Maze of Dread

[Horpner]

I just completed The Maze of Dread. It's a sewers-style windy-passages affair, i.e., a maze, until the third level, where the Graphnar First shows up to crush you with their military strength. The first two levels give you a nice break from the barrage of anti-magic, darkness, and spinners, allowing for some "traditional" mapping fun. There's really nothing in the first two levels that you need to find, but there is a powerful weapon available if you map carefully and solve a riddle.

The Graphnar Fist appear to be a group of elite mercenaries. They are anti-spell-casting to the extreme, and don't even allow any spell-casters in their ranks. They make up for their lack of magic with beef--it routinely takes more than 500 points of damage to defeat a single one. this means my monk has become a liability. When 290 points of damage stands virtually no chance of killing something in one shot, he feels like little more than a mule.

Summoned monsters are becoming useless. Most of them don't have the necessary AC to survive on the front lines any longer. L3 and worse ACs aren't cutting it. I'm going to have to start leveling up a Hunter, or drop one of my three archmages and start carrying around a Master Mage. Herb is the only summoned monster that can survive, but otherwise he sucks. It might be that the Kringle Brothers will solve this problem. In the meantime, a handy van fgn created a strong Vanquisher--he does good damage and sometimes breathes. Sadly he dies if the Sanctuary Song drops during a conflict.

Which reminds me that the Bard song duration is pathetic on the Amiga version of this game. It seems like less than two minutes. Plus, it contains an "enhancement" from the 8-bit versions, in that the song can cut off right in the middle of a battle.

I solved the snare easily. I admit I took too long mapping and writing notes the first time, and died. I'm trying to remember why I found this snare so impossible 20 years ago, but I'm failing.

Moving on, I've made a good start on Oscon's Fortress. The map of the first level is an aesthetic success. Unfortunately, my party's weaknesses continue to amplify.

[Darendor]

Level 1 of the maze contains one of the quintessential monsters for powerlevelling one's party to ridiculous power levels: Dream Mages. Also, the military academy on level 1 foreshadows the Graphnar Fist "boss" encountered later on...

As for the powerful weapon on level 2, you only get it if you've bothered with a special from a previous dungeon....

And then there's the Snare. Back in the day when I was 12 or 13 years old or whatever, I was completely and utterly unable to guess what the value of rote actions meant. Who knew you had to run back and forth 10 times to get the answer?

I just completed The Maze of Dread. It's a sewers-style windy-passages affair, i.e., a maze, until the third level, where the Graphnar First shows up to crush you with their military strength. The first two levels give you a nice break from the barrage of anti-magic, darkness, and spinners, allowing for some "traditional" mapping fun. There's really nothing in the first two levels that you need to find, but there is a powerful weapon available if you map carefully and solve a riddle.

The Graphnar Fist appear to be a group of elite mercenaries. They are anti-spell-casting to the extreme, and don't even allow any spell-casters in their ranks. They make up for their lack of magic with beef--it routinely takes more than 500 points of damage to defeat a single one. this means my monk has become a liability. When 290 points of damage stands virtually no chance of killing something in one shot, he feels like little more than a mule.

Summoned monsters are becoming useless. Most of them don't have the necessary AC to survive on the front lines any longer. L3 and worse ACs aren't cutting it. I'm going to have to start leveling up a Hunter, or drop one of my three archmages and start carrying around a Master Mage. Herb is the only summoned monster that can survive, but otherwise he sucks. It might be that the Kringle Brothers will solve this problem. In the meantime, a handy van fgn created a strong Vanquisher--he does good damage and sometimes breathes. Sadly he dies if the Sanctuary Song drops during a conflict.

Which reminds me that the Bard song duration is pathetic on the Amiga version of this game. It seems like less than two minutes. Plus, it contains an "enhancement" from the 8-bit versions, in that the song can cut off right in the middle of a battle.

I solved the snare easily. I admit I took too long mapping and writing notes the first time, and died. I'm trying to remember why I found this snare so impossible 20 years ago, but I'm failing.

Moving on, I've made a good start on Oscon's Fortress. The map of the first level is an aesthetic success. Unfortunately, my party's weaknesses continue to amplify.

[Banky]

Unfortunately, my party's weaknesses continue to amplify.

Hey Horpner. You might have read my conclusion about my party set up I wrote two weeks ago. It referred to the Dos version and now that I finished the Amiga version I can say that it applies to it as well.

