Part 1 – Character Creation

While the game intends for us to roll our stats randomly, it also allows us to modify our stats to whatever we like, so that we can make our characters ‘just like your favorite AD&D character’ but for speedrun purposes it works much better to set all stats to the maximum value, i.e. 18s for all stats and maximum possible HP.

The game uses (mostly) 1st Edition AD&D rules, which has a few weird quirks, especially for character creation. In this game, we start at 5th level, except for the Fighter/Magic-User, who is 4th level in both classes.

Thieves are of limited use in most Gold Box speedruns, so we don’t have any. One cleric is useful for healing, and unique to this speedrun, mages are not as useful, so our party consists of 1 Human Male Paladin, 3 Human Male Fighters, 1 Female Human Cleric, and 1 Half-Elf Fighter/Magic-User.

Paladin/Fighters – Paladins have a few special healing abilities and protection against some evil enemies. They level more slowly than fighters, but they will all hit a power spike at level 7 (where they will attack 3 times every 2 rounds instead of just once a round) after completing the second act, so I have 1 Paladin for emergency healing.

Cleric – Females have lower maximum strength than males in 1st Edition—human males can obtain the maximum of 18(100) exceptional Strength, while female humans only get up to 18(50). The difference between those strengths is actually massive: 18(100) gets +3 to hit and +6 damage with melee weapons, while for 18(50) the bonuses are only +1/+3. So all of our Fighters are male. However, only fighters get exceptional strength; all other classes max at 18 flat (only +1/+2 for the to hit/damage bonuses). We need one female character to avoid a length fight in the third act, so we make our cleric female. Only humans can get higher than 6th level as a cleric.

Fighter/Magic-User – Non-human races, like females, have limited maximum strength, so our half-elf can only reach 18(90) Strength (+2/+4). In addition, non-human races in 1st Edition have a maximum level they can reach; in the case of a half-elf it is 8th level for both fighters and magic-users. However, we will only reach 7th level in each by the end of the game anyway, so that doesn’t affect us in this game. Only non-humans can be multiclass and level fighter and magic-user at the same time, and since magic-users are useless without spells, having a fighter/magic-user will let us cast the few spells we need while still being able to fight almost as well as a straight fighter. In 1st Edition, a fighter/magic-user can even cast spells while wearing platemail armor.

Part 2 – The First Act, Step 1 – The City of Tilverton & Thieves’ Hideout

Our experienced party wakes up in the city of Tilverton, part of the nation of Cormyr on the Forgotten Realms continent of Faerun, in an inn. We have no equipment, having been knocked unconscious and stripped during the game’s prologue. We also have five mystical blue tattoos (THAT MOVE!) on our arms that we didn’t have before. We have been given more than enough money to buy all the equipment we need, however.

First we rest and memorize our spells. As in all D&D additions, rather than Magic Points, we have to memorize the spells we want to cast every time we rest. Cleric spells Bless and Prayer are for pre-battle buffs, Cure Light Wounds to help heal us faster when we rest, and Hold Person to paralyze enemies. Dispel Magic is for curing paralysis in emergencies but will probably never be used, and there are no other useful 3rd level spells for the speedrun. The magic-user gets Magic Missile for guaranteed damage and Stinking Cloud to debuff and hopefully paralyze enemies.

Our first step after leaving is to buy equipment so we can fight. The paladin, fighters and fighter/mage get Longsword, Shield, and Platemail, the best normal equipment possible in 1st Ed, and one fighter and the fighter/mage also get bows and arrows. The bows will quickly become useless, but they are good on a couple characters for the very early game. The cleric can also use Platemail and Shield but the Flail is her best melee weapon and she can use a Staff-Sling for ranged combat. The cleric is mostly useless in normal combat so the Staff-Sling will allow her to stay out of the way during most fights.

Once this is done, there is no more shopping in the game; there is nothing useful to buy in the speedrun at any point after this. The money we do use is spent on raising our levels, as we will see later.

After buying and equipping, we have to visit the Sage Filani to trigger a necessary game flag. She will take half of our money and tell us about the Azure Bonds on our arms. She doesn’t know much, but this is required to leave the city.

Once we have bought equipment and seen the sage, we can attempt to leave but will be stopped by guards. The second time we try to leave the king’s carriage arrives and the voice of the king emerges from the carriage. Our bonds compel us to try to kill the king, but after breaking into the carriage we find it is a decoy bard, Giorgi Wyvernspur, not the king. Guards attack us, leading to our first battle.

The magic-user will use Stinking Cloud and the cleric Hold Person to hopefully paralyze a few or all of the guards. Characters who are ‘Helpless’ because of Sleep, Hold Person or other effects will be one-shot by the next non-spell attack on them, guaranteed, so paralyzing enemies with these spells can (if RNG is kind) greatly speed up the fights.

After we defeat the guards, the Azure Bonds control on us is gone since the king wasn’t really there, and more guards come. We surrender to the guards to speed the game along, rather than fighting another group. They throw us in jail, but thieves break us out (we don’t lose any equipment going to jail—these guards learned from Chronotrigger) and take us down to their hideout. We get a chance to rest and memorize our spells, and as soon as we try to move from our position Fire Knives bust in and start a big fight. The Fire Knives are our first masters we must overcome, a group of assassins trying to overthrow the kingdom of Cormyr using us to do our dirty work. They are also trying to supplant the existing Thieves’ guild. We get Ally thieves in this fight that cannot be controlled; they will simply charge the nearest enemy. The enemies are two Fire Knives, who use bows, and many more thieves, who simply melee with daggers. Again, Hold Person and Stinking Cloud can speed up the fight by paralyzing enemies and letting us one-shot them, but Stinking Cloud is dangerous because spells in this game affect allies as well as enemies, so our stupid allies and characters will wander into Stinking Clouds while pursuing enemies and sometimes become paralyzed themselves. Stinking Cloud also has a very short range but lingers and affects a 4-square area.

