Trying An Old One

[jayrshaw]

Good to see you back, John Gregory! Best of luck with your surgery tomorrow and with recovering your full mobility - if you have time, post here letting us know how the surgery went and how your recovery is going.

The easiest way to Fuse Chaos is to run into the small, enclosed, four-square room in the far northeast corner of the area Chaos is located in, close the doors, wait for Chaos to teleport into the room (you can have your character sleep to make this happen more quickly), and Fuse him with two Fluxcages while he is standing in a corner between two walls - make sure that you do not attempt to Fuse him while he is standing in a corner between a wall and a door, because this will not work. If you ever come back to this game again, you may want to try attempting this technique with Tiggy to see if you are able to defeat Chaos this way....


--Jay

[Ameena]

I've never actually done him in that little room, nor even been there, I don't think. I tend to use the area near the corner just inside the entrance and off to the right, where there's more floor space (I didn't know until reading on the forum that you could use physical walls as well as fluxcages). You don't have to chase him around - just stand in the spot on which you plan on trapping him and cast fluxcages around yourself in all but one of the available adjacent spaces, turning and recasting as necessary. Eventually he'll come over to where you are but tends not to cast spells through the cages. He won't step through a fluxcaged square unless he has nowhere else to go, which is why you leave a space blank. As he advances toward you from that direction, wait till he's in that one space and cast the final fluxcage, then back up and Fuse him when he steps forward into the middle.

If you play again it'll be much faster as now you know which objects you can keep and which you can leave behind, you know what kind of tactics to use fighting various monsters and such. Getting to at least Lo Master in your most-used skills is generally where most people end up, I think, unless they spend ages training and grinding away at the Screamer Room (or the Rat Room) or wherever. Since you've basically finished the game (minus actually fusing Chaos) with Tiggy, doing it with anyone else, solo or otherwise, will probably feel somewhat easier . Note that if you take a character who doesn't even have the mana to cast the cheapest spell (a Lo-level stamina potion, Lo Ya, followed I think by a Lo-level light spell, Lo Ful, if you don't have a flask for the former), there are items that give mana while equipped - all wands and staves, also the moonstone necklace I think.

And then you can take the team through into CSB and have fun bashing your head against that for a while. I mean, there are a lot of illusionary walls so bashing your head against them can be the quickest way to find them .

[John Gregory]

I see now it's been a whole month since I was here. The surgery went well but was much more complex and far reaching than I anticipated leaving me in for a more difficult recovery that describes a very shallow slope.

Based on what I've read here, moving to CSB is out of the question given my PC's fragile nature coupled with my inexperience. I often consider redoing the adventure with a team even to the point of restarting a new game solely to browse the picture gallery assembling a theoretical team.

It's been weeks since I last toured the gallery so I'm going from memory. At this point, if I do go, I'm considering Wu Tse and Tiggy in the back row, Jay's avatar and one other in the front row. Ameena mentions 'grinding' in the Screamer or rat room. I even got that wrong instead doing my leveling practice in the purple worm room.

If my plans pan out, I should be all right returning to work school teaching soon. I could easily do a sedentary job now but today's teachers are always on the move which is more than I can expect I can do at this point.

@Ameena I never noted items increasing mana aside from the moonstone after I'd discarded it. For some reason, I expected it'd increase light somehow so dropped it when it failed to and then later noted my PC dropped mana. As to fusing, I remain oddly satisfied despite not having done this.

[jayrshaw]

Glad to see you back again, John Gregory! I'm sorry to hear your recovery from your surgery has been more difficult than you were anticipating - are you expected to make a complete recovery at some point during the upcoming months?

By the way, feel free to let us know if you decide to try a new playthrough and/or if you require any assistance!


--Jay

[Ameena]

The illumulet is the necklace that sheds light. The moonstone gives a couple of mana points. You can also use pretty much any staff or wand.
As far as training up your characters goes, note that you get more exp the deeper you are in the dungeon, so training against the rats will get you more exp than the screamers. I tend to finish DM with my characters around Expert (give or take a level) in everything except Ninja, which they're like, Journeyman in because I'm too lazy to bother training them properly. I play with two characters and always reincarnate, but I'd recommend playing with a full four (but still reincarnate) on your first go through. I also then take the same team through into CSB because I'm attached to them by then and don't want to "start again" with strangers from the CSB prison .

