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[kad3t]

Originally Posted by hunvagy

(...)
And yes, they are difficult in the beginning, because low level heroes are wimps A good party and decent stats can help. And as a little tidbit, if you are not happy with the generated stats, you can modifiy the characters before starting out and max all stats, if it helps (and yes, it will).
(...)
if your party hits level 2-3, it'll be a lot easier.

And as on the matter of Xeen being better then CoK, I'd strongly disagree. They are very different games from my perspective, the Gold Box games have more involving quests and a better written story, while Xeen is mostly a go and massacre everything the comes in your path game. Which has been carried along in all M&M titles. Plus as mentioned before, the combat in CoK is more strategic, you have to move your characters around and watch out for them to be successful.

Right. I have all of the Golden Box games and plan on completeing them all sooner or later. That may be difficult though as I usually play for no more than 1 to 3 hours a day and have to divide that time between multiple games - I belive that I mentioned liking variety - currently CoK, UFO Enemy Unknown and very soon WoX & also one of the Civilizations.

As for GB games difficulty I've based that opinion on my former try of a playthrough of PoR, but I belive now after spending some time on CoK that my approach to the game itself may have been wrong. My characters are at levels ranging from 1 to 4 & I managed to learn a lot about which usefullness of certain classes by now. It's a bit easier now also but some battles are more epic too. What I love about battle system in GB games is it's tactical & unit based. Reminds me of UFO, Sabre Team, Jagged Alliance & so forth and gives a better degree of control over my team. Also it's a nice touch that you can import your characters from earlier to latter games upon their completion.

All in all I'm happy with my current CoK game apart from a little drawback of built in maps being crap but I suppose I could always draw my own.

[kmonster]

CoK is shorter than PoR, a good choice to start the Gold Box games, especially if you don't have much time to play.

Sleep is very powerful in early battles, stinking cloud is a nice level 2 spell, it's extremely important that you learn how to aim fireball spells when your mages reach level 5.
Clerics have "hold person" to make battles easier.
Before hard battles cast buff spells like bless, protection from evil, prayer and disable search, the buffs will still be active when you start the battle, just don't forget to reenable search after the battle, so nothing is missed.
To make the game easier save before levelling up your characters, if you are not happy with the hitpoints you get just remove all characters and reload the game.

What party composition did you choose to play the game ?

[kad3t]

Originally Posted by kmonster

CoK is shorter than PoR, a good choice to start the Gold Box games, especially if you don't have much time to play.

The main reason why I chose CoK was that it also had more than one part, so I could move my characters to latter games and when I tried playing PoR last (a year or so ago) I got literally crushed in my first ever battle.

Originally Posted by kmonster

Sleep is very powerful in early battles, stinking cloud is a nice level 2 spell, it's extremely important that you learn how to aim fireball spells when your mages reach level 5.
Clerics have "hold person" to make battles easier.

I've never tried Sleep it just sounded not to usefull, but may change my mind now. Does it work for all creatures or just humans?

As for Hold Person I am loving that bad boy like there's no thing. It saved me so many times it's hard to count them. ^__^

Originally Posted by kmonster

(...) just don't forget to reenable search after the battle, so nothing is missed.
To make the game easier save before levelling up your characters, if you are not happy with the hitpoints you get just remove all characters and reload the game.

I learned about search just recently. I was stumbling along the first location, the dungeons where you have to get the key, find the hidden door and so on, anyway it does help but I learned little late though. Better late than at all I suppose. ^__^

Originally Posted by kmonster

What party composition did you choose to play the game ?

At the moment it's Two knights, one thief, one mage, one mage/cleric & one fighter. One of the knights was meant to be a ranger but I must've misclicked and not noticed until I started of. ^__^

[kmonster]

Sleep works on all low level enemies except undead.
I always had search on. There's no time limit in the game, you can spend thousands of days without getting older. There's only magical aging.

What races did you choose for your characters ?

