Reading time: 6 – 9 minutes
Return to Contents Return to Part 4 – AdventureThe Slums
1. Gate to New Phlan 2. Goblins Lair 3. Ohlo 4. Man with Ohlo’s potion
5. Kobolds Lair 6. Gate to Kuto’s Well 7. Treasure 8. Hobgoblins Lair and Treasure
9. Orcs Lair 10. Gypsy 11. Orc Guards 12. Leaders Gathering 13. Goblin Guards
14. Treasure 15. Trolls Lair 16. Orcs with papers 17. Hidden Treasure
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 locations 16 and 17, were added by me.This section is your first adventure, and one of the slowest. You will face very low level monsters, goblins and kobolds, and they will be able to kill your party with ease if you’re not careful, so please read up on combat notes before trying this area.
This is also the first area you will gain equipment, such as three Short Bows + 1 and a shield + 1. You will also get to fight two slightly over-powered encounters, one with ogers and trolls, one with the “mage” Ohlo, a 3rd level magic-user who just peppers you with his wand of magic missiles.
Please note: Encounters may grant “set” treasure, for example, you always get a shield + 1 from one location. It may also have “random items”, where the game pics a random magic item of a set level, such as low-end scrolls or +1 weapons. I’ve tried to mark these the best I can, but without yet another 2-3 playthroughs, I can’t be 100% sure what’s random and what isn’t. This applies to all areas of the map from now on; all encounters in the slums have been double checked.
Once you enter the slums, what should you do first? I recommend moving to area 16, or area 2, and make these areas your “base”, since you can rest in these areas without clearing the slums first (And without paying one platinum piece in town) . Area 16, the one I would hit first, is a simple combat with 4 orcs, and it nets you a cleric scroll with two cure light wounds. Such a weak prize, I would just sell it, it’s worth a lot as a down payment on a fine longbow. Area 2 has some goblins and a goblin leader, and you can get magic leather armor out of it. After this point, you can try to clear out all the set encounters, try to clear out the random encounters, or a mix of both to help keep the game interesting.
If you want to clear out the encounters, you need to decide, do you want to clean them out quickly, or do you want to fight more monsters for more EXP? If you want to have more EXP, find a nice, wide open area, and keep using LOOK until you have an encounter. If you want to make the encounters go quick, find a small area, such as 7,11. If you face into the wall, you will have far fewer monsters to face, and very little change in EXP because EXP is so low for these monsters anyways; kobolds are like 7 exp or less, so about 1 exp per party member per kobold. You will average 7 monsters per combat, with EXP of about 276ish, vs 500-1,300ish for larger fights.
One thing I see a lot in walkthoughs are people talking about getting the potion for Ohlo. If you give him the potion, you get 3,348 exp, plus a scroll that contains fireball. If you kill him, you gain 4,853, plus a wand of magic missiles, so I recommend this fight. But unless you’re skilled in combat, you will need to be higher than first level to win, there are a lot of orc leaders with bows that can take your guys down quick. Spam the sleep spells and take Ohlo out with a bow ASAP, he uses a wand every round that casts magic missiles, doing 4-10 points damage each round to your party members who have 9-10 hp.
Other than that, the area is pretty basic. At areas 17 and 14, you need to search for the treasure. Area 10 is the fortune teller, there’s no point in killing her, you get 3 copper. I have heard that killing her makes the random encounters harder, it doesn’t seem to do that or much of anything else.
Another area of note is area 15, the coming of age section, For some people this is too tough of a fight to complete when you do the slums, and that’s understandable, but really a 1st level party can win. You need to make sure you have a high armor class, and attack the trolls with arrows, aiming on one troll at a time. Once you hurt a troll, they start regenerating 3 HP per round three rounds from when the damage starts. If you kill a troll, it’ll stay down till it has 100% of it’s life, then pop back up where it was. To stop that, you can move someone on the square they went down at, and the troll can’t get back up. Once the trolls are down, focus on the ogres, they do much less damage than trolls.
Items:
Random Encounters:
| Encounter | EXP | Items of note: |
| Kobolds | 535-650 | (None) |
| Orcs | 834-978 | (None) |
| Goblins | 606-1,356 | (None) |
Set Encounters:
| Location | EXP | Items of note: |
| Area 16 | 535-650 | (None) |
| Area 2 | 540 | Leather Armor + 1 |
| Area 17 | 1,398 | 20 Arrows + 1 Shortbow + 1 |
| Area 5 | 1,734 | Bracers AC 6 |
| Area 7 | 7,038 | 20 Arrows + 1 Shortbow + 1 |
| Area 8 | 1,548 | Shortbow + 1 Ring of Protection + 1 |
| Area 9 | 2,472 | Flail + 1 |
| Area 11 | 594 | |
| Area 12 | 378 | |
| Area 13 | 390 | |
| Area 14 | 2,298 | Shield + 1 Magic-user scroll (Magic Missile) |
| Area 3 (Give Potion) | 3,348 – 4,200 | Random item |
| Area 3 (Fight Ohlo) | 4,853 | Wand of Magic Missiles |
| Area 15 | 7,332-8,532 | 3 Random Items |
Return to Contents Return to Part 4 – Adventure On to Sokal Keep