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Demetrios1453 Plays the Gold Box Games
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<blockquote data-quote="Demetrios1453" data-source="post: 9294589" data-attributes="member: 6801060"><p><em><strong>Pool of Radiance </strong></em><strong>(Part 25): Kovel Mansion (Part 1)</strong></p><p></p><p>Our mission to the Cadorna Textile House complete, it's time to turn our eyes towards the next commission, the thief-infested Kovel Mansion.</p><p></p><p>The mansion is in the wealthy area north of the river, along with the Temple of Bane, which is next on our agenda. So we can't get to it by traversing the city, we have to go to the docks and get a boat to the north shore opposite the part of the city we've been exploring thus far.</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH=full]352635[/ATTACH]</p><p>[ATTACH=full]352636[/ATTACH]</p><p>[ATTACH=full]352637[/ATTACH]</p><p></p><p>As we get off the boat, we catch our first glimpse of the overland map, although only in the GBC map window. There's quite a bit of spoilery-ness in it, compared to the unmarked overland map in game we'll be seeing later.</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH=full]352638[/ATTACH]</p><p></p><p>The north entrance leads to the Kovel Mansion, while the southern entrance leads to the wealthy area and the Temple of Bane. So north entrance it is!</p><p></p><p>(Also that view of the city is... not the best. I know this was 1988, but they definitely could have done at least a bit better).</p><p></p><p>We enter the block, and move around to the north side to enter the mansion.</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH=full]352639[/ATTACH]</p><p></p><p>We go a few rooms in, and:</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH=full]352640[/ATTACH]</p><p></p><p>(My halfling rogue in BG3 has a blue (well, purple) mohawk too. I wonder if I was subconsciously thinking of these guys when making him? Obligatory BG3 screenshot):</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH=full]352649[/ATTACH]</p><p></p><p>(Anyway, back to a just slightly older turned-based D&D game...)</p><p></p><p>We decide to chase the two thieves. You actually don't control your movement for the next bit as you chase them from room to room - the game chases them for you.</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH=full]352650[/ATTACH]</p><p></p><p>We'll follow the one going to the south.</p><p></p><p>Of course, this leads us to an ambush. Although we were expecting it, the thieves get the drop on us with a surprise round.</p><p></p><p>(By the way, this block, very irritatingly, has a lot of text flash by without a pause at the end. In most cases in the game, you'll get the text to hit Enter to go to the next screen in order to continue to the next bit of text, or it will give you some choice, as in the screenshot above. For some reason, in this area, a lot of the text just doesn't pause in any way and just goes to the next page. This has the unfortunate result of it being hard to catch some of the text at the end before it immediately disappears when it proceeds to the next page. It also has the REALLY unfortunate result of making it extremely difficult to screenshot a lot of the text here - I either screenshot the next page by being too late, or cut off the end of the text by being too early. Even at the slowest game speed, there were multiple times I had to re-do sections over and over because I missed the screenshot. I was literally yelling at my computer when it literally took more than a dozen times to get a decent enough screenshot dealing with some tapestries that will appear in the next post. The upshot of all this is that in this case, I missed the text that I was being ambushed and that they got the drop on me).</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH=full]352651[/ATTACH]</p><p></p><p>As the battle starts, they've moved from two organized lines to flanking me, all during the surprise round. The thieves come in two types, the 1st-level thieves with 4 HP and the tougher, but thankfully less numerous, 6th-level thieves with 28 HP. Also, don't let them get behind you! A backstab, especially by the 6th-level thieves, can be very unpleasant!</p><p></p><p>Also, why are all the thieves shirtless? I don't know if it's supposed to indicate leather armor or what, but it kind of looks silly. They're all wearing blue shirts in the window illustrations, so why not follow that?</p><p></p><p>Brother Baltor and Brin are about to even the odds quite quickly though...