubuntu 10.10 in VirtualBox 4.0.4 on Win7HomePremium.
I am so close to having it successfully run on my machine it’s tantalizing. >:(
Any tips, advice or suggestions about what I could try to get Helherron 2.04 for Linux working on my machine? (in my current virtualbox/ubuntu setup or if it will not work with some other Linux-based setup if I have to). As I’ve mentioned earlier unfortunately I don’t know anything about Linux systems being Windows guy. Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Yes, I’ve heard of them being mentioned as a prime source of inspiration for Helherron. I’ve downloaded both these games yesterday. I will certianly take a look at them in the future, thank you.
Update: Trying to get Helherron 2.04 bug-less Linux version to run on my computer.
After spending some time messing with configuration I was able to successfully install Virtualbox, Ubuntu and Helherron on my computer. After additionally installing stdlibc++5 package (found this tip on another forum) I am now able to run Helherron 2.04Linux on my machine.
However I have a problem with it - Helherron in my setup plays with no sound. (I have sound in other applications in my Ubuntu setup)
I have Ubuntu 10.10 in VirtualBox 4.0.4 on Win7HomePremium.
I am so close to having it successfully run on my machine it’s tantalizing. >:(
Any tips, advice or suggestions about what I could try to get Helherron 2.04 for Linux working on my machine? (in my current virtualbox/ubuntu setup or if it will not work with some other Linux-based setup if I have to). As I’ve mentioned earlier unfortunately I don’t know anything about Linux systems being Windows guy. Any help would be greatly appreciated!
From what I’ve found while digging for Helherron’s info over the last few days, Tom’s Nahlakh game was a major inspiration source for Helherron. However it was made by different person.
Ok. I actually have some older posts on OO that were the initial bases for Josh’s guide (he got much more indepth with stats and such, and I didn’t do any walkthrough bits). I’m pretty sure I introduced the game to OO (and it filtered out to a smattering of other locations after).
Here’s some general commentary:
There are lots of little inbalances in the game that came about due to the creator wanting to make certain classes more viable. Like at one point archers could shoot one arrow per move point, which was stupid. I only significantly played v2.01 (give or take) I think it was, and I’m not clear how much things shuffled after that. Just keep this in mind.
Party creation, you want the following:
An Ogre something (barb or fighter) in the front left. Ogres see the best in the dark, and the lighting changes (post 2.0 I think) mean that when the deployment phase begins the front left (#1 slot) character will be selected. This is just to save you annoyances. I don’t like the lighting system, but it is what it is.
At least one other big mean heavy, ogre or golem. Ogres and Golems get much higher carrying capacity than other characters. This is not just a strength thing; there was a hard coded capacity boost wired in for these characters. This will save you lots of trouble. The main difference between Barbarian and Fighter is that the former gets better skill multipliers for 2h weapons while the latter gets them for 1 handers (+5/+4 versus +4/+5). You won’t level that much - 12 to 15 times plus myabe a couple more - so the multipliers matter.
I love having 2 mages and 2 priests. If you only want 3 casters, get 2 priests. I never played a Summoner (introdouced post 2.0), I remember the feelings on them were mixed. Fairies have the best max int/wis really. And they fly. The flying will be useful in certain places.
Lizard Man is the preferred choice for a HtH geared monk; Elf for a caster geared monk. The HtH geared monk will be better in the long run, IIRC (that was absolutely true at one point around 2.0; I don’t know now. Actually caster monks were decidedly lacking at one point - you just won’t get a high enough caster skill to summon 20 demons or anything). It will take awhile but your monk can turn into a vicious killing machine. They ignore Zones of Control. Also, monk was the popular choice for the special new game + mode (1 character, but you get significantly higher base stats, by the dozens).
