Dungeons & Dragons Games Vol. 22: Gold Box - Death Knights of Krynn (MS-DOS) - Part 2

This week on Super Adventures, I'm going to continue playing Death Knights of Krynn! If you'd prefer to read part one instead, click THIS LINK.

I'm still playing the DOS version you can buy from Steam and GOG, I just decided to show the PC-98 version of the title screen this time. It's based on the game's box art, or at least the painting the box art borrowed. The PC-98 title music is also worth a listen, and if this was 1998 I'd have it autoplaying when you open this page.

The painting is called 'Lord Soth's Charge' and that's him at the front, the leader of the undead army. I don't actually know anything else about him, but I feel like we wouldn't be friends in real life. I do know something about the engravings surrounding the logo though. There are three orders of Solamnic Knights: the Order of the Crown, the Order of the Sword, and the highest of them is the Order of the Rose. So the rose design is probably related to that.

Warning: this is going to have SPOILERS. Not just for Death Knights of Krynn, but also Champions of Krynn, as it's a sequel.

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Previously, in Death Knights of Krynn:

The Champions of Krynn were invited to a party to celebrate their victory in the first game last year, and to remember their late friend Sir Karl. Unfortunately the corpse of Sir Karl came flying in on a skeleton dragon, undead armies lay siege to their outpost, and basically the whole event was ruined. Then a Dread Wolf showed up at the graveyard to laugh at us!

We do have a lead to follow though: a knight had a prophetic dream of Sir Karl's rise (along with darkness and a candle and stuff) and he has a recording of it stored on a Sleepstone. If we can get the stone to the Dream Merchant at the bazaar in Kalaman we can see the dream for ourselves and investigate further.

And now, the continuation:

Finding Kalaman would be a bit difficult using the in-game map as they neglected to label any of the locations. Fortunately the one printed in the Adventurer's Journal is a bit more informative, if not quite as legible.

I suppose I could just glance over at the proper labelled map that Gold Box Companion has thoughtfully bolted onto the side of the DOSBox window. I'm ready to make use of another one of its features now as well: the music player. I am so sick of playing in silence, and it's smart enough to know when it's time for town music or a victory fanfare.

When I started Champions of Krynn my first mission was to hike three squares north to Throtl. This time I'm starting off down at the bottom right of the map and Kalaman is up at the very top, so I've got a bit more of a walk before I can get back to fighting undead.

Damn, I was only able to walk three squares north before I got a random encounter.

I suppose I could just walk away and leave these guys to fend for themselves. Will my Solamnic Knight and his legendary team of champions that once donated all their expensive gear to the Solamnic Knights stop for five minutes to save a bunch of Solamnic Knights? Hmm, it's a real dilemma.

Damn, they've got me surrounded here. Worse, they're like a dozen tiles away and I think my team must be overloaded with cash or arrows right now as they can barely go two or three steps per turn. I forgot to visit the bank to drop off my coins before leaving the outpost.

Okay, how am I going to deal with these undead quickly without hiking all the way over to them? Do I have some kind of magical ability that can deal with a large group of opponents at a distance? Oh, I have an idea...

I clicked 'TURN' and Rinoa used 'turn undead' to deal with the all zombies in one move. Some of them ran away, the others just exploded. I didn't get a lot of XP for using it, but I'd like to get this over with so I can get to Kalaman.

KALAMAN

I feel like I've met this guy before somewhere.

Turns out that Kalaman is a proper location I can walk around, not just a menu town with a list of options to pick from. The door to the left is the inn, the gate behind the guard leads to the bazaar, which is closed for the night, and the street to the right leads to the local commander. I'm here to find the Dream Merchant, but I'll go pay the commander a visit while I'm here.

Along the way I ran into a gang who... wanted to sell me a map for 25 steel. I told them I didn't want the map, so they lowered the price to 20. I do actually kind of want to see the map and I have so much cash I can barely walk, but I don't make deals with gangs who jump out at me at night, so I said 'no'. So now we're fighting I guess!

Celes is ready for a level up and I'm looking forward to her fireball spell getting an upgrade, as right now it's leaving me with a lot of wounded survivors to clean up. 

I suppose I could just give everyone a bow and tap the 'NEXT' button each turn. They've finally fixed it so that it targets the next enemy instead of cycling through every unit, so that'll clear out a scattered crowd of low-health rogues efficiently enough. But I can't be bothered going into everyone's inventory and un-equipping their sword and shield first.

