Thursday, October 13, 2016

Pools of Darkness: The Final Battle

The problem with the final battles in one animated GIF.
    
The famous final series of battles in Pools of Darkness begins when Gothmenes returns from his expedition to Limbo, a tied and subdued Elminster in tow. The party has had about an hour to run around Gothmenes' palace, scavenging what weapons they can and getting hold of the Crystal of Bane, which I guess is the source of his power. Once Gothmenes starts the clock, there's no escaping the palace--even if you could get very far before the countdown ends, you end up fighting endless battles against Minions of Bane as you get to the palace exit (or so I'm told--I didn't try).
    
The extra "g" really bothers me.
   
One or two steps before Gothmenes returns, the game gives you some kind of warning--I forgot exactly what it says--that basically alerts you that it's time to cast your buffing spells. Because the moment he gets back, you go directly to combat.
    
That just seems so undignified for Elminster.
   
Buffing at this level takes a while, and a few spells must be cast in a precise order. For instance, if you cast "Globe of Invulnerability" on your spellcasters too soon, they won't get the effects of "Haste" and other beneficial spells. Some of the low-level buffing spells make only extremely minor adjustments at this level, but for the final battle, you need every advantage you can get. So you scatter a few "Protection from Evil, 10' Radius" around the party to improve AC by 2. The mages all cast "Mirror Image" and the ranger can toss a couple of "Barkskins" on the highest AC characters. A cleric casts "Bless" and "Prayer." Everyone gets "Enlarge," "Resist Fire," and "Resist Cold." One "Haste." Mages give themselves "Fire Shield" and "Iron Skin" and cast a few "Fire Touches" on the melee characters (the spell makes melee fighters do extra fire damage) [Ed. I guess it also works on ranged weapons]. Then you try to cover as many characters as possible with "Mind Blank" to protect against psychic attacks.
    
This wasn't a hard choice. I don't even really like Elminster.
     
Once the mages have all the early level spells active, they can cast "Globe of Invulnerability." I used to finish off with a "Mass Invisibility" (you have to cast this last, or the very act of casting dispels it, I think), but I haven't had a lot of luck with invisibility working in this game.

If you're not an idiot like me, buffing also includes the use of potions (Potion of Speed and Potion of Giant Strength, maybe, though "Enlarge" and "Haste" duplicate their effects and don't really stack) and scrolls. In particular, you want to give someone the Scroll of Protection from Dragon's Breath, which also protects against the breath of Minions of Bane and maybe some other creatures. Because I didn't bring any of this stuff through the pool, I didn't have any of these items. As we'll talk about later, I'm not sure it wouldn't be cheating even if I did have them.
     
That's fine. "Resist Fire" is a thing. Just don't tell me I'll run out into a lightning storm to escape your wrath.
    
When Gothmenes gets back, there's a series of cut scenes. He notes that you have the Crystal and then shows the party Elminster, bound in Gothmenes' whip. He offers to trade the wizard for his Crystal. I don't think what you do here matters, because if you say yes, Elminster just shouts "no," frees himself, and instigates the final battle. If you say no, Elminster gets tortured a little and the final battles begin anyway.
   
Is it a flail or a whip? Get it together, Pools of Darkness.
    
Gothmenes summons allies from a Pool of Darkness. The party gets one choice: whether to try to use the Crystal to "countermand the summons." If you do, whoever has the crystal suffers a near-total loss of hit points, but I guess you face fewer monsters in the final combats. I unfortunately didn't see what happened when I didn't use the crystal.
    
That's not nice. I haven't even met them.
   
I love how "Bane minions" is an afterthought here, like they're not about to be the biggest pains in the neck in RPG history.
   
It is a word; that's just not what it means.
   
Elminster escapes his bonds and keeps Gothmenes occupied while his beholder ally, Xoham, spurs the summoned minions to attack. It all begins. You have to fight a sequence of three battles with no opportunity to save or rest in between. You cannot lose a single character within the first two battles and have much hope of defeating the third one, so no one can die, get stoned, or get disintegrated. There's no recovering if that happens.
     
Guys, note that he did not say, "Breathe lightning at them."
    
The first battle consists of a large group of Blue Minions of Bane, dracoliches, Pets of Kalistes, and Bits o Moander. The first time I played, I swear they weren't too hard. Blue Minions and dracoliches both breathe lightning, against which you have no defense (save the ring, which I didn't bring through, or scroll, which I didn't bring through), so you have to kill them quickly. Blue Minions fall easily to "Delayed Blast Fireball" but dracoliches don't. My mages went early in the round and destroyed most of the Blue Minions and Pets of Kalistes with fireballs. My hastened fighters pounded away at the dracoliches. I didn't kill them all in one round, but I reduced them enough that by the second round, the few stray lightning breaths that got through didn't really matter.
     
Preparing to take out the first batch of enemies.
    
Suspecting I was about to go into a second battle, I didn't end the combat when the enemies were dead, but kept playing long enough to restore everyone to full health. Easy peasy. 

Second battle: About 8 beholders. No magic helps here. I rushed to engage them in melee combat. This happened my first time through:
    
      
In subsequent tries, the beholder battle was trivially simple, because I used the exploit by which my characters would run up to the beholders and then run a step away, causing them to attack their backsides and ensuring they therefore wouldn't use their special eyestalk attacks that round (the same strategy that keeps dragons from breathing). I'm sorry if anyone thinks this is cheating, but once you know it works, you can't not do it, particularly in a battle this hard. It would take more willpower than I possess to stand there and watch characters get stoned and disintegrated because they failed random rolls than to use a quick and simple exploit.

But the first time, I was doing it honestly and paid for it with 3 character deaths. I killed the game to restart, which turned out to be a bad idea, because I could have used my doomed party to explore an option coming up.

Reloading, I started the first battle again, and you know what? It was harder than the first time. I had to review the videos to see what was different, but it appears that my first attempt had lots of Blue Minions (which are vulnerable to "Delayed Blast Fireball") but only a few dracoliches. The second and subsequent attempts reversed that ratio, so that I was able to clear fewer enemies with spells and had to resort to individual battles with the dracoliches. (I think there were a couple extra total enemies, too.) Trying the same strategy that had won the combat the first time, my party was wiped out within 2 rounds from the lightning breaths.

So I had to switch up my tactics. North of where the battle starts is a hallway with a 2-square entrance. I figured if I could get all my characters up there, I could lead the enemies to me in smaller groups and try strategies like delaying my spellcasters' actions until the end of the round, popping up to the entrance, firing off fireballs and lightning bolts, and then retreating around the corner at the beginning of the next round.
    
My party hunkers in the hallway while the enemies come around the corner one-by-one (the Black Minion of Bane is mine).
    
