Reincarnation vs. importation

Discuss Chaos Strikes Back, the "expansion pack" for Dungeon Master.
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Seriously Unserious
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Re: Reincarnation vs. importation

Post by Seriously Unserious »

I wouldn't exactly call this "wildly off topic" :roll: If we started discussing real life food like my spaghetti sauce recipe or others' favorite foods/recipes, now that would be wildly off topic :P Of course, if I don't throw something csb related into this post it will probably take us "wildly off topic" :oops:

OK, so, uhm, actually from the original topic, one thing to be careful about in reincarnating characters in CSB is they lose a lot of stats initially, and can't cast any decent spells and don't have any weapons at all, while surrounded by poisonous, hard hitting worms. I tried having a fully reincarnated party once and surviving the 1st few minutes of the game with characters who have no equipment and no skills is very challenging to say the least. If reincarnating, I'd say bring at least 1 resurrected character along who still has enough experience to cast some decent fireballs just to help the reincarnated survive the initial onslaught of worms and flying, lightning bolt throwing, eyes.
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Re: Reincarnation vs. importation

Post by beowuuf »

Indeed, speaking of reincarnation, I didn't have enough lasagne pasta strips left the second time so made a mince/sauce heavy lasagne. It has not turned out too badly, however!


I think RTC is a lot more punishing than, say, CSBwin for the start of CSB. With a decently strenghted character it is possible to dance around and hit/kill the worms, just a wrist-tiring battle. The flying eye is trickier, I#d have to check where the trigger is for them, but they do make supplies for the quick much harder without the ability to kill them.

Actually, I would say with a reincarnated party the munchers are the worst critters. A decent wizard can wipe them out with poison bolts, making the neta path the easier one to take first. Without that ability, you almost want to take KU first just to boost levels.
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Re: Reincarnation vs. importation

Post by MasterWuuf »

beowuuf wrote:Nice to see we still have it in us to go wildly off topic :D


And yes, CSB makes you earn the things DM gave you for free
Whew! I was afraid he was talking about 'my' comment. That would be wild, to be sure. :wink:

By the by: I always reincarnate my single character now in DM,
Spoiler
Unless I drag some other hero in to help carry the extra stuff and call him Beowuufling, or some other vague nomenclature)
but have yet to try CSB with reincarnated characters.
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Re: Reincarnation vs. importation

Post by Monoven »

I found training in the prison dealt with some of the early reincarnation issues. If you grab Storm at the beginning you can even spend some time training in the first room by respawning the worms. Of course I can only speak for the Amiga version not to mention I tend to use four champions.
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Re: Reincarnation vs. importation

Post by Seriously Unserious »

MasterWuuf wrote: have yet to try CSB with reincarnated characters.
if you want a challenge, then go for it, but don't expect to survive long with just 1 character who has no skills, is stumbling around in the dark and is surrounded by worms...
If you grab Storm at the beginning you can even spend some time training in the first room by respawning the worms. Of course I can only speak for the Amiga version not to mention I tend to use four champions.
that or one of the other attack spell producing items helps, if your character can use it that is... of course, grabbing a torch off the floor also helps deal with the "stumbling around in the dark" problems which can be a pain -- literally. Especially when you get out into the flying eyeball area where you won't even see those deadly lightning bolts coming until it's too late, if at all.
Indeed, speaking of reincarnation, I didn't have enough lasagne pasta strips left the second time so made a mince/sauce heavy lasagne. It has not turned out too badly, however!
in response to the "wildly off topic" topic... I love lasagne. Of course, when I make it I have to go gluten and dairy free though, so it tends to be more costly to get the ingredients.
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Re: Reincarnation vs. importation

Post by Seriously Unserious »

MasterWuuf wrote: have yet to try CSB with reincarnated characters.
if you want a challenge, then go for it, but don't expect to survive long with just 1 character who has no skills, is stumbling around in the dark and is surrounded by worms...
If you grab Storm at the beginning you can even spend some time training in the first room by respawning the worms. Of course I can only speak for the Amiga version not to mention I tend to use four champions.
that or one of the other attack spell producing items helps, if your character can use it that is... of course, grabbing a torch off the floor also helps deal with the "stumbling around in the dark" problems which can be a pain -- literally. Especially when you get out into the flying eyeball area where you won't even see those deadly lightning bolts coming until it's too late, if at all. and that's not to mention the pits you won't see. :twisted:
Indeed, speaking of reincarnation, I didn't have enough lasagne pasta strips left the second time so made a mince/sauce heavy lasagne. It has not turned out too badly, however!
in response to the "wildly off topic" topic... I love lasagne. Of course, when I make it I have to go gluten and dairy free though, so it tends to be more costly to get the ingredients.
Last edited by Seriously Unserious on Thu Dec 13, 2012 12:43 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Reincarnation vs. importation

