Thursday, April 18, 2024

Dungeon Hack: Blitzkrieg

A minotaur prepares to swing his axe, which looks like it ought to be impossible with the height of the ceiling.
        
I started over after the first entry, deciding to go with a slightly easier game. I lowered the levels to 10, kept secret doors turned off, said "no" to the water level, and created a mage/cleric named Tirena. She got some decent statistics within the first few rolls:
         
No one's pretty or healthy after 10 levels in a dungeon anyway.
       
A mage/cleric is a bit of a handful. Like all characters, she has two hand slots available, but she has at least seven potential things to put in them:
     
  • The primary weapon
  • A shield
  • The cleric holy symbol, for casting cleric spells
  • The mage spellbook, for casting mage spells
  • Usable items, such as wands, potions, and scrolls
  • Items that I want to identify
  • Conjured magical weapons
        
Add to this the fact that the character can cast cleric spells while wearing armor but not mage spells. I'm constantly swapping items in and out of slots depending on what enemies I'm facing and how many spells I have left. I mind this less than I might have expected. If I was playing a party of four characters, it would probably be too annoying to bother with, and I'd end up under-valuing one of the two classes. With only one character to manage, constantly swapping things in and out gives me something to do between battles.
    
I've completed six levels. As we discussed last time, each level offers two types of enemies plus a single "boss" enemy who's a higher level than the regular two. Level 1, as before, gave me orcs and goblins. The boss was a hobgoblin. I found a Ring of Feather Falling and a mace +1 among various lesser treasures.
   
One of each.
      
Level 2 served up hobgoblins and troglodytes as the main enemies; the boss was a ghoul. I had my first level-up, with both classes reaching Level 4 (I started at 3). Before I finished the level, I ran into a pit trap and fell to Level 3, which had shadows and ghouls. It was a while before I found the stairs back up to Level 2 and discovered that the "boss" there was also a ghoul.
  
I realized at some point during this process that there's no reason to conserve anything, particularly spell slots. Since you only meet two types of monsters on each level (with that one exception), no monster is any different than any other. Might as well blast away. I fell into a habit of exhausting my mage spellbook (mostly "Magic Missile") before donning the armor and spending the rest of the day with my cleric spells and equipment, only to repeat the cycle after the next rest.  
       
This isn't what I normally think of as a "troglodyte."
       
Shadows and troglodytes both sap strength, but it's not permanent. Ghouls can paralyze for a while, but paralysis just stops you from acting, not moving. You can run away until it wears off. 
    
Still, I was motivated to stay out of melee combat, and it was in messing around with spells that I discovered how awesome "Spiritual Hammer" is. Is it this awesome in other D&D games? I've been ignoring it for most of my gaming career, apparently to my detriment. It creates a magical throwing Thor hammer that comes back to you. If you miss an enemy on the initial throw, it might hit him in the back on the rebound. And you can summon one for each hand!
      
Hammer time!
     
By the time I finished Level 3, I was loving this game. After the first session, I thought I'd be bored with it. But now I was charging through the hallways, hurling double hammers at every shade who approached, getting them coming and going, blasting away with my mage spells, slamming keys into doors, barely ever having to pause to get my bearings because everything is so linear. The key to the enjoyment of this game is that it plays fast. There's no point mapping anything because it's all randomly-generated (and the automap does a great job). There's no point waiting because enemies respawn. There's no point conserving because every level brings new stuff. It's probably worth holding one high-powered item in reserve for a particularly tough boss, but otherwise Dungeon Hack is a game of swift offense.
    
That isn't to say there aren't some problems. Chief among them are horrendous timing issues. Even with the emulator cranked up to a level way above an era 486, I suffer maddening pauses sometimes when moving and turning. It's particularly annoying when this happens in combat, causing me to over-turn and get disoriented.
      
Foreshadowing?
      
Meanwhile, forget about the "Combat Waltz" or any other dance moves. The only way to not get hit by enemies is to not get next to them. This can be difficult. Enemies sometimes dither in one square for several seconds, and other times they seem to move three squares at once. If the enemy does get next to you, and the game's clock decides that homeboy gets an attack, all the shuffling and running in the world isn't going to avoid it. The particularly annoying (and slightly amusing) thing is that the game's combat timer isn't synced well with the characters' positions. There are times that I'll get adjacent to an enemy, then run backwards down the corridor. Ten seconds later and ten steps away, the game suddenly registers a hit and the character goes "oof!"
 