After this battle, we will try to make it through the Thieves’ Hideout and avoid random encounters; they can be quite lengthy and it is slow and difficult to run away from the tactical map, so we will safety save often and quit/reload if we get encounters. There is also one encounter with fleeing Thieves, who will just pass by if you Remain Calm.

We do have another required battle against 1 Fire Knife and many Attack Dogs, but it is simple and easy. Then we find our first treasure of the game in a locked armory, which we can usually break open with our high Strength stats but if we fail we will have to reload (it’s about a 1 in 6 chance or less to fail). Magic Items in the game have to be identified in a shop to know what they are, but can be used even if they are unidentified; we will pick up the +1 Longsword to help in one battle and the +1 Banded Mail for one character because it is as good as Platemail for AC but allows the one wearing it to move twice as fast—12 squares a turn instead of 6. We ignore the rest of the items.

Note on AC (Armor Class) – In 1st Edition, lower Armor Class was better. AC starts at 10 and gets lower due to armor, magical protection, and Dexterity. There is also a stat called ‘THAC0’, To Hit Armor Class Zero, which is what a character must roll to hit a character with AC0 on a 20-sided die. From 3rd Edition onward, of course, D&D fixed AC to be easier for people to understand, with higher AC being better, but 1st Edition especially was weird.

We also find the best, most overpowered item in the game—Dust of Disappearance. More on that later.

After looting the room and again resting and memorizing spells, we try to get out of the hideout and reach the sewer, again quitting and reloading if we get any encounters.

Part 3 – The First Act, Step Two – The Sewers and the Fire Knives’ Hideout

There are two ways into the sewers, but we go the secret way that allows us to avoid all the encounters we wish. There are also no random encounters in the Sewers, so we don’t have to worry about that. We will run into some Otyughs, who will make a bargain with us to defeat some other Otyughs so they can take their lair and they will give us treasure in return. We agree to the bargain so we don’t have to fight, but we don’t have time to actually do it because it’s a speedrun; but going this way and taking this quest allows us to avoid fighting them and several Fire Knife checkpoints on the other side of the Sewers path.

We will go into a Troll Lair for a quick battle, again using Stinking Cloud to hopefully paralyze one or two, in order to get some experience and to get a +1 Staff-Sling for our Cleric and make her slightly more effective. We also pick up a Girdle of the Dwarves for a bit of extra HP for one of our fighters.

After that, we enter the secret training lair of the Thieves’ Guild. In this game you do not level when you gain enough experience; in order to level you have to visit a training hall and pay 1000 gold pieces to increase your level. If you have enough experience to gain 2 levels, you only gain one and lose all the extra experience you had into the next level. All of our gold going forward will be spent training our characters (or bribing enemies). We don’t have enough experience to level yet, but again, this route allows us to enter the secret area of the Fire Knives’ Hideout.

In the first room of the Hideout we can get encounters, but soon we will enter the secret hallway where we cannot. We will save before leaving the secret hallway because once again it is faster to quit and reload than to fight any encounters we do get. When we see the checkpoint up ahead, we enter the door on our left, and loot the armory, getting the next two crucial items we need. Our cleric gets a +2 Flail for emergencies and one of the Fighters gets all the potions (these items are not necessary but are useful), while we also pick up the Longsword +3 Frostbrand, the second-best (permanent) sword in the game, and the Necklace of Missiles. We will then commence the game’s only real glitch.

In the Party Management screen, which you can only reach by entering a Training Hall or by loading a game, we can add and remove characters, create new ones, and drop party members. Removing a character takes them out of the party and puts them in a free character pool, where they can be added to any other game later, while Dropping a character permanently gets rid of them. Characters in the free character pool are not affected by saving or loading games. We Remove the Fighter/Magic-User from the party and add an unimportant ‘baggage’ PC who will hold onto some items for us. We trade the Frostbrand longsword, the Dust of Disappearance, and the Necklace of Missiles to the baggage character. We then remove ‘Bags’ from the party. Then we Drop every party member. This takes us back to the game’s first screen, allowing us to reload our save. Since we didn’t save after giving ‘Bags’ our items we still have them, and since Bags was in the free character pool when we loaded the game, he still has the items we gave him. By removing the fighter/mage again and adding bags, we can take the items he was holding for us and give them to another character; now we have 2 Frostbrands, 2 Dusts of Disappearance and 2 Necklaces of Missiles. We then remove Bags from the party again, save the game when he isn’t in the party, add him back to the party, give him our now 6 items, and remove him from the party again, drop the entire party again, reload the save from before we gave him our six items, put him back in the party and collect our six items from him again, and so on. Doing this, we actually multiply our items until we have 5 Frostbrands (1 for each fighter, including the paladin and fighter/mage), 16 Necklaces of Missiles (3 for each character except the fighter/mage, who gets 1) and 16 Dusts of Disappearance (doesn’t matter who holds them). Then we remove ‘Bags’ one more time and add our fighter/mage back into our party, giving him his new items afterward. Now we are set to dominate the rest of the game with this overpowered equipment. We do a bit more inventory management, ditching our useless bows and old swords and original flail/staff-sling.

After one final save (we have 2 spots we can get random encounters), we head for the final Fire Knife battle and the end of the first act. Right before the checkpoint, we use a Dust of Disappearance from the menu. Using this item outside of combat casts a kind of ‘Improved Invisibility’ on the party. This invisibility does not go away after a character attacks and in fact lasts for hours. We enter the checkpoint and surrender to the guards, who immediately take us to their leader, who also have the Cormyr Princess Nacacia captive. The leader uses the Bonds to keep us under control, but Nacacia slips her bonds and knocks him unconscious, which suspends his control and allows us to fight all his men. There are one mage and man Fire Knives in this battle, but they are no threat, because we have Dust of Disappearance active.