Post by Gambit37 »

Errr.... messy! You should be able to edit that first post, SU, instead of quoting your own post and adding to it. Then delete the second one.
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Re: Reincarnation vs. importation

Post by Seriously Unserious »

Sorry about that, I must have hit the wrong button by accident. Editing the first post was certainly my intent. :oops:
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Re: Reincarnation vs. importation

Post by MasterWuuf »

Slipping on a piece of lasagna might ruin any reincarnation attempt, at least at the start of CSB.
I don't even believe Beowuuf's 'spin to escape damage' tactic would work in that case. :lol:

P.S. Noticed I advanced to an EE Master with this post.
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Re: Reincarnation vs. importation

Post by Monoven »

I thought I'd outline my training loop(don't really have an "area" exactly) that I've worked out for any interested people or for suggestions to make it better or point out something I've missed. This being CSB it takes some set up and is more complicated than anything in DM. It requires going through the DDD and clearing out the Dragon's Den section of Ku(note, do NOT blast open the south door when you enter the Dragon's Den, that's the room with the respawning dragon and things will be easier if he's stuck behind that door to start with).

For those that can't be bothered with training this post may be tl;dr. This is also for Amiga using WinUAE. I don't see a reason you can't use it for CSBwin, however my understanding is that fireballs in RTC are much stronger which might make clearing out the demons harder.

Your training "partner" will be the fire elementals in the DDD and basically the same method used for fire elemental training outlined in another thread that I can't seem to locate. Cast enough mon fire shields to nullify their attacks(if you can't use Mon, make this your first training priority) and then go to work on them, getting double exp bonus for actions performed after an attack. For fighter levels, attack them with weapons(it's harder to get them to regenerate without respawning the other DDD monsters so I suggest Jabbing with the Rapier or Storm rather than a Vorpal blade). For ninja levels you can punch them or use the rope(though that runs through your stamina faster). Priest levels use potions(I think the Stamina gives you the most bang for your buck). Wizard levels, wizard spells(I think Poison Cloud is the most efficient one). Top up fireshields as needed. Step away from the elemental when you need to sleep.

However getting your food and water is where things get complicated as you're going to have to set up certain things to make getting to the areas easier. For water, you need to open the door near the stairs up to the DDD. There's a sapphire key in the DDD in the alcove of the fire elemental area(yes, you'll have to fight past a bunch of the buggers, but the ones next to the alcove don't respawn so you can rest up there before fighting your way back through). I think you can also get one from a random giggler drop.

Food is even more complicated(well, others might say " more complicated," I say "breaks up the monotony"). I assume you've cleaned out the DDD monsters(not counting the elementals) and that one golem on the way to Ku. To set things up, climb(or drop) down the "Trust me" pit(to make your return trip easier make sure the pit to the right of the "Fighter's Charge" sign is closed before you go down). Step on the plate to open the passage under the other pits and kill the dragon there(I advise luring him into the passage and using the stairs to eliminate him with the Peek-a-Boo method as the only areas wide enough to Step Dance have pits that get activated after you've stepped on them enough times. The main DDD monsters don't respawn unless you pass through the main entrance). Take the stairs up(don't go down or you'll be stuck back in Supplies For The Quick) and fight your way through the fire elementals to get back to the main DDD floor. Now things are set up.

To get food, go into the Trust Me pit, up the stairs and right into the second part of Ku. If the knights respawn, then the dragon regeneration tile should be active. Kill the knights and head to the Dragon Den area. One of the dragons in the south chamber will be there again. If the door is still intact, you can shoot him with poison missiles through the door(six mon level missiles should off him). Collect your steaks.

To get back to the DDD retrace your steps back to the Trust Me pit(you shouldn't have to fight the knights again unless you waited for the dragon spawner to reset which takes...well I don't know how long, but a really long time). Go down the pit or the stairs, take the secret passage to the room under the DDD, go up the stairs, fight the fire elementals to get back to the main floor of the DDD. The spawner for the dragon has usually reset by the time I go through half to 2/3 of the steaks. Because of the fighting involved on food and water runs, don't wait for your food levels to get low(things get easier with each run of course as your levels build).

See? Piece of cake. (:P)
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Re: Reincarnation vs. importation

Post by Phoenix »

I always reincarnate to get better stats. In regards to CSB training, fighter gives you the bulk of your strength and hit points, so I always take the KU path first. Once you have a rope, start ninja training ( climb down) to boost dexterity. If you have more than one champion, have the other champion make stamina potions while the other champion uses the rope. This way you are training two champions at the same time. Once that champion levels up in ninja, switch.