Enemies oddly cannot step and then turn in one move, but they can turn, step, and even attack in a single move. Take this guy:
        
He's closer than you think.
     
If this were Dungeon Master, I'd have enough time to go make a sandwich. There, he would have to turn to face me, then pause, then step into the square in front of me, then pause, then attack. But this guy probably did all three of those things in the nanosecond after I took the screenshot. In Dungeon Hack, you can be two squares away from a monster who's facing the wrong direction and it's still too late.
    
I've learned to live with these aggravations because everything else happens at a good clip. By the end of dungeon Level 3, I had reached character Level 5 for both of my classes. I found a pair of Gauntlets of Hill Giant Strength and two Shields +1. 
  
Level 4 brought the first level-drainers: wights and shades. I tried to suck up the level drains at first, but it happened too many times. I learned to just rely on my hammers, keep out of their way, and reload if they hit me. I got "Negative Plane Protection" at some point, which stopped the draining.
       
Yeah, screw that.
      
The enemies were worth an incredible amount of experience. I arrived on the dungeon level at character Level 5 in both classes, and I left at Level 9 as a mage and 8 as a cleric. Along the way, I picked up a pair of leather boots, a book that increased my wisdom by 1, and a Stone of Good Luck. I frankly don't know what that latter item does, or how to use it. It doesn't equip in any slot and it doesn't activate from the hand slots. 
         
Taking damage from a shade.
       
The game follows Dungeon Master's convention of never telling you, in-game, what any of the enemies are called. You have to look them up in the manual. The "boss" enemy for dungeon Level 4 was an armored guy surrounded by a blue glow, and he doesn't correspond with anything in the manual. He carries a sword and shield; death knights carry a two-handed sword and have skeletal faces. Steel shadows are just animated armor, so they don't go with the fact that this guy has a face. Swordwraiths don't carry shields, and their armor looks completely different. The manual does warn that its list may not be comprehensive.
    
Any ideas what this guy is?
      
Whatever he was, he was fast. All the backpedaling in the world didn't keep him from catching up with me. After he killed me twice, I decided to try my Wand of Fire on him, and he died in one shot.
   
As you explore, you occasionally find message scrolls that give you hints about the game and perhaps fill in some semblance of story? It's too early to tell. This is what I have so far:

  • "More than once, the ogre slug I was fighting attempted to hit me with some sort of corrosive spittle."
  • "As well, Midnight had a shield, one that would absorb some damage meant for her." [Isn't that what all shields do?]
  • "But in order to see illusions, Midnight relied upon her Helm of True Seeing. With it no . . ."
  • " . . . ical instrument, this Lute of Well-Being, is also said to strengthen a weakened bard."
  • "I wish I had the power of the 'Neutralize Poison' spell. Twice I was struck by the poisonous sting of the wyvern."
     
Did this one appear for the wrong character class?
      
The manual mentions that you might find artifacts from a famous adventurer who preceded you, and I guess in my case, that's "Midnight."
        
Some miscellaneous notes:
    
  • The game has a lot of clever ways to offer locks and keys. There are half a dozen different colors of locks and keys to start. Then, sometimes instead of a lock and key you'll have a gem and a mosaic that the gem needs to be placed in, or a plume from a helmet and a relief depicting an armored knight that takes the plume, or a mallet and gong, or a pearl that has to be placed into a clam shell. They're still just very rote, linear puzzles, but at least their variety makes them kind of fun.
       
Just when you thought you'd seen every way to open a door.
    
  • I mentioned it last time, but I'll also call attention to the wide variety of things you can click on just to get an atmospheric message.
        
To eat, I would think.
       
  • It took me a while to figure out that you can learn spell scrolls by clicking in the spellbook with them.
  • Mage spells seem a little underpowered so far. "Magic Missile" significantly underperforms physical attacks. "Ice Storm" often misses. "Hold Undead" didn't work on the undead I faced on Level 4. But the mage class is still worth it for "Improved Identify." 
 