The Invisibility effect prevents us from being targeted by any spells or ranged attacks, so the mage cannot cast spells on us and the Fire Knives cannot shoot us. All they can do is attack a character if they are next to one, and at a -4 penalty. In addition, if all characters are invisible and they are not next to one, they will either do nothing or attempt to cast a spell, which will only work if it is defensive; they will not try to move forward to engage us in melee, rendering us nearly invincible. Now we use the Necklace of Missiles as an item. This causes us to throw a Fireball spell a short distance. The Fireball does fire damage to the target square and the 27 squares within three squares of the blast radius. This is very random damage, anywhere from about 5 damage to 36, so RNG plays a huge factor in how quickly our Necklaces destroy the enemy (and they can make a Saving Throw to take half-damage rounded down, so I have seen damage as little as 2 and sometimes often), but hitting so many enemies with no chance of missing makes the fight go very quickly. The Necklace has limited charges and will just disappear without a message after it is used up, which is why we gave 3 to each character except the mage (we’ll get to why later).

After defeating the Fire Knives, the princess threatens the leader and forces him to free us, leaving us down one of five masters. Then the king arrives and, because we did try to kill him (even if we were ensorcelled) and he can’t trust us, banishes us from the city; we can never come back to Tilverton or go any further into Cormyr but must go east into the Dalelands. We get a small cutscene where our remaining four masters visit us in a dream and try to frighten us.

Part 4 – The Second Act, Step One – The Village of Hap

We get a wilderness encounter against a small group of hippogriffs as we try to head east. This is annoying because of terrain, spread out enemies, and the fact that Fireballs have a small AoE outdoors (going out 2 squares instead of 3, still, it’s amazing a game this old has such technical physics in it). After beating them we get our first city experience. Most cities have no maps, but just a menu of places of interest. First we visit the shop and Pool our money, then spend 100 gold pieces on each of the four potions we have to Identify them (partially to tell them apart, but also because this changes all of our gold into fewer equivalent value platinum coins—coins in this game have encumbrance and can slow down my characters, so while not as important as in the first game, Pool of Radiance, it’s good to occasionally spend money in a shop to change out lesser coins for more valuable ones). We throw away the potion of invisibility because it’s redundant, EleGiggle.

We visit the Hall next to train our fighters and cleric to 6th level and our fighter/mage to 5th level as a fighter; the paladin does not yet have enough exp and the fighter/mage can’t reach 5th as a mage yet (in 1st Edition, all classes require different amounts of experience to level based on how powerful the class is. Thieves are by far the fastest, while paladins are the slowest and mages usually slower). We’ll deal with that soon. We then go to the inn to heal anything that needs healing and memorize a few new spells for our cleric.

(I should mention: the ‘Fix’ command in camp rests to memorize spells we’ve prepared, and also quickly heals the party by simulating the cleric casting all his available healing spells and then automatically rememorizing them. Without healing, a character only recovers 1 HP every 24 hours, so healing takes a long time in this game. Resting can also be interrupted by random encounters most places in the game, so we only rest in guaranteed safe spots in the speedrun.)

We now journey from Ashabenford to the Standing Stones, going by Wilderness so we don’t encounter Fire Knives disguised as a guard patrol on the road. At the Standing Stones an old man talks to us, which we ignore. He finally tells us ‘Seek Red to the South’, which actually is the intended path. We head south to Essembra, by the road to avoid a friendly but time-consuming encounter, and then south to Hap by any means. On the way to Hap we are attacked by our second and final wilderness encounter in the run, 3 Black Dragons.

From 2nd Edition onward Dragons are awesome boss-level foes, but in 1st Edition they are frightening but manageable glass cannons. These 3 Black Dragons are maximum strength Black Dragons, with 48 hit points, which is not threatening. However, they can breathe a stream of acid which will do 48 points of damage (24 with a saving throw) to all characters in a line. Since we only have 40-80 HP on each character, this is very dangerous. Again, the terrain is random and can foul things up, but our enemies start very far away. They can only breathe acid if they are in range at the start of the turn, so if we’re lucky, all 3 will manage to come together close so we can use the Necklace on 2 or all 3 at once. We Delay with our characters until all 3 dragons have gone and hope to burn them down before they start their next turn and have a chance to breathe on us. Luckily, after the battle we can camp and rest up before entering Hap.

Hap is under control of Dark Elves and an Efreeti loyal to Dracandros, our second master. There is a useless Mage NPC we can recruit in the town, but he’s useless because of AI and the power of Dark Elves. Our first objective is to free the city by defeating the Efreeti and his guards. We can fight the patrols (random encounters) in town to reduce the number of guards in the boss fight, but it’s faster to fight many enemies in the one boss battle than many smaller battles outside, so we can avoid combat with the random encounters by using the Parley option and using Meek speech. If we recruit the NPC, he insults the Dark Elves and starts combat for us.

Before entering the Barn at the south end of town to fight the Efreeti, we use Dust and have our cleric cast Bless & Prayer to buff us. In addition, the fighter who has it should use the Potion of Speed to double his attacks for this battle. The Efreeti takes 25% less damage from fire and the Dark Elves have 50% magic resistance, meaning half of the time spells don’t affect them at all. Because of this, the Necklace will be useless for most of the Second Act. The fastest way of combat is to take off our Necklaces and let our characters Quick Combat. The Dust is extremely vital for fights like this, as all of the Dark Elves in this fight are spellcasters, either mages who love to throw lightning bolts, dealing 10-20 damage to enemies in a line and bouncing off walls to hit again, or clerics who can paralyze us with Hold Person, making us vulnerable to be one-shot by enemy attacks. Being immune to this magic makes this speedrun viable.