</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH=full]352652[/ATTACH]</p><p>[ATTACH=full]352653[/ATTACH]</p><p>[ATTACH=full]352655[/ATTACH]</p><p></p><p>Brin gets her spell off first, as <em>hold person </em>has a casting time, while <em>sleep</em> doesn't.</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH=full]352656[/ATTACH]</p><p></p><p>Brother Baltor targets the three 6th-level thieves, but unfortunately, only one fails his save.</p><p></p><p>Not to be outdone, and because he literally has some foes right in his face, Bragir casts <em>stinking cloud</em>.</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH=full]352657[/ATTACH]</p><p></p><p>A short time later, with most of them down or incapacitated, their morale breaks and they start to run. In many cases, the ones right by my melee are killed due to opportunity attacks, but some do manage, annoyingly, to run across the room.</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH=full]352658[/ATTACH]</p><p></p><p>Bragir takes that one out. Shortly thereafter, there are only helpless foes.</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH=full]352659[/ATTACH]</p><p></p><p>And soon, no foes at all.</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH=full]352660[/ATTACH]</p><p></p><p>Unfortunately, this group of thieves didn't have any decent loot, so we'll search around a bit to see what we can find and clear out any remaining foes here. (The number of foes needed to clear the block isn't counted by number of encounters, but by actual number of foes defeated in battle, and we need to take down 21 in total. This fight alone took down the majority of that, thankfully)</p><p></p><p>Ever wary of traps and ambushes, we'll have Search on for most of the time. But sometimes not even that will help:</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH=full]352661[/ATTACH]</p><p></p><p>Yeah, these random backstabs get very annoying. But it makes even more enjoyable when you catch one!</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH=full]352662[/ATTACH]</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH=full]352663[/ATTACH]</p><p>[ATTACH=full]352664[/ATTACH]</p><p></p><p>He lasts about as long as you would think. And give about as much XP as you would think.</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH=full]352665[/ATTACH]</p><p></p><p>Before we go much further:</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH=full]352666[/ATTACH]</p><p></p><p>This is getting old very quickly.</p><p></p><p>At least having Search on is helpful in other ways. The text stating that the party found a trap flashed by too quickly for me to screenshot, unfortunately.</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH=full]352667[/ATTACH]</p><p></p><p>Buffy attempts to disarm it. She's going to earn her keep in this section.</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH=full]352668[/ATTACH]</p><p></p><p>We search the room a bit more:</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH=full]352671[/ATTACH]</p><p></p><p>Yeah, we're not going to leave good treasure behind. But best to be cautious and search the area carefully:</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH=full]352673[/ATTACH]</p><p></p><p>And yes, it was trapped. Buffy steps forward again and attempts to disarm.</p><p></p><p>(And because of the rapidly disappearing text, I missed a few screenshots here and had to go back to my previous save, which was several rooms back. So Brin now has not been backstabbed, but Baroness Bella has. I started saving in virtually every room after this so I wouldn't need to backtrack so far again).</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH=full]352675[/ATTACH]</p><p></p><p>Buffy is successful at disarming the trap, and we get quite the reward! Brother Baltor casts <em>detect magic</em>, and confirms that it's all enchanted!</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH=full]352676[/ATTACH]</p><p></p><p>As we examine them more closely, we find some interesting items</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH=full]352677[/ATTACH]</p><p></p><p>The shield will definitely be helpful (and Baroness Bella equips it for herself), but all we can hope for with that broadsword is that we can dupe the shopkeep like we did with the necklace.</p><p></p><p>The rest of the items are pretty meh, despite being magical. We already have superior equipment in most cases.