I think this is the only "bad" piece of equipment I've found.
       
  • Having played a few hours of Baldur's Gate 3, I have to say that I find the simplicity of AD&D2 refreshing, where you find a Mace +1 and then a few hours later, you find a Mace +2--instead of a mace that gives you +1 but only in the sunlight and when you have a psychic link with at least one enemy who has taken damage from one of your companions earlier in the same round.  
        
I thought that would be enough for one entry, but it's not, so let's do another couple of levels. Level 5 bucked the previous trend by offering only one enemy type and no "boss": Minotaurs. The level was a labyrinthine maze, and they were waiting around every corner. I had several reloads when I couldn't dodge their two-handed axe attacks in time.

There was another clever stand in for a lock-and-key where a relief on the wall depicted a planet with three moons. The space for the planet was empty; I had to find the orb to stick there.
      
Another clever alternative to a key and lock.
      
The level had a brief section in which, when I entered, my character announced that she was suddenly famished. While in this area, food depleted at a much higher rate. It wasn't long before I was out of it, though. I had plenty of food anyway, plus my character was capable of casting "Create Food and Water."
   
Items found on the level helped me resolve the cleric-mage armor problem. A Ring of Strength allowed me to remove my Gauntlets of Hill Giant Strength and put a pair of Bracers +1 in that slot instead. Then a Cloak of Protection +3 took the place of my chain mail. With this setup, my AC is 1 instead of 0. Good enough.
        
Just a shot of the Level 4 cleric spell list.
       
Minotaurs didn't provide nearly enough experience (at least relatively) as the shades. I only gained one cleric level before heading down to dungeon Level 6.
     
Level 6 brought back undead, specifically mummies. They were joined by trolls. No level-draining, but both of them hit hard enough that I did everything I could to stay out of melee range. I hit mage Level 10 at some point, but I ran out of time before I finished the area.
       
The low ceilings have given the troll a flat top.
      
Short entry, but it's a busy week. This is a good game for a busy week--not much plot, a decent amount of forward momentum. There's only so far you can get on momentum alone, though. We'll see how I feel about the last four levels.
   
Time so far: 7 hours (only 4 on this character)
 

71 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. I have the same experience with Dungeon Hack. Despite the uninteresting generated dungeons, it's fast and fun. Until about dungeon levels 12-14, when monsters start to repeat, you've got most item upgrades, and levelups don't provide much of a boost anymore. It's probably better to replay this with 10-12 levels with different characters than to make a deep dungeon run with one.

    Permadeath (I guess you're playing without it) also is less tempting than it sounds. It is generally too weak, not limiting reloads in any way. But instant death by petrification becomes a problem and there are no good ways to protect against that. You can rely on a low armor class and luck, or tedious ranged combat if you have a ranged weapon at all. There's an item that protects you but it is unlikely to appear in a dungeon.

    >>The manual mentions that you might find artifacts from a famous adventurer who preceded you, and I guess in my case, that's "Midnight."<<

    Famous for losing artifacts.

    I would be surprised if you got Midnight. I thought the artifacts were class based, and I got Midnight for my paladin (though I think also for my fighter/cleric/mage). The Helm of Midnight is awesome, though.

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    1. To add to this: I think the items you find are fixed by the seed, but the game seems to take your class into account at least partially. As a paladin, I never found a single mage scroll.

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  3. I have a suggestion as to why the game might be running slow with those pauses. (Though you may already know this since you've been using DOSBox for a long time. :) )

    By default, DOSBox runs older 16-bit games (Wolfenstein, Commander Keen) at a set fixed speed controlled by the cycles number, and runs newer protected mode 32-bit games (Doom, Quake, Jazz) at the maximum speed it can. You might notice at the top of the DOSBox window it changes to 'cpu speed: max 100% cycles' by itself sometimes.

    Usually, you don't have to touch the cycles in DOSBox. If you start changing the cycle count by using Ctrl+F11/F12, you can slow down older games that are too faster or try to make slow games speed up, but in my experience DOSBox goes very funny when you try to set that fixed cycle number above 18000 (regardless of what host computer I'm using). If a game runs so slow that I have to put the cycles that high, using the cycles 100% percentage option gives it more power but in a more stable way. You can't get to that setting by using the Ctrl+F11/F12 keys though:

    To run an older DOS game like Dungeon Hack with more cycles, try typing in CONFIG CYCLES=MAX inside the DOSBox command prompt itself before starting the game exe. Alternative you could use a new config file for dosbox, but typing CONFIG CYCLES=(number) or CONFIG CYCLES=MAX before running a game that's giving me trouble is simpler to me.