Quick Combat allows the AI to control our characters; it is limited and foolish, with poor pathing, but it resolves battles very, very quickly, especially if I can’t (or won’t/shouldn’t) use spells or items. The AI has odd priority for ranged and melee attacks, but the cleric with a Staff-Sling+1 and a Flail+2 will choose to use the Staff-Sling unless an enemy is in melee range. However, without magical bows or arrows, none of our fighters will use ranged weapons when they have the +3 Frostbrand, hence why we got rid of our bows and arrows (and if we want to manually attack at range with them, we have Necklaces). If the character has a magical item equipped, like the Necklace, they may try to use them—and since their targeting is terrible, and spells can hurt allies, they will usually do more damage to the party than the enemy, especially against Dark Elves with Magic Resistance. For the same reason we ignore the mage Akabar Bel Akash, whom we could recruit, because he is totally AI controlled and will waste his spells on Dark Elves. He will also throw his signature Fireball into the middle of our group and kill the party, and as a Mage with no other class, he is otherwise useless.

After letting our party butcher the Dark Elves and Efreeti, we are praised by the grateful villagers, and Hap becomes 100% safe. Before we move on to the next dungeon, we have gained enough experience to level up our remaining characters, so we leave and go back to Essembra to raise the Paladin to 6th level and the Fighter/Mage to 5th level mage. We get a new spell, and choose Haste, which is actually the most useful mage spell in the game, especially for the speedrun. We rest and memorize our new spells, especially Haste.

Part 5 – The Second Act, Step Two – Cave of the Dracolich & Dracandros’ Tower

We return to hap, use Dust after entering the city, and then immediately turn around to leave. However, this time, instead of returning to the Wilderness, we follow our new map (we looted from the Efreeti) to the Caves. We have a set battle against guards, consisting of more Dark Elves and Salamanders. Salamanders are immune to fire, so our Necklaces are still useless, so we let our fighters butcher the enemies with their swords. Luckily, the Frostbrand does additional damage and hits more often against Salamanders and Efreet. We loot the Dark Elf Chainmail from off the Drow from this and subsequent fights until most of the party has it. This Drow Chain is slightly better than plate and gives us 12 movement, making it much easier to chase down enemies, but it will disappear once we leave the caves, so we can only use it during the Second Act. After this fight, we turn south to visit the Dark Elf lady Silk. Silk has a quest for us to complete, which we generally won’t do, except I probably will in the marathon just for fun. We need a female character to get this quest and its benefit, which is why we have a female cleric. She will put the mark of the ‘Swanmay’ mercenaries on the cleric, marking her as part of them, and this mark lets us avoid some random encounters in this cave and one particular long fight in the Third Act.

Some Dark Elves recognize the mark and respect Silk and will leave us alone (the encounters that show the Dark Elf portrait). However, even other encounters are not dangerous here, because we can just choose to Flee before combat even starts, which backs us up a step but stops the encounter. We wind our way through the caves before another required battle against Salamander and Dark Elf guards. The next room is the lair of the Dracolich, the most powerful enemy we’ve faced so far. We have to be totally prepared, so we re-use Dust to refresh it and then cast Bless and Prayer to give us better chances to hit, then enter to face the Dracolich.

We can surrender to the Dracolich and immediately see Dracandros, but if we skip this battle will be attacked by him in the Wilderness once we leave Hap, so it’s faster and better to fight him now while we’re prepared and can surround him. It’s a dangerous fight because he can still gaze on us each turn even if we’re invisible, and the gaze can Paralyze us, allowing us to be one shot. He does heavy damage and attacks multiple times a turn (after gazing that same turn!), and has a -6 AC and 88 HP. We have to just try to kill him as fast as possible and hope RNG is in our favor. We safety save before the battle and reload if things go awry. If we are reduced to 0 HP we are just unconscious and can be healed back up easily (and after this fight in particular, we will automatically revive at 1 HP afterwards), while being at -1 to -9 HP or being one-shot while ‘Helpless’ means we are dying. An ally has to use Bandage on their turn to stabilize the character or they will eventually die. At -10 HP or less, a character is dead and can only be revived by powerful magic and still has side effects after the fact. Essentially, if any character dies it is an instant reload. If only one is knocked unconscious, the fight can be salvaged, but more than one would leave us potentially too weak for the next fight.

After the Dracolich, if one character is particularly hurt (such as at 1 HP from almost Dying), we can use the Potion of Extra Healing to heal him up to 3 times, the Lay on hands ability of the Paladin, or the Cure Light Wounds spells to buff them up. From this point on, patrols in this cave will automatically attack without giving us a surrender option, so we need to save and reload to avoid those encounters at this point, but with luck we won’t get any before the tower.

The tower is a short distance after the Dracolich, and Dracandros uses the bonds to control us and then teleports us to the top of the tower. There we see a flight of Black Dragons, and Dracandros compels us to attack one. It’s only an illusion; Dracandros wants to convince the Dragons the humans are plotting against them and start a war between them, but the Dragons are smarter than that. Recognizing that the wizard forced us to attack the dragon illusion, they demand he release us so they can see what we’ll do. Dracandros does so, and we have four options: Attack the Dragons, Attack the Wizard, Flee, or Parley with the Dragons. Fleeing or Attacking the Dragons is bad and results in fighting the Dragons. With Dust on, we can fight the dozen or so dragons in the battle, but it is long and time-consuming, so we want to avoid it at all costs. Attacking the Wizard is fastest and causes the dragons to fly off; parleying gives multiple choices, and some will start a fight while others will persuade the dragons to leave. After attacking the wizard, the dragons leave and Dracandros flees, calling guards to attack us in his place. After this fight, we are given an opportunity for unlimited resting and healing on the roof, and we immediately take advantage.

