I’ve cleared the kobold cave except for the spider fight and the dwarven temple and got jack for spellbooks. Nothing but summon small animal books and minor heal to be found. I already had those. No good offensive spells and no AOE at all, unfortunately. Maybe because of that, or because of the improvements to the AI, I’m finding the beginning of the game much, much harder than I remember from any previous version runs.
I’m going to have to run to some other towns and see of them have any useful spellbooks, I guess. If not, I think I’m going to have to restart. The AI will focus fire down your melee now and without AOE there’s just too many to deal with in some fights. My troll fighter is the most effective and survivable melee I have. The golem and monk die easily.
A large component of the game has always been wandering between Gitala village and Galatako to shop scum for spell books. The magic item merchant in Odrewold rarely has books. You also want to pick up good looking wands/scrolls as you can. You won’t be reliably casting a *ball spell for awhile yet, though (to wit, my best caster at level 6 can only cast them at 72% and now I’m often facing foes for which it is minor damage at power level 1). CC spells (sleep, confuse, stun, blind, etc) are much more valuable as a rule. That and the 3x3 “field” spells. Web is better than you might think. Create Water is great in battles with lots of melee action (it will take a loto f heat off your front line), and actually it’s not bad at pinning distant ranged groups either. Those are the best books to hone in on. And if you have a choice between e.g. cold ball or holding out for some CC, you probably want to do the latter.
There are several early(ish) game opportunities to pick up some nice platemail for the golems, which should help. Mine tend to be my sturdiest characters, so maybe you are getting a bit unlucky.
I have all of those except blind. It’s the area effect spells I’m lacking currently. I spam a lot of summons spells to keep the hordes occupied and manageable so they don’t overwhelm my melee with pure numbers and that usually works well. I also have the transfer spell which is tremendous help. I love to summon a critter next to my best melee and then use transfer to swap it with a distant caster or archer. Splat! Or use it to send my golem to the back ranks of the enemy where he can run amok against the ranged and casters back there.
I did have one Create Water scroll. I used it in the fight against the Kobold King to dump him and 3 archers in the water where they sat helpless until I killed them. I sure wish I could find a wand or spell book with that. I also had one lightning scroll which I used to kill the imp in that same battle.
My golem currently has ringmail only and has an AC of 11. I’d love to get an upgrade there.
Well, the first guaranteed plate only comes after clearing the Orc Caves (it’s a quest reward). So you aren’t there yet. It’s also “only” Iron Platemail, but iirc is still +16 AC. I’m pretty sure you’re likely to roll up another heavy armor somewhere in the next few dungeons. Most of my playthroughs have memories of finding other heavy armor after the very early game beyond that quest reward (and I got 2 other plates in my current game).
Create Water is probably the single gamechangingest CC/zone of control spell. Create Ice used to be but that was due to a combination of quirks and a bug and they all got ironed out (and the reason being that with Create Ice, monsters tended to stumble onto and back off of it the way they entered. And when they didn’t, they were slamming into each other to the tune is significant amounts of damage). So good luck finding something. Shop inventories will refresh every few days. You’ll get Create Water eventually, but hopefully sooner rather than later.
Anyway if you have any spare sleep spell books do pass one along. ;)
It sounds like maybe I should be using sleep more often, eh? I wish it would work against Ba’Dong. I can’t find anything that will touch him. He resists everything, wand and spell alike. And he hits like a truck. Two shots to kill my melee, even with the armor spell in place and an AC of about 22. It’s frustrating. I may have to come back and finish that last area later. Do you know if he has any weaknesses?
I don’t recall weaknesses off hand. But I would typically have about 3 more cleared areas (. . . ish; I had done Orcs, Abandoned Farm, and pushed into several other places before coming back around to Dwarven Temple) by the time I did him. that’s probably worth 1-2 levels and the chance to roll some nice upgrades. + all the shop scumming for spell books. Point being, I would be in a much better position to handle him than you are now typically. I took him down really easily in my game thanks to what was a much better resource position relatively speaking. There are a lot of things in this game that require you to take them in stages. Sometimes it’s hidden areas in a dungeon that have much tougher monsters. Sometimes it’s that pesky boss. Ba’Dong is extra tough because all demons are a pain. I don’t recall hard CC working on them you have no doubt discovered.