The first time I tried the tactic, one of my mages got the first initiative. I had her run up through the opening and into the hallway, then cast "Monster Summoning." A couple of Black Minions of Bane appeared around my lead character. I hoped they'd serve as fodder for the enemies' attacks while my other characters all got to safety. It almost worked. 5 of my 6 characters got up around the corner, but last, my paladin, suffered a poor initiative roll, apparently. Since all my other characters were in hiding, he suffered the brunt of every breath attack and soon died.

I reloaded. This time, I got luckier with the initiative rolls and everyone was able to get around the corner. After that, it was trivially simple, if long, to wait for each creature to wander into the hallway and kill him individually.
     
Keep fighting that single enemy, Elminster.
    
The second battle began. As I mentioned, I used the exploit and managed to kill the beholders with very minor injuries. I healed up, refreshed "Haste" and a few other spells, and moved on.
     
I was even able to get the beholders to damage themselves on my "Fire Shield."
   
Another series of cut screens. Gothmenes manages to throw Elminster into the dark pool. He surveys the damage I've already done and looks doubtful. "Perhaps you have earned the use of my gem," he says. "With it, you can rule the Realms!" He offers to teach me the "word to command it."
    
I just know this is going to be a bad choice, but I frankly would like to rule the Realms.
    
I silently curse. Of course I have to explore this option, even though I suspect it will end in ruin and I'll have to fight the first two battles all over again. I say "Yes." Gothmenes gives me a code word, and fortunately I screen-shot it, because it's only up for a second. I type it in when prompted.

Elminster lurches out of the pool, twisted and dying, screaming "no!" Gothmenes says, "Fools! You have opened the crystal! Welcome your new master!" I don't know exactly what that means, but all my party members instantly die and the game is over.
    
What if we'd been evil?
    
It takes 2 or 3 more reloads to repeat my success with the first and second battles. This time, I say "no" to Gothmenes' offer. "Minions! To me!" he cries, "but only a few lumber forward." He screams, "Bane! Protect your chosen one," and at first it seems like Bane doesn't answer. And then it happens: a light comes from the Pool of Darkness and wipes my spellcasters' memories. The final battle begins, and my party members don't have access to a single spell. (My buffing spells are still active, though.)
   
Aw, come on. This is bull#%#&.
   
The enemies: Gothmenes, 2 Bits o Moander, 2 green dragons, and 7 Blue Minions of Bane.

At this point, the full force of the mistakes I made last time comes crashing down. Gothmenes, for all his status as the "big bad" of the game, is just a balor. SSI's adaptation of AD&D rules doesn't allow for individual, named enemies to be notably more powerful than generic enemies of the same type. So though he has some special attacks and defenses and whatever, he goes down in a single attack from a hastened fighter (who gets 4 blows per round).
    
What should be the hardest villain dies right away.
    
Similarly, the green dragons don't last long against melee weapons. The Bits o Moander are tough, but there's only 2 of them, and they can be avoided until later. None of these enemies is trivial, I hasten to add--the green dragons and their poison breath are particularly vexing--but none of them is the real problem.

The real problem is the 7 Blue Minions of Bane. Not only are they blasting everyone with lightning bolts every round, but they've got this electric field that does double damage to anyone making a melee attack against them. If one of my hastened fighters runs up to one and hits him for 16, 18, 20, 14, he gets hit for 32, 36, 40, 28 in return, and probably immediately dies. In previous combats, spells made it easy enough to kill them at a distance, but I don't have any here. I also don't have any healing spells to at least restore hit points to wounded characters.

Nor do I have any wands, nor any scrolls, because I didn't bother to try to bring them through the Pool of Darkness, not even to see if it would have worked.

So my only recourse is missile weapons--which I've been ignoring the entire game.

I check my inventories. One mage has a staff sling, the other a regular sling. My thief has a short bow with 10 arrows. This is not enough, not even with my non-missile-equipped fighters sacrificing themselves to take down a couple of minions.

For a little while, it seems like I'm going to be able to win after a really long fight. My two mages have Rings of Blinking (you get one for fighting with Vala early in the game, but I repeated this area twice). This causes them to "blink out" after they make their attacks every round, and no enemy can target them. Because both mages have 18 dexterity, they almost always act first. (They have 18 dexterity because I kept re-rolling until I got it, not because I edited them to it.) They're horrible shots with their missile weapons, but I assume that given enough time, they can whittle everyone down and kill them.
    
My mages try to hold the line. (This from attempt #3 when I didn't kill Gothmenes first, for some reason.)
   
But "almost always act first" doesn't mean always, and they lose the initiative enough times that soon even they're dead.

After I lost this battle the first time, I knew I was in serious trouble. I hadn't even made a dent in the Minions. I looked through my paltry inventories and mentally reviewed all my tactics, and I couldn't come up with a single path to victory.

I did try. In two subsequent attempts (it took me 6 total reloads to get there because I had to win the first two combats first), I tried moving my characters around corners, keeping them at a distance, and so forth, but the enemies all have movement totals in the 20s and 30s, so they were able to close the gap and swarm me within a couple of rounds. And the Minions don't seem to have any distance restrictions on their breath attacks anyway. I tried giving the staff sling, sling, and Rings of Blinking to my fighters, and I managed to kill about half of the final enemies but it still wasn't enough.

As we reviewed last time, I had at this point exactly 2 saves. One was about 2 steps before Gothemenes started the final battles--just enough time to buff. The other was 40 hours ago, just after I defeated Thorne. As I write this, my previous post hasn't been published yet, but I'm going to assume you've already beaten me up pretty bad for that dumb mistake, so let's try not to do it again.

I honestly couldn't see any recourse, barring cheating, except to export all my party members, re-import them into a new party, and start the game over, not making the same mistakes. I'd also earn a few more levels, I reasoned.

But then I reflected how long it would take me to do that, even skipping the optional areas, and I decided to adopt a compromise--one that remedied one of my many mistakes and only left me with an advantage comparable to what I'd have had if I hadn't been stupid in the first place.

It really is an odd fact of the Gold Box games that when you load up a saved game, until you actually hit the "begin" option, you have a full menu of party options. This allows you to create, delete, and swap out party members even in an active party. An unscrupulous player could use this advantage to smuggle over all their equipment from the other side of Limbo by stuffing it into the hands of a throw-away character, removing him from the party, and then adding him back to the party while in Gothmenes' realm.

I couldn't even do that, since I didn't have a save state from prior to entering Dark Phlan. All my stuff was in storage in Limbo and wouldn't be available again until the end of the game. I suppose I could have done it with whatever equipment my party was carrying after the battle with Thorne, but I didn't want to cheat that badly.

What I did instead was to load my game in Gothmenes' realm, remove one character, and create a new fighter. New fighters start with, among other things, a Composite Long Bow +2 and 50 Arrows +2. I gave those items to one of my fighters, removed the new character, and repeated with my other two fighters. I finished by adding my original character back to the party. Yes, it's technically a cheat, but it's a cheat that gave me roughly the same equipment that I would have had if I'd been picking up missile weapons from the moment I entered New Phlan.