[John Gregory]

Thanks for the good wishes. I am hopeful of a full recovery and am already much better than I was pre-surgery so I account things a success already.

Good tip on training. I did have difficulty with the rats on my solo go. I think I posted having to play the game using my left hand across my body to access the number pad which in my game was the only way to move my PC. This was beyond awkward meaning my PC's 'dancing' was much slower than it should be. I'd also come off the pad which had my PC static until I was again positioned.

If the game I was playing permitted an alternative control set such as something around the ASD keys, I'd have had a much easier go of it. Since if I go, I'll be going from the start, what game version does this group recommend? I am using the actual PC version running in a virtual machine. I'm running Win10/64. Is there a better way to go for either or both DM and CSB?

[jayrshaw]

Glad to hear your recovery is going well (albeit slowly based on your previous post)! I've only ever played the SNES version of Dungeon Master, myself, since I've always strongly preferred playing games on a television screen with a video game controller to playing them on a PC.

Also, you may want to note that while the experience multiplier on the Rat Floor of the dungeon is 3 and the experience multiplier on the Worm Floor of the dungeon with the Screamer Room is only 2, it is far easier to train mindlessly in the Screamer Room than it is to do so on the Rat Floor due to the fact that you can stand directly in front of a group of Screamers and perform endless repetitions of various actions without any risk of harm coming to your group but cannot do this while facing one or more Pain Rats....


--Jay

[Ameena]

Huh, I play with my left hand on the numpad too (and right hand on the mouse) and I had no great difficulty. But I've always played games using the arrow keys to navigate (at least, in games where movement is done using the keyboard of course ), so the numpad isn't super far a stretch over. And I can just, you know, move the keyboard a bit to the left if I need to .
In terms of version, personally I play CSBWin because it's a port of the Atari version, which is the one I used to play originally. It's got some kind of config file thingy where you can chang the keybindings if you need to.
Incidentally, feel free to join the Discord if you haven't already - if you need quick help with something in-game and don't want to wait for a reply here, a bunch of us are members there too and are likely to be around to give hints or whatever. Especially if you move on to CSB once you're done with DM . Link here if you want to join us - https://discord.gg/2T8CSCR

[John Gregory]

Thanks, Ameena. If I plan on continuing in the game arena, I'll try for Discord. I'll also look for that CSBWin if I go on.

My desk/chair combo isn't well suited for computing work so I have my extended keyboard on my lap/knees. If I try to move it to the left to access the number pad without too much stress, it falls into the gap between my legs. I need a higher chair or a lower desk, it seems but that's a rather low priority in my life now.

I agree, Jay, that training in the almost non-fatal Screamer room is easy and doing so in the worm room relatively easy compared to the rat room but also my joy for whacking easy targets has faded. My single remaining frustrations with my run through are at the end of the game.

I'd like to have spent more time to clean out the level with the Ghost Knights but found myself wholly overwhelmed by the crabs. I was clearly not the player who could have done that using the single Tiggy and maybe not even with a full team. I'd also like to have taken on the dragon in the large room instead of my long, dreary hit and run in the halls.

Curiously, I continue to be unbothered by my inability to fuse the end game.

[jayrshaw]

You can kill the Oitu [crab/spider enemies] on the Animated Armour level of the dungeon with high-level Fireballs, but you generally need a pretty big overall mana pool to keep up with the huge number of them which can generate in certain parts of the floor. For Animated Armours and Stone Golems, you have to resort to direct physical attacks, so they can be quite a bit more difficult to dispatch....


--Jay

[Ameena]

Don't forget that other most powerful of dungeon weapons - the door .

[The Journeyman]

I only kill my enemies by hurling the rabbit*s foot at them. Luckily there are 2 in the game

[Prince of Elves]

Luckily there are 2 in the game

Pun intended, I suppose.