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    1. Ugh, excuse me - 'config cycles=max' has to be all lowercase for it to work. I used all caps to make it stand out as a command, but it has to be typed in lowercase, unusually.

      This command sets the cycles setting just for the current DOSBox window, not permanently.

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    2. The AESOP engine tries to do something clever with real-time simultaneous effects (to prevent all action from stalling during a spell animation, like in EOB1/2); I think this is not 100% correctly implemented and may react weirdly to different CPU speeds.

      It's not uncommon for DOS games to have some parts depend on CPU speed and others depend on real-time clock or monitor refresh rate, not taking into account that later computers would have a very different ratio between these. Space Quest 4 is a well-known offender here, and I think that's what's going on here, too.

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    3. Related, I remember Star Control 2's melee mode (just combats) had a commandline switch '/frenzy' to ignore timing caps and just go as fast as the CPU would go. When it released the difference wasn't that great between the high and low ends - quite noticeable but not unplayable at the high end.... not so much nowadays IIRC.

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  4. Spiritual Hammer is not a great spell in tabletop (at least, in this edition) because of low damage. Dual wielding them, or getting a second attack when they fly back, only works in this engine.

    The point of Magic Missile is normally its range and its low casting time, neither of which helps in this game. The point of Ice Storm is normally its huge area, which again doesn't help here. Both spells have much lower damage than Fireball, or than weapon attacks. And, a lot of monsters can have Magic Resistance, which gives them a flat %chance to ignore all spells.

    The luckstone adds +1 to all saving throws when carried. Regarding Midnight's Shield, normally in D&D shields add to armor class, they don't reduce damage taken.

    I think those enemies stepping, turning, and attacking all in one "tick" is a bug; because the earlier EOB games don't do that. And in my memory, neither did this game when I played it.

    And yeah, level drainers is why you either need a cleric in this game, or turn "undead" off at the beginning.

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    1. Yeah if you just hit level 10,Magic Missile will be doing 5-45 total damage, RNG doesn't seem to be favoring you. Spiritual Wespon is OK in BG 3, it sucked in every other game it was in: maxed out at 1d4+4 damage and didn't act like Mjolnir

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    2. Magic Missile deals 10-25, not 5-45. Compare: Fireball at that level is 10-60.

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    3. Yeah, magic missile's utility at higher levels is that it always hits, has a super-quick casting time, doesn't have a saving throw, and you can independently target the missiles, which means that it's a very effective way to interrupt other spellcasters and make them lose their spells (at least, assuming they don't have Shield up and that the GM/game implement the spell interruption rules, which are notably self-contradictory in AD&D) -- the damage is a nice bonus on top of that.

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    4. Yep, used MM in the Gold Box games as tetrapod describes for tabletop. As for Ice Storm, my recollection is it was mostly useful for opponents who are immune against Fireball, like e.g. Fire Elementals, Fire Giants, Salamanders (or protected by a Minor Globe of Invulnerability). Neither of which seem to be relevant in this game, though, at least so far.

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    5. Spiritual Weapon is actually pretty clutch in 5th edition. The only reason it's not considered S tier in BG3 is because BG3 dramatically buffed a bunch of other things, as good as Spiritual Weapon still is now there are other things a whole tier better in that game.

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    6. But surprisingly, Dungeon Hack does not use 5th edition D&D rules :P

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    7. Make one texting error on your phone...

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    8. In DCSS (Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup) Magic Missile is weak but always hits. For a low-level mage it's fairly essential.

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  5. The Stone of Good Luck gives you a +1 to your saving throws

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  6. I know Dungeon Hack gets a bad rap, but I've always found it great fun. Probably helps that my first ever PC game was Eye of the Beholder 2 and I loved that. Just the engine and experience of Dungeon Hack brings back good memories of playing EoB 2 when I was a teenager.