It still didn't make things easy. I had to reload 3 more times to get through the first battle again, then my party was wiped out in the final. But I came close enough that it was encouraging. I slowly developed a strategy by which my best fighters would first take out Gothemenes and the dragons in melee combat, then switch to missile weapons and pick away at the Minions of Bane. They were capable of firing enough missile shots to kill the Minions in two rounds; they just had to survive that long.

I didn't stop making mistakes. I totally forgot the option to switch the Rings of Blinking from my mages to my fighters--who with their bows, were much more important. If I'd remembered that, I might have won in a single try instead of 4. (That's 4 for the last battle; it took me 7 total reloads to get to the final battle 4 times, owing to problems in the first battle.)

On my 16th time entering the final battles, with adequate ammunition and missile weapons in the hands of my paladin and ranger, I was victorious. This time, I had my paladin and ranger kill only Gothmenes in the first round before switching to missile weapons and shooting at the Minions of Bane. I had everyone else attack the green dragons and Bits o Moander with melee weapons. Taking out the Minions so much faster made a big difference, and I finished the battle with only two characters dead.
   
My status at the end of the victorious battle. I have no idea why everyone left Dromio alone.
    
Whew.

The third of the three battles strikes me as just fundamentally, obnoxiously unfair. Spellcasting is such a huge part of the game that to remove it for the final battle betrays a lot of what you've built your characters to do. On the other hand, no matter how much you all warned me about the final battles, I couldn't imagine ahead of time what the game could possible do to pull the rug out from under me--and this was definitely it.

I'll cover what happened after the victory next time, but lets talk a little more about that final series of battles. It strikes me that a  player who's willing to cheat and bring all his equipment "around" the pool would have a trivially easy time with it. No, I couldn't verify this myself, but I'm 90% sure that if my characters had their best armor and weapons, their Girdles of Giant Strength, their rings of protection and Scrolls of Protection Against Dragon's Breath, maybe cleric scrolls with "Heal" and mage scrolls with "Delayed Blast Fireball," I would have won on the first try, maybe with a couple of character deaths. Heck, even a single dragon's breath scroll (which has more than 6 castings) would have rendered moot the difficulty posed by the Blue Minions and dracoliches. (Though it turned out to be good that I saved it--see the next entry.)

So it's cute that someone online, playing the game with a single magic-user/paladin at "champion" level, managed to win the final battles taking hardly any damage, but he did so by editing his character to max statistics and bringing over equipment that he wasn't meant to have. At least my cheat only gave me stuff that I would have found in the final area anyway.

On the other hand, I wonder if even having my Vorpal Blade and two Rings of Blinking wasn't a bit of a cheat. Elminster warns you that all magic items will be destroyed when you go through the pools. I think that's what was supposed to happen. The fact that some items aren't destroyed seems like a bug rather than a deliberate feature to give the party a slight advantage.

Winning the game took me literally all day. When I went to sleep that night, I had dreams about the final battle--dreams in which I found all kinds of loopholes that don't exist in the game, such as my party leading the enemies to favorable terrain (like a long narrow hallway with multiple 90-degree bends) before the battles begin. I kept waking up and whispering angrily to myself, "The game brings you to the final battle, not the other way around. There's no way to control the terrain!" Then I'd fall asleep and dream that there was some secret way to rest and save before the third battle.

Having spent so much time defeating the battle, I was curious what different spoiler sites had to say. Here's GameBanshee's summary:

The final trio of battles required for defeating Gothmenes is stupidly difficult. There are just way too many one-shot things that can go wrong, including stoning, poison, death, and disintegration--none of which can be corrected while you're in battle--that your odds of finishing the battles successfully is exceedingly low. After failing dozens of times to complete the battles, we finally got frustrated enough to switch the game difficulty to "novice," where we were finally able to succeed (but even that took a few tries).

It sounds like they were most afflicted by the second battle against the beholders, not knowing about the "run up, run away" trick. I don't know why I didn't consider lowering the difficulty level. I don't consider that a "cheat," exactly; it just feels a little lame.

The "Spoiler Centre" walkthrough encourages players to set the difficulty to "novice," too, and it recommends my strategy of having everyone run up into the northern hallway for the first battle. It also suggests that the mages' "Globe of Invulnerability" should have protected against the breath lightning of dracoliches and Blue Minions. Is it wrong, or did it not work for me simply because the spell ran out before the third battle? Maybe I should have memorized a few of those. Come to think of it, it didn't really occur to me to re-cast any buffing spells (except "Haste," which I lost because one of the Pets of Kalistes cast "Slow") between the combats. I assumed once was enough. I should have checked the time-outs on them.

I tried to watch some YouTube videos to see what tactics others have used, and the answer seems to be "cheating." I haven't found one in which the party members didn't have equipment they weren't supposed to have (including obvious item-duplication exploits), weren't cheated to at least 18 (sometimes 25!) in all their stats, and didn't have more hit points than should be plausible for party members of their level. 

So now I'm tempted to re-play the final battle at the intended game difficulty, using only the equipment I think I'm supposed to have, and record it for posterity. I'm not going to do it right away because I know it will take a full day or more, but perhaps sometime before I finish 1991. The only problem is, I don't have a saved game from before the final battle anymore (except the one that's way back at Thorne's). If someone sent me a saved game from, say, Arcam's fortress, would I be able to load it and then swap in my own characters? If not, or if no one has one, I suppose I can just replay the necessary areas after Thorne. It's not like I need to do a lot of leveling. I just hate the thought of going through the Moander dimension again.

Next up: the denouement.

Time so far: 60 hours
Reload count: 70

80 comments:

  1. "I tried to watch some YouTube videos to see what tactics others have used, and the answer seems to be "cheating." I haven't found one in which the party members didn't have equipment they weren't supposed to have (including obvious item-duplication exploits), weren't cheated to at least 18 (sometimes 25!) in all their stats, and didn't have more hit points than should be plausible for party members of their level. "

    I recorded my own final battles some years ago, but I failed to make a title that makes them turn up on searches. Also, the _sound, so mute it._

    My characters are all non-save scummed, not maxed out, and IIRC they didn't bring any magical equipment from the main map. I played on default difficulty and didn't use any cheats, except I edited every character's DEX up to 18. Then I was able to beat the final battles on second try, with one only one man left standing.

    So here's the honest YouTube version of the final PoD battles:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypkwKnHhlOE

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ne3d6sp_t3E

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zu25mpNokN0

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aur1WM7iCV8

    BTW, Fire Touch also works with missile weapons, not just melee weapons.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Sound is bugged, so make sure you mute it.

      Delete
    2. That's awesome. That makes me feel like I don't need to do it all over again myself.

      I really did discount the power of ranged weapons.