</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH=full]352678[/ATTACH]</p><p></p><p>We give Brother Baltor the magical chainmail, which will allow his scale mail to be sold. (He traded all the other items to Bant to carry - I tend to fill inventory from top to bottom as the characters are listed - it's easier to track who has stuff to carry and be sold that way).</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH=full]352679[/ATTACH]</p><p></p><p>We head out of that room, and search around further.</p><p></p><p>(And I made a bit of mistake by doing so. I <em>should</em> have just not searched for traps with the loot earlier - this would have triggered an encounter with the remaining thieves, and I could have wiped out the rest in one fell swoop. Now I have to catch and take them out one by one. Luckily there are only a few left)</p><p></p><p>The thieves are still at it though. Sometimes we don't catch them:</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH=full]352681[/ATTACH]</p><p></p><p>And sometimes we do.</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH=full]352682[/ATTACH]</p><p></p><p>We catch the thief who ran to the east after our very first encounter here.</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH=full]352683[/ATTACH]</p><p></p><p>Again, a single thief against the whole party goes quickly, even if he's one of the 6th-level thieves:</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH=full]352684[/ATTACH]</p><p></p><p>(By the way, it says he's using a longsword, but is very obviously holding a dagger in his icon)</p><p></p><p>A few rooms beyond this, all our searching comes up with something exciting! (The message saying so was one of those that didn't allow me to take a screenshot).</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH=full]352685[/ATTACH]</p><p>[ATTACH=full]352686[/ATTACH]</p><p>[ATTACH=full]352687[/ATTACH]</p><p></p><p>The leather armor is as good as her bracers in AC, so we'll switch out just for RP purposes. Also, we'll let her keep the short sword as well - again for RP purposes, but honestly, even with a +2 instead of a +1, a short sword will just do so much less damage (especially against large creatures - remember 1e had different damage for weapons for large and above creatures) than their current longswords will (and Brother Baltor has a <em>mace +2</em> anyway).</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH=full]352688[/ATTACH]</p><p></p><p>As it's getting near the upload limit, I'll end this post here. There's still a lot of places to visit here in the Kovel Mansion, and we'll continue the exploration in the next post!</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Demetrios1453, post: 9294589, member: 6801060"] [I][B]Pool of Radiance [/B][/I][B](Part 25): Kovel Mansion (Part 1)[/B] Our mission to the Cadorna Textile House complete, it's time to turn our eyes towards the next commission, the thief-infested Kovel Mansion. The mansion is in the wealthy area north of the river, along with the Temple of Bane, which is next on our agenda. So we can't get to it by traversing the city, we have to go to the docks and get a boat to the north shore opposite the part of the city we've been exploring thus far. [ATTACH type="full" alt="Screenshot 2024-03-20 160350.png"]352635[/ATTACH] [ATTACH type="full" alt="Screenshot 2024-03-20 160400.png"]352636[/ATTACH] [ATTACH type="full" alt="Screenshot 2024-03-20 160409.png"]352637[/ATTACH] As we get off the boat, we catch our first glimpse of the overland map, although only in the GBC map window. There's quite a bit of spoilery-ness in it, compared to the unmarked overland map in game we'll be seeing later. [ATTACH type="full" alt="Screenshot 2024-03-20 160433.png"]352638[/ATTACH] The north entrance leads to the Kovel Mansion, while the southern entrance leads to the wealthy area and the Temple of Bane. So north entrance it is! (Also that view of the city is... not the best. I know this was 1988, but they definitely could have done at least a bit better). We enter the block, and move around to the north side to enter the mansion. [ATTACH type="full" alt="Screenshot 2024-03-20 160458.png"]352639[/ATTACH] We go a few rooms in, and: [ATTACH type="full" alt="Screenshot 2024-03-20 160607.png"]352640[/ATTACH] (My halfling rogue in BG3 has a blue (well, purple) mohawk too. I wonder if I was subconsciously thinking of these guys when making him? Obligatory BG3 screenshot): [ATTACH type="full" alt="20230910171916_1.jpg"]352649[/ATTACH] (Anyway, back to a just slightly older turned-based D&D game...) We decide to chase the two thieves. You actually don't control your