Champions of Krynn Trilogy

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I'm going to play the whole trilogy (CoK + DKoK + DQoK) with one party for all three parts.
I've already played the 4 older PoR series games and the 2 savage frontier games, but I'm pretty clueless about the Krynn universe.
I'm undecided if I should try the PC or the Amiga version.

Since I want to keep my party until the end I don't want to make errors during the creation process which I'll regret later.

What do you think would be the best party for playing all three parts ?

I'm thinking about a party composition like the following:
M LG Human Knight
F NG Kender Cleric of Mishakal/Thief
F NG Silvanesti Cleric of Majere/Ranger
F CG Qualinesti Cleric of Kiri-Jolith/Fighter/White Mage
F LN Qualinesti Cleric of Shinare/Fighter/Red Mage
M CN Qualinesti Cleric of Sirrion/Fighter/Red Mage

 

You have the right idea for the party - multi classes rule!

If this is your first time playing games from this series, then that party is a decent choice. Kender is a must-try because it is different, and you have both mage types.

The choice of cleric gods isn't such a big deal in the long run. The extra (charm person) spells are handy in Champions of Krynn, but become more or less useless in Dark Queen. Personally I like Mishakal, Majere and Shinare. But like I said, it doesn't really make a big difference later on, especially if you level your guys up to 40.

If this is not your first try, I really don't like kenders. I hardly ever Yell anyways - I'd rather not see them dead . And they aren't the best clerics (16 WIS, max level 12). I would instead take a fighter/mage/thief and balance the number of white and red mages. Plus you get extra attacks per round to backstab more.

 

The choice of cleric gods doesn't seem so unimportant to me. The extra spells might get useless but bonusses like +1 thac0 might stay useful during the whole game. Are there any deities I should take because of extra quests in the game ?

No way I'm playing without a Kender, especially since I saw how they were mentioned in the DQoK intro.
What excactly does their Yell do ?

The default DQoK party has 2 white and only 1 red robe mage, so I'm considering using 2 white and 1 red too instead of 2 red and 1 white. What do you recommend ?

Should I change the knight orders as soon or as late as possible ?
The extra spells don't seem to be enough to even out the slower gain of levels which affects HP,thac0,extra attacks and saving throws.

I won't use any haste spells since I don't like the aging effects.
I'll also try to avoid charm spells because I need the XP.

Is 40 the highest available level in DQoK ?

Does thac0 progression stop like in PoD at level 17(warrior) and 21(thief) ?

 

I'm going to have to pull out those old manuals to answer these questions

There are no extra quests depending on cleric gods. So choose as you please.

ok, so you're keeping the kender. I usually like my thieves to be part fighter for more THAC0 and backstab... but since kender's fighter level caps at 5, I guess cleric/thief is the better way to go.

Yelling causes affected enemies (they get a saving throw) to target attacks at the kender. It is supposed to spare the rest of the party from harm, like force an archer to hit the kender instead of your vulnerable mage. Or force a dragon to breath on the kender positioned far away so that no one else gets hurt. Or force a mage to center his fireball on your kender, which you had cleverly moved behind enemy lines, so that the mage ends up fireballing his own side.

So in all cases, the kender exposes himself to damage to save the party... which means he has a greater chance to get killed.

You know that the difference between white mage and red mage is the spell lists right? Check to see which spells are available to which colour. Both colours get the essentials like fireballs and lightning bolts. Only red mages get haste and slow though, which are great for tough battles. But one red mage is enough for that.

After that, white mages tend to be more defensive and status-inducing. They get the charm, confusion, paralyzation type of spells, as well as the defensive globe of invulnerabiltiy and mind blank (a.k.a. chaotic commands in BG2). Red mages on the other hand have more potential to be fighter/mages. They get the illusions like mirror image, dimension door, fear, and also fire touch and iron skin (less dramatic than BG2 stone or iron skin). I like to have my F/red mage/T do this job behind enemy ranks.

In the end, it comes down to style and spell tastes. Look at the spell lists more closely to decide. Personally I would take 2 white and 1 red because I like mass charm, confuse and hold spells.

Knight orders... I recall them having an effect on game play, like quests. Something like you have to be a knight of the sword or rose to do something... but can't remember how important it was. Staying as Knight of Crown sounds like a good approach... it's not like you need MORE cleric spells in that party He IS your only single class character, so he might be ahead in levels already.

You can still get experience for charmed enemies, as long as they die before you end the battle. So if the enemies didn't kill him, you could kill him yourself. But be careful, sometimes NPC's won't like the fact that you attack your allies and they might turn against you, and you could lose the NPC permanently. The way around this is to kill him with magic; just magic missile him to death.

