Dark Sun: Wake of the Ravager

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After finishing the great predecessor, Shattered Lands, it's now time to continue with Wake of the Ravager.
I've imported my party consisting of half-giant ranger/cleric(water), thri-kreen fighter/psionicist/druid(earth), half-elf ranger(air)/thief/preserver and human gladiator8/druid(fire)/preserver9. After the starting battle (unlike with a freshly created party difficulty was set to hardest) they levelled up (everyone had about 1,650,000 XP), the dualclass class preserver lost XP and stopped at preserver level 13 at 1,125,000 XP.
Some items were transferred in a "strange" way, with chest armor in the girdle slot and nonsense magic symbols in their description for example.
Prices are also different for the identical items, the price of the imported arrows +1 is different from what the merchant's price, but they stack, the price displayed at the merchant is false.


I'm seriously considering playing this game from scratch instead of importing for several reasons:

1) Those bugs with the imported items are annoying and I fear they will become even worse, maybe even corrupting savegames.
2) At darksun online it's recommended to delete the imported characters and only keep the items by transferring to a dummy character to avoid ruining the game.
3) According to the version readme of the patch there are racial level restrictions. When using the cheat command to level the party up my half-giant ranger/cleric stopped levelling as ranger as level 12, I don't know how it works in the regular game but I don't want want a crippled tank who doesn't even reach level 13 for the extra half attack.
The dualclass preserver build also isn't made for WotR.
4) I've read somewhere that the game doubles all enemy hitpoints (which is equivalent to halving all physical and spell damage you do) if you import from SL, making the later part of the game impossible to beat. Is this true ?
While I'm not afraid of the difficulty I don't like the thought of my characters doing only half the damage they are supposed to, it slows down the game and a 24 str half-giant has to be deadly and shouldn't be less damaging than a standard halfling in a standard game.


So what are your thoughts ?
Should I start the game with imported characters and equipment or start from scratch ?

 

I've never played the sequel but I know a number of people who have. None of them ever had this problem with imported items. It's definitely something to worry about. Did you try moving the items to different in slots in SL and importing again to see if this changes anything?

I remember the racial restrictions, but I also remember that if you have high enough values in certain stats (was it the class's main stats?) you could go all the way to 15/15, at least for multiclasses.

As for doubling hitpoints, is this something that the game does when you import, or just because it automatically sets the difficulty to max? If the latter, you could just take the difficulty back to normal.

 

I had the import Item issue way back when. It made the game unplayable. Sucks too, as El's Drinker is an AWESOME weapon in the Hands of a Half-Giant. Makes him nigh unstoppable. I have no recollection of the enemies having double HPs though. Maybe they did and I didn't even notice it, the end game was tough.

Play from Scratch. More challenging that way.

 

My transferred party had even 4 El's Drinker. (3 from the friendly genie)

Reason number 4) for not importing doesn't apply. I've fought the starting battle with the pregenerated party at normal and with the imported characters both at normal and hardest difficulty. At the same difficulty setting enemies have the same number of hitpoints independent of the party.

While testing if harder difficulty grants more XP I made a surprising observation: At hardest difficulty the party gets less XP for the first battle, at normal you get 4,000 + 8,000 + 8000 XP for the 3 draxans, at hardest only 4,000 + 4,000 + 8,000 XP.

There's a strange bug at character creation. Double class characters get far less hitpoints than they are supposed to, but a few times it worked correctly. I've no clue how to enforce this to happen.

I've decided to start with a new party to avoid annoyances and get a better balance, the game is obviously not made for playing with a party imported from the prequel.

For planning my party I need an idea about how many XP you can gain during the game. Can triple class casters reach level 14 in order to cast the highest level 7 spells ? Will a human gladiator14/preserver14/druid15 ever finish dualclassing ? How many XP did you have before the last battles ?

 

It's been a long time since I played this one. But I'm pretty sure that with playing thru the game and not trying to rest over and over for random fights and extra XP, that my Dualed Fighter/Preserver was Fighter(7), Preserver(14???.. just reached 7th level spells right before my final battle). Don't have the XP charts in front of me, but that should help as a reference. I'm sure I missed some stuff in the game and you can probably reach higher levels.