    Always loved the engine and art style, same with the first Lands of Lore game.

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    1. I basically feel the same way, it's fun to re-install this game and have a go at it for a couple of rounds.

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  7. >This isn't what I normally think of as a "troglodyte."

    Yeah, it's odd because 'Might&Magic 6/7' used a very similar 'amphibian bipedal' concept for depicting them. I think in both our languages it does mean 'cave dweller', but that evokes the image of a pre-human Neanderthal rather than the Creature from the Black Lagoon.

    Maybe an overall attempt of the gaming industry to de-humanize the enemies that get killed, because there were heated discussions about violence in video games back then?

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    1. Troglodytes in D&D have been lizard people since 1e, so probably not. They're notable for being particularly smelly and living deep underground. Gygax probably just knew that "troglodyte" meant "cave dweller" and went for it. There's an entry for "caveman" in the AD&D Monster Manual in any case.

      D&D also made kobolds a type of lizard person, although it took a couple editions (in 1e they look kind of doglike and in 2e they look goblinish).

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    2. Hey, that's interesting to know - it fits that Gygax took some liberties while inventing monsters for his game, and there might again be a cultural gap between the US and Europe, since 'Kobolds' are quite universally known as 'little helpers' over here.

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    3. For some reason kobolds remained Doglike in Japanese media inspired by D&D. I was surprise when a kobold in Delicious in Dungeon turned out to be a dog person but apparently the manga/anime is just following the local traditions.

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    4. Yes, I was surprised by Deekin in Neverwinter Nights because my previous knowledge of kobolds had been just little goblins (they're the weakest monster in Castle of the Winds) or dog-men. I still don't know why they decided that D&D needed more lizard dudes.

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    5. Idk if this is why, but I suspect it might be to discourage violence towards dogs.

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    6. I think having them distant relatives of dragons is kind of fun.

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    7. As I understand it, Kobolds were always described as lizard-people related to dragons, but the art in the 1e AD&D Monster Manual was...not great, and made them look dog-like, and a lot of people missed the line saying they were lizard-like. This is the THE book that introduced a LOT of people to most of these monsters, and that separated out a lot of previously synonymous creatures, so it makes sense that the idea of dog-men sprung out from that.

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    8. No, AD&D 1E Monster Manual says nothing about dragons or lizards in relation to kobolds. It says they're tribal, live in war bands, hate sunlight, and maybe live with wild boars or giant weasels. THAT's something I've never seen in a CRPG depiction. They hate good, small creatures like pixies, sprites, and gnomes. They speak goblin and orcish, which sounds like they're meant to relate to those bestial enemies.

      But there is something draconic about the portrait. Although the muzzle looks like a dog, it's got a couple of horns and the back of the head is scaly. In the 2E Monster Manual, they're a lot thinner and look slightly more draconic, but the description still doesn't say anything about that.

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  8. First the 'SSair' and now the 'Blitzkrieg' - maybe cool it with the WWII references for a while ;)

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    1. obviously time to switch it up with a Red Baron reference during Red Crystal

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    2. Clearly Chet needs to make a touching and tasteful reference to the Russian-Japanese wars when talking about Princess Maker 2.

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    3. I ll make AD&D references in my next WWII game I guess.

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  9. Isn't this against Chets dislike about playing teenagers?
    The charcter is only 16 in the screenshot and is charisma something you use in this game?

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  10. Just to let you know, Chet, as you use a fictitious name, your little statement about copyright has no merit. It does not give you proper legal protections for this blog or its content. My guess is you are okay with that. You can also understand AI systems have already abused publicly available internet data and unfortunately a step worse, I think you will find google "OWN" all the things you create in their blogging system.

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    1. What? I'm not a lawyer, but copyright applies as soon as you create a work, whether or not you include a statement about it, and whether or not you write under a pen name. And Google in no way own things published here - their ToS state "Your content remains yours, which means that you retain any intellectual property rights that you have in your content."

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    2. I am not a lawyer (nor even an attorney) and not an American, but I suspect that the issue has more to do with the ability to enforce any copyright claims. Pursuing a copyright violator would require bringing a lawsuit and, with some very narrow exceptions, this cannot be done pseudonymously. So in that sense the copyright protection is meaningless as our host values his secret identity. A right without a remedy and all that.