movement for the next bit as you chase them from room to room - the game chases them for you. [ATTACH type="full" alt="Screenshot 2024-03-20 160648.png"]352650[/ATTACH] We'll follow the one going to the south. Of course, this leads us to an ambush. Although we were expecting it, the thieves get the drop on us with a surprise round. (By the way, this block, very irritatingly, has a lot of text flash by without a pause at the end. In most cases in the game, you'll get the text to hit Enter to go to the next screen in order to continue to the next bit of text, or it will give you some choice, as in the screenshot above. For some reason, in this area, a lot of the text just doesn't pause in any way and just goes to the next page. This has the unfortunate result of it being hard to catch some of the text at the end before it immediately disappears when it proceeds to the next page. It also has the REALLY unfortunate result of making it extremely difficult to screenshot a lot of the text here - I either screenshot the next page by being too late, or cut off the end of the text by being too early. Even at the slowest game speed, there were multiple times I had to re-do sections over and over because I missed the screenshot. I was literally yelling at my computer when it literally took more than a dozen times to get a decent enough screenshot dealing with some tapestries that will appear in the next post. The upshot of all this is that in this case, I missed the text that I was being ambushed and that they got the drop on me). [ATTACH type="full" alt="Screenshot 2024-03-20 160801.png"]352651[/ATTACH] As the battle starts, they've moved from two organized lines to flanking me, all during the surprise round. The thieves come in two types, the 1st-level thieves with 4 HP and the tougher, but thankfully less numerous, 6th-level thieves with 28 HP. Also, don't let them get behind you! A backstab, especially by the 6th-level thieves, can be very unpleasant! Also, why are all the thieves shirtless? I don't know if it's supposed to indicate leather armor or what, but it kind of looks silly. They're all wearing blue shirts in the window illustrations, so why not follow that? Brother Baltor and Brin are about to even the odds quite quickly though... [ATTACH type="full" alt="Screenshot 2024-03-20 160813.png"]352652[/ATTACH] [ATTACH type="full" alt="Screenshot 2024-03-20 160824.png"]352653[/ATTACH] [ATTACH type="full" alt="Screenshot 2024-03-20 160846.png"]352655[/ATTACH] Brin gets her spell off first, as [I]hold person [/I]has a casting time, while [I]sleep[/I] doesn't. [ATTACH type="full" alt="Screenshot 2024-03-20 160918.png"]352656[/ATTACH] Brother Baltor targets the three 6th-level thieves, but unfortunately, only one fails his save. Not to be outdone, and because he literally has some foes right in his face, Bragir casts [I]stinking cloud[/I]. [ATTACH type="full" alt="Screenshot 2024-03-20 161009.png"]352657[/ATTACH] A short time later, with most of them down or incapacitated, their morale breaks and they start to run. In many cases, the ones right by my melee are killed due to opportunity attacks, but some do manage, annoyingly, to run across the room. [ATTACH type="full" alt="Screenshot 2024-03-20 161212.png"]352658[/ATTACH] Bragir takes that one out. Shortly thereafter, there are only helpless foes. [ATTACH type="full" alt="Screenshot 2024-03-20 161242.png"]352659[/ATTACH] And soon, no foes at all. [ATTACH type="full" alt="Screenshot 2024-03-20 161305.png"]352660[/ATTACH] Unfortunately, this group of thieves didn't have any decent loot, so we'll search around a bit to see what we can find and clear out any remaining foes here. (The number of foes needed to clear the block isn't counted by number of encounters, but by actual number of foes defeated in battle, and we need to take down 21 in total. This fight alone took down the majority of that, thankfully) Ever wary of traps and ambushes, we'll have Search on for most of the time. But sometimes not even that will help: [ATTACH type="full" alt="Screenshot 2024-03-20 161550.png"]352661[/ATTACH] Yeah, these random backstabs get very annoying. But it makes even more enjoyable when you catch one! [ATTACH type="full" alt="Screenshot 2024-03-20 161625.png"]352662[/ATTACH] [ATTACH type="full" alt="Screenshot 2024-03-20 161634.png"]352663[/ATTACH] [ATTACH type="full" alt="Screenshot 2024-03-20 161702.png"]352664[/ATTACH] He lasts about as long as you would think. And give about as much XP as you would think. [ATTACH type="full" alt="Screenshot 2024-03-20 