Dark Sun: Wake of the Ravager

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My party just entered the Vulcano tapestry in the VA hideout, searching for the 4th artifact.
El's drinker is the only used weapon which casts a spell on attack and it's still there in spite of permanent use.

 

You make me want to play the DSUN games again...Personally, I think El's Drinker is the best weapon I have ever used in any D&D game, except for possibly the Dragonlance. El's is more useful though, it's poweres are unstoppable by all, not just useful against dragons. Especially in the hands of a Half-Giant....

 

My party was down in the Vulcano. Really a painful area.

Shortly before reaching the stone maze I saved the game not knowing I was already screwed, a few second afterwards the final eruption happens and the game is over.

The last save before the seal opening was in the VA headquarters. I had to hope that my party hadn't wasted too much time already in the save after the first 2 battles down in the Vulcano.
I took a look into the cluebook, reduced dosbox cycles from 20000 to 3000 (which made inventory access and saving very slow, precise moving difficult, produced glitchy graphics when scrolling and made the mouse pointer dance around) so time wouldn't pass that fast.
Luckily, it worked. I hope this was the last time limit in the game.


My party gained 544,537 bonus XP after sealing the vulcano again.
My tri-kreen (who had 1,370,214 XP before) has reached her XP limit, it's capped at 1,400,000.
So she's stuck as fighter13/druid14/psionic14 and can't reach level 15 in any class.

Is this a fixable bug or a game mechanics problem ?

Since my human gladiator9/preserver10/druid reached level 15 I suspect either psionics or fighters are limited to 1,400,000 XP. It's also possible that all tripleclasses are capped at 1,400,000 XP for balancing reasons.

Did anyone get to fighter 15 ? Or to psionic 15 ? Or a triple multiclass with over 1,400,000 XP ?

 

Good question. I remember casting 7th level spells with my mage. I also believe I hit level 15 with my Half-Giant Gladiator. But he was the only single-class pc. Dualed Thief-Preserver, which I believe also hit 15th level Preserver, but my Clerics, Druids and Psionicists were always multi-class, not sure on what level they finished at... Though there isn't much difference between level 14 and 15 in these games. By now, your team is goldly...

 

With all the XP you get during the game it's almost impossible not to max out single class characters.

Level 13/14/14 is still better than 15/15, fighter 13 grants the maximum attacks, druid 14 grants access to level 7 spells and she has picked the important psionics long ago.

El's drinker doesn't have unlimited charges. It's gone now.
I have a save just before entering the crypt where it has exactly 2 charges left.

You're supposed be able to change it into another weapon in the Forge, but when I was there casting it into the lava pool changed only its magic symbol temporarily and I don't think it's possible to go back there.

 

You need Promere's Hammer to change it to the Mace. Do you still have it?

 

Thanks for reminding me.
I went down to the forge again with help from the digger. Using the hammer with the forge after putting the sword back into the inventory after using it with the forge did the trick, I had only tried using the sword with the forge and and the hammer with the sword before.

Now I had a problem in the crypt. When I went down a level into a hole (I think it was the 4th hole I went down, if I ignore this hole and take the next the same happens) and came up again the niches in the wall disappeared. Those walls were either replaced by blackness or some greenish color. It looks like a graphical glitch but they are gone, when I click there nothing happens.
What does this mean ?

I'll restart the crypt anyway tomorrow since I reloaded and reforged the sword into something more durable.

 

You are carrying to many items. That's the bug in the game. It can't handle everything. Unload inventory....

 

You were right, thank you. I'm surprised I didn't encounter this bug earlier.
I sold some of the stuff I was carrying around, reduced the containers to 6 per character, left the 5 potions of healing in the VA HQ and left the crypt for selling stuff twice. The bug didn't appear anymore.