As for sleep, anything that allows you to “turn off” enemy archers and mages for a few turns is a godsend. As a general rule, humanoids (from actual humans to orcs), and *men (uh, you’ll meet plenty of flavors later :D ) are generally susceptible to all of it. Although more powerful creatures can be more resistant . In terms of things being too resistant, you generally won’t have too many problems in the top part of the initial island, or even down part of the east side though. Bosses are often trickier, of course.
Oh, to add: a ring of quickness (+1 movement minimum) will run you ~3.5k gold. Keep that in mind if you want to keep money on hand while looking for one (Galatako is the most likely place to find one for a very long time, merchant wise). Your best barterer will affect that of course. I think I payed 3600 and change, but don’t have anyone with good barter (probably no better than 35-40).
Helherron has a rule that the character with least experience within the party gains exp a bit faster than others. That does ensure no one ever gets left too far behind. But agreed that balancing needs to be done (in this and many other areas) and for that I need help from you players.
So I don’t trust my memory on this any more. If I cast e.g. confuse monster at a higher power level than 1 it lasts longer (as expected). Is it also harder to resist?
It would be breat if the in-game spell text changed to reflect the power level you were casting at.
I am about to take 2.102 for a spin. I am giddy about the buy/sell changes.
Enjoy while it lasts. There are hundreds of monster and I have not set up the Swimming skill properly for all of them (yet). Also the current Create Water is permanent unlike the walls created by Create [Great] Wall spell. I think there will be a duration for the water, but it will be at least 5-6 turns at 1 x mana usage and can be doubled, tripled, etc.
Only duration is affected. Chance to resist is based on your Mind Penetration skill and target’s Resist Magic. There’s a reddit post about the math here.
Surrounding Ba’Dong with summoned animals seems to work pretty well for me, if you can handle the lesser undeads. This is one of the fights where you really to rely on wands & scrolls.
Isn’t there an official site for the game @akuukka? I seem to remember one, but it’s not showing up in my Google search. Where do I get the newest version?
Thank you, just checked out the reddit page too. Noticed you had a request for someone to help with graphics. Wasn’t someone at OO doing some (that was years ago though)? Did that fall through? I seem to remember liking the initial stuff he did.
Anyway, will start up a game tonight or tomorrow. Never did finish my fist play through, think I got stuck on a hard fight or something.
Edit: just saw that OO graphics update was 11 years ago…
SkeleTony will hopefully contribute again. Crossing my fingers!
Didn’t make it to 2.102, but I just increased the number of items available at Abal’s magic shop in Odrewold and also increased the probability of having spellbooks for sale a little bit.
Someone recovered it and Josh gave us permission to offer it up for download. We never did get around to actually hosting it but I guess we’ll do that now that interest in the game is reviving.
As for it being up to date, not entirely. But the differences are mostly minor. E.g. the stat maximums when rolling characters are a little higher on average (with a rare chance for crazy outlier scores apparently), and this in turn means the max skills are a bit higher as well. It doesn’t contain a listing of any of the artifacts in the game because they didn’t exist when the guide was was created (or only a couple did, I can’t recall).
The map/secret door info is all good, though. And the listing of statuses is very helpful.
Doing well on my current run. My party is up to average level 5. I’ve cleared The goblin cave, kobold cave, dwarven temple, and abandoned farm now. This is about as far as I’d gotten in the game previously before crashes would always end my runs so I’m not quite sure what to do next. I have a quest to deal with some orcs so maybe that.
I’ve got full plate for my golem now by making a boat trip and buying it at the southeast island. I also found create water there. Life is good.
What’s the deal with recharging wands? I took a few to the magic guy in the starter town and he wanted to charge me 7000 gold to recharge an average wand that was missing about 4 charges. And that’s with my merchant with 170 merchant skill talking to him. That’s a lot more than I can buy a new one for so, uh, no thank you. I guess I’ll never be recharging any wands. I’ll just toss them and buy new ones instead. I’m not sure why recharge is even in the game if it’s that expensive and won’t be used.