161706.png"]352665[/ATTACH] Before we go much further: [ATTACH type="full" alt="Screenshot 2024-03-20 161758.png"]352666[/ATTACH] This is getting old very quickly. At least having Search on is helpful in other ways. The text stating that the party found a trap flashed by too quickly for me to screenshot, unfortunately. [ATTACH type="full" alt="Screenshot 2024-03-20 161821.png"]352667[/ATTACH] Buffy attempts to disarm it. She's going to earn her keep in this section. [ATTACH type="full" alt="Screenshot 2024-03-20 161833.png"]352668[/ATTACH] We search the room a bit more: [ATTACH type="full" alt="Screenshot 2024-03-20 161909.png"]352671[/ATTACH] Yeah, we're not going to leave good treasure behind. But best to be cautious and search the area carefully: [ATTACH type="full" alt="Screenshot 2024-03-20 162301.png"]352673[/ATTACH] And yes, it was trapped. Buffy steps forward again and attempts to disarm. (And because of the rapidly disappearing text, I missed a few screenshots here and had to go back to my previous save, which was several rooms back. So Brin now has not been backstabbed, but Baroness Bella has. I started saving in virtually every room after this so I wouldn't need to backtrack so far again). [ATTACH type="full" alt="Screenshot 2024-03-20 162316.png"]352675[/ATTACH] Buffy is successful at disarming the trap, and we get quite the reward! Brother Baltor casts [I]detect magic[/I], and confirms that it's all enchanted! [ATTACH type="full" alt="Screenshot 2024-03-20 162632.png"]352676[/ATTACH] As we examine them more closely, we find some interesting items [ATTACH type="full" alt="Screenshot 2024-03-20 162659.png"]352677[/ATTACH] The shield will definitely be helpful (and Baroness Bella equips it for herself), but all we can hope for with that broadsword is that we can dupe the shopkeep like we did with the necklace. The rest of the items are pretty meh, despite being magical. We already have superior equipment in most cases. [ATTACH type="full" alt="Screenshot 2024-03-20 162813.png"]352678[/ATTACH] We give Brother Baltor the magical chainmail, which will allow his scale mail to be sold. (He traded all the other items to Bant to carry - I tend to fill inventory from top to bottom as the characters are listed - it's easier to track who has stuff to carry and be sold that way). [ATTACH type="full" alt="Screenshot 2024-03-20 162905.png"]352679[/ATTACH] We head out of that room, and search around further. (And I made a bit of mistake by doing so. I [I]should[/I] have just not searched for traps with the loot earlier - this would have triggered an encounter with the remaining thieves, and I could have wiped out the rest in one fell swoop. Now I have to catch and take them out one by one. Luckily there are only a few left) The thieves are still at it though. Sometimes we don't catch them: [ATTACH type="full" alt="Screenshot 2024-03-20 162944.png"]352681[/ATTACH] And sometimes we do. [ATTACH type="full" alt="Screenshot 2024-03-20 163054.png"]352682[/ATTACH] We catch the thief who ran to the east after our very first encounter here. [ATTACH type="full" alt="Screenshot 2024-03-20 163203.png"]352683[/ATTACH] Again, a single thief against the whole party goes quickly, even if he's one of the 6th-level thieves: [ATTACH type="full" alt="Screenshot 2024-03-20 163219.png"]352684[/ATTACH] (By the way, it says he's using a longsword, but is very obviously holding a dagger in his icon) A few rooms beyond this, all our searching comes up with something exciting! (The message saying so was one of those that didn't allow me to take a screenshot). [ATTACH type="full" alt="Screenshot 2024-03-20 163704.png"]352685[/ATTACH] [ATTACH type="full" alt="Screenshot 2024-03-20 163722.png"]352686[/ATTACH] [ATTACH type="full" alt="Screenshot 2024-03-20 163736.png"]352687[/ATTACH] The leather armor is as good as her bracers in AC, so we'll switch out just for RP purposes. Also, we'll let her keep the short sword as well - again for RP purposes, but honestly, even with a +2 instead of a +1, a short sword will just do so much less damage (especially against large creatures - remember 1e had different damage for weapons for large and above creatures) than their current longswords will (and Brother Baltor has a [I]mace +2[/I] anyway). [ATTACH type="full" alt="Screenshot 2024-03-20 163835.png"]352688[/ATTACH] As it's getting near the upload limit, I'll end this post here. There's still a lot of places to visit here in the Kovel Mansion, and we'll continue the exploration in the next post! [/QUOTE]
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