Before heading back down, we need to use Dust, Bless, Prayer and Haste again. We should probably have a fighter use the Potion of Giant Strength, too. At the bottom of the stairs is the hardest fight in the game: the Dark Elf Lord Burly, Dracandros’ Bodyguard. Burly has a -7 AC and over 100 HP, attacks twice a turn, and has a +5 Drow Longsword and +3 Platemail and +2 Shield. Even worse, a small text box before the battle tells us he has a symbol on his shield which he shows, causing us to writhe in pain. The gameplay effect is that in this battle our party is debuffed, with a severe penalty to both our AC and our own ‘To Hit’ property. This makes the battle incredible difficult, since he still also has more than 50% magic resistance. All we can do is surround him and, with Dust partially offsetting the Symbol of Pain effect and Haste giving us 2 attacks each a turn, our 5 fighters have a chance of killing him before he slaughters us. Our cleric will cast Hold Person on Burly until she runs out; it only has about a 5% chance of actually working, but if we paralyze Burly the battle is immediately over as he is killed by the next attack. We loot his armor and equip it; not only will we now have a -7 AC on one of our characters but that character will move at a respectable 9. The +5 sword will be very good for one fighter as well; like the Drow Chain, it will disappear once we leave the cave, but it is very good for the rest of this Second Act.

After the battle we go back up to the roof and rest again to recover all our spells, then start our descent. In this dungeon, the random encounters are in small groups, so usually it’s faster to bite the bullet and just fight them, letting Quick Combat move through them as fast as possible. The enemies are in groups from 3 to 6, which isn’t bad.

Our first interesting diversion is down the first hall, a Trial of the Sphere challenge room. In a normal speedrun I would ignore this room, but I will probably enter it in the marathon just to show it off. A drow mage challenges one character to a contest in controlling an Orb of Annihilation. It floats in the center of the room and each contestant concentrates on it, trying to use willpower to move it towards their opponent. The ability to move the sphere is determined by magical power, intelligence and wisdom. Because of our 18s, it is easy even for non-mages in our party to win this contest, especially since, in the case of a tie, the Orb moves towards the stronger wizard. Once it reaches him, the sphere annihilates the wizard and we get to loot his room. It gives a large amount of experience and more money than we can possibly carry (or spend!). Since we don’t need either the money or the exp, we should skip this room, but it’s kind of neat.

(if the character loses the contest and doesn’t surrender, they are disintegrated and permanently dead).

We go down to the next level and see an illusion of Burly (his twin?) We can surrender and the illusion steals our money and equipment (somehow?) but if we attack the illusion vanishes. We will have a set encounter on this level against a group of Dark Elves and many Owlbears. Their positioning isn’t great on the map but it’s still worth the time investment to pause quick combat and use Necklaces to blow up most of the Owlbears, then resume Quick Combat to mop up the Dark Elves and the remaining Owlbears. We go down the next set of stairs immediately afterward and find a strange paper. If a mage can disarm the explosive runes on it, we can disable the trap of spikes at the bottom of the next stairs, but I’ve never successfully done it, so it’s better just to ignore it here and take the damage on the next floor. We avoid the main hallway on this floor to skip another fight against Drow and Owlbears, instead going through siderooms and finding a room with a Dragon Egg. This is one of the items Silk wanted us to get for her, and the one that’s easiest to get. It’s faster to wade into the room and take the Dragon Egg in order to proceed anyway, even though we normally wouldn’t ever give this to Silk. Then we can leave the room and take the last stairs.

We’ll take some damage at the bottom of the next stairs, then will head through the last few rooms before the Second Act’s final battle. First we have a room full of Wyverns. We will reuse Dust before entering to make sure they can’t see us, then pause Quick Combat to blow them up with Necklaces. Wyverns have a poisonous tail sting, and poison in 1st Edition is again OP—it causes automatic, instant death. If any of our characters tries to melee the Wyverns, is hit by an unlucky strike and dies from poison, we have to reload the game, so it’s far safer just to nuke them all with Fireballs and stay out of close combat.

We cast our usual spells (Haste, Bless, Prayer), and enter the next room to fight Dracandros. He has invisibility on, meaning we can’t target him, but we can see his position and can throw fireballs at the Dark Elf behind him to hit him with them. We need to keep him damaged and kill him as soon as possible so that he won’t cast Fire Shield; Fire Shield protects him with a damage shield that will do the same damage to us if we hit him with a melee weapon, and this is the most dangerous thing that can happen to us. So after nuking him down with indirect Necklace shots, we go back to Quick Combat to clean up his forces.

Dracandros has lots of great loot, including Bracers, 2 rings, and 2 wands, all of which go the fighter/magic-user. One Wand is Fireballs and the other is Ice Storm, and it’s because of these he was only given one Necklace. The Damage from the Wand of Fireballs is more reliably high, in the high teens and 20s, and it has a longer range, while Ice Storm is a higher level AoE spell with a smaller AoE but damage that can’t be saved against and is usually in the 20s as well. One Ring and Bracer will allow him to ditch his armor to move at 12 and still have a -6 or so AC, and the other ring lets him memorize twice as many 1st 2nd and 3rd level spells (that he probably won’t cast, but oh well). At this point I will be memorizing 2 Haste spells each rest.

We also get the Helm of Dragons, a key item that does not show up in our inventory but is one of the 3 key items needed to defeat Tyranthraxus, the final boss in the game. After leaving his tower, we can and would normally go straight to the Wilderness, but for the marathon, because why not, we will go to the caves instead, where Silk will immediately pay us for the Dragon Egg, giving us more exp and money we don’t need. Then we have to go back to the tower and then back to the Wilderness again from there; it’s only 3 spaces of movement, but there is a chance of getting a time-wasting random encounter doing this, hence the reason we normally would skip it in a real (PB attempt) speedrun.

Part 6 – The Third Act – Yulash and the Cult of Moander

We travel north to Essembra and visit the Hall first to level the party – the paladin fighters and cleric all reach 7, a major power spike level that gives the warriors, as mentioned, 50% more attacks, letting them attack 3 times a turn with haste, and the cleric now has a new healing spell to memorize, Cure Serious Wounds, which will greatly speed up our Fix resting time. The fighter/mage reaches 6 in both levels and learns Fireball, but neither the levels nor spell are too important on their own. We also rest to memorize these new spells and visit the shop to change money and identify the wands, mostly so we can easily tell the difference.

