Classic editor History Talk (0) Share. Universal Conquest Wiki. Pool of Radiance Wiki is a FANDOM Games Community. Universal Game Editor Pool Of Radiance; Zaxwerks Proanimator Full Crack; Pokemon Leaf Green Egglocke Rom; Pat Files For Revit Architecture; Ps3 Tales Of Graces F Dlc; Negima Ps2 Game; 3d Max 8 Xforce Keygen Free Download; Cad Software For Textile Design; Wasp 11 Keygen; Stronghold 3 Full Version Iso 9000; Sko Software Konter Pulsa; Episodi. Ultimate Party: - Submitted by: CDMII Pool of Radience PC (1988) First, play the game and keep all the important magical items (especially the Manual of Bodily Health, the Ring of Invisibility, and the Necklace of Missles). Have one party member leave with all the good stuff, but save the game on 'B'.
Overview
Ten years ago, a cadre of adventurers banded together and rose up to the challenge of stopping a Pool of Radiance that had manifested itself and brought evil to the edge of world domination. The Pool, which emanates pure evil, was closed and the lands rejoiced, singing songs of the great deeds these heroes had performed.
But all is not well -- for evil, true evil, cannot be stopped.
A new Pool of Radiance has emerged and the land's greatest heroes sallied forth to meet this challenge. They blew it. In an attempt to escape their deaths, the group’s sorcerer opened a portal into which they could escape. Instead, they were cut down, and you and your team just happened to be on the other end of the portal. As any good adventurer would do, your group jumped into the portal and instantly found themselves among a small crowd of monsters. After getting your bearings you realize that you are near the fabled (yet decrepit) city of Myth Drannor. Quickly you find that maybe you didn’t just happen upon that portal, maybe larger forces are at work. For this new Pool must be stopped, and you and your cohorts love adventure, so...
Gameplay, Controls, Interface
To many people, Dungeons & Dragons is the be all, end all of RPGs. So with the huge honor of being the game that could very well redefine the genre, Pool of Radiance (PoR) has been cast down onto us mere mortals.
Let me start off by saying that the first thing you will want to do when loading up this game is to get a cold drink. The installation on this puppy is long and the game is huge, weighing in at 1.2 GB if you choose the full install. Next, you will want to visit www.pool-of-radiance.com to download two patches that fix a number of issues with the game. Most notably, the fix that allows you to install PoR onto drives other than the C: drive. So, okay, no big deal, most games have patches that come out almost immediately with the launch.
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Once you finally have installed the game and set the very limited amount of options, I would advise any new or moderate RPG player to take a tour with the tutorial. The tutorial will give you an existing set of adventurers and walk you through the ins-and-outs of the game. Learning the interface, activating characters either separately or as a group, combat, you know, the usual stuff found in games like this.
Now, I will admit, that certain 'massive' RPGs in the past have somewhat overwhelmed me with the monumental amount of controls and with the user interface. So I was pleasantly surprised to see that PoR kept things a bit simpler. First, each character in my party was assigned a different color. Now, when I say that, I am referring to the colored circle that appears underneath them when selected independently. This color coincides with a small colored bar located in the bottom right hand corner of the screen. This bar has two functions. First, it acts as an easier way to select a single character in case they are all grouped together and you can’t click on him or her because another character is in the way; and second, the bar is a health meter. Under the colored bars is an icon that indicates who you have set as the leader of your party. A diagram button to the right of that allows you to pick how you want to form you party (how you want them to walk strategically) and then a last button that switches the movement action from one character to the entire group.
The game can be almost entirely controlled with the mouse. Right clicking on a character brings up a menu that can be accessed in or out of combat, since this menu contains not only inventory and item options, but also special attacks and magic attacks. Without right clicking this menu during combat, your character will just do his/her generic attack when you press the left mouse button.
