Back Again

[John Gregory]

Hello All,

A tried DM a few years ago documenting my experiences on this forum perhaps to other inmates' hilarity.

IIRC, I played all the way through failing at the final battle/trapping but remained enthusiastic overall at the adventure.

For reasons I am now unsure of, I stumbled back on the subdirectory where the DM distro exists finding it called to me enough to give the game another try. I found myself hooked immediately upon entering the maze room containing the avatar portraits.

With giving it as close to no thought as possible, I chose the dinosaur Hissa this time as my avatar and off I went. As I remember things, this game is dramatically different from my last. My avatar is rugged so enormously less vulnerable to hits but keeping the game lit is a challenge. So while the stage remains the same, the play is drastically different.

For example, I'm currently on the 3rd level as I count because I call the picture frame level as 1. I was overwhelmed in the previous game by the blue apes behind one door. This time I easily waltzed through them. I don't recall any light issues last time but this one was a major issue until my avatar gained a sufficient level to reliably create torchlight. That took camping out at a safe place to grind up to the point of being up leveled.

This time through I've lost the element of shock due to ignorance of what's coming. I forgot a good deal but do remember the broad strokes of everything so far. So here I am back and looking forward to new experiences during an older setting.

[jayrshaw]

Hi John Gregory,

It's good to see you giving the game another spin. I can definitely see how a solo playthrough with Hissa would have a less bumpy start than one with Tiggy! Looking forward to hearing how things progress moving forward.


--Jay

[Ameena]

Hissssa is one of the more physically-strong starting characters so yeah if your last run was a solo Tiggy (the squishiest of characters!), anyone will seem less difficult. It sounds like you're still going solo, rather than taking a full party, though? So you'll still find it more difficult than you otherwise might since you have less firepower and inventory space and such. At least with Hissssa you can cast a Lo-level light spell if you let his mana regen after casting "Lo". I tend to go with a two-player party and he is always the first half of that party...though I reincarnate him and call him Ameena so he kind of becomes a she .
The first level is the Hall of Champions and yes, most of us count that as Level One (a few call it Level Zero). The "blue apes" are generally known as "blue trolls" or sometimes "trolins". Hopefully you manage to finish the game this time, and then maybe you can move on to CSB and have fun being lost and clueless and dying all over the place like the rest of us once did .

[John Gregory]

I'm bouncing between levels three and four. I explore four some but then retreat to three to hone my skills in the angry cabbage and purple worm regeneration rooms. Yes, I'm playing my avatar as a solo. I'm currently, IIRC, artisan wizard and ninja, adept fighter and craftsman priest. I'm going to search for spells online since my remembrance of them is sketchy at best. I remembered torch, fireball, wellness and relearned anti-venom from a scroll. I forgot that the scrolls use the names rather than symbols so also will need a Rosetta Stone.

I'm back in the dungeon due to getting some wired headphones in for an evaluation. In the spirit of 1980s wired, I booted the game to use with these samples. I never considered assembling a good team because I thought this would be a one and done but got hooked so continued play after writing up my view of the headphones. The above posts got me to thinking that maybe I'll abandon this ill considered non-team, return to level 1/0 and assemble that two avatar team. Then again, I've persevered this far finally getting my avatar solid in all skills so...

Well, time to get off the console and back into the non-screen world. Good to see you to again. Oh, one more thing. I forgot or never knew, does an avatar get education credit for failed spells or only those that work?

[jayrshaw]

You get a token amount of experience for spells which fail, but not nearly as much as you do for a successful cast.


--Jay

[slickrcbd]

Two comments. For a Rosetta stone, just look at the official manual.
http://dmweb.free.fr/files/Game,Dungeon ... 0,Scan.jpg
http://dmweb.free.fr/tags/manuals/
https://www.replacementdocs.com/download.php?view.451

Also you don't have to abandon your current solo run if you decide you don't like soloing.
You can return to the Hall of Champions at any time before retrieving the Power Gem and grab some additional recruits.
The only drawback is at this point they will be much weaker than your current champion, but you can just neglect to build his skills for a while while working on grinding the other two.
However even if you do do this, I recommend you have the neglected champion practice creating mana potions whenever his mana level gets close to full. Then you can transfer that mana to the other champions to practice with. You lose a lot in the process, but you're still grinding priest levels.

I should mention that often when I take Halk, I wind up neglecting to work on his fighter skills until the worm level, and only increase his ninja skills by throwing stuff (I make him the leader so all manually thrown objects are done by him, which happens quite frequently with the mummies early on) in order to level my other champions health and strength since they are usually much weaker and less durable than Halk.
Since I learned of the trick, I now however will use War Cry on a screamer until he gains a priest level and work on leveling his magical skills on the early levels, so I'm not totally neglecting him.