Leaving Essembra we probably meet the Bridge of Destiny, which normally we would just spam through. This small event is a cloak for a copyright protection interruption, but with CP disabled in this gog.com version of the game, it’s pointless fluff. For the marathon, I’ve registered it as a bidwar event for donators to decide our silly quest, favorite fruit, and ‘LETTER OF POWER’ (what would normally be the copyright protection letter).

At the Standing Stones, the strange old man tells us ‘Seek Green to the North’. We journey east to Hillsfar and north to Yulash, by Wilderness both times to avoid patrols of soldiers that would attack us. On the second leg we ignore the green-robed cultists we see instead. We enter Yulash, and are hit by horse running out of town on the way in (part of a continuing side story narrative of Princess Nacacia and her lover, Gharri the priest of Gond). We Ask Permission, Talk to the Guards, and Go with the Guards and get taken to a room to wait before meeting the leader of the Red Plumes of Yulash—soldiers from Hillsfar who are vying with the Zhentil Keep soldiers for control of the city.

We save, quit, and reload here to reset RNG. As soon as we take a step, Zhentarim spies rush in, trying to flee, and we are given the opportunity to Fight Them or Let Them Go. We choose to let then go because it’s a long, involved fight. The Red Plumes are upset, but take us to the commander. We speak Haughty to impress him. He approves of the Swanmay in the party, and it’s for this reason we met with Silk back in the Dracolich cave. If you don’t fight the spies, it’s a 50/50 chance to impress the commander. It fails every time if you don’t quit and reload before the meeting, but if you reload, it always works, (I don’t fully understand why, but it’s something in how the RNG is called for this event). You always impress him if you fight the spies, but that’s slow. If you fail to impress him you not only have to fight him and his guards here, but every waypoint the Red Plumes man in the city, and we have to go through at least 2.

We turn east partway down the path and duck into a group of ruined buildings (we usually encounter some deserter Red Plumes on the way but we can flee from them). There are several random encounters that can occur, but we can flee from all but the Zhentarim soldiers. We use some Dust before a set battle in this group of buildings, an annoying fight against some Zhentarim soldiers in a corner too close-quarters for Fireballs. There are two dangerous wizards in this group who start with Minor Globe of Invulnerability (a defensive spell that makes them immune to 1st, 2nd and 3rd level spells, including necklace Fireballs) and often cast Fire Shield on themselves (same as Dracandros does). Usually the best strategy is to let most characters just Quick Combat but take control of the fighter/mage to use the wand of Ice Storms on the casters in order to prevent them from casting spells (if a character is damaged before they act in a given turn, they cannot cast spells that turn).

Afterwards we head north to the next set encounter—Shambling Mounds that are hovering over a dead cleric of Moander. There are 2-6 Shambling Mounds in this battle, so RNG determines how long it is. Shambling Mounds are powerful foes that are immune to fire, take half damage from cold and get healed by lightning, so it’s sword attacks again to dispatch them. We are rewarded with two more wands for the fighter/mage: Lightning and Defoliation (the Wand of Defoliation does not even need to be identified). The Defoliation wand does damage over a 3-square cone area only to plant creatures, such as Shambling Mounds and Vegepygmies, which are found in abundance during the third act and only the third act. It does an average of more than 20 damage and makes short work of enemies in many battles during this part.

We head north, taking some damage from a sinking pit we don’t have a character to avoid it (a dwarf or maybe thief could help us prevent it, but it’s not worth having one in the party just to avoid his trigger) and enter the Pit of Moander. A dying cleric calls us the chosen ones and collapses the entrance behind us, trapping us in this dungeon. We make our way down, going by the straight path—random encounters are rare and often easy to avoid, so it usually is uneventful as we head down the stairs go for the main chapel. Near the chapel we meet Alias and Dragonbait, the heroes of the novel Azure Bonds that is the inspiration and effectual prequel to this game. They join our party (it’s far faster to let them join than to argue or try attacking them) and are okay AI-controlled archers to supplement our damage. Dragonbait is also a Paladin who can give a small amount of emergency healing in a pinch.

Alias warns us right before the Big Boss battle. We refresh Dust, mostly to make sure Alias and Dragonbait are also protected (or else the enemy AI will try to reach them to attack them and will disrupt the fight) and cast the usual spells. Mogion the High Priestess of Moander is trying to use the power of the bonds to bring their dead god of slime (Moander himself) back to life, but during the ceremony something goes wrong, our Bond just vanishes and the portal snaps shut after only allowing small pieces of the dead god through. We fight Mogion, her priestesses, and many Shambling Mounds. Once again, the Dust makes us immune to the deadly Hold Person spells of the clerics, and Necklaces, while not affecting the Shambling Mounds, will wipe out the humans quickly. The Mounds die to melee attacks and the Defoliation wand. We loot more +3 Plate/+2 Shield from Mogion, along with a Cloak of Displacement, another good AC item that stacks with all armor types. Then we have to fight the Bits of Moander that came through the dimensional rift, massive bruisers with 140 HP each, but since they can’t charge and surround us we can cleave them up easily. They are like Mega Shambling Mounds, being immune to Fire, etc., but taking damage from Defoliation. I move the mage around behind them to above the back pair because of the weird giant hit boxes of the Bits—it is only in this position I can hit two with the wand at the same time.

