Characters You Have Never Used

[Ameena]

Power Towers was in CSB I believe, not DM. But even so, I don't recall really wearing it once I got it . I tend to not go much further than mithral/chain and just not bother with any kind of plate at all - too much weight for negiligible armour boost, and I like my characters to always be in the grey for maximum movement speed so if either of them hit the yellow I'll faff about dropping stuff until they're grey again . Well, unless they're yellow due to an unnoticed injury or something, obviously - then I'll cure them and carry on .

[Vici]

Never have used Chani come to mention it. I used to like using Halk, Nabi, Alexandre, and Syra because they were the party in the manual story with the original game diskette.
That party stinks btw.
No wonder they died.
As far as armors go I mostly just wear the starting stuff anymore, a lot of Mon level spells and a stick and move method usually does me pretty good. If I do get armor happy it's usually boots of speed, Illumiette, Elven Huke and or Doublet, Niras crown, or Cloak of night.
Flamebain is pretty awesome though!

[slickrcbd]

Never have used Chani come to mention it. I used to like using Halk, Nabi, Alexandre, and Syra because they were the party in the manual story with the original game diskette.
That party stinks btw.
No wonder they died.
As far as armors go I mostly just wear the starting stuff anymore, a lot of Mon level spells and a stick and move method usually does me pretty good. If I do get armor happy it's usually boots of speed, Illumiette, Elven Huke and or Doublet, Niras crown, or Cloak of night.
Flamebain is pretty awesome though!

Nice to see I'm not the only one to think the starting party is lousy.
Halk is a powerful fighter, IMHO the best fighter/ninja in the game (his lack of mana can be fixed with the teowand found on level 4 and can have a decent amount by the time he's an adept priest & wizard), but the others are kinda meh all around. Syria has low HP and strength, and doens't have much mana or magical power to compensate. Not compared to Boris, Gothmog, or Chani.

Nabi and Alexandre are jacks of all trade, masters of none, but not only do they not excel at anything, they don't grow to become as powerful as some of the other characters when you develop their classes equally. They'll always be subpar fighters and subpar magic users. Halk on the other hand can be a great ninja and fighter and a subpar magic user that is only marginally weaker in magic than Nabi and Alex grow to be.
Elija and Mophus will always be subpar fighters, but compensate by being great wizards and priests. Unlike Gando or Tiggy, they can still fight.

Oh, I do try to make Gando and Tiggy fight when possible. When one (or both if I'm being masochistic) are in the party, they are the designated Screamer killers. I also keep them as party leader and have them kill mummies, trollins, and gigglers via ranged attacks (though gigglers also get fireballs or poison bolts if I have mana. I hate having to retrieve the ammo from missed shots and the spells are more reliable for kills). Finally, I'll frequently have them quaff a shield potion and try to step-dance around the worms.

As for armor, it depends on who I'm using. Strong characters like Halk, Stamm, Daroou, Sonja, Hisssa, etc; I will continuously upgrade their armor.
Weaker characters like Boris, Tiggy, Chani, Syra, Wu Tse, etc, I will often just leave with leather armor. It's probably the most economical as it's not too heavy and gives some decent protection. I might upgrade to mithril if they can spare the weight.
I don't usually leave the starting equipment, although when I was younger around 12-14 I used to like to leave the halter tops and gunna on the women, or make them go naked save for shoes. Seems so childish now.

[Automaton]

Interesting.

I guess having played it through so many times, my ideas differ from the norm. I quite enjoyed the prospect of a 0 mana bod. Take wuuf as well, focus low level EE potions, get huge priest levels doing so and pump the EE pot(s) into the mana-less dude until they got levels.

I believe I've used everyone, and Nabi is a popular pick (I'd worked out just based on stats that cumulatively Nabi has the highest score of all champions). My parties, towards the end of my DM time, always used to gravitate to 4 pure casters (usually Tiggy, wuuf, nabi, gothmog), reincarnated of course and making all 4 multirole (I didn't like the idea of 2 that were good fighters and 2 that were good casters for some reason).

I also did the speed run with just tiggy to the screamer larder on the worm level then reincarnate some others and power level them there.

I hadn't realised until recently that anti-fire and anti-magic stats never worked on any ST version

I did notice just how stamina-full stamm was, that dude never tires, and conversely how much tiggy, wuuf and gando suffered from having too much mana and trying to recover it when sleeping (ouch that stamina hit!)