[Ameena]

Level Three is the one with the six sections accessed off the central hub. Level Four is the one with the purple worms and the Screamer Room. Level Five you can technically skip because the way down to Level Six is right along the corridor from the stairs and there's nothing essential on that level but plenty of annoying monsters.
Spell-wise I only use Fireball, Magic Torch, Harm Non-Material Being, and the Health and Cure Poison potions. Oh, and a single Zokathra of course, but I'm not sure that counts. So you can complete the agme without having an exhaustive list of all the spells, but some monsters are more resistant/vulnerable to certain damage types so you might find certain spells/weapons more useful if you do want everything to die as quickly as possible. I'm lazy though, and can't be arsed to switch stuff around to train anyone. My Ninja skill gets neglected entirely (which means it's at zero because I always Reincarnate my dudes) until I'm on like, Level Nine, when I train it for a bit by having someone chuck a chest ovr and over again. Once they gain enough skill that the chest travels to the next square and I have to move forward to pick it up, I switch to the next person. Which gets them to Journeyman, if I remember rightly. Not very high but it's better than nothing and I can finish DM and CSB with that so it's fine . Your current skills sound decent enough - generally people finish DM with skills around Expert level, give or take one or two levels, so you're doing fine.
When I played the game back in the day, I only ever took four people because it never occurred to me that it was possible to take any other number. It wasn't till I went in search of a downloadable version of the game in the early noughties, joined the forum, and saw people talking about it that I realised you can take fewer than four if you want. So I tried all the other variations - three was...okay? One was a bit difficult - I managed to finish DM but got stuck in CSB where I would kill some dudes and then have to close the door to regen mana, but they'd respawn when I stepped forward again so I'd have to kill them again, etc. A solo player does also mean you can't get hit by any projectile coming down the other side of the corridor (and can "dodge" by quickly moving your character to the other side). Two was the sweet spot for me, however - a full front row so I can always get in two melée attacks, and at least have two spells readied at once (I say "spells", I mean Fireballs, naturally ), a decent amount of inventory space (especially in CSB where there are keys for days), and I can still technically "dodge" projectiles by turning sideways in the appropriate direction.
My go-to party is reincarnated Hissssa and Wuuf, because I like non-human-looking characters, Hissssa is the most physically tough but who still has the mana to cast a spell without needing a boost from a wand or whatever, and Wuuf starts with a flask so I can be casting healing potions immediately if I want to...though I don't cast potions ahead of time but just have the characters keep a flask in their off-hand and cast as needed.
Anyway, good luck whether you choose to carry on, go back, or start again. DM is almost like a tutorial for CSB, showing how basic dungeon mechanics work and having a linear layout that gets harder as it goes, so you have a challenge that slowly ramps up and you can backtrack along a known path to safer areas if you're having difficulty. CSB is...none of those things .

[slickrcbd]

For spells, I tend to use Fireball, poison bolt (more effective on trollins but only single target, and more cost effective on gigglers and wizard eyes.), harm non-material, magic torch, health potions, cure poison potions, the shield spell (YA IR), fireshield in places I might get fireballed (mostly level 8 and the last two levels, although the deepest level is only a problem until you dispatch the dragon) and mana potions. I also use poison clouds on wasps. On level 6, you can kill all but two of the wasps with a LO level poison cloud. Those two are in a locked room and require UM level. When you meet wasps again later in the dungeon they usually require UM or ON level poison clouds.
That's the only monster I routinely use poison clouds on, the only other time I use that spell is the rare times I need to get a monster to move out of the way, usually in the oitus room.

The only time I use shield potions is if I decide to punch out a rockpile or stone golem, the latter of which can only be done with the sturdier champions as weaker ones like Tiggy can be 1-hit-ko by those bruisers if you slip up (fortunately there is an Alter of VI on the only level they appear. ). Usually the shield spell is just as good in a pinch. Both are good for facing rockpiles, stone golems, or animated armors. Also I found that punching rockpiles and golems is often a good strategy if you can time it so you retreat before they attack. You get multiple hits, and while punches are weak, there is almost no cooldown and unlike most foes, punches usually aren't any less damaging to rockpiles or golems than most other weapons besides Diamond Edge or Hardcleave. Classic death of a thousand cuts. You can't use this strategy on animated armors because they attack too fast.