40th level is indeed the highest in DQK. Race permitting of course.

No idea about the THAC0. It's not in the manual apparently.

 

If the answers were written in the manual I would have found out on my own.


I read the spell descriptions, but the manual doesn't mention which spells affect which monsters, "Hold Monster" would be useless for example if only 1 HD goblins would be affected.

I will take 2 white robes, hold monster was my 2nd favourite spell after the level 40 delayed blast fireballs in PoD.

I considered making my kender neutral for level7 cleric spells, but since 16 wis won't allow cast them, the extra HP seem more useful to me.
Yelling is useless if there isn't any other bonus, my kender will have the lowest HP in my party.

I'd like to play with a all-kender party, just to humiliate the big bad guys even more , but this would probably be suicide.

 

Yup, that's why I said to avoid kender if you've been through the game before. The manual does mention taunted / yelled enemies suffer a combat penalty, but there are no numbers. Still useless in my eyes.

Almost all the spells are exactly the same as in Pools of Darkness. So Hold Monster will still be just as fun.

I don't like how the cleric spell list got reduced. They lost all the cause wound spells including poison, slay living and harm. And their new seventh level spells are just restoration pretty much. They did get Blade Barrier though, which is a great offensive damage spell. It targets like a stinking cloud; same range and 2x2 area of effect. But it cuts people standing in there each turn if they don't save for up to 60 damage.

As for mage spell changes... cloud kill got improved. It kills weaker creatures as before, but now it deals 1-10 damage to creatures in the area of effect too. And of course there's the new high level mage spells which you'll discover.

Oh yeah... I almost forgot Rangers get some new 3rd level druid spells too. Nothing terribly spectacular though, although Protection from Fire is extremely useful. Hold Animal is useless.

Oh by the way in Pools of Darkness... did you finish it? There was one insane battle near the end where you are surrounded on all four sides with undead or death dragons (can't remember), those lightning shielded guys and their red cousins, and other monsters.... I think it was the tail end of back to back battles or something too. How did you survive!?

 

The only characters you really need are a Solamnic Knight and a pure class thief.
The latter is most important because you cannot finish 'Champions' without it. There is a door at the end of the game you absolutely have to open. Multiclass thiefs are not able to do this.

By the way: Since when can Kender be clerics of Mishakal in these games? IIRC, their only option is Reorx.

 

@Fabius: Which version did you play ?
Are you sure I need a pure class thief ?
They recommend a party with kender cleric/thief multiclass as only thief in the manual, who should be able to reach the highest thief level as well.

When I played "Gateway to the Savage Frontier" there was a trap my thief couldn't disarm no matter how often he tried but my Paladin finally managed to disarm it. Maybe it's something similar.

Maybe I can bash the door with the help from the enlarge spell or use the knock spell ?
How did you open the door ? Did you add a pure thief to your party extra for this ?

I guess Kender don't count as dwarfs in the game. They don't have much in common with them stat-wise. Low strength an wisdom and high dexterity instead of high con and low dex don't sound very dwarf-like.

@Blog: Are you talking about the final battle to save the world consisting of 3 battles in a row, first battle dracolichs, pets of Kallistes and others, second battle against beholders and third battle against the bad guy and his minions with electric or other fire shields where you can't use magic ?

Or are you talking about the bonus challenge you can sail to after the world has been saved and time has been turned back ?

Do you agree with Fabius ?

 

It is Dwarves that are restricted to Reorx. Kender is a different race that can be any cleric.

I do not remember a door to open. I'm pretty sure I finished the game without a pure thief though. I'll double check the solution later. And as kmonster says, Kender can max thief levels, so there's nothing he can't do. When the game makes a thief skill check like that, it is based on dexterity or thief level... but definitely not multi or pure class.

I think I mean the three straight battles to save the world, not the bonus challenge. How'd you pull it off?

 

About the battle:

My party consisted of

fighter15/mage40
fighter10/cleric40
cleric9/thief40
paladin40
paladin15/ranger40
ranger10/mage40

3 were created PoR, 3 from CotAB, all had maxed HP and stats. I played the PC version.

Most important is pre-buffing in the right order.
I didn't use haste in the whole series but there are many good spells. Level 40 enlarge gave 22 strength to anyone except the strength girdle users for example.

My F/M closed the portal before the battle. He got seriously damaged but less monsters appeared.

1.Battle: Cleric cast heal on the F/M, delayed blast fireballs killed all except the dracolichs who were held with hold monster (4 with the first spell) and slain.

2.Battle: Just hope for good saves and kill the beholders.
Then wait with ending the battle, heal the party and refresh buffing spells.