In PoR, you will want to keep your eyes open and your cursor moving at all times. The cursor icon changes to one of several icons when you move it over something of interest. Which brings me to the view. PoR is a ? view game that has height, width and depth. Although it the game is 3D, it felt like it really wasn’t -- think of it as a poor man’s 3D. Not that this is a bad thing, because it really isn’t. This view is best for these types of games since is allows for the greatest viewable area. Occasionally, I had to muddle through some areas that didn’t seem to make sense to me (e.g. I didn’t really see those stairs until I just put my destination point on the object). This was even in the tutorial, strange.
Once you are ready to begin the real game, you are given the option to assemble a team of up to four characters. The game has several pre-made characters to choose from or you can create your own. Since I’m not into using pre-made, I chose to create my own team. For starters I obviously got to pick their names. From there you can choose what race you would like the new character to be and you have several to pick from: human, elf, half-elf, dwarf, halfling and half-orc. Each race has its benefits, both long and short term. If you pick a half-orc, you will have yourself a big tough brute to start out with, but don’t plan on making him your leader since he starts with lower charisma. Did I forget to mention that? Yes, PoR has the usual attributes associated with traditional dice and paper RPGs. Strength, dexterity, charisma, intelligence, constitution and wisdom are all in here, and don’t you believe that it doesn’t affect the overall game. I'm adding this here, because each race will be given a varying amount of character points that can be distributed over these six statistics. Pool of Radiance has also added a couple of new character classes to the game, which total eight: Fighter, ranger, paladin, barbarian, rogue, sorcerer, monk and cleric. I tried to create a balanced team, so I started out with a fighter, barbarian, rogue and sorcerer. Moving through character completion, at the last stage you can pick what you want your characters to look like. Frankly I was disappointed in the real lack of choices. Yes, they did include female versions of all the professions, but they did not show a woman half-orc. Personally, I would have liked to seen that.
So on to the actual game. While adventuring, I found it necessary to switch the 'always run' button to on. Trust me, this game will take about 100 hours to complete, and you could spend an additional 25 hours if you always walked. Kill as many bad guys as you think you can, then talk with everyone you think you can, including possible enemies. Not all monsters are interested in fighting, ya know. Speaking with non-player characters is fairly easy and the path is never really foggy. There will be a few times during the game that you might feel a bit lost or where you might not know what to do. The game makers did this on purpose. The clues can be found in the hand of a slain enemy or in a hidden room. Look around, use your rogue’s ability to find traps and discover hidden places. Put that barbarian at the front of the party. Rest whenever you can and save this game often.
When combat is initiated, whether you were surprised or you managed to sneak up on someone, a series of icons will appear in the upper left corner of the screen. Essentially, there is an icon for every character that gets a move during that particular round of combat. Again, your characters’ colors will be displayed along with a red icon for each enemy in the fight. Now, here is another reason to choose those extra character skill points more carefully. A stronger, more dexterous character has a better chance of striking the first blow, especially if they are of the more quick profession (barbarian, rogue). A small, time bar appears when it’s that particular character's turn to attack and steadily decreases as you make your combat selection. Depending on what kind of combat selection you make, once it’s been completed, it may be that your character has a little more round energy to use. In some cases you might want to attack and then back away. Or you may want to strike more than once in this particular round. Either way, designing a good strategy is paramount. You can and should also tweak your ranged fighters to walk toward the rear -- bows and sorcery are a very effective combination. My only real beef was that characters start out the game with really low hit points, and I’m talking anywhere from 8-14 hit points. That’s one slash away from getting killed. I realize these characters can possibly reach level 16, but that doesn’t change the fact that single digit hit points is a really bad way to start a huge adventure like this one.
Look, to be perfectly honest I could go on and on about the specifics of this game, it’s that huge. Know this, the game includes the latest D&D rules and a really great cast of monsters and bad guys. It’s up to you to make the good guys cool.
Multiplayer
PoR features online gaming that allows you to team up with players from across the net to go dungeon crawling in maps specifically made for online gaming. I find that doing online RPG style games is much more fun when you contact people (your friends) and host/join a game that includes people you know. Sometimes it is difficult to find other players that like your particular style of gameplay. And it can be difficult, as I found out, to deal with online gamers who like to mess up strategies. Otherwise, I really enjoyed my online experiences. I need to hook up with that geeky tech group in my office who plays every night.