A ranged character is or was viable, but in part due to the afformentioned inbalanced. Pre 2.0 ranged was useless. Bows are better than crossbows because you can’t see for shit anyway and crossbows have to be manually loaded after each shot. Or that was true at one point. A merchant can make a good ranged character. The merchant skill can come in useful; you’ll be doing lots of store scumming (it’s a fact of life; see below).
move items are very valuable. they can really make a monk, archer, or one of your true heavies very useful. Golems only get move 2 and I think ogres are at move3 (everyone else starts at 4). Don’t misunderstand the Golem; they’re sturdy and they hit hard and the lack of move won’t hurt as much as you think. But find him a nice + move ring.
General play:
I did not like the lighting system introduced some time in 2.0+. Characters can’t see very far so much of the battle field remains shrouded in darkness. It’s a toss of the dice as to whether you’ll start with what amounts to a “flare” spell, and it’s usefullness is somewhat limited. But the Ogre has great darkvision. So you can still get a feel for the battle while in the deployment phase. If you are really sneaky, you can make note of pesky caster/ranged attacker locations and target blind.
Field spells are useful. Field of Ice isn’t as crazy as it used to be (there was a pathing problem and also a mechanics problem that basically made it ridiculusly OP) but it can be useful. Web to tie a caster/archer down just for a turn or two can be super useful. Water is the best - every turn enemies inside must make swim checks or flounder and lose a turn. The create 3x3 water spell is something you want early for your clerics.
Damage spells are not quite as useful as disablers. It used to be they got great late game due to scaling, but then some time post 1.5 or 1.8 the creator changed the way enchanting worked. No longer can you stack +15 eternium INT gear (giving +21 int effectively, or +63% cast chance). I never got far enough into these versions of Helherron to know how Mage DPS scaled. Before this point, they got it from using crazy powerful spells and adding as much tot he cast power as they could. It’ll be much harder to do now and I was unsure aws to how much the casting costs had changed (pre 1.5, it was impossible to cast certain spells reliably unlesS you stacked all that enternium int gear. At level 15, at power level 1).
But mages can do lots more. They get wonderful buffs and disablers - a little more variety than the clerics get. An d they get their fair share of summons. Mages don’t have to ve classic dps, but they can still provide damage. Summoning can be useful because it can distract enemy casters/ranged. The creature may not last long. Enemy casters will drive you nuts doing this.
Int is important since it gives out more skill "increases"on level up, but it’s not super important on non casters. The system is slightly weird; you get X skill increases. Each invested in a skill gies + Y skill points (based on the multiplier), but you can’t spend more than 3 increases per skill per level up. That means your castyers should get +15 spell skill every level up and if you aren’t doing this you are playing the game wrong (possibly living your life wrong as well). Weapon skill doesn’t necessarily need to zoom into the 300s, but you generally want to focus. Have at least one character use 1h swords. There are things that can add penalties to spell casting, IIRC.
I think I said it already; 1 int or wis is worth 3% casting chance. I think the casting skills add 1% per point on top of that but it has been a long time. Generally at first you don’t want to mess with increasing power levels (haha! you won’t even be able to except in rare cases anyway). But power levels can do a lot: boost damage/healing. Add duration. Summon more creatures. I believe 25 is the max starting caster stat (for int/wis). You want this (you can settle for 24 if Faries don’t quite get the wis bonus elves do; IMO they are still worth it). And you want to re-roll skills until you get max casting skill (generally 105-109 I think?).
Positioning matters. Enemyes (And players!) can get knocked back. It can hurt something standing behind the thing being knocked back. Fairy casters that get body slammed by flying Golems are not going to enjoy it. It’s part of the game (those golems, starting mid game, are going to be tossing lots of creatures around like rag dolls!).
The first major combat encounter in the goblin caves is going to test your mettle. But once you beat it you will have gained valuable knowledge. That, as the bard said, is a certain percentage of the battle, based on various factors.
Searching for secret doors is a way of life. But there aren’t many early.
Scrolls and potions and such are there for the using. DO NOT BE BASHFUL IN THIS.