I usually went with

- Half-Giant - Fig/Psi -
- Thri-Kreen - Fig/Drd/Psi
- Human - Fig/Pre Dualled or Half-Elf Fig/Pre/Thf Multi
- Dwarf - Fig/Thf or Fig/Cle

 

Only about 1,500,000 XP per character until the final battle ?
My party earned more XP during the first game.
Thanks for the information, I guess early dualclassing will be the best way to get both high level spells and some fighting ability.

I'm thinking of something like

half-giant gladiator (maybe fighter or multiclass fighter instead)
thri-kreen fighter/druid/psionic or t-k fighter/cleric/psionic or dwarf fighter/psionic/thief or dwarf fighter/psionic/cleric
human gladiator8-9/preserver8-10/druid or cleric
human gladiator8-9/thief5 or 9-10/preserver

I won't start before next week, advice and comments are welcome.

 

I don't see any full preserver in there, so you'll be missing out on level 6 and 7 spells. Not having played the game I'm not sure how essential they are, but considering how important magic was in the first game I'd say having a dedicated preserver is important. As for the half-giant, is there any reason to go with a pure fighter instead of a gladiator? The XP difference is extremely minor (both will max out way before the end game anyway) and I think the gladiator had a couple of nice extras.

 

I'll have a dualclass preserver in the party. If I choose gladiator8/thief5/preserver (I hope for this is enough for the gameplay options thieves get) the character will only have about 75,000 + 10,000 + 60,000 = 145,000 less preserver XP than a pure class preserver who needs 375,000 XP for an additional level up after level 11. A multiclass will have to spend 1,500,000 or even 3,000,000 XP for other classes until level 14 is reached for casting level 7 spells.
The pregenerated party has only a triple class preserver who won't even be able to cast level 6 spells (requires 2,250,000 XP) during the game, so with a dualclass my party will definitely have more arcane casting power.

I'm rather worried about divine casting power since the pregenerated party has a pure class cleric (are they so important ?) and a doubleclass druid.

According to the WotR manual the only gladiator benefit compared to fighter is +1 AC and gladiators level as slowly as rangers, reaching the level 15 cap at 2,100,000 instead of 1,750,000 XP.
Since there aren't much more than 1,500,000 XP to gain during the game according to Blades of Vanatar neither gladiator nor fighter will max out.
A fighter will gain levels (and therefore thac0, hitpoints, saving throws and level 13 for the extra half attack) faster, 1,500,000 XP are required both for fighter14 and gladiator13.

 

There could be more exp than 1,500,000, I just used the example of where my party was. I could of missed some XP. don't take that as the end all, only as an example of where you party could be experience wise. Like I said in my previous post, It's been a long time since I played it.

As for your Dual gladiator8/thief5/preserver, remember that you are taking 8 Glad levels, then switching to Thief, you need to pass your glad levels as a thief to unlock the glad levels for use. Hence, you will need to be a lvl 9 thief. Then, when you switch to preserver, you need to reach level 10 to unlock the glad and thief abilities. This is explained on page 19 of the manual, 2nd paragraph under the heading "Character Classes". Just thought this might help you to not make the mistake of switching at lvl 5 thief and screw yourself if you need a thief ability later on....

 

Blades, in the build that kmonster described wouldn't he unlock the Thief abilities at preserver 6 then the gladiator ones at preserver 9? He'll be fin for thief abilities then.

 

Ziad, I don't believe so. I'm pretty sure when you triple daul in the Dark Sun games(and in 2nd edition, at least at RPGA spnsored events) the coding/rule is you must become a level higher than all previous classes. I not sure about the newer games by Black Isle. But I'm pretty sure it was also the same way in all of the old Gold & Silver boxed games. Since they and the Dark Sun series were made by SSI, that would make sense.

 

Alright, so in this case won't both gladiator and thief abilities be unlocked at preserver 9?

I may have it wrong, but I thought you were saying that, since he dualed from thief to preserver before unlocking gladiator, he'll never get the thief abilities back. Did I misunderstand?

(keep in mind I haven't played Ravager and I never dualed in SL, so this is me trying to understand the system )

 

Ok I believe it goes like this...