[hunvagy]

Also beginning from level 2, the fighter classes can something akin to Cleave in DnD 3, meaning attacking more then one adjacent monster, which is pretty neat and handy. It works wonders in PoR, nothing like a fighter tearing through 2-9 goblins at once The number of enemies attacked depends on your level, I think, but I'm not sure, it's been a long time since I played it I take it you can only choose Solamnian Knight orders in CoK, so now Dark Knight of Takhisis, right?

[kad3t]

Originally Posted by kmonster

Sleep works on all low level enemies except undead.
I always had search on. There's no time limit in the game, you can spend thousands of days without getting older. There's only magical aging.

What races did you choose for your characters ?

My characters are as follows...

Figther - Human - level 4 (very good)
Knight - Human - level 3
Knight - Half-Elf - level 3 (dies often, probably due to his race)
Thief - Half-Elf - level 4 (currently DEAD)
White Mage - Half-Elf - level 3 (useless)
Sirrion Cleric/Red Mage - Qualinesti Elf - level 3/3 (awesome)

As you see there's no odd races here like Dwarfs or Kenders but it's just because I don't like to play them as my characters. Same goes for halflings, orcs and all the other weird creatures (even though neither's present in CoK). ^__^

[kad3t]

Originally Posted by hunvagy

Also beginning from level 2, the fighter classes can something akin to Cleave in DnD 3, meaning attacking more then one adjacent monster, which is pretty neat and handy. It works wonders in PoR, nothing like a fighter tearing through 2-9 goblins at once The number of enemies attacked depends on your level, I think, but I'm not sure, it's been a long time since I played it I take it you can only choose Solamnian Knight orders in CoK, so now Dark Knight of Takhisis, right?

Yeah... That fighter I've got in my party is a real killing machine. Anytime he manages to kill something he get's another try at another enemy... Sadly can't say the same thing about my other characters. Well, cleric/mage is good to and saved my group loads of times but apart from these two the rest is so so or useless. Well, I will know for the future games how to build my characters better.

[hunvagy]

Originally Posted by kad3t

My characters are as follows...

Figther - Human - level 4 (very good)
Knight - Human - level 3
Knight - Half-Elf - level 3 (dies often, probably due to his race)
Thief - Half-Elf - level 4 (currently DEAD)
White Mage - Half-Elf - level 3 (useless)
Sirrion Cleric/Red Mage - Qualinesti Elf - level 3/3 (awesome)

As you see there's no odd races here like Dwarfs or Kenders but it's just because I don't like to play them as my characters. Same goes for halflings, orcs and all the other weird creatures (even though neither's present in CoK). ^__^

well halfling == kender But kenders make great thieves.. statwise anyway

[kmonster]

Fighters, knights, rangers and paladins should all be able to sweep through weak enemies. But this only works against level 1 monsters who aren't really threatening for an experienced party.

If a character dies I recommend reloading, if you use the "raise dead" spell he looses 1 constitution permanently when he is brought back from the dead and is crippled permanently.
I guess that's why your half-elf knight died so often, each time he dies and gets raised he gets weaker and will therefore die more easily.
Half elves get the same stats as humans except strength, they aren't more vulnerable than humans.


Your knights shouldn't attack much weaker than your fighter (only -1 to hit because of 1 level difference) unless they have worse equipment and or lower strength.
Pure class thief is a bad idea, even a triple class thief should be able to max out thief levels before the end. I'd replace this character with a fighter/thief, fighter/thief/red mage or good aligned cleric/thief (especially useful at locations where you can't rest for healing), you get more hitpoints and additional power this way.
Your white mage can cast sleep and stinking cloud, when he learns fireball at level 5 he'll be able to do a lot of damage.


I don't recommend taking your party through the whole trilogy (Just import them to give their equipment to freshly created characters in DKoK if you want to keep it.)

Freshly generated DKoK characters will have nearly as many XP as characters who finished CoK, they aren't crippled by "raise dead" or aged by "haste" (very powerful !) spells and while the hitpoints you get at level up in CoK are random you can maximize hitpoints after creation for DKoK characters.

So you'll have a weaker party at the end of DKoK if you import from CoK (unless you never die, never use haste and always get maximum HP at level up), but you'll want a powerful party to export to the big and difficult Dark Queen of Krynn game.