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    3. This is the weirdest thread in months. "On the lock," why in the world did you think it was necessary for me to hear your opinion about copyright law? Has the subject ever come up in any of my entries? Are you planning to publish my work under your own name?

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    4. I am not a practicing attorney but I do have a law degree, and can confirm that Google doesn't own what you write and that a pseudonym in no way prevents you from holding and enforcing copyright, even if there are obviously practical challenges. So yeah this is out of nowhere and completely wrong.

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    5. I think the original comment refers to your AI disclaimer on the bottom of the right text column.

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    6. In such a case, this seems to be a bit of social awkwardness on their part. I mean, formulating their thoughts in that way so one has to guess what do they mean?

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  11. Regarding the 'slot logistics', a couple comments from this gog forum thread in case any of it is still helpful / you weren't already aware of it or have figured it out yourself already (I assume you consider none of this spoilery) :

    "You can leave the Holy Symbol in the pouch to the right of your hands and just move it when you need to open the spell menu. Once the spell menu is open, you can unequip the Holy Symbol and still cast spells. This is useful if you want to dual wield Spiritual Hammers or Flame Blades. (Beware, while dual wielding Flame Blades, you can't equip the Holy Symbol. Spiritual Hammers do not have this issue)"

    "You only need to sacrifice your shield when casting spells. Once you have your spells up, you can put your shield back. Also, you can click on the holy symbol to open the spell window and then unequip your shield (this makes it possible, for example, to dual wield Flame Blades)."

    "Spiritual Hammer has two major advantages [...] over Flame Blade: 1. Spiritual Hammers are thrown weapons that return to you [as you already mention]. 2. You can unequip the Spiritual Hammer, allowing you to temporarily put something else in that hand (which makes identifying items possible)."

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    1. If you start cheating by abusing glitches like this then you might as well just watch the ending on youtube instead of playing the game.

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    2. Why would it be a glitch in DH that unequipping a spellbook (or holy symbol) keeps the casting menu open? This has worked ever since the first EOTB game.

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    3. And it's certainly the case that in pen and paper AD&D wizards aren't running into battle with their spellbooks clutched in their hands, while clerics similarly have lots of flexibility on their holy symbols. So yeah open question I think on whether this is a glitch or exploit -- it's as easy to understand the requirement to open the casting menu via a held magical implement as a constraint required by the game's interface than any intentional design or difficulty choice.

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    4. If it's a constraint of interface, it seems to me that the exploit shouldn't work at all. If screen real-estate is that important, it's something that really should have been fixed in testing.

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    5. Put it like this: they rebuilt the EOB1/2 engine from scratch for EOB3/DH (because they didn't have access to the source code). And they put this trick in AGAIN, a second time. There is no way that wasn't fully intentional on part of the programmers, so this is not a glitch.

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    6. From a programming standpoint, I doubt that this was intentionally added as a "trick" -- there's likely an event handler for clicking the symbol/spell book that opens the spell menu, and I would suspect that there's simply an absence of code to close the spell menu when a symbol/spell book is removed from character's hand.

      It could be that the lack of code was intentional and that they intended to allow the scenario, but to me this seems like a classic case of something that either wasn't accounted for, or it came up in testing but no one felt it was worth closing the loophole.

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    7. That doesn’t make sense, though - there’s code that disables the spell menu when the relevant character gets paralyzed or killed, for example, so it would clearly be simple to add the identical functionality when the player unequips the spell book/holy symbol. It’s pretty clearly the case that the implements are there because the EOB interface requires characters to click objects to take actions, and since in the original games the inventory wasn’t visible at the same time as the game’s view window (since they were multi-character and had less real estate) they had to be equippable items. But as Radiant says, the programmers were aware of this behavior and reimplemented it, and “you have to hold a spellcasting implement in your hand” has never been a constraint of DnD, so I really don’t understand the arguments that this is an exploit.

      (For all that I’ve never actually done this when I’ve played the EOB games, since I’m too lazy for that level of micromanagement and they’re quite easy; I can see it being more impactful in Dungeon Hack though).