      Delete
    3. Few thoughts:
      -You spend a lot more time scanning the battlefield than I do. It must be a patience thing. But I'm sure it's why you won in 2 attempts instead of my 16.
      -I always forget that "undo" exists. You seem to use it quite a lot.
      -Didn't even occur to me to try to "hold" dracoliches.
      -Got some use out of "Power Word: Stun" towards teh end of the first battle, which I never did.
      -That "Monster Summoning" sure did you a lot of good.
      -Particular kudos for winning the second battle without using the exploit. You got a lot luckier than I did with those rays.
      -Isn't that BS that you can't cast "Stone to Flesh" in combat?
      -I'm not sure what's going on with "Haste" in your combats. By the second, it looks like only one character has it active. I wouldn't have thought it possible to win the final battle without "Haste" active for everyone.
      -It must have been infuriating to watch your characters "miss" Gothmenes. You can't afford to waste attacks like that in this battle.
      -Freaking "Dispel Evil!" Why didn't I have that active on everyone?!
      -By 09:00 in the final battle, I was wondering how you were going to possibly end with only 1 man left standing. But those lightning breaths are just relentless, aren't they? Especially when they bounce off the walls. Shouldn't there have been some kind of max range on those attacks?
      -At around 10:15 in Part 4, I can see you struggling with what to do with Aragorn. Do I sacrifice him against the minion? Do I walk away from the minion and get hit with free attacks so I can use my bow? Do I just attack the bit o moander even though he's the least dangerous foe on the board right now?

      Delete
    4. Re: long-ranged weapons, I remember having a hard time as a kid with BG1, until on my second playthrough I gave my lead character and Imoen short bows with the skills to match. Two Archers in the party made me clean house in the Mines dungeon like never before!

      Plus, in BG1, once you get the cash to buy a useful number of magic arrows, most enemy Spellcasters can go suck it.

      This was a huge revelation to me as a 12-year-old and I was super pleased with myself...

      Delete
    5. Yeah, Bowder's Gate it is. It's partly a function of real-time w/ pause combat.

      IIRC Chet said he played through without ranged weapons as a challenge at some point.

      There's an NPC called Coran who has Dex 20 and several proficiency points in longbows and he almost single-handedly doubles your ranged damage output.

      Delete
    6. RE: few thoughs:

      - Yeah, it pays off to plan carefully and not rush it, especially when there are several fights in a row with no saving inbetween.

      - Undo is very convenient for finding to optimal path and check if your character reach their target. I sometimes find myself trying to use it games that don't have that function.

      - Holding Dracoliches: I think I did it because I had some left over targets and thought I could just try it. Hold spells are not supposed to work in the Undead, though.
      - Monster Summoning is yet another underwhelming spell. I think I'd rather fill up the lvl 8 and 9 spell slots with lvl 7 spells.
      - Stone to Flesh not working was annoying, especially since I could target the spell on anyone but the one who needed it!
      - Second battle was in many ways the most difficult ones, since you start surrounded by Beholders and it's not so easy to avoid their Rays. Also they like to cast Slow, and I didn't have enough Haste spells to counter them all.
      - Yeah, Lighting Breath should have a ranger requirement like the other breath attacks. Probably a bug.

      Thanks for the feedback.

      Delete
    7. Pet

      How few reloads do you reckon you could finish PoD with?

      I wonder if it's ever been done with no cheats.

      Delete
    8. I completed the Amiga version with no cheats, and with non-maxed characters. A working Ring of Lightning Immunity helped.

      Aa for number of reloads, it's probably possible with none if you are lucky and patient, and have some meta knowledge.

      Delete
    9. Oh I meant a no-cheat no-reload run, but you answered that.

      Delete
    10. Petrus, do you remember if the Ring of Electrical Immunity protects you from those "retaliatory" attacks by the Minions of Bane? If so, I can see where that, particularly coupled with a Scroll of Protection from Dragon's Breath, would let you win with a single character.

      Delete
    11. "Retaliatory damage" would have been a better way to say it.

      Delete
    12. Fire Shield protects aginst Cold or Fire, but not Lightning, so the Ring should have no effect against minions' opportunity attacks.
      If all characters have missile weapons, a good non-cheating tactic would be to have it equipped on your best tank who is in the LOS of most of the minions, while your other characters try to stay out of sight from most of the minions (and Dracoliches).

      Delete
    13. Does Stone to Flesh change Stone Golems to Flesh Golems? I can't remember!

      Delete
  2. The third of the three battles strikes me as just fundamentally, obnoxiously unfair. Spellcasting is such a huge part of the game that to remove it for the final battle betrays a lot of what you've built your characters to do. On the other hand, no matter how much you all warned me about the final battles, I couldn't imagine ahead of time what the game could possible do to pull the rug out from under me--and this was definitely it.

    Thank you. Somebody had to say it. As you have pointed out in the Buck Rodgers game, magic is an essential component in the game. To remove it arbitrarily is unfair. I would go further and say that any magic using creature or character cannot have magic resistance. Leave that to Dwarves and other races that cannot use magic.

    Also, I agree with you about Eliminster. Forgotten Realms would be better without him.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I like how in BG 2, you can refuse to help Jaheira and tell her to 'get Elminster to sort it out'.

      FR suffers from the Marvel/DC universe problem, whereby anything significantly bad should immediately acquire the attention of a ton of super powerful beings rational enough to want to work together to solve it. But it doesn't happen because reasons.

      Oh we'll just let the Child of Bhaal disappear, what could possibly go wrong.

      Delete
    2. It's funny you mention that, because I put some Civil War analogues in my final post on the game.

      Delete
  3. Perhaps I'm mistaken, but doesn't Elminster tell you that 'all but the most powerful of magic will be destroyed' or something to that effect when you cross through your first portal to Thorne's realm? If all magic were destroyed it would stand to reason that those artifacts you've been collecting would die too.

    Oh, and the the 'non-cheese' way to deal with the beholders is to just put a bunch of distance between you and them and pick them off with missile weapons. Their eye attacks have a limited range and they can only move 3 squares a turn.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You are correct. I just found the journal entry where he first brings it up. He does leave it open that the most powerful items can make it through.

      The problem remains whether you really want to risk taking something through that you THINK is ultra-powerful. I would have thought the Girdles of Giant's Strength were pretty damned powerful. Ditto Boots of Speed. Both are destroyed. None of the +5 weapons or armor make it through, but the Vorpal Blade does. I mean, I guess I understand why that's more powerful, but it's not in raw damage.

      Unless you're willing to save-scum, you're taking a big gamble, and it's not hard to see an honest player refusing to risk it.

      Delete
  4. I must confess that I found this post to be pretty suspenseful. I knew you'd win at the end, but the blow-by-blow was very well written.