Oh, if I don't have Halk, Stamn, Hissssa, or Daroou, I might use a KU potion once at the "test your strength" puzzle on level 6, but you usually find such a potion in the dungeon prior to that point, so I just hold onto it until I get there and never actually create one.
However a weak (in terms of strength) party such as Gando, Tiggy, Chani, and Boris might require multiple KU potions to shoot the arrow far enough so I can't say I never cast that spell. I can say I never use any of the other stat potion spells or the light & darkness spells.
The magic footprint spell can be useful in certain areas like The Matrix on level 3 for spotting the spinners and teleporters. The See Through Walls spell can be useful in seeing if a monster is just behind the door, or on level 7 when trying to remember which door has the treasure you want although you can somewhat see through those doors on that level. I almost never cast it anymore, but I did use it when I was new to the game.
The spell that people can't agree on if it's called "confuse monsters" or "invisibility" (it is invisibility in Dungeon Master II) I never find useful. The one place it might have been useful is the Oitus Room and it never seems to help. Fear weapons like the Horn of Fear, Staff of Claws, Snake Staff, etc are far more useful in there, as are poison clouds.

I've found lightning bolt to be a more costly, less effective version of fireball. Supposedly (and somebody did prove it in another thread recently) they are useful against animated armors and stone golems that are immune to fireballs and poison, but especially the latter are still too resistant to really be worth it as opposed to using weapons with hit and run tactics. I never use them.
Similarly the light spell is supposed to last twice as long as magic torch, but it costs three times as much mana. I just use MON FUL. The only benefit is that it seems to give better experience for advancing your wizard levels. I've never had a use for the darkness spell besides grinding wizard levels, which to be fair is a legitimate use. Stand up to a screamer and exhaust your mana casting darkness until it's pitch black, then light until it's fully lit. Then stab or slash the screamer with a dagger or kick it to death to work on your ninja levels. Can work with pain rats too but is far more risky.
(TIP: Daggers are extremely useful because they work on ninja levels instead of fighter levels. You might want to hold onto them for grinding as they are the best melee weapons for ninja levels.)

[John Gregory]

Thanks again all for the tips and advice. I had no idea the game has such endurance that some folks are often repeat players. Then again, I seem to be a bit hooked myself after having started the game as a lark intending on at most, an hour or two of play.

I’m frustrated at having forgotten something. I remember finding a Vorpal blade on, what I thought was L7. At any rate, I’m at the huge room below where I used a Ra key to open one door of two or three leading to the uninitiated Firestaff. It’s the level above that one. I remember finding the blade in a long wall but cannot describe the place sufficiently to ask if my memory is correct. Anyway, I thought I was there but a search that turned tedious failed to turn it up.

It seems my remembrances have run out. While now in the large room contending with those green ghosts, laughing thieves and so forth I am so confused that I’m likely as confused and dazed as the first time through. I remember having that Vorpal highly useful so am annoyed at myself for not finding it this go when I did so easily (or so I recall) before.

I’m having a difficult go at the large room. I’m going to take a break since game playing has me behind on real life. Perhaps when I return, mentally fresh, I’ll find the large room less intimidating.

Oh, this go like you said, used non-thrown daggers as a weapon having discovered they work like fighter-lite but award the otherwise (for me) ninja points. I'd say 90% of my ninja points were scored fighting with them.

[slickrcbd]

both the manual and the hint book is available on
http://dmweb.free.fr/
as well as
http://www.replacementdocs.com

The hint book contains maps with the location of all treasures, so if you think you forgot something you can check the list on each level to find what you missed. If you don't look at the map it can be a checklist for what you're seeking.

[Ameena]

Vorpal Blades are highly useful - I believe there are two in the game (which makes sense, since that's the most people you can ever fit into your front row ). Nice for stabbing ghosts to death and stuff. For some reason I can remember the locations of the ones in CSB better than DM, which I really can't remember at all .
Just so you know, the Firestaff level is Level Seven (assuming Hall of Champs is Level One). You need a total of three Ra keys and the Master Key in order to get what you need, but there are some other locked doors requiring other keys which contain optional treasure, as well as another keyhole elsewhere that opens a shortcut to somewhere else in the dungeon (avoiding spoilers in case you've never done that bit). Level Six is the one with the Riddle Room, and has skellies and beholders to deal with. Level Eight is the big open room with the ghosts, thieves, and constant Fireballs flying about. I get one of my preferred melée weapons on that level. Thieves only ever steal from your left hand so if you don't want them nicking your stuff, just have everyone empty that hand and they won't be able to do anything except occasionally get in your way.
Incidentally, which version of the game are you using? The various clones and ports have differences in how they work and stuff, which might be relevant if you ever have any issues with anything. My go-to is CSBWin because it's a port of the Atari version (the one I playe back in the day).