Stamina potions are the most efficient training for Priest, and you really don't need a flask until your champion can cast MON YA without failure. Without a flask, just cast the spell starting at LO YA, ignoring the "you need a flask" message until it fails (you need more pratice with this spell). At a certain point, for that power level, the spell won't fail and you'll only get the "you need a flask" message. When this happens, increase the power rune to the next level ( so if you were casting LO YA, go to ON YA) and you will immediatly level up in preist. Around expert level, you'll need to have a flask to continue.

For wizard, have your champions cast FUL at each power level until there are no spell failures at MON FUL. After that, restart with fireballs (most exp / mana spent).

A well trained champion/party should be able to cast heal, fireball and fireshield at MON level without spell failure.
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Re: Reincarnation vs. importation

Post by Seriously Unserious »

One of the best areas for training your fighter skills in also in the way of Ku, in that area just past "no fireballs" room with the re-spawning munchers, there is this area that quickly spawns massive hordes of mummies, perfect for getting your characters to hack away at them and watch your fighter levels go up. you can also throw a few fireballs around to quickly train your wizards and shoot/throw some weapons to train your ninjas too, all while taking advantage of the 'in combat' bonuses to experience gain so that it takes much less time to build your levels up then it would doing the same actions without any monsters nearby to fight. If food starts becoming an issue, you can always go downstairs to fight the dragon for dragon steaks and there's also a few worms for worm rounds too.
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Re: Reincarnation vs. importation

Post by Monoven »

I actually used that area(because there's also a water fountain nearby) initially, but the worms eventually stopped respawning.
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Re: Reincarnation vs. importation

Post by Seriously Unserious »

They do, and so do the mummies, but by that time you will have gained some decent experience and the worms will have fed you while you're training, so by then the area will have served it's purpose. Also, you can just go up the stairs for another decent training area, with 2 levels of antmen, also excellent for training, and when they eventually stop re-spawning, you are again not far from other good training grounds. Plus if you're looking for a limitless supply of worms to train on or eat, just go back to the start room, and there's a trigger to re-spawn worms that never expires and does not need any time to reset, in addition to the infinite re-spawners of the flying eyes in nearby "supplies for the quick" area, so that's also a good area for training and restocking on food, which I use extensively in the early stages of the game.
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Re: Reincarnation vs. importation

Post by Thorham »

For my first play through I started with reincarnated Chani and Syra (just reincarnate, save and import). When you don't know CSB, the beginning is HARD that way. Becomes easy quickly, though.
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Re: Reincarnation vs. importation

Post by Seriously Unserious »

Gusty move, reincarnated DM characters with no training to start CSB. I'd imagine the start must have been HARD with just those 2 characters on top of that. I doubt many have attempted to start CSB like that.
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Re: Reincarnation vs. importation

Post by oh_brother »

Clearly a pro! I can't imagine beating those worms with 2 characters without any training. I guess just dancing around, pokin them until they drop dead?
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Re: Reincarnation vs. importation

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Seriously Unserious wrote:Gusty move, reincarnated DM characters with no training to start CSB. I'd imagine the start must have been HARD with just those 2 characters on top of that. I doubt many have attempted to start CSB like that.
Yeah, was much harder than I thought it would be. Doesn't stay hard for very long, though.
oh_brother wrote:Clearly a pro! I can't imagine beating those worms with 2 characters without any training. I guess just dancing around, pokin them until they drop dead?
You can leave them for later. All you really have to do is get the potion bottle, and some weapons and food from the 'Supplies for the quick' area and go to the junction level. Actually it's quite easy, but not when you've never played CSB.
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Re: Reincarnation vs. importation

Post by Seriously Unserious »

The supplies for the quick area can be challenging in itself, with all those lightning throwing eyeballs floating around, blasting you and getting in the way just as a pit's about to open up under you. I probably fell in a pit dozens of times because of those stupid lighting belching eyes getting in the way at precisely the wrong moment.
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Re: Reincarnation vs. importation

Post by Trantor »

The difficulty also depends on which engine you play. With original CSB, CSBWin or DSB, it shouldn't actually be all that hard since you gain levels like crazy at the very beginning due to the high experience multiplier in all of CSB. I think I gained something like 7 or 8 levels in the starting room alone when I once started the game with a single reincarnated character.
Of course, if you are playing RTC which doesn't know experience multipliers for levels, it will be a LOT harder.
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Re: Reincarnation vs. importation