Fortunately my team's more than up to the task of getting in there with a sword, as every one of them is a fully fledged fighter. It's just that some of them have to spend a share of their XP on cleric and mage levels too. You'd think that levelling up slower would put my mages at a disadvantage, combined with the harsh strength limit that female fighters have in 1st Edition D&D, but they can just cast the spell 'enlarge' before combat and become even stronger with a blade. It may even let them walk a few tiles further each turn despite their overloaded backpacks.

Wow, they really did have a map to sell me! A pretty decent one too. I found it on their dead bodies afterwards.

'X' seems interesting, I should check that out at some point. Actually forget X, there's a training hall right above me, so I can finally level up!

I think the guy running the training hall used to be a Solamnic Knight. I'm just getting that vibe from him.

Levelling up is still based on 1st Edition AD&D, which is good because it's authentic, and bad because it's boring. Here are the choices I get to make on level up: none. Nothing at all, well besides picking a new spell for the mages. Though they do get a random increase to their max health and a better THAC0, which means fewer misses in combat.

I continued to the end of the street (to the house marked 'House' on that map), and met with Daine, Commander of the Solamnic Knights for the city of Kalaman. He had another journal entry for me:

Seems like we need to stop Lord Soth then. 

I've got only one question: what does beauteous mean?

Okay, it means beautiful. Got it.

I don't recall previous Gold Box games being so keen to describe everyone, though it's possible I just wasn't paying enough attention. It's funny how all the women are described as comely or beauteous, but the guys are all burly or fat. And Lord Soth's agents are outright hideous.

The game doesn't really do dialogue options but here it's giving me the option to not say my next line. But I'm gonna do it.

I chose to tell of Sir Karl, and Daine replied that this is grave.

I chose to tell of the Dream Merchant, and Ariela warned me of a gaunt-faced man, Soth's agent. She has a story to tell about him... which is recorded as journal entry 19.

Man, this had better be a really good story if I have to get my Adventurer's Journal back out again for this. Actually I'm using Gold Box Companion's helpful journal feature to show the entries over the game window, so it's fine.

Okay, so I'm going to the bazaar to look for the Dream Merchant, but I also need to watch out for Sebas Astmoor, as he's a Takhisis-worshipping monster working for Lord Soth.

The game's giving me a lot of villains to keep track of. I really need to write all this down.

• The Dark Queen Takhisis - The main villain in charge? I know that the third game is named after her.
• Lord Soth - I think he's the guy commanding the Death Knights of Krynn.
• Dread Wolf / Sir Karl / Sebas Astmoor - These three are all presumably working for Soth.
• Dream Merchant - He's in the bazaar. I need to give him the Sleepstone to see the dream.

Before heading to the bazaar I decided to go to the inn for some rest. Unfortunately my characters slept all afternoon and the bazaar's shut for the night! Damn you, day/night system!

THE NEXT MORNING

The bazaar takes up the top left 13x13 tiles of this 16x16 town, so I've got a lot of stalls to check. I can't just ask someone where the Dream Merchant is, it's not that kind of game. I can't even see anyone, especially not the person sneakily trailing us.

Very few of the vendors I've run into here have had actual shops I could spend money in, and they weren't selling anything interesting. This would've been the time for the game to throw in a couple of special items to tempt me into handing over some coins, but the bazaar is pretty much just a waste of my time. It's a maze where the dead ends occasionally ask if I want to buy a gnome hair carpet. Funnily enough, no.

Even the 'rare edibles from Ergoth' were just a 'yes/no' choice that got me nothing.

It took me five minutes of pointless wandering to finally find the Dream Merchant's Dream Pavillion (not counting all the time I spent checking shops, or getting jumped by thugs), and suddenly the most unexpected thing possible happened: the game started playing music.

What the hell? Gold Box games don't play music, not in the DOS versions anyway. You get a theme tune if you're lucky and that's it. I'm not sure why they don't though, seeing as it was 1991 and the Sound Blaster was two years old by this point. AdLib cards were four years old.

Hey, we're fighting Draconians! These show up a lot in the earlier Dragonlance games but I was starting to think the Champions had already killed them all by this point in the timeline.

It seems like Lulu over there is in real trouble, but she's tougher than she looks. Despite the icon, she's actually a fighter/mage in proper plate armour holding a long sword +1. I could manually edit the icon to put a sword in her hand and give her a silver tunic like Steiner up there, but I have no interest in doing that. I definitely have no interest in doing it every time I put someone's sword away and pull out a bow.

