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[The Fifth Horseman]

On 3rd June. And yes, that's the one you sent.

Hello. Newbie here and I'm hoping to get some info on this game. I started playing Disciples of Steel almost 15 years ago but never got very far, and just recently picked it back up. I'm pleasantly suprised to see others giving this game a shot too.

1. I see the tip about the Thieves Tools being in the tower in Teal. What constitutes good equipment? Is banded / plate as good as it gets?

Related to this, I find it very odd that casters can equip heavy armor. Most RPGs don't allow that. Does it hurt their ability to cast?

2. Is it possible to kill things like Death Knights and Earth Elementals? I think my party is relatively strong, but I can not even touch several monster types in combat. Is this normal? Am I just too weak yet?

3. Does the quality of work really matter for weapons & armor? I've noticed that upgrading from, say, adequate ring mail to terrific ring mail does give slightly better protection, but just by a few points. Is that all the difference there is?

4. Does anyone have some basic combat strategy suggestions? I find myself only using one or two mage & illusionist spells, none of which do substantial damage. Meanwhile, the majority of damage is done by my melee specialists. I also haven't had much use for ranged weapons, instead having my ranger wield a footmen's flail. Is the combat just that imbalanced, or am I missing something? Maybe it balances out as casters gain power?

Many thanks in advance to anyone who shares their thoughts.


P.S.

I'm also stuck at the point of finding the Survivor in Teal. I searched pretty much the whole island and could not find him.

[Svend Karlson]

Hi there,

I'll try to answer your questions below. Also, I've now finished most of the town quest lines except for Farnus, Teal, Demata & Rathadon. The last I cannot continue because I attacked one of the Rathadonian villages (which is a quest in itself). The other three I cannot make progress on because without being able to find the survivor I cannot open up any of the other quest lines.

I've also cleared all but three dungeons. I cannot answer the question asked in the Lair of the Wind inside the Temple of Terrine, meaning that I cannot get through a door. I cannot provide the magic word to the Hermit in the dungeon where you find the Seal of Farnus (the island east to that of Teal, with no settlements) and I am currently part way through the Rifts under Fire Mountain.

1. To be capable against Assassins, you probably want to:

Be making 3+ attacks per round with your main fighters (200 skill points)
Be using at a minimum weapons like Halberd+20, Longsword+10, Heavy Crossbow+50
Have armour & body skills at 200 for your tanks, with Full Plate armour
Have your mages able to cast 'Deathstrike' for an instant kill

One of the best weapons you can get in the game is the Backstab Dagger used by Assassins. To the east of Farnus on the road just before it turns to the North there is a Lair (you will not find it if you simply walk onto the square, you need to 'search') which you can attack, which should contain an Assassin. Equipping your edged weapon fighters with backstab daggers is a very good idea.

2. Yes, they are possible. Both will go down immediately to a mage deathstrike. There is a Deathknight lair a couple of squares south of the SW corner of Teal. I recommend hunting for Deathknight as soon as your mages have 'Deathstrike' in order to equip yourself with the best armour (Dark Mail) and the best weapon (Sly Sword) I have seen in the game.

The forest north of Farnus also contains at least one 'Jax', who wears Light Mail, almost as good as Dark Mail.

At the point of the game I am at, with fighting skills above 300, wearing Dark Mail & using +50 weapons, I can kill off Earth Golems pretty easy. A Death Knight could probably still take my entire party if it were not for my mages Deathstrikes. I believe Living Trees are the most powerful enemies in game, as I still cannot even hurt one with an aimed shot.

3. The quality has a massive impact. I think the quality of the weapon acts as some kind of multiplier to your weapon skill. At the top end, 'Perfection' weapons outperform 'Terrific' weapons by a huge margin. Sly Swords, Backstab Daggers & named weapons (like Balen's blade) are always perfect I think.

4. My approach is to:

Develop my mages with Bow skills & Essence until they can cast Deathstrike. Deathstrike allows them to kill off any one mob, even those that your fighters cannot harm. Using bows allows them to set up for aimed shots whilst being more or less out of harms way themselves. I have two invisibility rings & phasecloaks for my mages now too, which means they almost never get hurt.

Your priests will become your most powerful characters once they have the spell 'Wrath of God', which simply kills off 95% of mobs instantly in any combat no matter how many you are facing. You need 104 Wisdom & 250 Karma for this spell.

I have two warriors that have armour ratings into the high 200's & early 300's take up blocking positions & then move my blacksmith, priests & rogue into flanking positions where they can aim from relative safety.

I also found about halfway through the game that switching to aim for the head, instead of the torso, made fights far easier.

Once you have weapons like backstab daggers & sly swords, along with weapon skills above 200, your main fighters can kill things like Rathadonian Soldiers with one attack.