I played the same setup again except I changed my hunter for a warrior.
The hunter got worse throughout the game. I wasn't able to max out his AC (even my Bard made a better tank) and his critically hit ability didn't improve but decrease.

Overall you can say, the game makes a turning when you reached Oscon's since the monsters now have too many hit points. That's the point where the whole front line from spot 1-4 becomes pretty useless in fights concerning killing blows and only serves the tanking purpose.

Have you tried the Spell Bind spell yet to recruit a better creature than Herb? I never tried it in BT2 because I played with a 7 man party but I experimented a bit with it in BT3 which was fun because you could bind bosses, too. I never found NPCs to be especially useful, though. They cast too much nonsense.

[Horpner]

I tried the Dream mages trick just once. The Red Dragons they summoned always managed to breathe on me a few times before I could DISB them. But I can see that it would work.

Many of the battles in the maze and Oscon's are worth over 10,000 xp--powerleveling seems almost redundant. I have dim memories of getting over 160,000 xp against a certain kind of monster on the 2nd or 3rd level of Oscon's fortress--I'm sure I'll remember which monster as soon as I encounter them.

And then there's the Snare. Back in the day when I was 12 or 13 years old or whatever, I was completely and utterly unable to guess what the value of rote actions meant. Who knew you had to run back and forth 10 times to get the answer?

[SPOILER ALERT!!!]

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That's very odd. I only had to bring two vials from the alchemist to the thirsty magic mouth to get access to the clue I needed to win the snare.

[Horpner]

Hey Horpner. You might have read my conclusion about my party set up I wrote two weeks ago. It referred to the Dos version and now that I finished the Amiga version I can say that it applies to it as well.

Thanks for reminding me. That's a good point.

I was thinking that a Hunter, even if his critical hits are bugged and stop working, has access to some DEST-casting items. But I apparently I was wrong about that. Consulting an item list, it appears he really doesn't get anything like that.

Overall you can say, the game makes a turning when you reached Oscon's since the monsters now have too many hit points. That's the point where the whole front line from spot 1-4 becomes pretty useless in fights concerning killing blows and only serves the tanking purpose.

Have you tried the Spell Bind spell yet to recruit a better creature than Herb? I never tried it in BT2 because I played with a 7 man party but I experimented a bit with it in BT3 which was fun because you could bind bosses, too. I never found NPCs to be especially useful, though. They cast too much nonsense.

There's resource for would-be spell-binders. The Destiny Knight Monster Table will indicate the best candidates. Studying the list, it doesn't look like anything I can bind will survive for more than a few battles. However, a critical-hitting Garslayer should be useful for as long as I can keep my bard song going.

[Horpner]

It was most likely Brockters that I was thinking of. They're spellcasters that start at 90' and summon boatloads of illusions. Five minutes with a DIIL spell in effect and I snagged 186,000 xp. They also have the WIZW spell, but it's ineffective at their default range. Hah!

The spellbound Garslayer has worked out just fine. He's got 1029 hp, and really does crit about 25% of the time.

Even though it's not as much fun to take several rounds to defeat these high HP monsters, they aren't really a huge challenge. I expect that to change some time before the game is quite over, though.

I was having some fun plinking them with my Ring of Power, but it turns out the silly thing eventually disappears, even though it doesn't officially show charges.

[Darendor]

You're not playing the C64 version which caps experience and gold per fight at 65280 each.

[Horpner]

Nope. Heh, heh, heh. And I might add: heh. My last five minute encounter, which was more efficient since I dispensed with a special member, resulted in 346,000 XP. I don't plan on using this exploit again now that it's been verified to work. I really want to try playing "fair" for as long as possible.

I beefed up the AC of one of my Archmages to L6 now that I started finding wizhelms. He makes a fine meat shield, though he can only plink at monsters with his Mage Staff. His new beefiness has has relieved me of the pressure to keep my special members immortal.

I imagine that L6 won't be good enough for long, though. My warrior is at L6 too. If things heat up, he'll have to relinquish party leadership, trading his speedboots for an elf cloak.

[ManicWonk]

...sigh... I've been trying bunches of different NPCs: Storm Giants, Red Dragons, Spectres... sometimes they'll put up a fight, but usually they'll get squashed by some real nasty enemy. I did have some recent success with Salamanders, but I doubt they will continue winning fights for my party.
I am grateful that the spellcasters who summoned these (and other) wanna-be's asked to join my party, because a couple of the spellcasters (less than 3) are actually very tough cookies.
...my mage is begging me for a Wizhelm, so I'll be heading to the Grey Crypt after I find another shield...