    Completely unrelated: this may be the first time I've looked at the list of upcoming games and recognized none of them. Should be an interesting couple of months!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Powerful wizard caught by the whip of a flaming creature with bat wings? Followed by an extended battle between the two? Hmmm.

    (I'm reminded of the Charles Mingus song "Gunslinging Bird", except I guess this version would be subtitled "If Tolkien were a gunslinger...")

    Anyway, great post!

    ReplyDelete
  6. I feel better about bashing my head up against that final battle a half-dozen times during the Clinton administration and then giving up, now.

    ReplyDelete
  7. In the spirit of OWB's guest post, the tabletop 1e rules for magic items on other planes are actually quite complicated (something like -1 to the plus for each plane you travel through without first going back to Limbo, or something like that). The rules are not "any item not named X, Y or Z go poof", so this is another difference that SSI made, obviously just to up the difficulty level.

    I do have my old Pools saves from the early 90s if you want them, although I have no idea at what points in the game I saved. Most likely they're bunched up by the end, but there's no guarantee of that. I also have pdf's of my hand-drawn maps too for extra nostalgia (well, at least to me).

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. And even if they become nonmagical, they would still function as non-magical weapons or armor, so none of this lugging extras with you.

      Delete
  8. I remember this last battles pretty well, I've recently played through the GOG version of the game, just to grab some screenshots.
    What I did during the last of the three fights was to hide on the left side of the battle scene, where the lightining couldn't reach my men for some time. And than I've used my ranged weapons:
    http://www.gamersglobal.de/screens/108889
    But I needed several times to achieve the final victory. Even though I didn't counted my tries, I'm pretty sure that I needed 5 to 10 attempts.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. "What I did during the last of the three fights was to hide on the left side of the battle scene, where the lightining couldn't reach my men for some time." I'm not sure how that works. Two Minions of Bane start in that area, and two more can work their way down from the top without many pathfinding difficulties. I tried to hide in that area but it didn't do me any good.

      Delete
    2. Even that little bit helps; I did the same thing as Claus. Rushed everyone (hasted) into that corridor and shot down the two that were there with massed missile fire, then took down the others as they approached.

      The key difference was probably stockpiling the nonmagical Fine Long Bows - these allow for Strength bonuses to apply to missile fire and make a HUGE difference in how quickly Enlarged Hasted Fighters (or dual classes with fighter attack routines) to mow down the Minions.

      Delete
  9. Those ACs are with equipment that you can't bring through the pools to the final battle. In the final battle area, you just get whatever drow chain and a few shields that you can salvage.

    ReplyDelete
  10. If you're careful about it and clean out Dark Phlan, there's quite a bit of stuff you can pick up. At the very least the Evil Knights in the 'training hall' analog can be looted for Plate Mail +2, and there's a Dark Lord nearby with Plate Mail +3. There's one suit of Plate Mail +4 in the treasury, which also has a shield +4 and ring of protection +4, and another in the beholder lair in Gothmenes' palace.

    ReplyDelete
  11. OK, now I vaguely remember the battle from way back - though Elminster's Gandalf impersonation triggers more memories than the fight itself. For me it was not that hard since I had all characters dual class from fighter with percentage strength and always stocked up and used missile weapons to save on spells. Moander plane was tougher and more of an achievement at least in my memory.

    ReplyDelete
  12. "If someone sent me a saved game from, say, Arcam's fortress, would I be able to load it and then swap in my own characters? "

    I've been replaying POD as well and have got a save for just before entering Mulmaster (every other prior area (and mini area) done ). You'll just have to deal with Mulmaster, Arcam's caves, Dark Phlan and the end.

    If you could give me an email address, I'd be delighted to send a copy over.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Oh and I should add that it shouldn't be a problem to use your own characters with my savegame.

      Load one of your savegames, remove your characters from your party (it'll be saved as individuals).

      Load up my savegame, drop my characters and add your own characters.

      Not sure if you can do this from the opening screen, but you'll definitely be able to do it at a training hall (Mulmaster, Zhentil Keep, Hill Giant Stedding for example).

      Delete
    2. Now that we have Petrus's 4 videos above, I don't really feel compelled to video the final battle anymore. He accomplishes exactly what I'd be videoing my own battle to accomplish: to show that the final battle can be won with non-cheated characters and only the equipment that you find on the far side of the pool.

      Delete
  13. I can't recall the first time I finished PoD. I doubt I won the final battle the first time through, but I don't recall any particular frustration with it.

    In future plays, I typically had all my wizards dual-classed from ranger, so only the cleric couldn't pull out a Fine Long Bow and shoot their way through the final encounter. I can attest that the difficulty level drops substantially if you do that with five out of six characters; between Haste and Enlarge you can expect to kill one of the minions each time a character goes. If memory serves, I always had non-magical gear ready for diving into pools, though once replaced with better stuff I'd drop it and then repurchase before the next dip.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. A party of dual-classed rangers would be pretty bad-ass in this game, particularly since there are so many large enemies against whom Rangers get a bonus.

      Delete
    2. Half-Elven Ranger Clerics are also very good, but only at lower levels.

      Delete
    3. I can affirm that 3 Rangers and a Paladin all dual-classed to Mages pretty much mops up any battlefield with ease. My party is rounded out with a fighter/cleric and fighter/thief.

      It's a huge hole in this game that the fighter classes offer zero advancement past the time they get their second half-attack, which they start the game with if they're imported. Whereas mages get more spell damage with every level. So dualing your fighter classes to mages is a no-brainer.

      My ranger/mages all came over from Secret as level 15 mages, getting their Ranger class back upon transfer (and training). My Paladin dual-classed at 16, and it only took up until Kalistes' temple to get him up to 17 and get his paladin abilities back.

      This makes battles more or less trivial. Which unfortunately sapped my will to play the game, as it's a ton of slogging through battles to get anywhere.

      Delete
  14. Okay, I understated it, but to ACs of -23, you'd have to have your +5 plate mail and shields plus several other things. Frankly, I don't think it's possible to have SO MANY characters with ACs that high (in Heliophanus's screen shots) without item duplication glitches. So Heliophanus, I think whoever took that screenshot cheated on several levels.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Been enjoying all your posts on Pools of Darkness, but this last one brought back the most memories when I played this game on my Amiga 500 back in 1991 or 1992. Good times...

    ReplyDelete
  16. Gothomes looks like the child of the Heat Miser from "The Year Without Santa Claus".

    ReplyDelete
  17. Don't forget, that the game still is not over, there's "Dave's Challenge" just as in DKK...
    Good luck, Chet, you will need it!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Since I didn't use the Scrolls of Protection from Dragons Breath in the game proper, it was more like "Dave's Mild Annoyance."

      Delete
  18. Congratulations on winning a tremendous nightmare of a final battle!

    Just imagine all those newly recruited fighters valiantly sacrificing themselves to deliver precious bows and arrows to heroes battling evil gods in another dimension...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. They die? They just get removed from the party, which I always assumed meant they went off and did their own thing.