[jayrshaw]

I hadn't realised until recently that anti-fire and anti-magic stats never worked on any ST version

Automaton - Do you know whether or not anti-fire and anti-magic work on the SNES version of the game? I am somewhat suspicious that they might not because I tried damaging my own party with a fireball attack and discovered that it inflicted roughly the same amount of (large) damage upon my characters regardless of how high their anti-fire values were. Luckily, based on my dim recollection of when I played the game many years ago, I do believe that the fire shield spell does work in the SNES version of the game.

Anyway, back on topic - in my recent playthroughs of the game, I have always stuck to a party of Halk, Hissa, Sonja, and Stamm mainly because I find that my characters' carrying capacity never seems high enough for my taste regardless of how high my characters' strength values are. During earlier playthroughs, I recall using Leif, Leyla, Linflas, and Boris, too. I also recall using Zed during my first playthrough because I liked the idea of having a well-rounded character. Now that I have been experimenting with stat potion buffs, I am starting to be of the opinion that you could probably choose any of the champions and get through the game without too much difficulty since you can compensate for their weaknesses by using the stat potion buffs. I guess if you were really trying to maximize everything, you could go for characters with high values in the stats that can't be buffed (i.e., health, stamina, mana, anti-magic, and anti-fire); then again, I'm not even sure if the anti-magic and anti-fire stats work in the version of the game I'm playing!


--Jay

[Automaton]

I hadn't realised until recently that anti-fire and anti-magic stats never worked on any ST version

Automaton - Do you know whether or not anti-fire and anti-magic work on the SNES version of the game?

From the DM encyclopedia:

Anti-Magic
This value determines a champion's resistance to magic attacks.
Because of a bug this statistic is completely ignored in all Atari ST versions (but not in other versions).

Anti-Fire
This value determines a champion's resistance to fire damage.
Because of a bug this statistic is completely ignored in all Atari ST versions (but not in other versions).

So I would say yes, but couldn't confirm without testing it.

[jayrshaw]

I was originally assuming the same thing based on Christophe's encylopedia, but I also read some old posts on the forum here claiming that in some versions of the game there was a bug in the code that caused characters' anti-fire stat to be erroneously divided by 128 before being used to calculate damage reduction from a fire-based attack (essentially rendering the anti-fire stat useless in these versions of the game). Either way, I've been trying to get the maximum number of anti-fire points when my characters gain levels just in case it does work in the version of the game I am playing.


--Jay

[jayrshaw]

Well, I just tested this by having my party injure themselves with a couple of Lo level fireballs. The fireballs inflicted significantly more damage on Sonja (my character with the lowest anti-fire value) than they did on Hissa (my character with the highest anti-fire value). My characters' Wizard levels were high enough that the Lo level fireballs were generally doing ~100 damage to my characters, despite the fact that my characters have relatively high anti-fire values ranging from 65-82. Regardless, it looks like the anti-fire stat is working as intended in the SNES version of the game.


--Jay

[agarules]

It occurred to me when playing a custom dungeon the other week that I had never used Wu Tse before. Are there any characters you have never used after all these years? I only ever used Gando in Conflux II/III and apart from that I don't think I have ever used Elija or Azizi

Wu Tse and Chani are my 2 spellcasters. Iaido and Leyla up front. Why? Because in the second half of the game(s) magic can and will save your bacon.

[slickrcbd]

While I agree magic can and will save your bacon, I've managed to get a party of Halk, Stamn, Sonja, and Leela to be decent spellslingers without a lot of grinding. On levels 10-12 I tend to use magic to fight the wasps (they die easily to UM or ON level poison clouds), fireballs to fight the mummies, and poison bolts to fight the trollins and gigglers. I do use weapons to fight the brittle skeletons unless it's a group of four in which case I hit it with a LO level fireball first.

[Saumun]

Considering I bought DM within a few months of release on Atari ST, there are honestly lots of champions i have never used.
Looking at the roster, I don't ever remember using Alex, Azizi, Boris, Elija, Gando, Hawk, Linflas, Leyla, Mophus, Sonja, Syra, and Zed.
I would also probably never have used Tiggy, except I wanted to do a Tiggy solo run... and so did.