<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(doublejack @ Jun 29 2007, 09:09 PM) [snapback]297153[/snapback]</div>

Hello. Newbie here and I'm hoping to get some info on this game. I started playing Disciples of Steel almost 15 years ago but never got very far, and just recently picked it back up. I'm pleasantly suprised to see others giving this game a shot too.

1. I see the tip about the Thieves Tools being in the tower in Teal. What constitutes good equipment? Is banded / plate as good as it gets?

Related to this, I find it very odd that casters can equip heavy armor. Most RPGs don't allow that. Does it hurt their ability to cast?

2. Is it possible to kill things like Death Knights and Earth Elementals? I think my party is relatively strong, but I can not even touch several monster types in combat. Is this normal? Am I just too weak yet?

3. Does the quality of work really matter for weapons & armor? I've noticed that upgrading from, say, adequate ring mail to terrific ring mail does give slightly better protection, but just by a few points. Is that all the difference there is?

4. Does anyone have some basic combat strategy suggestions? I find myself only using one or two mage & illusionist spells, none of which do substantial damage. Meanwhile, the majority of damage is done by my melee specialists. I also haven't had much use for ranged weapons, instead having my ranger wield a footmen's flail. Is the combat just that imbalanced, or am I missing something? Maybe it balances out as casters gain power?

Many thanks in advance to anyone who shares their thoughts.


P.S.

I'm also stuck at the point of finding the Survivor in Teal. I searched pretty much the whole island and could not find him.
[/b]

Thank you very much for the information! It was most helpful.

I'm progressing well and with your advice my party is fighting much better. I do have one other question though. The second quest in Rathadon is to enter Mimax's tower and find his scepter. I cleaned the tower out and did not find it. Is it there? I ask because

A. I didn't know better and cleaned out the tower before I was given the quest. So I may have accidentally sold the scepter to a vendor not knowing what it was. I doubt I would have done that, but it's possible. More likely I'm thinking the quest has to be triggered before the scepter appears. I'm not really sure, but I think I remember opening an empty treasure chest.

B. I got several messages in the tower indicating recent footprints. Does that mean the scepter was already plundered by someone else and it's possible to find it elsewhere?

I'm half tempted to start a new game / party just to see if the scepter was there to begin with.

[Svend Karlson]

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(doublejack @ Jul 12 2007, 03:55 PM) [snapback]299120[/snapback]</div>

Thank you very much for the information! It was most helpful.

I'm progressing well and with your advice my party is fighting much better. I do have one other question though. The second quest in Rathadon is to enter Mimax's tower and find his scepter. I cleaned the tower out and did not find it. Is it there? I ask because

A. I didn't know better and cleaned out the tower before I was given the quest. So I may have accidentally sold the scepter to a vendor not knowing what it was. I doubt I would have done that, but it's possible. More likely I'm thinking the quest has to be triggered before the scepter appears. I'm not really sure, but I think I remember opening an empty treasure chest.

B. I got several messages in the tower indicating recent footprints. Does that mean the scepter was already plundered by someone else and it's possible to find it elsewhere?

I'm half tempted to start a new game / party just to see if the scepter was there to begin with.
[/b]

Hmm, there are definately some hidden doors in the Mimax tower, and you have to go through at least one to find Mimax himself. Mimax is at the end of a fairly long straight corridor. You encounter & fight Mimax at the very end of the corridor, after which there is another secret door immediately afterwards that leads into a single cell treasure room.

The sceptre is on his corpse, and it is a pretty good weapon, so you may even decide not to give it to Rathadon.

I reloaded several times before/after the Mimax fight, and on one occassion he was not where he was supposed to be, so along with the possibility that you have not found the hidden door is the possibility that Mimax has not spawned. If this information does not help you, I can probably do a screen-grab of the Mimax tower map to show you were he is.

When moving through any dungeon, because of the common presence of hidden doors, you simply must move against every single wall. I step forward, then move against each wall, turn back & move forward again, move against each wall etc etc.

Hi there,

First of all, thanks for getting the manual uploaded, that's a great help.

Unfortunately though, I'm a complete beginner when it comes to debugging etc. Anyone able to give a quick guide as to what I have to do to apply these modifications? Do I need any specific software, or can this be done in Dos?