Graphics
This game is in line with Baldurs Gate, Arcanum and Fallout. Only thing is, the graphics are far superior. The monsters really steal the show; from giant undead dragons to Basilisks, they all look really good. Action movement by all characters look as if real people were bitmapped and transferred to the game. Hacking and slashing is raised to an art form (hey look! Brains!). The clothing on the various characters looks cool as it sways during movement. Whenever armor is changed, it is reflected on the in-game character. On the fashion police note, you can find magic items in the game like boots, which just happen to look really horrible with pretty much every armor color. I didn’t know if my enemies were cowering in fear or trying to shield their eyes from my character's obvious color blindness. As in most games, the environment plays a huge part and the locales in PoR are nothing short of beautiful. From the awesome look of the underground dungeons that seem to be everywhere to the impressive ruins of Myth Drannor, the ancient Elvin city the game takes place in. Sometimes I’d be admiring the attention to detail and not even notice the monsters making their way towards me. I like games that look so good that you get caught looking
Audio
Why do RPGs seem to attract the best voice actors? PoR is no exception -- just watching and listening to the intro tells you that the effort put forth in the accurate music and timely voice acting is top-notch. Several non-player characters have cut-in voices and of all the ones I met sounded really good. Accents, from guttural to pristine, were done with a real flair. The music that also accompanies the game really sets the tone for high adventure.
System Requirements
Pentium II 400 or faster, 64 MB RAM, 8x CD-ROM, Direct X 8.0 compatible sound card, and a 3D video card with D3D support.
Documentation
Oh boy, Pool of Radiance contains a 142-page manual. Hard-core D&D players will read the whole thing; I perused most of it, and seem to be doing just fine.
Bottom Line
This game is HUGE! Anyone who buys it, plays the whole thing through (I haven’t yet) and beats the end battle is a person with drive. The only thing preventing me from scoring this graphics masterpiece in the 90’s was the somewhat weak storyline and the tedium that got me down on more then one occasion. Again, 100 hours is a long time to play a game -- you should be getting more than simply more powerful monsters once you reach the 50-hour mark. A must buy for the serious RPG player; a casual player won’t finish it.
Infobox VG| title = Pool of Radiance
developer =
publisher =
designer =
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media = 3½' and 5¼'
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Universal Game Editor Pool Of Radiance Download
'Pool of Radiance', released in
author=Dillon,Tony
title=Pool of Radiance
publisher=Commodore User (Oct 1988) p: 34, 35] As the first game in the series, Pool of Radiance was to be surpassed in terms of features by later
After the success of the original game (which won the
tory
The game takes place in the
The party begins in the civilized section of 'New Phlan' that is governed by a council. This portion of the city is a place for the party to buy equipment at the shops, rest up in the inns, listen to rumors in the pub, and contract with the clerk of the city council for various commissions. The party can also go to the hiring hall and hire an experienced adventurer to accompany the party.
Beyond this region the party enters the area of the slums, which have been overrun with low-level monsters such as goblins and orcs that the party must clear out (gaining experience in the process). Further into the slums, the going gets tougher, with ogres and trolls for opponents.
The next commission is to clear out Sokol Keep, a fortified area located on an island. This is filled with undead, among other opponents. Inside the keep is a specter who suffers under a curse. When you remove this curse, the keep is cleared and the shipping lanes to the city are finally opened.
There are a variety of other locations that are encountered as the party ventures further into the city, including Kuto's Well, catacombs filled with a bandit horde, a thieves' guild, Podol Plaza, and a buccaneer bar called the Pit. With the party making impressive progress, they are next contracted to go to the old Textile House, to recover the treasure of a council member. Pressing onward, the party can enter Mendor's Library, a temple of Bane in the wealthy section, Kovel Mansion, and the deadly Valhingen Graveyard.