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    8. ...but if the spellcasting character gets held or knocked unconscious, the menu immediately gets grayed out and rendered useless, so obviously there's a code hook for that which could be applied just as easily upon unequipping a spellcasting implement. So is the argument that omitting that in the first EOB was an accident, which then persisted through two sequels, a spin-off, and as Radiant mentioned, a complete rewrite of the engine?

      Anything's possible, I suppose, but Occam's Razor sure seems to suggest that the simplest explanation -- taking actions in the EOB engine requires clicking on an equipped item, therefore spellcasting requires clicking on an equipped item -- is the right one.

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    9. In EOB1, sure. But in EOB2, they left it in. And in EOB3, they rewrote the engine from scratch and put the trick in again. At that point it's clearly fully intentional that this works, even if in the first game it might not be.

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    10. They also left it in in Dungeon Hack, which - while using mostly the same engine as EOB3 - had some of its UI changed.
      However, in Dungeon Hack it covers the very helpful minimap, so there's a drawback to leaving it open.

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  12. For the record the way magic items work in BG3 is specific to BG3 and has little to do with the edition of D&D it's based on.

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    1. This is one of my biggest problems with BG3 (which I love otherwise). The lack of “normal” magic items. No Rings of Protection, no Bags of Holding, no traditional D&D magic sword types (Vorpal, etc). Every item has a stack of weird gimmicks.

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    2. I wonder if this does accurately mimc an experience of a first-time tabletop DnD player with an overly creative DM, where a player is expecting to see, at last, all the familiar stuff, but DM hates using creations of others and shows off what they, themself, invented :D

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    3. It's quite common advice for GMs to personalise magic items and avoid standard +1 swords and the like, so I assume that's what they are going for in BG3.

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    4. Sure, but it's very uncommon for GMs to actually take that advice. And it's even rarer in CRPGs; the best example I can think of is Planescape Torment.

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    5. The way my GM back in college explained it, a "standard +1 sword" should be thought of not as magical-in-itself, but rather as a sword whose craftsmanship exceeds what is possible without magical assistance, so you'd expect that category of magical items to essentially be the bread-and-butter "normal" output of magical blacksmiths.

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    6. @Ross, this plainly contradicts the logic behind some D&D spells that either require magical weapons to hit something or give explicit protection against those.

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    7. I was trying to figure out if the AD&D 1e books actually said that +1 weapons were magical (yes, because +1 weapons are listed in the magic weapons section). In the process I found two interesting things: 1) magic swords in this edition all automatically shed light when drawn, except for a few exceptions that had their own special effects; 2) the whole concept of weapon pluses is pretty much not mentioned in the Player's Handbook. Your DM would have to tell you that your shiny new +1 sword lets you improve attack and damage rolls by 1. Even the description of how combat works overall is missing a ton of details -- this was the "DM rolls behind the screen for you" era.

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  13. Regarding the monster you couldn't identify: you can go to the menu and select "show creature totals". All the boss monsters that did not occur as regular monsters on other levels should be there with a count of one, so it should be easy to find.

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    Replies
    1. It looks like a death knight though.

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    2. The full list of monsters taken from the game files (in rot13) is:
      Unt, Tboyva, Jenvgu, Ubotboyva, Bep, Zrnmry, Kvyy, Zvabgnhe, Gebyy, Fcrpger, Tebnavat fcvevg, Jvtug, Tubhy, Gebtybqlgr, Jrereng, Pneevba penjyre, Ohtorne, Jngre jrveq, Funqbj, Tnetblyr, Naxurt, Pbpxngevpr, Bglhtu, Zhzzl, Jlirea, Jngre ryrzragny, Rnegu ryrzragny, Funzoyvat zbhaq, Terngre zrqhfn, Hzore uhyx, Qrngu xavtug, Fcvevg antn, Puvzren, Syrfu tbyrz, Rggva, Onybe gnane'ev, Oyhr qentba, Terngre srle, Funqr jneevbe, Funqr jvmneq, Gyvapnyyv, Furrg tubhy, Haqrnq ornfg, Fjbeq jenvgu, Fpnynqne, Fyvgurezbecu, Jngpu tubfg, Obar antn, Tenir zvfg, Yvivat zhpx, Bter fyht, Tubfg jneevbe, Yvpu, Fgrry Funqbj naq Ryrzragny Ybeq

      My guess it's the Ghost Warrior.