As far as I remember, back in around '88 my friends and I went with Hissssa, Halk, Gothmog, and Wuuf on first playing the game.
On subsequent playthroughs, I always used Hissssa and either Halk or Stamm at the front with different combinations of spellcasters.
Later I tended towards only taking only one or two champions, almost always fighters... usually one or two of Hissssa, Halk, or Stamm.
I find dedicated spellcasters unecessary (at least in DM), as the fighters can make it to a reasonable level of mana, and I generally only use Des Ew to get rid of materializers and water elementals (Mon Des Ew much quicker than a Vorpal blade (which I barely use)). I generally use fighter techniques for anything else.

[MasterWuuf]

Sauman said, "Considering I bought DM within a few months of release on Atari ST, there are honestly lots of champions i have never used.
Looking at the roster, I don't ever remember using Alex, Azizi, Boris, Elija, Gando, Hawk, Linflas, Leyla, Mophus, Sonja, Syra, and Zed.
I would also probably never have used Tiggy, except I wanted to do a Tiggy solo run... and so did.

As far as I remember, back in around '88 my friends and I went with Hissssa, Halk, Gothmog, and Wuuf on first playing the game.
On subsequent playthroughs, I always used Hissssa and either Halk or Stamm at the front with different combinations of spellcasters.
Later I tended towards only taking only one or two champions, almost always fighters... usually one or two of Hissssa, Halk, or Stamm.
I find dedicated spellcasters unecessary (at least in DM), as the fighters can make it to a reasonable level of mana, and I generally only use Des Ew to get rid of materializers and water elementals (Mon Des Ew much quicker than a Vorpal blade (which I barely use)). I generally use fighter techniques for anything else."

Until finding this forum, I had only used four of the characters (if memory serves me well).
Tiggy, Boris, Gando? (been a long time), and Wuuf. It never occurred to me to take less than four.
I usually start with one character now, adding a second for extra mana-power and the chance to 'lug' more useless stuff around (hoarder).

Regarding the vorpal blade: I also found the Des Ew spell to be the best way to get rid of materializers and elementals.
The vorpal blade looked cool, but I actually felt it was all but useless to me, in comparison to the spell.
Of course, when you run out of mana, that vorpal blade is much better than anything else, when you're trapped. Ha.

[Ameena]

Using a Vorpal Blade also gives Wizzy exp rather than Fighter or Ninja, so it's another way to level that up but without using any mana.

[slickrcbd]

In the IIGS version, the Vorpal Blade does both. Using "Jab" or "Cleave" will give Fighter experience, while using "Disrupt" will give wizard experience.
Also in the IIGS version "Jab" and "Cleave" damage nonmaterial beings, while I've read in some guides that some versions only "Disrupt" will work on things like materializers or water elementals.

I think I've tried all the champions at one point or another, but I found I prefer the top 1/3 for pure carrying capacity as I'm too much of a pack-rat both in game and in the real world. I'm a hoarder by nature. I don't think I've used Tiggy, Gando, Wu Tse, or Boris more than once. Partly because they tended to keep getting killed on me with 1-hit KOs and were too weak to wear better armor than leather (not that it seems to help much) or mithril (mithril mail and mithril aketon are the two best weight-to-protection armors in the game).

[jayrshaw]

I was generally leaning toward using Des Ew (i.e., Harm Nonmaterial Beings) on undead creatures during my recent playthrough since Des Ew is ranged and my characters had a lot of excess mana. However, I discovered that using Disrupt with the Vorpal Blades can actually be more effective against the Materializers on the 12th Floor of the dungeon. The Materializers seem able to dodge Des Ew a large percentage of the time when they temporarily phase out of existence, but I found that Disrupt with the Vorpal Blades tends to hit them much more consistently...


--Jay

[Saumun]

Tip: Get materializers next to a wall, and Des Ew will hit them regardless of their phase... and a Mon level spell will either one-shot kill them or at least leave them very weak.

[jayrshaw]

Thanks for the tip, Saumun - I definitely didn't know about that. Unfortunately, I'm thinking that luring the materializers you encounter out in the open so that they are up against a wall is sometimes just as difficult as simply running up to them and Disrupting them to death with a Vorpal Blade. Then again, after watching the tactics used by some of the people on these boards who do low-level speed runs, I realize that I definitely could be mistaken (a lot of their tactics seem to involve luring enemies to various places)...


--Jay

[terkio]

Vorpal blade disrupting is more effective with high wisdom characters.
With two of them in front, that's the way to deal with the materializers.
There is a spell to make boosting wisdom potions.