Reading time: 9 – 14 minutes
Return to Contents Return to Part 4 – AdventureCivilized District
1. Gate to the Slums 2. Priestess of Sune 3. Inn 4. Priest of Tempus
5. Arms and Armor Shop 6. Silver Items Shop 7. Shopkeeper 8. Tavern
9. Jewelry Shop 10. Council Clerk 11. Councilman Cadorna 12. Cadorna’s Chamber
13. Lord Urslingen 14. Priest of Tyr 15. Bishop Braccio 16. Passenger Dock
17. Boat 18. Duel / Hire Hall 19. Clerics Trainer 20. Magic-Users Trainer
21. Fighters Trainer 22. Thieves Trainer 23. Council Guards
Map and locations by Marco Alessandri
NOTE: The map and the location numbers above were made by Marco Alessandri, who created the amazing maps and walk-throughs for many of the gold box games that are located at the-spoiler.com. The coordinates, along with location 23, were added by me.The civilized district of Phlan is where you will begin your adventure in Pool of Radiance, where you find your starting equipment, where you receive rewards for your efforts, where you come to level up, and where you get some of the best equipment in the game. In other words, one of the most important sections in the game, yet also one of the simplest.
First time in town
Once your new friend Rolf gives you a tour (Notice how he’s blond in the portrait, but has dark hair as he walks up to you?), you gain control of the party at #1. You have two major goals in town, buy items, and memorize spells. First proceed to any of the buildings marked with a 5, and buy every one the equipment listed in section B of outfitting your party.
After buying all the equipment you can, head over to any location marked with a 3, and memorize all the spells as mentioned in section E of outfitting your party. You may now explore the town all you wish, but do not start any fights, you town guards will wipe the floor with you at this point of the game. This means do not go near area 23, do not force your way into any closed stores, do not try to camp in the streets, and stay out of all taverns. While the taverns will not trigger the town guard directly, there are pick pockets in there who will swipe your gold. If you catch one, you can ignore him, meaning you still lose money, or you can catch him, this triggers a bar fight that’s not too hard. After that, the town guards come to break up the fight, these are the same level of guards that you will fight if you break into a store.
Once you have had your fill, now it’s time to decide: Are you going to play the adventure as a nice, Mr. Rogers lead party, or are you going to play rough? If your wanting to be a nice, sweet, happy troop of boy scouts, head off to the Slums. If you want free magic items, to room 18, and hire a Hero.
Hireling Abuse
If you’re wondering why hire a Hero if you want to play dirty, but not if you’re a “clean” party, the reasoning is simple. For the clean party, you won’t have the money to buy al the equipment you need, so you have to play the “Kill monsters, hull the loot back and sell if for almost nothing” game until you can afford the basics in life (Like a bow). Having a hero now means the money you gain now will be less, so may as well wait on the hireling. Or, if you would rather speed things along, you can take a Hero out into the Slums, and kill him.
That’s right, the game rewards you for cold blooded murder. I’m sure the game programmers never thought of this, since it gives you some nice equipment a bit sooner than you should have it, but it’s not so overpowering of a trick that you can now breeze through the game. See, when you hire a hireling, you can not remove their equipment as long as they’re awake. However, soon as you attack them, they turn into enemies, so their items show up in the loot after combat. The trick is, after you defeat a group of monsters in combat, say yes to continue combat. Have everyone in your party use delay, and move them a few steps away from the hero. Once the hero has used up his turn guarding, cast sleep on him. There’s no save, and he becomes helpless every time, so you can kill him in one shot. Repeat this 6 times, and everyone in the group is loaded with +1 two-handed swords, +1 plate mails, and bows\arrows. You can also do this to the theurgist, who has a ring of protection + 1.
I would recommend not killing hirelings on your first play through, but again, it’s not some cheat that will unbalance game play. It may be more fulfilling to wait till a second play-through to try this, but on the other hand, you may want to re-use existing characters on your second play through, meaning there would be no point to this. If you want to get the items, but feel cheap doing it this way, hire 1-2 heroes, but do not use sleep or hold spells, and do not use delay trick to get in a round of free shots. At the beginning of game play, a hero is much stronger than any other monsters you would face, so it makes it seem a fair challenge.