      Delete
    2. Quirkz needs to make this part of his next book.

      "All right, welcome to the party. You're an elf fighter, lawful good, male. Sound good?"

      "Actually, I...."

      "Is it all right if I depict you as a garish blue color with no weapons?"

      "Well, I'd prefer...."

      "Great, great. By the way, your name is 'AAAAA'."

      "No, my name is...."

      "Okay, let's take a look at that bow you brought along!"

      Delete
    3. I'll be sure to get right on that, once I sort out the anagramming trope problem.

      Delete
    4. DV and AAAAA would make a great starting party if they can get a Cleric and a Bard to join them.

      Delete
  19. Not much to add except congrats to anyone who won this. When I played this battle last week it took me from 9pm to 2am in the first evening. I happily concede that this was not my finest hour - got far in the first try and convinced myself that victory was just round the corner. The next evening I needed another two hours.

    Finally, I set the difficulty to novice. I do not think the fewer hp made a huge difference,though. Lame? Perhaps, but the game cheated, too, by turning off the magic in the final round. Ok SSI, lame trick, absolutely. In the end, it was more like a lucky punch after the umpteenth try.

    Still, it is a series of battles worthy of ending a wonderful CRPG campaign and as such it is meant for players who played the game in serious and focused way. I played it lazily and casually - no multi-classed characters, most of my sc were unmodified, I was somehow convinced that almost nothing (except the Vorpal Sword and Drow stuff in Kalistes' realm) survives the journey to different planes so I arrived there naked, did not bother with distance weapons (not because lack of experience per se - they were just not necessary up to the point). There were some hard battles before, I barely won against Kalistes, but in a way this just boosted my confidence (arrogance?) that I could beat PoD the easy way.

    I mean, the game lulls you into a certain rhythm with all your overpowered spells and then just pulls the rug from underneath. Still, grand finale.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I agree. If you aren't aware of the battle's difficulty already (as I was), and you don't take preventive steps, like dual-classing and not accepting characters with less than 18 dexterity (which probably means kicking out cherished characters from all the way back in the first game, as I did), you're in for a world of hurt in the final battle. As such, I can't recard lowering the difficulty as "cheating" even though I for some reason didn't think of that.

      Delete
    2. Not to mention role-playing a non-human.

      Delete
    3. Dropping my elven mage and dwarven fighter from the party I brought over from SOTSB was my first lip service to power gaming. Modifying one newly created fighter was the other. I have no honest excuse for the final - I just thought that I was good enough to coach my party through that hell and power gaming like multiclassing everyone to a Fighter/Mage combination was something for, now I run and duck for cover, pussies (seriously no offense meant) and 14 year olds with too much time to spend, i.e. me in 1991/1992.

      Delete
  20. True, and +5 weapons can't actually be gotten in the game--you have to bring them over from Secret.

    I think the best you can do is 18 DEX (6) + Bracers AC 2 (-2) + Cloak of Prot +4 (-6) + Ring of Prot +4 (-10) + Shield +5 (-15) + Helm + 4 (-19) + Boots of Speed (-21). Not sure where the extra 2 points of AC came from--I think if you hack your DEX up to 25 you get -6 to AC.

    ReplyDelete
  21. I role-play demi-humans in Pools all the time. I like multi-classing, though I admit its advantages fade over the course of a game where single classed humans are reaching 30th level. The key is "role-play".

    But that should not really matter. Yanking magic in the last battle overturns what is fundamental about the D+D experience. My party, being 2/5 elven did fine until that final encounter. I suppose the problem would have gone the other way had SSI not opted to take the magic away. But with magic, that fight would have not been much more difficult than say the fight with Tanetal. Well I am trying Dark Queen of Krynn again. I never finished that one. This time I do it. Now my party is 4/5 elven and we caste haste whenever we want.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. - I always loved to create half-elves as characters, and a proper fantasy party for me has at least one dwarven fighter and one elf Ranger or Mage.
      - It is damned hard to make a fight challenging at these levels, and I think the various limits of the GB engine did enhance this problem. They had to come up with something. Still, this was not fair.

      Delete
  22. I played through the entire series with the same party, then hit this battle. I strongly suspect that it was literally impossible for my characters; they were all stupidly high level, but without being designed from the ground up with (for example) sufficiently high dexterity, and with a heavily magic-oriented playstyle, they were being massacred before they could even act. A design decision that seriously soured me to the entire series.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm pretty sure I've finished the game with a non-altered party created for PoR only hex-edititing fighters to Paladins and Rangers after the first game, but the depictions of the final fight made me doubt my memory. It seems very unlikely for me to have beaten this battle without using some exploit or the other.

      I DO remember the challenge dungeon (and I failed beating that one), so I must've survived the final fight somehow...

      Delete
  23. Feels good to be catching up again- Mara and I have moved in together, so now I commute by bus instead of walking. Not a long commute, but good for reading on my phone. Today though I'm getting lots of reading time as I'm measuring the wavelengths of light my compounds give off. right now it takes half a second each point, and I measure each point between 400-700... Then do it again several dozen times.

    ReplyDelete
  24. I would have looked up what rammed weapon lot was in the final area, that I could have picked up but didn't, them added that to my characters.

    ReplyDelete
  25. Ran into a very odd bug today. While exploring the Hill Giant Stead, I stepped into a square and got a "Pic not found" message. The screen seemed locked up, but when I hit enter a couple of times it loaded a combat screen, with 12 Gothmenes as my opponents. You said he wasn't much of a threat in the final battle, but a dozen of them decapitated my party of ~15th level characters pretty quick. Figuring that was a crazy fluke, I reloaded and got the same error, this time with 24 Gothmenes. A third try got me "only" 10 of them, at which point I used Gold Box Companion to hack them down to 10 HP apiece and fought my way through. I actually remembered to record video of the third combat loading, but then foolishly re-saved over the apparently bugged save slot rather than keeping it around for further experimentation.

    A Google search turned up exactly one other instance of something similar, so it's happened before. My guess it was supposed to be a hill giant patrol and the enemy ID got over-written by Gothmenes. I also wonder if, since there are at least two reports, how many other people may have gotten the same thing and shrugged it off? Or thought it was an intentional obstacle and gave up on the game because they kept dying?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Finally finished the game today. Guess I can cross that 25-eyar-old goal off the list now. Honestly, I didn't find the game all that hard, other than three fights: the battle with Kalistes, a battle with beholders just before the end, and the final battles. I think those are the only three I needed to cast haste for the entire time. Maybe it was a combination of knowing what to expect after reading here and patiently dual-classing most of my characters so I had tons of HP and spells.