When the battle ended the Dream Merchant was nowhere in sight. I mean he never was in sight, the game mostly just describes things that are happening, but he's really disappeared this time. 

The game told me there was "A cry to the west!" so I raced through the fabric sheets to find... a wall.

I went back and found that someone else had been cutting through the fabric. The aides pointed south so I ran in that direction. Man, I hope it doesn't take me another five minutes of wandering around this bazaar to find this guy. It wasn't much fun the first time.

What the hell dude? Where were you when I was attacked by Draconians a minute ago! Or that time I was attacked by thugs!

Are we being arrested because we cut through the fabric wall earlier? We needed to do that because we were chasing the Dream Merchant on a crucial mission for the Solamnic Knights! You see, one of them had a dream about candles and darkness and a zombie riding a dragon, and he recorded it onto a stone...

LATER, IN A CELL

Kalaman sucks. Never go to Kalaman.

At least now I feel like I'm in a proper secret agent story. One of the ones where the hero gets locked up after things go catastrophically wrong.

I don't know if this game has branching missions, or if this is the only way events could've gone, but things look a bit bleak right now. The Dream Merchant is long gone, along with the people who kidnapped him, and "Seems the kidnappers got away. Sorry," is the most I'm getting out of the local law enforcement.

Though as I leave the building a passing woman drops a note. This is recorded as journal entry 58.

Awesome, I'm back on track! Though how the hell do they know about the Sleepstone?

They want me to go back into that bloody bazaar maze again to meet the kidnappers, though it's all mapped now so it shouldn't be as much of a pain as it was last time. Hang on, I have to be there at the 165th hour? Is that some kind of Dragonlance thing? Do I need to look this up? If they have 24 hour days on this world that would work out to be about a week, so do I have to keep myself busy doing optional missions until then?

I should check the actual Adventurer's Journal booklet and see what it says in there.

Oh, the 16th hour. 4 pm. Got it.

It's 2 am right now, so I'll go have another rest at the inn to heal and get my spells back.

The process is all pretty effortless in this game. To get my health back I just find a place to camp, press 'FIX', and the heroes will automatically cast all their healing spells and nap to get them back as many times as it takes.

To recover all my spells I press 'REST' and they sleep until they're ready, that's all I have to do this time.  In the previous games I had to go back to the spell list and fill my empty spell slots manually (either that or use Gold Box Companion), but now re-memorising spells is automatic!

Wait, I forgot to look at how long resting would take! Okay, cool, we woke up on the 14th hour. 2 pm. There's still plenty of time for us to get back over to the bazaar for the meeting with the kidnappers.

Shut! Dammit!

I ran around and tried the other entrance in the east but that's locked too. That detour cost me 30 in-game minutes, so now I only have 90 minutes left before I need to be in there. At least the gangs have stopped bothering me. When they see who we are they say "Oops! Our mistake," and hurry off. Okay, okay, there's got to be another way in that I don't know about, something I'm overlooking...

The map I took off the gang! It shows a door at the back of the inn, and I have just enough time left to make it.

Bloody hell! If the guards didn't like it when I made a mess of bazaar earlier, they're not going to be happy to see what the place looks like after a bunch of dragons come down.

The Dream Merchant asks me to throw him the Sleepstone so that he'll go free. I'm not sure that makes any sense, seeing as the dragons could just keep both him and the stone... but okay, let's try that!

Damn, the dude just teleported away with my stone, leaving me to face some very frustrated evil dragons.

Huh, I expected the dragons to join in with the fight, but it's just a bunch of fighters and wizards here.

These dumbasses would be more of a threat to me if they didn't love to run into my 'stinking cloud' spell and get themselves paralysed. It's random whether someone is affected or not, but when they are they're left useless, helpless and one hit away from dying. This is why I don't switch my own team to AI control when I'm putting down clouds, as they can't be trusted. This isn't an accidental flaw in the AI, by the way, it was something they added to the games after Pool of Radiance.

Well, all the bad guys have fled and now I have nothing. No Dream Merchant, no Sleepstone, no prisoners to interrogate.  I feel like I may have made poor choices. I suppose all I can do now is go visit Daine and Ariela back at the house at the end of the street.

Oh right, the Dream Merchant has a shop in Vingaard! I actually knew about that. It just slipped my mind because I'm an idiot.

First though I have to deal with another ambush in this street. I thought the gangs had decided it was better for everyone to just leave me alone.

Hang on, these are Draconians, and they want the Sleepstone! Were they not paying attention? I just gave it to the Dream Merchant right in front of them five minutes ago. You know what, it doesn't matter, I'll just kill them all and move on.