Your party is good enough for CoK, but not for keeping it for the whole trilogy. If you want to lead one party through the whole trilogy look at the racial level restrictions in the DQoK adventurer journal.
Your half-elf knight and mage will both stop at level 10 although you're supposed to have level 14 characters in DKoK and level 40 characters in DQoK.
A pure class thief will be weak during all 3 games.
Fighters level fast, but pure fighters will reach the level cap and stop improving early, they're ok in CoK, but in DKoK and DQoK paladins and knights are superior because of their additional abilities and multiclass fighters get benefits from more than one class.
The human knight and qualinesti cleric/red mage are good for the trilogy if they don't ever die in CoK, aren't aged by haste and maximum hitpoints are enforced at level up (a level 3 knight can have 56, a level 3/3 cleric/mage 24 hitpoints).

[El Quia]

Kenders != Halflings it is just that halflings doesn't exists in Krynn (as there are no orc, neither). But yeah, the play the same role, that of the thief Although yo shouldn't call a Kender a thief, they will deny it. Also, kenders have taunt And they are great at ranged fighting with the hoopak at low levels.

The Sleep spell was always a great low level spell for low level characters. Its usefulness quickly fades away, though, because it can't affect anything with more than 4+3 hd. But meanwhile, those it can affect (any non-undead humanoid with less than 4+3 hd) are affected without any right to saving throw... although magic resistance still applies.. which means that you shouldn't be using this spell against elves (and half elves to a lot lesser degree. Elves have 90% resistance to it, while half elves have 30%). But it will not affect all the critter, only a number of critters determined randomly.

About that "cleave-like" effect, that is because fighters (including rangers, paladins and knights) have a number of attacks equal to its level against creatures with less than a hit dice. And goblins are 1-1 hd, so it counts as less than a hit dice

And white mages aren't useless, it just that they start to be really useful starting at level 5, when they acquire fireball

And no, I don't think it's the race fault that your half-elven knight dies often. In fact, IIRC, in Krynn the half-elf receive a very nice bonus to dexterity, which adds to its armor class. Maybe you just had bad luck, either with enemies' attack roll or his hit points rolls?

I don't think making your only cleric a multiclass is really wise... that means he will have to divide his experience between all his classes, making him lower level than his companions... and you need all the cure X wounds spells you can get... and if you take into account that, unlike D&D 3rd edition, after the cure light wounds the next cure spell is a 4th level spell (that you get at level 7), you have unnecessary gave you a handicap. Fortunately, I think that the crown knights have access to some clerical spells, starting at level 4... and the knights of the rose have access to the lay on hands power... or was it the other way around? I am too lazy to go looking for my Dragonlance boxed set

The hold person is a nice spell, yes, except that it doesn't work on critters not considered "person" Also, you have to take into account that, while you can target as much as 4 people with it, the less you target the harder is the saving throw. Again, elves and (to a lesser degree) half elves are resistant to this (as it is a charm-like spell), and other critters can have magic resistance. But, without taking that into account, the thing is that targetting 3 or 4 people let's them have a normal saving throw against paralization (remember, clerics have a better saving throw against this than other classes), 2 targets impose a -1 to the saving throw and 1 target is a -3 IIRC. That that into account. Also, silence is GREAT against spellcasters Also, don't forget the Pray spell when you gain access to level 3 spells.

And I think that's it. Personally, I don't like making a full thief in these games, seeing as the strong point of this class doesn't merit a full class. Usually I make three warrior-class characters to be on the front line, a cleric in the 4th position, a mage in the 5th (so he is in the middle of the back row) and a cleric/thief (or mage/thief, depending on my mood) on the 6th. That is a nice build in my opinion. And I usually don't care for rangers too much, even though his bonus against giant creatures is nice, it doesn't compensates for his incapability to use armor heavier than studded leather.

Also, IIRC, elves doesn't make great clerics seeing as their race limits its cleric level to 12 (or was it 9?). But I can't remember if these games used the race limit to class levels...