RTC DM: Playing with just 1 or 2 adventurers

[Kevin]

When I played DM in the dark ages I found it actually easier with 2 characters, and lots of fun with just 1. <br>Do all players realise that 4 is not compulsory?<br>Also, in this version, are there any handicaps for doing this as I'm finding it quite hard going? (I'm playing with Stamm and Chani (my favourite character) ) <p></p>

[beowuuf]

Tyup, 1 is the best as long as you know how to be selective with items
All the food, all the experience, plus best of all, the ability to dogde spells. The only downside is you reduce your mana by 2 - 3 times and your attacking speed by half what it could be, but hey, risk you take

There shouldn't be any handicaps in RTC, so might just be the length of time since you've played last...don't know ; )

[Kevin]

Yeah, it has been a long time. Also, at 56 I'm not getting any younger (you tend to slow up a bit on the reaction side of things)

[sucinum]

i personally prefer playing with 2 chars, soloing more for the competition (actually, i try reincarnated csb-soloing...kinda easy, got 600 hp atm and play for ~1h)

[Curath]

RTC was a nice find with all the extra difficulty levels and stuff, I've ran DM and CSB under WinUAE for some time now. I tried solo way back when my a500 was still in working order. Now I reincarnated 1 char .. Leyla I think (has good all-round stats and a rope).

Made through DM, converted to CSB and am proceeding there. I've reached the D³ and realized that it's starting to get REAL tough. I'm constantly near my max carrying capacity (just under yellow zone) with the insane pile of different keys (several of each) that you need along the way. Having less firepower starts to hurt when you need to eliminate large hordes of demons.

Those +10 strength power leggings are a must (get 5kg more carrycap too), and Boots of Speed for movement "without lag". Executioner axe was somewhat simple to acquire, getting out from among those deathknights wasn't..

I've realized that one of the toughest jobs is ahead: eliminate the Fighter maze bottom dragon.. hit and run will be difficult with all those worms for company.

[Gambit37]

Regarding the dragon in the basement: try to restrict your movements into the various side passages as this is what creates new worms...

Boots of speed: In DM, movement was updated every other frame, unless you're all wearing boots of speed in which case the update is every frame. I don't know how this is implemented in RTC - I must admit I haven't noticed much speed increase when wearing all four, although I haven't played the full game for a few versions now, so it may have changed.

[beowuuf]

Anything triggers worm,s but there are only a few hot spots
Personally I do KU first, it's fairly easy to rush to the basement...and while tedious, a single dragon on his own isn't that much of a challenge, and he's had no chance to accidentally generate those worms!

[Curath]

I don't know aboout 2 frames (there's 25 in a second..) but especially Amiga DM was clearly "sluggish" when moving around even when no one had any injuries and weren't even slightly overloaded. Boots of Speed made you able to run just about as fast as you could type in the movements. Good example is CSB beginning; you open the secret passage with the torch and the corridor has a pit that closes on a timer for a moment. It's not many squares from the trigger line, but normal party can time it perfectly if everyone's in shape .. wearing BoS you can run up and have to wait a second or so for the pit to open.

Too bad you can't get first pair in DM early (first at lvl 10). Btw, does DM even HAVE 4 pairs? I only remember 3. I know CSB does although a couple are sort of tough to get to.

[beowuuf]

In DM you can outrun pit traps, etc with boots of speed..try placing a pit trap with the trigger right infront of it...you can outrun it opening if you bomb down a corridor! I remember havign to design a few of my traps and tricks in my dmuted dungeon to take this into account.

I haven't tested it yet in RTC, but I think boots of speed more combat overloading than provide this huge speed increase.

DM sets:

1 in one of the turquiose key rooms of the tomb of the firestaff
1 behind an illusionary wall at the start of the scorpion part of level 10 (beyond the torso plate false wall)
1 behind about three illusionary walls just before the 'enlarge my view' door at the end of level 11
1 in the oitu room at the end of level 12

[_pharaoh]

I haven't tested it yet in RTC, but I think boots of speed more combat overloading than provide this huge speed increase.

That seems to be exactly my conclusion, as well. I didn't notice any increase in speed, but I did notice I could load up my chars to their listed maximum, and the load would be in grey (ie, not slowed at all) until I was over 100% of my capacity. I can't recall offhand if it then turned yellow or red, so I'll have to double-check later.

[Gambit37]

George admitted way back that he'd cheated in the implementation of the boots of speed after I reported it as a bug. I hope he changes it as it's pointless to even look for them if your champions are never overloaded. I'm sure it can't be that hard to increase the party's movement...

[PicturesInTheDark]

I think the party member' capacity turned into red with BoS when you went over the set maximum without ever going into yellow - until then it's just normal grey as far as I remember. That goes for my memory of DM on Amiga, can't recall how it works on RTC nowadays...

Regards, PitD

[Tourmaline]

On the Amiga, you could move faster than normal if ALL your characters had the boots of speed and none were overloaded into the yellow.

For instance, at the start of the worms area there is a door that closes right in front of you (you push a button on the wall and get teleported right in front of the door and sidestep through).
With 4 pairs of boots and no characters overloaded you can get through this door without using the button (get a bump on the head tho )

[Lunever]

I too hope that George will fix this for V0.25

[PicturesInTheDark]

A lot of smaller issues have accumulated for V0.25 it seems. Does anybody still have an overview?

Regards, PitD