Post by Thorham »

Seriously Unserious wrote:The supplies for the quick area can be challenging in itself, with all those lightning throwing eyeballs floating around
Had problems with those, too. It's still more fun than simply resurrecting four CSB characters. With those you can simply nuke everything with fireballs in the starting area.
Trantor wrote:The difficulty also depends on which engine you play.
I'm playing meynaf's DMCSB engine on my Amiga. It's an extended port of the Atari ST version of the game with lots of bug fixes. This version of the game also includes the magic map from the Amiga version, which is a great help. You can get it here: http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=49830
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Re: Reincarnation vs. importation

Post by Seriously Unserious »

Thorham wrote:
Seriously Unserious wrote:The supplies for the quick area can be challenging in itself, with all those lightning throwing eyeballs floating around
Had problems with those, too. It's still more fun than simply resurrecting four CSB characters. With those you can simply nuke everything with fireballs in the starting area.
True. Of course, I could always make you a special CSB version on RTC where the fireball spell is disabled for the party, then you wouldn't have that option of fireball nuking everything. :P
Thorham wrote:
Trantor wrote:The difficulty also depends on which engine you play.
I'm playing meynaf's DMCSB engine on my Amiga. It's an extended port of the Atari ST version of the game with lots of bug fixes. This version of the game also includes the magic map from the Amiga version, which is a great help. You can get it here: http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=49830
:shock: you still have a working Amiga?! :o Man, now I'm getting jealous of you! :evil: My Amiga's long since broken... :cry:

Now I'll have to make you that special no fireballs for the party RTC version of CSB and hack your computer to make sure that's the only version you can play. :P :P :P
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Re: Reincarnation vs. importation

Post by Thorham »

Seriously Unserious wrote:Of course, I could always make you a special CSB version on RTC where the fireball spell is disabled for the party, then you wouldn't have that option of fireball nuking everything. :P
Lightening bolts :P
Seriously Unserious wrote:My Amiga's long since broken... :cry:
Sorry to hear that :( You could get it repaired... if you're willing to pay (unless it's something simple). Or you could get a nice secondhand one... if you're willing to pay (Amigas can be an expensive hobby).

Did you check meynaf's DMCSB engine? It also contains some extra dungeons, including a really difficult one. You may want to try it just for that.
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Re: Reincarnation vs. importation

Post by Seriously Unserious »

Sorry to hear that :( You could get it repaired... if you're willing to pay (unless it's something simple). Or you could get a nice secondhand one... if you're willing to pay (Amigas can be an expensive hobby).
The part that's broken is DF0, and at the time there wasn't anyone local who could fix it, no parts. since then I haven't looked for parts online. I've been using WinUAE and adf files to play some of my favorite Amiga games and that's worked well for the most part.
Did you check meynaf's DMCSB engine? It also contains some extra dungeons, including a really difficult one. You may want to try it just for that.
Not yet. I took a quick look at that topic and got intimidated by the 20-something pages of posts. I'm too busy to sort through that ATM, but I'll have more time for this in a couple of weeks. I'm just in the middle of that end-of-semester rush right now, with all my assignments due this week. Tomorrow I'll be giving a presentation on Cloud Security as a Service. Then Wednesday I'll be writing a Spanish exam.

Once that stuff's done I'll look into meynaf's DMCSB and see what that's like. Hopefully I can find a Windows or WinUAE compatible version to try.
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Re: Reincarnation vs. importation

Post by Thorham »

Seriously Unserious wrote:Hopefully I can find a Windows or WinUAE compatible version to try.
Just use the latest version. Should work fine under WinUae. A Windows version doesn't exist, it's strictly Amiga.

Good luck with your assignments and exam ;)
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Re: Reincarnation vs. importation

Post by Seriously Unserious »

Thanks. I did a presentation on cloud based security yesterday and it went really well, and earlier today I tool a Spanish exam and it also went quite well.

I'll pick up the winUAE version later, I'm beta testing a new custom RTC dungeon first, then I'll have some time to play around with WinUAE stuff more by this weekend. :) Looking forward to it too.
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Re: Reincarnation vs. importation

Post by Thorham »

Seriously Unserious wrote:Thanks. I did a presentation on cloud based security yesterday and it went really well, and earlier today I tool a Spanish exam and it also went quite well.
Did you get good grades?
Seriously Unserious wrote:I'll pick up the winUAE version later, I'm beta testing a new custom RTC dungeon first, then I'll have some time to play around with WinUAE stuff more by this weekend. :) Looking forward to it too.
Checked out meynaf's hard dungeon yet?
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