      For the final fight, I kept having terrible luck with someone getting poisoned or disintegrated. Eventually I finished one fight with five guys and just used gold box companion to bring the disintegrated one back from the dead, rather than going through the whole thing again just hoping for better roles. Except I forgot he'd lost all his equipment. He still beat up some beholders barefisted, so I didn't notice at first. Didn't have any trouble with that fight, even without using the exploit. I guess I got through by having all my hasted characters rush from one section to the next, keeping out of range of the beams? Or I got lucky with rolls. On the final fight my resurrected guy got beheaded immediately, and one other died from electricity (the one with the ring, even, because it was bugged and I forgot to reset it) but otherwise it wasn't too bad.

      Rereading here, I realized I also forgot barkskin, iron skin, fire touch, and dispel evil, all of which I never really looked up and didn't remember how they worked. I also didn't try taking wands, scrolls, or potions through the pools - would they have survived?

      I did have a couple of game bugs helping me. Somewhere along the line several characters picked up permanent 23 STR from the girdle, even when they weren't wearing it, and someone else got a perpetual boots of speed effect.

      One thing I did out of traditional order was go to Marcus' tower first and get the vorpal sword early. It was really nice to have against the drow later.

      Kind of sad to finally have this sequence wrapped up. I can see playing it again in a year or two, maybe trying some different mixes, or using gold box companion to let me play some demihuman multiclasses without the obnoxious level caps, for instance.

      Delete
    2. Well, congratulations. I wish I'd gotten those attribute boost bugs. Somehow my dwarf got 99 charisma, but I ended up dumping him.

      Delete
  26. Looks like D&D (and the rest) panic comic writer Jack Chick fought his final battle and entered the pool of darkness.

    His hateful rhetoric won't be missed, but his shitty hilarious comics will live on forever.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm glad he gave permission to a group of games to make a movie out of the D&D Chick tract "Provided it wasn't a parody". (I don't think they told him they were gamers) before he died. So they made a played-straight version of Blackleaf. Haven't seen it yet, but....

      My girlfriend grew up in Illinois and went to high school in a rather rural part, and tells me people are still handing out Chick Tracts.... ;-;

      Delete
  27. Having just reached this point myself, I found that they did build in just what is needed to make the final battle easier: the weapons shop in Mulmaster sells non-magical Fine Long Bows that go through the Pool just fine and apply the Strength bonus to damage - giving everyone in the party with long bow skill one of these and Enlarging them helps a lot.

    I had already planned on doing that with the bows carried over from SotSB, but being able to buy more of them was something I had overlooked or forgotten.

    ReplyDelete
  28. I was finally able to finish this monstrosity an ending. A party of five, 19 tries, having smuggled over our best armor and weapons, including missile weapons, we finally triumphed, but at the cost of the party leader. She was decapitated by the Balor. It is just as well. The ending is almost insulting, considering the final struggle. Dark Queen of Krynn handled this far better in my view.

    I still stand by my view that Pool of Radiance and Secret of the Silver Blades were the best of the Pool series.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Well, I agree with you about POR, at least. I don't think any of the sequels topped the original.

      Delete
    2. And congratulations on winning!

      Delete
    3. Secret was the only one to give me a "tomb of horrors" like vibe. dungeon crawling was the staple of early D + D modules and Secret reflected that best. Pool was more like "Village of Homlet". Some of my value judgements reflect nostalgia more than reality.

      Delete
  29. Replaying this extended final battle has left me with just one conclusion. It's all about the numbers. You can have all characters with maximum dexterity and hastened and still see them stand taking lightening bolts over and over again. The number of times that the complete party makes it to the final battle is small. A failed save here, a failed initiative there and before you know it, you are invoking the most powerful force in the game: Power Word Load.

    But there is a cost. Story and immersion fade away in a made attempt to finish the game like it were an exam. An then I realize it is all about the numbers, luck. Even Napoleon said that a good general needed luck.

    Chet: I agree, the enhanced background really make the world feel empty. I also find it interesting that all the NPCs you find only help you when you are helping them. Otherwise, you are on your own.

    ReplyDelete
  30. Random thought - does Fire Shield work on Bane Minions? One way to bring them down quickly would be to use a Fire Shielded character who continually moves in and out of melee range, eventually bringing minions down with Fire Shield damage. And you can pretty much do this continually from the start of the battle until they're all dead, as long as you have the HP.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'd be wary about sacrificing so many hit points just to damage the minions, but perhaps it would work out in the player's favor.

      Delete
    2. At the second-to-highest difficulty level (which I play at), the Blue Minions of Bane have what, 60 HP? That means you only need to take ~30 HP of damage to take one down with a fire shield.

      This is where playing with an all-dual-classed-fighter party really would come in handy. With all of your characters at 140+ HP, it'd be trivial for each in turn to take down 2 or 3 Minions with fire shield damage, and then melee attack Gothmenes or one of the dragons to slay them as well. If all 6 characters got the jump on the enemies, you could easily wipe out the minions, dragons, and Gothmenes before any even got a chance to act.

      It feels like that would be a bit exploitative, but this battle feels like you need to exploit the game engine where possible just to have a chance. After all, the game is exploiting a super-cheap move of its own by taking your spells away.

      Delete
  31. This feels like the only place on the Internet where this will be understood properly: I managed to win the final battle on Champion level. No cheating and no grinding, meaning:

    - Rolled characters (with re-rolling but no modification of stats), and always accepting whatever hit points were rolled in training.

    - Using only gear that makes it through Limbo or can be found in Bane's land. Magical gear that makes it through are Vorpal Long Sword, Rings except for Rings of Protection, and Scroll of Prot Dragon Breath.

    - Not using the "run up, run away" tactic to make enemies waste their turns on doing only a melee attack.

    - Characters at the levels that they naturally are by completing the quests but not spending large amounts of time on random encounters to boost their levels.

    I won on the second attempt, with four characters standing, so it's not horribly difficult, but there is a big luck component. On my first attempt, I had a Pet disintegrate one character and Bits stone two characters. I still went through to the third combat, where Gothmenes beheaded two characters on his first two attack turns. On the second attempt, there were possibilities for the same things to happen, but saving throws and attack rolls went better for me. Also, I got lucky in that one of the green dragons breathed so that it killed one of the Moander bits.

    The videos posted by PetrusOctavianus in the first comment show some great tactics for this battle. Some additional advice from my experience:

    - The shop in Mulmaster sells fine long bows, which use strength bonus for attack and damage, and they're non-magical, so they can be taken through Limbo. Buy one for everyone who can use one. There are a bunch of +3 and +4 arrows in Dark Phlan and Gothmenes's palace, but bring some non-magical arrows with you too so you don't run out.

    - Scatter your party and keep them away from walls so that there's less effect of the breath weapons and area attacks.

    - Swap offensive spells for buffing and healing. Offensive spells are only needed in the first combat, but healing and re-buffing is useful up to the end of the second combat. Especially make sure that you have three Hastes, one to cast before the battle, and two in case the beholders manage to hit enough with Slows.