3.Battle: The main tactic in this battle was getting my fire-shielded mages hit in melee to deal out double damage. Shooting might also be useful.

When you survive these battles you have saved the world. You can start the bonus challenge at the end.

 

Wow good job! You know what I did? For the third battle, I ran my party around a corner and waited it out.

I should try your fireshield idea out sometime.

 

Which PoD version did you play ?
Which version (C64, Amiga, PC) of the Krynn trilogy did you play ? I'm going to try the amiga versions.

 

I played PC versions of both. The PoD came in the box of 12 AD&D rpgs, which included the Savage Frontier games, Eye of the Beholder series and a few others. The 3 Krynn games I got together in a different set.

OK I double checked the thief business. Yes, there is a lock that is essential to open to finish the game. However, there exists a key to open the lock if you LOOKed around. And the lock can be opened by a skillful thief if you can't find the key.

 

@Blog: I played the Amiga version. I actually had on my second run throughh the game two T7/C9: A dwarf and a kender. Both were not able to open the door and it was not bashable.

I'm checking my ancient solution-magazine for all old SSI/TSR-CRPGs. One moment...

The door I meant is no door. I remember now. In Kernen, there is an magical guardian which is only destroyable with some alchemical potion or something. You'll have to find the recipe, which is in a book that is found in a room to the north-north-east in the keep.
The book with the recipe is locked. My T/C-characters were not able to open the book.

(Or was it the lock on the door? Damn, that's like 15 years ago.)

 

Thanks, I will keep my cleric/thief then.

After I've encountered too many errors in the Amiga version (don't know if it's because of the game or because of my UAE configuration) I've decided to play the PC version too.

Moslo version 1.32 works well as slowdown program on my k6-500.(Version 2.0 didn't work.)
The EGA graphics look nice and I've already made a screenshot even before creating my party. I wish I had known about the screenshot feature in Win98 when I played the other 6 gold box games.

I guess I have the same box with the 12 AD&D games and some idiotic copy protections.
In PoR I learned the codes after playing a few times and in CotAB I usually just typed a random letter and restarted when the code was wrong. It was still faster than using the code wheel.

I installed and configured EoB, but I'll probably never finish it since I don't like realtime rpgs that much.
Gameplay consists mainly of clicking as fast as possible. It's a Diablo style game with less character development.
I had exspected something different.

 

Good memory Fabius, that is exactly what the lock is for... I had to go back and look at the solutions to remember what this is all about. Maybe the Amiga version is different, or you didn't find the key (in a nearby room).

That's what I do for the copy protections too! I still have some memorized... like the introduction paragraph starts out like "Welcome to the official ...." and they ask for word 1 and word 4.

I think the EoB's had plot or a storyline behind it still, but it's probably not good since I don't remember it either. Compare this to Dungeon Hack, which has no plot at all - its just a dungeon crawl and or treasure hunt, in real time again. But it is still fun (and replayable) because the maps are randomly generated. Menzoberranzan is real time too, but I think you should still try it. Blood and Magic is a slow real time strategy game which you probably won't like.

 

I don't have enough time to play everything.

Is there a time limit in CoK or can I rest for centuries without consequences ?

I realized that I got different amounts of money for selling seemingly identic non-magical ring mails. For some 5, for the others 17 steel each. Is there any logic behind that ?

@Fabius: Did many errors (recoverable alerts, crashes, partially invisible characters on the battle screen, items not lootable...) appear when you played the game 15 years ago ?

 

Rest all you want. If there IS a time limit somewhere, you'll see it coming loud and clear.

Nope, no clue behind the selling prices. Maybe you can investigate it for us. Some hunches I have are new vs used equipment, the stats of the character selling like if he's a knight or thief, or charisma.. not sure what else applies.

 

The price doesn't depend on the selling character and all armor was looted after fights.
Maybe it depends if the armor is from a common hobgoblin or a hobgoblin leader.
Maybe it's just to give different rewards for different monsters without having to invent new armor names.
I remember similar things when playing the other gold box games, like the arrows +2 which didn't want to join with each other.


I've met the first joinable NPC.
I hope there is no NPC who takes away the magical items from my party loot.
Do the NPCs you encounter only take away experience or do they add something storywise ?
Although a helping hand in combat is not really needed I'll probably try all of them.
I guess I can earn enough money and experience with random encounters.

 

Most of the NPC's have an effect on certain events that happen in the area in which you find them. The NPC's you meet later in the game add to the story a great deal more than the guys you find at the beginning. I don't think any one of them stay around permanently; not in Champions of Krynn at least. I usually don't share my best stuff with NPC's anyways