Eventually the party ventures outside the city by boat, where they encounter a silver dragon. Various side treks and adventures occur, including visiting an encampment of the
Now the more difficult endgame begins. The party reveals a traitor in the city council, and is commissioned to hunt him down. At some point the party will have to assault Stojanow Gate, a difficult task against bugbears and ettins. The party then enters Valjevo Castle and its inner sanctum, descends a stairwell to encounter some guards of the impostor Tyranthaxus (who assumes the form of a bronze dragon). After defeating his guards, the party refuses his offer to join his side and engages the dragon boss in a deadly battle, emerging victorious.
Plot overview
The party's objective is to ultimately free Phlan from the monsters and the boss, Tyranthraxus. There are many missions from the Phlan city council the party can undertake, some optional, which will give rewards for successfully accomplishing the tasks.
The only real mandatory task is for the party to clear the areas on the outskirts of Phlan so it can make its way to Valjevo Castle and defeat Tyranthraxus. It is highly recommended, however, to gain enough experience to undertake this task.
Copy Protection
The original Pool of Radiance game shipped with a decoder wheel. After the title screen, a copy protection screen was displayed consisting of two pictures and a line. The player was required to use the decoder wheel to line up these two pictures, and then enter the word revealed in the appropriate cutout in the decoder wheel. The player was given three tries to enter the correct word before the game exited.
Differences between versions of Pool of Radiance
Pool of Radiance was released for several computers/game consoles, so there are differences between the versions.
Commodore 64 (C64) featured music, while the DOS version had none. The C64 also had more detailed graphics. Unfortunately, C64 had notoriously slow load times, unless the computer had a fast load cartridge installed. The game was also distributed on four double-sided floppy disks, making disk swapping a common frustration for players. The use of disks to save characters, however, made disk-swapping exploits possible to achieve item duplication.
The Nintendo (NES) version was completely different from the other releases. It featured original music, different graphics, and a unique interface. It lacked many of the features of its computer counterparts, such as editing character icons. It also lacked several areas to explore, most notably the randomly generated creature lairs found on the wilderness map. Battles in the NES port were also considerally toned-down, partly because the NES had trouble with a large number of sprites and partly to lower the difficulty.
The Amiga version was very well made with nice music and enhanced graphics and animation, and a level of quality the PC version would not reach until
For MS-DOS there are three different known versions available:
Difficulty
'Pool of Radiance' is considered to be very unbalanced with regard to difficulty, especially by today's standards. The frequent random encounters were often more challenging than the set-piece battles and tended to be very time consuming. This is partially because the game would base random encounter difficulty off party strength, and the metric used counted player stats heavily. A party of first level characters with high stats (easily obtainable at character generation) would face random encounters with numbers of enemies more suited for high level characters.
Hacking
The save game files were very simple and easy to edit using either a Hex Editor or Pooledit, a DOS-based saved-game editor written by Stephen Oulton. It was possible to edit a character's statistics (Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, Dexterity, Constitution, and Charisma) up to 25 - the maximum allowed in Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Version 1, and the game was programmed to accept scores that high, though it was impossible to get them without using an editor.
It was also possible to edit equipment items - giving rise to 'Helmets of Fireballs', 'Swords of Ice Storm', 'Shields of Lightning Bolts', and other interesting if improbable creations.
Bugs
* Bag - The Commodore 64 version of the game had an interesting bug - if a character had a lot of arrows you could split them until all of the character's 16 inventory slots were filled, and then split them once more. The result was that the topmost item in the character's inventory would be transformed into an item called 'bag' and appear as a 17th item slot. The bag was not worth anything to sell, however it virtually made the base item +57. So if you had a plate mail transformed into a bag, you could get an Armor Class of well below -50 and if you had a weapon transformed into a bag, you would easily deal 60+ points of damage with each blow at a miss chance of 5% (natural 1). Basically, the same thing also worked with all other items that had quantities (quarrels, flasks of oil, silver arrows, carpets etc.). The bonus the so created item had and its name varied. Some had minor bonuses, some had huge bonuses and some had such high bonuses that they turned negative (silver arrows made superb items with a malus of about 100).