    - Lightning breath seems to be implemented as a casting of the Lightning Bolt spell. That is, there is a long range to the initial target, and then the lightning extends 8 squares from the initial target in the appropriate direction. Also, it's seemed to me that monster spell casting, like this, has a way longer range than it should have.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. (Continuing since I had so much to say)

      Specific hints on the individual combats, starting with the first:

      - Hold Monsters is stupidly overpowered. Start with the mages by Delayed Blast Fireballing the Minions and Pets, and when there are no clusters of them left, start spamming Hold Monsters on the Dracoliches and Bits. In both my attempts, I ended up killing with standard combat only one Bit and no Dracoliches. All others succumbed eventually to being held.

      - Dracoliches are also spellcasters but they have silly spells like Charm Person and Feeblemind that shouldn't affect Mind Blanked characters. They seem to prefer spellcasting to breath weapon, so make sure not to damage them in the early rounds to get them to waste their turns casting useless spells.

      The second combat is quite easy with the proper tactics:

      - Beholders are slow and their powers have short ranges. I think the maximum range is 12. There is space in the northeast corridor to get some distance between you and the beholders so run there and take all the enemies out with arrows. There is enough space to keep your distance even when the beholders advance.

      - Death Tyrants are undead and can be turned. Remember that you need line of sight to turn, but that's available from the escape area in the northeast. Turning works in Gothmenes's palace, even though it didn't work in Dark Phlan.

      For the third combat I don't have anything obviously winning, but a couple of things I did seemed to work well:

      - Try to position your characters so that the monster groups in the rooms to the north and west remain in the rooms due to the bad pathfinding. For me the north group did that remaining behind the wall, which made the battle somewhat easier.

      - It could pay off to have a fighter-type with a 2-handed sword go kill the green dragons. Enlarge, Haste, and Fire Touch should make this a one-round affair per dragon. They have more hit points than the Minions so their breath weapon is more damaging.

      - There is very little for a single-class mage to do without spells. For fun I parked mine next to a Minion and let it damage itself against the mage's Fire Shield. A tactic would be to run around, letting the monsters attack from behind, but that smells a bit fishy, since it also eliminates their special attacks.

      I'm in complete agreement that this battle is unfair. I personally like it a lot, and I really enjoyed this playthrough, planning the party composition and thinking up tactics that would work, but that's only possible when you know what's coming. Springing this on a first-time player is just not okay, especially since there is no reason to expect such an unusual battle.

      It could be more acceptable if there was some indication to prepare. It could be a previous, easier, battle where Bane steals your magic, so you know that's a possibility, or a bit of a fakeout hinting at magic-immune Blue Minions, so you have some clue to prepare with ranged weapons. But Gold Box games tend not to be very good at this kind of hinting. They seem to depend on reloads more. Expect in this case you need to have a save from a long time ago for reloading to be beneficial.

      In general, my opinion is that Pools is a good ending to a series of Gold Box Combat Engine games because it forces a bit wider variety in tactics, especially after the too-easy Silver Blades. But as an ending to an RPG series it leaves something to be desired.

      Delete
    2. Jay, your recent comments on Gateway made me realize that I had never responded to your excellent comments here, and I apologize. I really appreciate the additional detail and tips, and I' sure subsequent readers do as well.

      Delete
  32. I just noticed that some of the cutscene art (the Pets of Kalistes and the beholder below it) is lifted straight from Eye of the Beholder, which was released earlier the same year. That feels a bit lazy :)

    ReplyDelete
  33. After many years of having not played this series, I finally finished this a couple of days ago. I was unable to play PoD back when I was younger because it never came out on the C64, so I was never able to take my original characters through to the end from Pool of Radiance. I must say the ending was quite disappointing as you described. The final battle was tough, but I was armed with your spoilers so I made through in the 3rd try.

    I did try and see what happens if you don't use the crystal before the first battle and I don't recommend it. Yes, there are definitely more and enemies and you spawn adjacent to many of them. This makes fleeing much more difficult particularly if you want to flee and fire off a fireball towards the end of your run to the north corrider.

    Of course, I always carry bows since the very beginning because I know how useful they are even with hasted archers with fire touch on them (yep fire touch works on arrows!). It made the very last battle doable after spreading my party out. My best fighter (ranger/cleric) with electric immunity(ring) got stoned, my dwarven fighter/thief and cleric/paladin eventually went down, but by that time I had everything whittled down my magic-user/ranger, ranger/magic-user, and magic-user/paladin finished them off with their bows. The beholder battle was the easiest with the run away trick. I think it took me all of two rounds to finish them off.

    I do find it annoying that you lose your spells on very last battle and can't bring your best gear into the dimensions. I did notice that my gear in the last dimension survived the transition back into the realms after the final battle.

    I'm not sure if I want to do the challenge though, since it's so anti-climactic.

    ReplyDelete
  34. The trilogy of plhan with the EOB engine and more cinemática and role play choices would be great

    ReplyDelete

I welcome all comments about the material in this blog, and I generally do not censor them. However, please follow these rules:

1. Do not link to any commercial entities, including Kickstarter campaigns, unless they're directly relevant to the material in the associated blog posting. (For instance, that GOG is selling the particular game I'm playing is relevant; that Steam is having a sale this week on other games is not.) This also includes user names that link to advertising.

2. Please avoid profanity and vulgar language. I don't want my blog flagged by too many filters. I will delete comments containing profanity on a case-by-case basis.

3. NO ANONYMOUS COMMENTS. It makes it impossible to tell who's who in a thread. If you don't want to log in to Google to comment, either a) choose the "Name/URL" option, pick a name for yourself, and just leave the URL blank, or b) sign your anonymous comment with a preferred user name in the text of the comment itself.

4. I appreciate if you use ROT13 for explicit spoilers for the current game and upcoming games. Please at least mention "ROT13" in the comment so we don't get a lot of replies saying "what is that gibberish?"

5. Comments on my blog are not a place for slurs against any race, sex, sexual orientation, nationality, religion, or mental or physical disability. I will delete these on a case-by-case basis depending on my interpretation of what constitutes a "slur."

Blogger has a way of "eating" comments, so I highly recommend that you copy your words to the clipboard before submitting, just in case.

I read all comments, no matter how old the entry. So do many of my subscribers. Reader comments on "old" games continue to supplement our understanding of them. As such, all comment threads on this blog are live and active unless I specifically turn them off. There is no such thing as "necro-posting" on this blog, and thus no need to use that term.

I will delete any comments that simply point out typos. If you want to use the commenting system to alert me to them, great, I appreciate it, but there's no reason to leave such comments preserved for posterity.

I'm sorry for any difficulty commenting. I turn moderation on and off and "word verification" on and off frequently depending on the volume of spam I'm receiving. I only use either when spam gets out of control, so I appreciate your patience with both moderation tools.