Store inventory refreshes every few days. Eventually, it becomes necessary to travel between a couple of towns to refresh the stock at the caster store. The spell books you find in game are randomized to a degree (basically there’s tiers of spells and I think you’re just rolling on a specific tier list). There are lots of spells you want. That’s why you’ll end up doing this. It may feel like dirty power gaming but this is a power gamers game. It’s hard as hell and you’re going to be facing lots of long odds.
The capital city does have lots of other interesting stores though. Enchanting is still viable but it’s more more restrained and expensive. Always check shop inventories. You never know when a nice + move item is going to appear, or something else that you can make use of.
This going to be incorrect, but I think:
iron < mithril < diamond < eternium, with missing materials. There are materials that can add penalties (bht they might make an item more expensive/sell for more). Diamond is definately a booster, but some other rare material types are mixed bags for pure “do more damage/hit more/etc” purposes. I am pretty sure I am missing something - Dwaven and elven maybe. I think elven does what you think (a little more protection but lighter). Is there adamantium? I forget.
Eternium us really +6. Everything else is +1 to +5 (or negative!). Max enchantment is +15. But the “material” bonus stacks on top (man, it really was something else when you could enchant all that +15 enternium stuff. It wasn’t precisely easy; you’d empty a dungeun and find you could afford another piece of +15 eternium int or wis gear, boosting a caster and relishing the moderately increased spell casting ability).
There are tactics (uhhhh, shift-t?). I can’t quite recall the specifics, but you can trade offensive ability for defensive protection. There is actually dodging and damage mitigation. Those lumbering fighter types (golems and ot a lesser extent ogres) will never be good dodgers, but never mind that.
I can barely remember the key commands. Ask specific questions and we can stumble through. Trading between party members is tedious.
More later. Note, any reference to “2.x” should be “2.0x”, I am too lazy and busy to clean them all right now.
There should be. Yes, the game was inspired by Nahlakh. But mechanically they are very similar:
Casting system where spells have a casting cost that is “overcome” by high casting skill. Fireball might be rated -180, which means you need 280 skill to cast at 100% reliability (more if you want to up the power!). There were variances but this basic mechanic was there.
Lots of tactical considerations in combat. Using the various “field” spells. Summons. Disables/supressions. Combats are usually your 8 (don’t take less! no benefit whatsoever!) versus many, many more monsters. This stuff is wicked important. And of course the 8 character party is unusual. Nahlakh was itself inspired by Wizard’s Crown. But was more involved tactically. It’s one of Proudfoot’s trademarks. I don’t think anyone has done it quite like he has. Helherron is the only one that’s tried (and done a good job, frankly).
For lack of a a better word, the enchantment system. Weapons have prefixes, suffixes, and materials. This dates back to WC but Proudfoot’s sytem was much more elaborate. Nalhalk predates Diablo I am pretty sure. But this sort of thing was rare once upon a time. And Nahlakh came to be beause Proudfoot loved Wizard’s Crown but found the final dungeon (The supposed demon world) to be a huge letdown (he wanted an actual demon world; and Nahlakh delivers that).
Fatigue based spell casting. The fatigue system (it’s called stamina in Helherron maybe) in general was different. all actions cost fatigue. Spell casting costs even more. Things like wearing armor can impact the costs, IIRC.
Hey, sounds like a game that could really use a nice guide to play it with! None of what you mentioned was an instant no-sale for me, but what’s the payoff? Does the tactical combat fill you with joy?
Well, getting Nahlakh to run might prove complicated. I hate futzing with DosBox but what I tried never managed to get it working on Vista (never tried on win 7).
That said. . .
Nahlakh still has differences. And. . . well it’s an old game and some of the design is ugly. Skills just have word descriptions, not numbers. There’s 3 pages ranking the descriptions from worst to best but you never know for sure what they are (unless you played with a hex editor and figured it all out. In which case you are (1) someone with way to much time on your hands or (2) me. But I lost those notes years ago :( ). That can be off putting. Oh! Skills go up through use. You don’t level, but you spend money to train up your actual ability scores.