After the battle we get our second Pointless Key Item to defeat the final boss, the Gauntlet of Moander. We now have to fight our way out. Random encounters are more common now and, except for the giant slugs, can’t be avoided. Usually we’ll nuke through small groups of Vegepygmies and Cultists but quit and reload before Shambling Mounds because fighting them is very slow. After retracing our steps back up a floor, we take a detour through a room with a required Vegepygmy fight (weak plant-men that fall very quickly to both Fireballs and Defoliation), past some required Slugs that we can nonetheless avoid, and finally a final-force determined to stop our escape or die trying. Cultists in front, Shambling Mounds behind, we blow up the Cultists with Necklaces and Ice Storms and then hack through/Defoliate the Shambling Mounds as usual and finally make our escape. Alias and Dragonbait will bow out and we’ve completed the Third Act.

Part 7 – The Third Act – Zhentil Keep & the Beholder

We generally don’t have experience to level yet and the level benefits aren’t huge so we move immediately to neighboring Zhentil Keep, and after camping outside to rest and recover we enter the city. Zhentil Keep is a hostile city devoted to Bane, the evil god of death and main villain of the Gold Box AD&D games. They are our 4th Master, and Fzoul, their leader, plans to use as puppet soldiers and pawns in his quest to conquer Faerun for his master Bane, primarily by giving us a cache of ultra-powerful good-aligned weapons he has in his possession (sadly, these weapons exist only in lore, not in the game, so there’s no way to get our hands on these goodies. But we have Dust and Necklaces, so what else do we need?)

We journey into Zhentil Keep, ignoring all the shops and buildings and events along the wa(casually, the game’s only magic shop is here, selling magic arrows, Darts of Hornet’s Nest, and Wands of Magic Missiles, about the only things worth spending money on in the game besides levels), and finally entering the only narrow alley forward. We can get encounters, but we can avoid fights by Parleying Nice to Clerics Meek to Soldiers and Sly to Mages (although sometimes our Zhentarim Bond will force us to fight; but encounters in general are astronomically rare here). Eventually we meet Olive Ruskettle, a Halfling Bard who wants us to rescue her friend, the sage Dimswart, from the Temple of Bane. We agree, and she sneaks us inside, depositing us right in front of Dimswart’s cell and then vanishing. We bust in and take Diswart along (without a thief, our only means of opening locks is brute forcing it, which is actually far more effective anyway for most of these Gold Box games). Dimswart is a noncombat NPC who serves no purpose other than a story progression flag; he does appear in the party list, combat, or in any other way really affect the game, similar to the Key Quest Items we’ve acquired thus far.

With Dimswart along, we immediately end our journey in the Temple by heading straight north and ducking to the back of the room we enter (we can get super-rare encounters, but again can avoid combat by Parleying ‘Nice’ to the priests we meet, and they bless us and let us go—even though we’re toting their prized prisoner along). We use Dust again for ultimate protection before entering the back corner of the room. A hooded woman appears and offers to get us out, and we agree so that we can progress the story. We are taken to the lair of Dexam the beholder, a monster in the service of Bane. Although Zhentil Keep and Dexam both serve Bane, Fzoul and Dexam are each out for their own glory and are bitter rivals. Dexam wants to learn the secrets of our Bond and use it against Fzoul, but before he can begin his experiments Fzoul busts in and declares us his property, ‘along as he is alive’. With that caveat, Dexam nukes him with a disintegrate ray, ending him and destroying our Zhentil Keep Bond. Without that Bond we are no longer of any interest to the Beholder, so he just casually leaves. Meanwhile, the alter room turns into a war zone as the forces of the two factions battle it out. Because of this, this is a heavy RNG segment—I want to avoid all the battles I can because, even though Necklaces now work flawlessly, the battles are still rather long because of the number of enemies and their HP, and it’s still faster to safety save/quit/reload. However, this room can easily throw encounters at every step, and I’m not consistent with how I handle it—sometimes I’ll save after every step, sometimes I’ll just go for it and get lucky (and sometimes I even get a battle immediately after Dexam leaves and the cutscene is over—it seems like an event battle, but it’s just random!), making it out of the room with no encounters.

I have to save often on the way out because of these random encounters. There are four forced encounters in the cave, and technically a fifth forced random because of my quit/reload strategy. First a group of Minotaurs and priests will block my path. Finally, after winding my way through a good portion of this maze-cave, I’ll run into Dexam. He has a particularly Lair Room that is somewhat obvious when you’re aware of it, and you’re intended to go inside to confront him, but if you try to walk past the entrance without going outside you encounter him anyway, to prevent people from leaving without getting the boss fight. We cast our usual spells before the fight starts, of course.

The Hooded Woman is a Medusa and actually the most dangerous combatant in the fight. Like the Dracolich, her gaze can target even invisible foes, and if she turns us to stone it’s reload time because there’s no easy reliable way to fix that status ailment. She’s also in a position where it’s impossible to hit her with Fireballs without damaging the party, too. Luckily, she has a bad initiative, so two or three fighters in range of her will get to go first and cleave through her meager hitpoints in short order. After that, we can decimate the horde of minotaurs in the group with Necklaces, and then turn our attention to the Beholder. This is not a bad place to use your Dust even casually because with a Death Ray, Disintegrate Ray, and Flesh to Stone Ray, the Beholder can easily kill three characters in a single turn, but those rays are like spells and can’t target invisible creatures. The Beholder’s anti-magic ray is used in the game engine to simply make him immune to magic, so we can’t hit him with Necklace missiles, but without his rays he’s a big piñata for our fighters to beat until he pops.

From Dexam’s corpse we collect the Amulet of Lathander, the last of the three artifacts needed to defeat the final boss, Tyranthraxus. And then, in another predictable bit of AI, I will get a random encounter immediately following this one, before I even have a chance to open a menu or take a step—the only time I haven’t gotten this encounter immediately after is when I actually fought one shortly before the fight in question. Since Haste is still active for this fight, it’s better to take this practically-forced random battle here rather than before.