In town combat – For mid-level+ parties only
As I mentioned before, the civilized district is the best place equipment and a good place to level up. This is due to the town guards and priests of Tempus, these large fights net the party 30,000 – 60,000 EXP each, and give you some good mid-level items. If you break into a shop, encamp in town, or survive a bar fight, the city watch shows up, the weakest of the three types of fights. These fights seem to always lack the 8th level fighters that give the better EXP and items.
The best place to get into a fight is as 23, with the counsel guards. These fights always have five Level 8 Fighters, who wear Plate Mail + 2, Ring of Protection + 3, Two-handed Sword + 2. And it’s neat that they wear such bad equipment, the plate mail’s magic overpowers the ring of protection; if they wear non-magical plate mail, it would function as +3 with the ring, as covered in the equipment section of the faq. Maybe the designers didn’t fully understand the game engine?
Once you have defeated a set of town guards, you change how Phlan reacts to you. You can still train, but no inn, shop, or temple will offer you services. This means you can not sell items to raise the gold needed to train, so make sure you have plenty before you start raising hell. This effect lasts even if you leave town, the only way to reset it is to complete a job for the city counsle, once this is done, the town returns to normal.
While being disliked by the town, two of the temples will refuse to help you. The third temple, the Temple of Tempus, will attack you soon as you walk in the door. The combat is with 10+ high level (For this game) clerics, some Aides, and a few Level 8 Fighters, meaning this very well could be the hardest (But not the cheapest) fight in the game. Thanks to your parties high DEX scores, you have a better chance of reacting before the priests, so hit as many of them as you can with a fireball, this will prevent them from casting hold person spells, then load the area up with stinking clouds, starting with the priests you missed with the fireball. You must damage the priests each round, or cover them in a stinking cloud, or else they will start casting hold person spells on your party. After you have defeated them at one door, you can walk over to the other door, to repeat the combat. These battles will net the party close to 70,000 EXP, so 8,750ish exp for a party of 6 and two hirelings, or the full 70,000 if you are only trying to level up one party member. That will bring your single-classed fighter from level 7 to level 8 in one combat.
Return trips to town
When you are ready to level up, you will have to go to areas 19-22. Each level of training costs 1000 gold (200 platinum), even for hirelings. You have to train each class separately, so for example, area 19 is for training the priest class, 20 is for the magic-user class. You can also only gain one level in a class at a time; if you have the EXP to go up two levels, the game drops your EXP values to be one less than required for the second level. For example, a 1st level single-classed thief with 5,000 exp would become a 2nd level thief with 2,500 EXP. More info on this can be found in the General game system notes, tips, and bugs section.
When you want a hireling, you can proceed to 18, more info on this topic is covered in section G of Outfitting your party, on the page covering hirelings.
Once you have a large amount of money, you will want to buy a Fine longbow as per the outfitting your party section. You will also want to buy mirrors for the library, but these isn’t required. And oil\holy water is always fun to try out.
After you have cleared a section, such as the slums, go to location 10, and talk to Sasha (I do not think she is ever called that in the game; her name is established later in the series in her cameos). Sasha rewards you with EXP, gems, and sometimes items for completing quests. The best item(s) is when you’re offered the graveyard quest, she will give you a two handed sword + 1 +3 vs. undead, and a bunch of scrolls of restoration. These scrolls restore levels lost due to the level drain from undead, but they do not restore lost experience points. See the section on spells for more info.
Items:
| Fight | EXP | Items of note: |
| Bar fight | 2,250 | (No items) |
| Town Guard | 32,748 | Wand of magic missiles x 2~3, Two Handed Swords + 2 x 6+, Longbow + 1 |
| City Hall Guards | 34,752 | Plate Mail + 2 x 5, Two handed swords + 2 x 5, Rings of Protection + 3 x 5, Wand of Magic Missiles x 3 |
| Tempest Temple Guards | 68,820 | Plate Mail + 2 x 4, Two handed swords + 2 x 4, Rings of Protection + 3 x 4, Mace + 2 x 10+, Potion of healing x 10+ |