Cheers

Ferris


<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Guest_zyzzle @ May 20 2006, 11:15 AM) [snapback]231429[/snapback]</div>

WOW!! I think I've finally got a working cracked STEEL.EXE. I figured out there are four locations to modify. Two of these are checksums. Replacing these with NOPs seems to fix it. Now no message about "CRC failure" comes up. The other modification was made so that savegames are no longer checked and corrupted if CRC mismatch occurs. To crack the game, perform the following modifcations to the STEEL.EXE file at these offsets. The file should be exactly 759,404 bytes:

0x0464A0: 74 06 FF 46 B6 E9 05 00
to: 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90

0x069B30: 75 09
to: 90 90

0x069EA0: 75 09
to 90 90

0x06F710: 7E 03
to 90 90

It is now cracked! Test this out to make sure I haven't missed anything. Hopefully the game should now be able to be completed normally.
[/b]

[_r.u.s.s.]

the game shoud be fine now. try just running start.bat (run the game in dosbox)

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(ferris @ Jul 15 2007, 09:43 AM) [snapback]299465[/snapback]</div>

Hi there,

First of all, thanks for getting the manual uploaded, that's a great help.

Unfortunately though, I'm a complete beginner when it comes to debugging etc. Anyone able to give a quick guide as to what I have to do to apply these modifications? Do I need any specific software, or can this be done in Dos?

Cheers

Ferris

[/b]

There's a procedure to get this game up & running without any hacking or crack. The availability of the manual makes cracking the copy protection (which has yet to be fully defeated) a moot point. Here's how to get the game working:

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Svend Karlson @ May 8 2007, 06:21 PM) [snapback]289645[/snapback]</div>

Game is now playable in 4 easy steps:

1. Download the main program zip from this site & install it
2. Do NOT run the crack file, just delete it
3. Download the 1.013 patch zip & apply it (if you cannot find it, message me, I'll email you it)
2. Download the manual from this site (essential, unplayable without it)

The manual is needed because without it you cannot get past the manual copy protection built into the game (the supplied crack doesn't remove all the protection) & the patch is needed because the main executable file has already been 'cracked' even if you don't run the crack supplied, which triggers an additional copy protection measure that will cripple your game after about 6 hours of playing.

I've now been playing for quite some time, it's just as I remembered it, sort of.

In answer to the question about the theives tools above, I cannot say for certain, but there is a theives guild in a tower inside Teal. Theives tools may be inside, but presently I cannot fight past a band of cutthroughts to progress beyond the very beginning of that tower.
[/b]

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Svend Karlson @ Jul 12 2007, 06:51 PM) [snapback]299137[/snapback]</div>

Hmm, there are definately some hidden doors in the Mimax tower, and you have to go through at least one to find Mimax himself. Mimax is at the end of a fairly long straight corridor. You encounter & fight Mimax at the very end of the corridor, after which there is another secret door immediately afterwards that leads into a single cell treasure room.

The sceptre is on his corpse, and it is a pretty good weapon, so you may even decide not to give it to Rathadon.

I reloaded several times before/after the Mimax fight, and on one occassion he was not where he was supposed to be, so along with the possibility that you have not found the hidden door is the possibility that Mimax has not spawned. If this information does not help you, I can probably do a screen-grab of the Mimax tower map to show you were he is.

When moving through any dungeon, because of the common presence of hidden doors, you simply must move against every single wall. I step forward, then move against each wall, turn back & move forward again, move against each wall etc etc.
[/b]

I loaded a previously saved game and Mimax was there. Looks like there's a possible bug where he's missing sometimes. Either that or I just overlooked his room the last time.

I am thinking of keeping his scepter. It's nice, and I get the feeling I shouldn't be helping the Rathadonians.

Now I'm stuck in a few other areas. I found the Elven Burial Grounds, but not the staff yet. I'm having trouble locating Gothard Henrin for a Cartha quest, big area to search for him and I'm still working at it. And finally, I can't seem to find the entrance to the Barelk mines - although I haven't looked that hard.

I've been playing a lot lately, and have noticed huge gains in my party's strength. I love Deathstrike. I also have 3 characters that can successfully strike Living Trees - a Knight w/ a Sly Sword and > 400 skill in edged, a rogue using the same also with more than 400 skill, and my ranger can with an aimed shot and a bow skill of 350. It takes a while to go through the trees and they don't give good loot, but the experience isn't bad. I found a trick when fighting them. Have most of the party hide, and the trees will waste their limited movement revealing them. They will do this over and over while you hack away.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Svend Karlson @ Jul 1 2007, 11:21 AM) [snapback]297411[/snapback]</div>

Hi there,

I'll try to answer your questions below. Also, I've now finished most of the town quest lines except for Farnus, Teal, Demata & Rathadon. The last I cannot continue because I attacked one of the Rathadonian villages (which is a quest in itself). The other three I cannot make progress on because without being able to find the survivor I cannot open up any of the other quest lines.

[/b]

I have found the survivor! Outside of the walled area, just south of Teal proper (but still within the city) there are several residences. The survivor is living in one of the yellow-ish hut looking ones. Attempt to enter them, and when you get the right one a dialog will appear.