I made my my last save before going down the crypt, when the freed templar died because of the lightning trap I decided to play around a bit before reloading and finished the game although many things went wrong. In the end area I was supposed to find a scepter to enter the inner area but I fought the skeleton warrior in the forest and the body with the sceptre was covered by a tree so I first didn't find it, my party just ran around aimlessly, killing everything, trying to use the elemental items at the doors, wasting time until the pyreen died before they went back and accidentally found the dead body with the scepter.

Then the final battle with the tarrasque started. I thought it was invincible since the upper part didn't have a health bar and I were suppoed to place the elemental items at the doors, this didn't work so I thought I'd kill the elementals and skeleton warriors first and ignore the lord warrior with the lord warrior with fire shield to avoid taking damage from it. Big mistake !
The inability to see or even target monsters close to the tarrasque didn't make the battle easier.
The level9 skeleton warriors had so many hitpoints that I thought there was a bug and while fighting them my dualclassed gladiator/thief/preserver and my half-giant gladiator with 252 hitpoints and the full set of Promere's armor died and the tri-kreen was being swallowed, luckily she managed to get free after a few rounds.
So only the tri-kreen fighter/psionic/druid and my human gladiator/preserver/druid left alive finishing off the skeleleton warriors, protected by spells like "blink" and "flesh armor"(improved the t-k AC from 0 to -9) casting many "heal" spells during the battle and trying to keep the distance, even summoned greater elementals didn't last long.

At the end the t-k dispelled the lord warrior's fireshield with a simple "dispel magic" and killed him in melee within seconds (could have abvoided a lot of damage if done earlier), and the level 70 tarrasque did have surprisingly little hitpoints.

After the battle I desperately tried to place the elemtal items on the doors or towers at the wall to seal the urn, it took a long time until I found that the rocks in the middle were the statues where I was supposed to place the items and managed to finish the game.

Maybe I'll replay the end battle with a prepared party (healing potions) and smarter tactics (kill lord warrior and tarrasque first) to achieve a flawless victory, it should be quite easy considering how I succeeded in spite of all the mistakes I made.

 

I'm mostly just hearing talk about bugs. Is there still much room for fun?

 

Tons of fun! Triple Multi-classes, Half-Giants, Life-Draining swords, thri-kreens and much more. Just an old game and an old engine, so you have to be ready to accept it. I would recommend playing part I first though. Shattered Lands then Wake of the Ravager. You can Import characters from one game to the next. Nothing like a 200+ HP Half-Giant with Dual Weapons ripping through your enemies. I often will take 2 Half-giants and less magic support. this game can be easiserif you have a Arcane, Divine and Psionic character in the party. The great thing is with triple multi-classes, two characters can cover all those spell-casting needs plus your thiefly needs as well, leaving 2 Melee Blenders available to build. Or you can have 4 multi or Dual fighters. It is very replayable.

I highly recommend playing through the Darksun Games. You will probably need Dosbox though, depending on your system. I have kept an Win 95 system running just for these games. Or I play them in dosbox, depends If I have time and space to setup.

 

When playing the Darksun games I encountered a few bugs, but nothing game critical (I encountered a worse bug playing Baldur's Gate).You can handle them, especially if you're prepared, save often and use different save game slots, don't carry too many containers and sell the stuff you don't need to avoid the infamous "too many items" bug.

The Darksun games are older and not as comfortable to play as the IE games, but in the roleplaying department they really shine.

 

Okay, I'm no stranger to keeping full libraries of save games. I might have to put this on my list for the future. Yes, Tal, I read the news article as well, thanks.

 

Does anyone know how to get giant snake eggs for Notaku ?
According to the cluebook there are some in the yuan-ti caves in the pit near the worthless treasure, but down there in the middle of the snakes there's only one big egg which I could pick up and set down elsewhere, but when giving it to a character I get the "too big to carry" message.

 

I don't remember. Though I would try to either a) put it into a container then pick up the container or b), try giving it to a Half-Giant.

 

I've reloaded an old save from before entering the snake pit and found a lot of carry-able white eggs besides the yellow egg which is too big to carry.
I don't know why those eggs weren't there when I searched them in my game (it's possible I took them and forgot it, but I rather think they disappear after unknown events, they're unimportant anyway).