Also, character creation. . . yeah you just pick icons (I mean, you pick a name sure). The icon is a class, but you don’t know what they are ahead of time without someone telling you. It’s not really very smooth.
It’s a deep game, though. Proudfoot has a devious mind. Which is why there are things like the fight with the Dragon God (noteable characteristics: crazy AoE attacks, perma invisible).
Natuk is an evolution and has some interesting mechanics and story bits in its own right. You don’t level here either; you gain xp and spend it on skills/abilities to raise them. Class dictates costs and it’s a huge impact (a mage will have the spell casting skill cost of 1 xp for 1 point for each point you buy from 50 to 99, say. A fighter would see the cost at that point be 6 xp for 1 point). Also, Natuk might be a 6 character party, but I’m thinking it’s still 8.
Natuk shares Nahlakh’s magic system. The big difference from Helherron is no power levels and the spell syllables. See, each spell consists of 3 britannic* syllables. Each syllable means something. Finding a spell book is really just a reveal of what 1-3 syllables mena (depending on what you already know).
So pretend fireball is tok bel fir - create ball of fire. But you also have the ice dart - spell - tok jet cel - create dark of ice. You can substitute cel for fir in the above and get an ice ball! Or a fire dart! It’s a neat system, really. There will be many times when you’ll want the destructive power of fireball but wouldn’t you know it, fire demons aren’t hurt by fire so wouldn’t an ice ball be nice instead? And it’s an elaborate system - moreso in Natuk where there are more spells. You can wither arms (and heads!) and stuff like that. It’s neat. The magic system and the enchanting system got more elaborate in Natuk.
Natuk and Nahlakh both took a page from Wizard’s Crown. Let’s say you clear 5 dungeons/areas and are stuck in the 6th. You can go into a particular folder and delete the map file for one of those dungeons/areas, and then re-clear it. Proudfoot deliberately did this.
Lastly, Natuk has crazy difficulty. Up to 500% (but it increments; it isn’t that finely grained). That means 5x the hp, and 5x most physical stats. But not mental stats - so monsters are still susceptible to charm/sleep/etc. Makes for an interesting game - you can beat it at 500% without doing map resets but it’s also fun to do it with map resets and see how absurd your party can become.
Oh, one nice thing - when all monsters are disabled combat ends. Can’t tell you how awesome that is. There are lots of big combats.
Honestley, all the games have merit. Natuk is the most polished of the 3, and also features an interesting end game. It’s not story heavy (that’s not Proudfoot’s style), but you play a band of orcs wrongfully imprisoned by the emporer in a might-makes-right orcish empire, and thee are times where playing that way is a benefit (making for a reversal of the normal trope and also avoiding just making you “evil”. Bear in nind there isn’t a ton of that in the game, just a few cases here and there).
To a genre lover I’d recommend all of them. Nahlakh will be the most taxing to play, though. Progress will be slow and there isn’t a ton of guidance in game. Proudfoot could do crazy encounters, though.
I should say this, in terms of polish, Natul > Helherron/Nahlakh. Both of the latter two have ups and downs when it comes to UI and such.
Awww. . . my old strategy postings weren’t at OO, they were at GG. They might be gone FOREVER.
Bards can be powerful. The music produces random effects but a little skill goes a long way. I didn’t like the changes actually. Bards could produce things like mass confusion more reliably than mages at a much earlier level.
You get exp based on acting and iirc more for killing. That means you always want to be casting a spell or attacking if possible. It’s something about Helherron I don’t like actually.
And what genre is it? A party-based roguelike with tactical combat sounds perfect. On the other hand, I never played the Ultima games when I was younger, so if there’s too much of that I don’t think it will have the same charming effect on me.
For example, I played Wasteland for the first time a couple years ago. It was an amusing historical reference, but it didn’t excite me at all. If I had played it nonstop when I was a kid I’m sure I would’ve loved it.
I’ll try all these games out, but I’d like some context first. Is the combat rewarding enough to put up with the old school RPG conventions?
