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From: tromp@cwi.nl (John Tromp)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.games
Subject: Re: Chaos info
Message-ID: <3043@charon.cwi.nl>
Date: 27 Feb 91 16:11:58 GMT
References: <6865.27C74918@zswamp.fidonet.org> <1991Feb27.095430.2107@odin.diku.dk>
Sender: news@cwi.nl
Lines: 47

jake@diku.dk (Jacob Bay Hansen) writes:
>Stewart.Mckinnon@p0.f178.n221.z1.fidonet.org (Stewart Mckinnon) writes:
>>I would strongly recommend using characters from CHAOS STRIKES BACK 
>>PRISON, rather thab
>>(ooops!) rather than ones from DM1. I just don't think they'll be 
>>up to it! Anyway, hope I've answered your questions!
>I strongly disagree. I've completed CSB once allready, and is trying
>with some characters from the prison this time. I find it VERY hard
>to survive with these 'novices'. The ONLY two characters of any reel
>use is 'Lor' and 'Kazai' (The hidden ones). My characters from DM
>are alot more useful i.e my fighters have 660 and 637 hit points,
>and my wizard/priest's have 240 and 223 mana a hole lot more than
>ANY of the 'Prison'-characters.

The reason that most people play CSB with DM characters is that they've
spent so much time on builing characters, i.e. gaining levels, instead
of just doing the minimum necessary for completing the game. Using a
run and hide technique, and saving all the time until you get lucky
enough to avoid that extra blow that's about to kill your character, it's
quite possible to complete DM with a single average artisan champion.
Instead many people have spent hours and hours just hacking away in
the screamers room to get those wonderful master levels.

The same holds for CSB: you don't need much manpower, if you already
know your way around and just focus on the absolute minimum.
As an example, consider the first half of the Dain path. You often
start at the crossing with the gates, pressure plates & spiders and
later have to kill all those water monsters and ghost things to progress
to some location X.
If you get lucky (or force it by save&retry), you get to start right away
at point X. The same holds for the other Ways: you're put in one of 3 different
places, where one can save you an enormous amount of trouble over the others.

Having finished CSB with Elija (with H=999,S=999,M=329 better than Lor
and Kazai combined!), I am now trying to play the game with Itza,
which I consider to be the best character in the prison by far.
Mana really is more important than health, seeing how little mana
is required for a mon vi potion. Once I get all the Corbums,
I can still decide to take a tourist's trip through all of the dungeon.

This leads to the following question: I noticed that one of the Ku starts
puts you past the mummies, spiders, and blue meanies, so naturally this
is the place I want to be put in. However, I still need that solid key.
Is there a route from the dragon's room back to e.g. the junction of the
ways that avoids all those monsters? That would make Ku a piece 'a cake.

John Tromp (tromp@cwi.nl)                     Itza says "live and let live!"