The enemy team is made of Draconians, evil fighters and a wizard or two. Nothing I haven't fought before. They'll have to wait a bit though for me to get over to them, as my team is still so weighed down with cash that they can barely move. It would've been a real help if Kalaman had a bank.

Wait, Celes has been held? Oh no, this is exactly what I don't need. Now she's useless, helpless and one hit away from dying!

I should've focused on shutting down the wizards quickly, maybe sent some arrows their way to break their concentration, but I've been breezing through fights so easily lately that I wasn't really taking the threat seriously.

This is what losing the game looks like. Steiner: dying, Barret: wounded, Faris: dying, Celes: dying, Rinoa: unconscious, Lulu: held.

I was still hoping I'd find a way to turn it around, but when the wizard put that hold person spell on Lulu it was all over. Even if Barret can solo the rest of the enemies, which isn't impossible, he can't kick ass and bandage his dying teammates during the same turn, so they'll all die.

Fortunately it hadn't been long since I saved and the second time around I could buff my party before the ambush. Once the rematch started I had my mages shut down the enemy spellcasters, casting spells like fireball, fireball and fireball. Any survivors got stinking cloud'd to paralyse them, before being killed by a single cruel blow.

The Draconians got one hit in before being utterly wiped out. I don't like it when I lose fights.

THE TRIP TO VINGAARD

The road from Kalaman to Vingaard took me past this creepy tower, so I thought I'd walk over and see if there was anything interesting I could do there.

I wasn't expecting a bit of spooky music to start playing! If it happens once or twice more I might start to get used to it, but right now even a tiny bit of soundtrack is a big surprise. Also look, you can see the planet's three moons in the background. I'm not sure they match the ones on the top of the screen, but it's still a nice touch.

Well my only options are 'leave' or 'nothing' so I'm going to walk away. Maybe the next location will be more interesting.

My next stop was Cerberus Town, where a whole lot of nothing is going on. The game assures me that there are people around and that it's bustling with activity, but there's nothing for me to do here. No sidequests, no shops, no bank to store my money.

I guess it's like the towns in Champions of Krynn, which are basically inactive until the plot sends you there.

SOON

Dulcimer Town already has the map filled in, so that's weird. Even weirder is that it's the same map as Cerberus. It's not just the same layout, all my numbered map notes are right where I left them as well. 

The main difference is that everyone here is a zombie, though they've been a lot more civil than the others I've been running into.

They've even got a zombie mayor and he's wondering if I've been to Cerberus yet.

The lich explains that he built Dulcimer in Cerberus' honour, which just raises more questions. There's got to be more to this story, but I guess I need to come back later. I'm just glad he seems friendly, as I know enough about Dungeons & Dragons to know that liches are what you go fight when dragons become too easy.

In fact I was able to walk around the whole town without incident... almost. I did beat up a bunch of zombie giants after accidentally interrupting their card game, and I feel a little bad about that. Anyway, there's nothing to do here, so I'm moving on again.

Alright, I have arrived at Vingaard! I really hope there's a bank here, and a training hall to get Faris her level up. Man, I can't believe I haven't found a place to drop off money in this game since Gargath Outpost.

Though I'll have to stop playing here, as I've already written more than enough and if I keep going it'll get ridiculous. Sorry, but that's all I can show of Death Knights of Krynn. I hope it was enough for you to get an idea of how the game plays.


CONCLUSION

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Death Knights of Krynn may be your ideal game, if what you really want from an RPG is to patrol an outpost and then wander around a maze of useless shops, being asked over and over if you want some useless joke item. To be fair, the story that's been set up so far does have my interest, but nothing's really developed yet. I went looking for a guy and he teleported away to another town.

It seems possible that there could be some interesting locations to visit outside of the main story, but nothing I've come across so far has given me anything to do, so I dunno. And the gameplay seems a lot like the other Gold Box games, though I haven't really made any progress yet.


Actually screw it, I'm not done with this game yet! I'm going to search Vingaard and find the Dream Merchant, I'm going to explore the world map, and I'm going to find out if this story's any good. You know that I usually try to prioritise quantity over quality, and I try to cover as many games as I can instead of giving each of them the time they deserve, but I'm going to break with tradition here and give this a third part!

TO BE CONTINUED

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Next on Super Adventures, I'm going to find a better place to stop playing Death Knights of Krynn. Hopefully after some satisfying dramatic event.

But for now it's your turn to say something about the game.