* Lizardmen Camp - The NES version of the game has a rather annoying bug, though it does not affect the completion of the game. If you enter the abandoned castle and find the old lizardman but flee before he gets a chance to give you your quest, he will disappear from the game and the overall quest for this segment cannot be completed.
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* Wraith - When fighting a wraith, it was possible to have a character's level drained until it reached 0 and then drained again, wrapping around the 8-bit register to level 255. If a member of your party survived, it was possible to resurrect this dead character and have a level 255 character with 255 hit points.
* Export - Not so much a bug as an exploit, if there was a particular item you wanted more of you could give it to a character then export them at the adventure hall. Strip the item from the character then drop them from the party. Re-enter the adventure hall and add the character back in - with the original item still in their possession. This could be repeated 'ad infinitum'. Also of note is that in the NES version codes are provided to export your characters. Though not technically a bug, no sequel was made for the console so the codes are worthless.
* Mad man - On the C64, the Mad man character is seemingly useless. If you add him to your party and then return to civilization, he will start fights with people randomly. It is possible to get to a training hall and modify his attributes as long as he has 0 experience. Doing so will give you full control of the character from that point on and the game turns him into a regular player character (giving you 7 PCs).
Game credits
* Scenario created by: TSR, Inc., Jim Ward, David Cook, Steve Winter, Mike Breault
* Game created by: SSI Special Projects
* Programming: Scot Bayless, Brad Myers, Russ Brown, Ted Greer
* Original Programming: Keith Brors, Brad Myers
* Graphic Arts: Tom Wahl, Fred Butts, Darla Marasco, Susan Halbleib
* Project Manager: Victor Penman
* Encounter Coding: Paul Murray, Russ Brown, Victor Penman, Dave Shelley
* Developer: George MacDonald
* Testing:
Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor
Pool Of Radiance Book Series
Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor is the sequel to 'Pool of Radiance' and was released in
Pool Of Radiance Download Free
This was a new game based on the same AD&D module, but with rules updated for the 3rd edition. Sales for the game were initially low as it received lackluster reviews and was plagued with bugs, especially in multiplayer. The situation was so bad that uninstalling the unpatched game could wipe the user's system files [http://arstechnica.com/reviews/01q4/pool_of_radiance/pool-1.html] . The main complaint about the game was that it was boring, as the AD&D module it was based on was intended for a large player group. Other problems, such as the infinite and confusing dungeons and only one style of gameplay - hack'n slash - contributed to make this title considered boring and repetitive. Later patches fixed some of the stability issues, but by this time stronger competition such as
Reception
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Pool of Radiance received positive reviews, with Tony Dillon from Commodore User scoringit 9/10. The only complaint was a slightly slow disk access however the reviewerwas impressed with the features even labeling the game as a Commodore Usersuperstar. [cite
author=Dillon, Tony
title=Pool of Radiance|
publisher=Commodore User (Oct 1988) p: 34, 35]
A review from Zzap was less positive only achieving 80%. It was noted the gamefelt too much 'hacking, slicing and chopping' without enough emphasis onpuzzle solving. The game was awarded on 49% for puzzle factor. [cite web
title=Pool of Radiance
url=http://www.zzap64.co.uk/cgi-bin/displaypage.pl?issue=44&page=127&magazine=zzap
publisher=Zzap 44 (Dec 1988) p : 127
accessdate=2008-02-21]
See also
* '
* '
* '
* '
* 'Pool of Twilight'
* '
*
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References
External links
* [http://www.geocities.com/dragonbait1999/index.html Dragonbait's 'Pool of Radiance' page] , screenshots, info and pics of the original Pool of Radiance (1988)
* [http://www.gamebanshee.com/poolofradiance/ 'Pool of Radiance' at Game Banshee] - Contains a walkthrough and many in-depth specifics about the game
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