Dungeon Master Forum

I am now trying the following in Dungeon Master:
With reincarnated heroes to use only the spells which my company learned thru notes on the way.
So far it es not so easy, I reached end of level 3 (4 x magenta worm generator!) without using FUL IR (firebombs) once!... Fortunately on my way there was a spell DES EW (against non-material like ghosts) and DES VEN (flying poison).

Did anyone managed DM in this way?

First time I played DM, I must have done it casting only spells known from scrolls. I had a party of resurected champions.
I remember I did the worm level by the sword and had to use the spell to deal with the ghost.
I had a hard time with the worms. Later I knew better, how to fight them in open spaces.
At that time, I did not like casting poison bolts.

Now I am in level 4 and have a bad time with fighting couatls (flying snakes) without FUL IR - they are really fast, too fast for poison cloud or any door-trick!... The one I killed was a combination of some door-slams, magical-box & hits, and a lot of ninja-combat (throwing or shooting with bow).
What I also miss are the possibilities to prepare some potions - I only can cast serum for wounds (VI) , against poison (VI BRO) and a stamina potion (YA).

As far as I know, the FUL-IR-note comes at the beginning of level 6 - so before that I will have to fight giant wasps and skeletons on level 5 withour the nice bombs...

What do you think would be a better long-range-weapon against couatls and wasps: poison cloud (OH VEN) or the flying poison spell (DES VEN)?

Counting the Hall of Champs as Level One, I just skip Level Five (the one with the Flying Snakes) these days because there's nothing there that you actually need and as you say, the Snakes are horrible . The scroll for Fireball is on the floor near the stairs on Level Seven (the Tomb of the Firestaff). The level between that and where you are now is populated by only Beholders and Skeletons if I remember rightly. But the Beholders are a pain (even more so if you're using RTC because their attacks deal much more damage than in the original/CSBWin versions). There are no Giant Wasps on that level - they're only on Level Four (the Worm level, and then it's only a single one, same as there's only one Ghost there) and Level Eleven. Level Five is the only one containing Flying Snakes.

Edit - Btw, welcome to the forum .

In many games magicians have a spell book to register spells they can use. This is missing in DM.
RTC introduced a spell book but limited to registering runes.

BTW Welcome to the club.

Hi,

@ Ameena: I did not know the level 5 is not necessary - on the other hand, there is enough water and food nearby (screamer-generator in level 4), so it was a good training for my skills!... But these were really NASTY, especially in the north-west area where is a generator... So I will not need the 3 gems? But some items like magical boxes were ok as well.

After that level it was much easier: Level 6 was quite quick ( I remembered it from the past) - and at level 7 there is as you said my FUL-IR-Scroll!!!

But on level 6 there were 2 places with Giant Wasps, though. Especially nasty was one chamber with 4 of them moving and biting VERY QUICK - the only solution was a combination of a magical box (freezes ALL 4 of them) and poison cloud-spell!

By the way: After 5 or 6 years after not playing DM it is still so exciting and fun! I first played it on my ATARI ST (1991?), and the game is still so magic!...

Ohh, wow it's been so long I actually forgot that there are indeed Giant Wasps on that level...oops, lol. Well, in the original version they were always easy enough to take out with a Lo-level Fireball spell. If you're playing RTC they're tougher than that, though.

To play DM using only learned spells from scrolls is a good idea.
That' s the way it should be played.
IMO This should have been enforced, hard coded in the game.
All spells available right away allows an easy tasteless gameplay.

I would certainly agree with Terkio on this...
When i first played DM (also on the ST), a friend that had already played it told me the FUL IR spell and i blasted my way through much of the game.
I've always wished that i had never done this. It must be so much more satisfying to complete the game as it was intended.

The thing is, though, it was also intended that people might want to mess around and experiment - the specific rune sequences for each spell weren't included in the manual but descriptions of the individual runes and their meanings were - if someone played around and hit on "Fire" and "Flight" making a Fireball, imagine the satisfaction as they saw it sailing away from them several dungeon levels before actually finding the scroll telling them how to do it .

A fair point, but in my own case i didn't do that either.
Just wish i'd said "No! Don't tell me!" to my friend. I was 13 or 14 at the time though.