 

some advice for those who want to play the game:

- thieves and psionics only get 2 HP for reaching level 10 (preservers with 16+ con get 3-6 HP like in the manual)
- druids switch to cleric XP progression after level 10, so they need 125,000 XP for level 10, 675,000 for level 11, ..., 1,575,000 for level 15
- you can expect to get about 4,000,000 XP per character during a normal game and get unlimited XP by fighting respawns
- avoid rangers, they're capped at 1,400,000 XP
- psionics are capped at 1,400,000 XP too, so they should only be taken as middle profession for human double dual classes or as part of triple classes
- weapons which cast a spell on hit have only limited charges (but many of them) and disappear afterwards, but other weapons or armor won't disappear, so spare weapons or armor should be sold immediately to avoid the too many items bug, everything can be killed with +2 weapons
- for doing something time critical turning down dosbox cycles can help
- you can stack items like feyr teeth, the game doesn't show numbers but it knows how many are there


My party which did beat the game easily consisted of:

half-giant gladiator
thri-kreen fighter/druid(earth)/psionic
human gladiator9/preserver10/druid(fire)
human gladiator9/thief11/preserver


I might have made the half-giant a fighter/cleric instead of gladiator if this doubleclass could get the correct 144 HP instead of only 112 HP. So I chose a gladiator to get the maximum HP possible. The good thing about having an half-giant with 24 strength is that you only need only one level 3 "strength of one" spell to get 24 str for everyone until the next rest.

The reason why my thri-kreen didn't gain XP any more is that psionics and rangers are capped at 1,400,000 XP.
You can enforce to get the missing levels easily if you start the game with "dsun -k911" and press the "t" key during the game to level up, but level 13/14/14 was sufficient.
Thri-kreen is the most powerful race for combat because of the 3 extra movement points and the extra bite attack per round which can even paralyze greater elementals or tarrasques. A tri-kreen as party leader also seems to move faster.
I chose earth druid because of the powerful "iron skins" spell which lasts even longer than a rest.
At level up she got up to (20 con) 6 HP for fighter, 5 for druid and 2 for psionic.

The 10 preserver levels were good for maxing hitpoints and getting protective spells like "blink".

I would have taken only 9 thief levels for the second human if I had known that thieves get only 2 hitpoints for reaching level 10, but since I had already spent 160,000 XP when I realized it I decided to take 11 levels.



Spoilers to follow:



The best way to grind XP is entering the tapestry with the soul shards in the VA headquarters. Haste your party, put most shards back and continue killing the re-spawning ghosts to get lots of XP extremely fast.

About the final battle:
- It's relatively easy compared to some earlier battles, the big battle down in the mines is harder, especially since you have far less XP.
- If you kill the greater elementals outside before entering you have less monsters to fight in the final battle
- The tarrasque reappears up to 2 times if you don't seal it fast enough, it can be killed within a round by 2 buffed fighters. It's not immune to blade barrier, can be backstabbed and even paralyzed by thri-kreen bite.
- The level 9 skeleton warriors have over 200 HP and can be backstabbed.
- If you cast globe of invulnerability or energy containment (metabolic psionic) your buffs aren't dispelled upon entering the final battle area, energy containment also protects from fire shield, you have to enter the spell effects screen and remove it if you want to drink a healing potion or cast a spell at this character.

 

Thanks for taking the time to share this. If I ever get around to trying this out, this post will definitely be consulted!

 

I will test the Weapon with abiltiy theory of them rrunning out of charges. I never experienced it. I will make a Half-Elf Cleric/Mage and a Half-Gaint Gladiator. I will haste the Giant, dual wield 2 of these weapons and let him blender everything over and over. Using the Half-Elf to buff and heal the giant to keep him battle worthy. No other characters in the party. It shouldn't take too long to run out of charges.