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    3. Ah, thanks. I completely overlooked that option.

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    4. It was indeed a ghost warrior.

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  14. When I played such a character, I believe I described my experience as playing Dungeon Hack like it was Doom.

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  15. Based on your playthrough, the key to liking this game is playing it fast AND enjoying DM-like mechanics.

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  16. I quite like using "Spiritual Hammer," actually, in the Gold Box games, especially Pool of Radiance. It's one of the first spells your clerics get that can do damage, besides the fairly useless "Cause Light Wounds." I mean, there are probably better uses of your cleric's time, but I also like the idea of your cleric lobbing hammers at monsters, on principle.

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  17. I believe EOB3 used the same overpowered Spiritual Hammer that you see here.
    To make things worse, iirc, you could summon 12 Hammers and distribute them to your party and have everyone throw them at enemies.

    In Baldur's Gate 1 the Spiritual Hammer was also a good weapon. People will frequently pick Branwen as a companion and it's a great weapon for her, at least in those first few levels

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  18. Odd that they use Midnight as a name; That IS the name of a character in the FR setting, who was introduced in 1989. They aren't an obscure character either, they were one of the main characters of the Avatar Trilogy, and orpbzr gur arj Zlfgen, Tbqqrff bs Zntvp.

    However, I don't recognize any of those items, and she was a wizard so wouldn't be using several of those items, anyway.

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  19. Having grown up playing this game, yes, Shade Wizards are worth bonkers experience. Minotaurs are unusual in that when they appear on a level, there will be no rooms or other monster types (the boss will even be a minotaur). Also, while most monsters past the 2nd floor are native to exactly one depth from 1-10, Minotaurs may show up as early as 5 or as late as 7 (or 8?). Getting them on 5 spares you having to deal with Ghost Warriors, Cockatrice, or Xills.

    Clerics, as you have discovered, are Easy Mode. Cure Light Wounds keeps you from starving until you can learn Create Food and Water, which alongside Spiritual Hammer lets you basically bypass the game's whole combat/attrition system.

    Re:Midnight, you will generally only find treasure that fits your class (Mages won't see any halberds, but fighters won't see any mage scrolls (usually)), so while you will still read about Lutes of Strengthening or Shields of Midnight, you probably won't find one (you might find cleric or mage adventurers, though).

    The 5 worst things that can happen to you in this game:
    ROT13
    5: Qrngu Xavtugf. Gurl ner ynetryl znantrnoyr, ohg pna guebj n sveronyy gung qbrf n onmvyyvba qnzntr.
    4: Fpnynqnef. Uneq gb uheg, naq fvapr yvtugavat obygf zbir guebhtu perngherf (yvxr lbh), lbh'yy gnxr qnzntr gjvpr sebz gurz, be cbgragvnyyl zber vs lbh gel gb eha njnl sebz vg.
    3: Gyvapnyyvf. Fznyy rabhtu gb svg 2 gb n fcnpr, yrguny rabhtu gb xvyy va bar uvg vs lbh pna'g arhgenyvmr cbvfba.
    2: Terngre Srlef. Znffvir qnzntr, npphengr nggnpxf, svg 2 va n fcnpr, NAQ gurl'er vaivfvoyr vs lbh qba'g unir Gehr Frrvat. Qba'g gnxr lbhe rlrf bss gur zvavznc.
    1: Yvivat Zhpx. Uvtu UC naq qnzntr, rngf nal jrncba gung gbhpurf vg, naq pna cnenylmr lbh ba uvg, ohg V pbhyq yvir jvgu whfg gung. Gur erny ceboyrz vf gung nyy gurve fvqrf ner sebag fvqrf; vg pna fgrc bhg sebz n pbeare naq nggnpx lbh va bar zbgvba rirel gvzr. Guvf znxrf qnapvat njnl sebz gurz zhpu uneqre naq vapernfrf gur yvxryvubbq lbh'yy onpxgenpx vagb nabgure rarzl (naq vs vg'f nabgure yvivat zhpx, gung'f lbh va gur genfu). V guvax gur Jnaq bs Fgevxvat +3 vf n eryvnoyr zrnaf bs svtugvat gurz.

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