- Start at Glad(8)
- Dual to thief, glad locks
- When hitting Thief(9), Glad unlocks
- Dual to Preserver, Glad and Thief locks
- When hitting Preserver(10), Glad and Thief unlock

As for taking Thief up to only level 5, I believe he won't get his Thief abilites back at Preserver(10) because they are in an unlockable state. Call it a bug or bad programming. I think I ran across the same issue, but it's been years, so who knows. I was only pointing the issue out so kmonster wouldn't waste his time and get deep into the game and encounter it. Better to be safe then sorry.... Or you can always start a new game, cheat in some levels and see if it works....

 

Just a short question. How do you get the Dark Sun games to work on XP? I presume using DosBox is the right way to go about it, but I couldn`t get that to work.

 

Try the directions from this link...

http://www.cdaccess.com/html/pc/ad&dds1.htm

 

Both Dark Sun games work with DosBox 0.73 for me without special adjustments.You can find a DosBox tutorial at http://www.abandonia.com/node/23854

I've tested double dualclassing in Shattered Lands, a gladiator8/thief5/preserver reactivates thief at preserver 6 and gladiator at preserver 9, it should work the same way in WotR.
I don't think there's any other AD&D crpg which allows double dualclassing.

It's hard to decide when to dualclass, 7 gladiator and 5 thief levels are definitely worth it, since they grant twice as many attacks per round, backstab*3 and add a thief to the party for only a few XP, but are +1 to hit and 9 extra HP as useful as 75,000 or 150,000 XP, is backstab*4 as useful as 100,000 XP for example considering a preserver level costs 375,000 XP ?

I'm aware that 1,500,000 XP aren't a fixed value, but I'll definitely dual so early that I don't feel bad if my characters don't gain more XP, I'll be happy to read from others who managed to beat the game how many XP they gained until the last battle.

For the second human I've thought about taking 7 psionic instead of 8-10 preserver levels, it requires less XP and extra psionic points and about 9 psionic powers to choose are appealing, but the blink spell is even more overpowered in SL than in the gold box games (enemies still attack although they can't hit and even take damage from fireshield).

 

I never tried the triple dual in SL. Only Wake, because of it's much higher XP cap. It could be just my paranoia about when the classes unlock. I know it doesn't work that way in PnP, at leat at the RPGA events anyway. Though the average Joe can interperet it anyway they want. I have always made sure when tripling up that the next class always passed the previous in levels.

 

I've used the cheats like suggested to test double dualclassing in Wake of the Ravager, it works exactly as in Shattered Lands.

A gladiator7/thief5/preserver8 looks strange and I'm not an expert but how it's handled in the game makes sense to me.

When you dualclass in P&P you don't forget what you've learned before, you only restrain yourself from using it so you can learn and advance in the new class.
When you've reached more levels in the new class it dominates the old so you can safely use abilities from both classes without falling back to the first.

Double dualclassing should work the same way. If you start as level 7 gladiator, take 5 thief levels and dualclass to preserver you still know what you've learned in the previous classes, you just can't use it if you want to advance as preserver.
When you reach preserver 6, the preserver class will dominate the thief class so you can afford to use thief abilities.
When you reach preserver 8, the preserver class will dominate both the gladiator and thief class so you can afford to use what you learned as gladiator and thief.

It wouldn't make sense for me if a gladiator7/thief8/preserver was stabilised enough at preserver level 9 to afford using the 7 gladiator and 8 thief levels while still advancing as preserver while a gladiator7/thief5/preserver would never be stabilised enough to afford using the 7 gladiator and 5 thief levels.

 

I had to go try it out myself. And, you are right kmonster, it works exactly like you described. It's been a very long time since I played the Darksun games and has peaked my interest.

So I installed DosBox on my new system and downloaded a free version of Shattered Lands. The default screen is only about one-fifth the size of my 21.5 screen. I have played around with the instructions to try and change the screen size, but when I do, the game goes buggy. Any recommendations on an easy way to change the screen to a decent size w/out killing the game?

 

Are you playing full-screen or windowed? If windowed, there is an option in dosbox.conf called scaler, setting it to normal3x will make the window bigger without changing anything in the game. There are some other options to set an exact resolution as the output, but they require tweaking some other options in tandem. Let me know if scaler does the trick, and if it's still too small (probably will be on 22'') I'll walk you through the others.