Shortly after this we’ll fight more priests and minotaurs, and then the final encounter of this section—a group of Manticores, one more high priest, and another Dark Elf Lord, a copy of Burly. This one has most of the same stats, but he drops no loot, has a different Sprite, and doesn’t hit us with Pain, but he’s still the worst foe remaining in the game. We use our second Haste and Prayer before this battle to speed it up a little; with our extra levels now, he isn’t as bad as he was the first time, but a Hold Person or two is still worth trying on him just in case RNG favors us, as 100+ HP is still a bit to get through especially with a -7 AC.

After saving/reloading another dozen times or do to avoid any battles on the way out, we leave, Olive appears and takes Dimswart away, and we have only the endgame left.

Part 8 – The Final Act – Myth Drannor

We journey from Zhentil Keep to Yulash to Hillsfar, then enter the city for some last level ups—usually the Paladin will not be able to level, unless I’ve gotten a lot of supplementary exp from optional quests or random battles, but the fighters and cleric will reach 8, and the fighter/mage should reach 7/7, giving him 3 attacks/2 rounds and his 4th level spell (it’s pretty pointless, but I usually take Ice Storm because it’s the most reliable damage). After resting up in the inn one last time, we journey on the Standing Stone, where the Old Man reveals himself as the final boss, our last master, Tyranthraxus—he was pointing us towards his allies so that we would eliminate them for him so that he could rule over us alone. Good villain stuff.

A new travel option allows us to travel from the Standing Stone to Myth Drannor, ancient destroyed city of the Elves. A lot of great end-game magic items are here, but over time I’ve weeded them from my run because they take time to get and I really don’t need much more than Dust and Necklaces. Speaking of which, I dust and save as soon as I enter for safety, and start heading east. I attack the spirit that comes up—it’s a Rahkshasa spirit trying to trick us and it’s fastest just to attack it—and continue on. Random encounters can be troublesome—Phase Spiders will chase you down, have a poisonous bite, and aren’t a fast kill, so we like to reload rather than fight them. Luckily, we can avoid the Thri-Kreen by telling them that Tyranthraxus is our master. Once we reach the edge of the first map, technically the Elven Graveyard, we can journey to Myth Drannor proper, choosing the way through the Woods because that avoids more unnecessary encounters. The first thing we meet is a group of hell hounds about to kill a man; this was the track to the most powerful magic items in the game, which were the last treasures here I routed out of the run. I’ll probably do it anyway for fun during the marathon, however. You choose to save the man from the Hell Hounds and battle a bunch of them, but with Necklaces, wand of Lightning, and of course Dust, we make short work of them. Afterwards, the man dies, but tells us how to find his treasure. If we let them kill him, we can avoid the fight but can’t find the treasure…amazingly, I did find recently that this was faster. We head east and through a middle path between buildings, avoiding saving the critter pursued by the Hell Hound this time because it’s a Rahkshasa in the disguise and don’t want to fight. If we are going after the ultimate treasure, we head into the ruined building on the east edge of the map and Search or Look to find a +5 Longsword and Girdle of Storm Giant Strength, which when equipped gives the wearer a 24 Strength stat (and +6 to hit/+12 damage with melee weapons!) I’ll grab it for the marathon, but since most of the end battle is fought with necklaces, it doesn’t actually save time to fight one extra battle to get it. During this part, we can encounter Rahkshasa, but we can bribe them to leave us alone as many times as we encounter them. They take half our money each time, but what else do we have to spend it on anyway?

Finally we head north into Tyranthraxus’ temple. Tyranthraxus is a demonic spirit in the service of Bane; he does not have a physical body of his own, but possesses other beings instead and uses their body and powers, using the Pool of Radiance to move his spirit around and between planes. In Pool of Radiance he ruled Phlan with the body of a Bronze Dragon, but we defeated him and saved the city. Now he’s put the Azure Bonds on us to get revenge and use our bodies and multiple replacements for his spirit. He appears before us as we enter the temple in the body of a Storm Giant, and paralyzes us with the Bonds, and, in a somewhat confusing cutscene, tries to get rid of our artifacts, but one of his priests is secretly Nameless (the Nameless Bard) who is responsible for Alias and the Bonds in the first place (as told in the novel Azure Bonds) and ends up temporarily freeing us from the Bond’s power and giving us back the artifacts. Tyranthraxus kills him and runs away, leaving his minions to deal with us. After some Necklaces, Lightning, and swordplay makes quick work of these enemies, we have one last RNG fest to try to make it to the second floor to confront Tyranthraxus with a minimum of encounters. Sometimes I’ll make the whole trip without one, but more often I have to save and reload a dozen times or so before I finally make it up to his room. The parties can range from as small as 2 enemies (I’ll usually fight those rather than be forced to reload) or more than a dozen (just reload and try again). Once at the top, we cast our usual spells, refresh our dust, and head in.

There are many side rooms and events you can do with the temple, including letting in the valiant Knights of Myth Drannor to assist you (but only in lore, not real gameplay or battles), and each one reduces the forces in the Final Battle, but it’s still much faster to head straight up and fight everyone in one huge group. Fireballs, after all, don’t care how many enemies there are!

Tyranthraxus is accompanied by a huge horde of Margoyles and High Priests, but with the entire party using Necklaces or Wands of Fireballs it will only take a minute or two to eliminate the Force Entirely. Tyranthraxus is immune to the Fireballs, but once he’s the only one standing he falls quite quickly to the Hasted fighters attacking 3 times a round. He can hurl powerful lightning bolts, but since he can’t target us with them, he’s laughably harmless.

Once we vanquish Tyranthraxus, we get the final series of cutscenes—his body rises from the slain giant, but as he tries to escape through the Pool of Radiance we touch it with the Gauntlet of Moander, destroying both artifacts and leaving Tyranthraxus with no ability to return his spirit to its plane, causing him to also be destroyed. With his vanquished, our last bond fades, we are finally free of the curse, and the Knights of Myth Drannor bust in to see us victorious. They take us to a victory celebration to honor the cleansing of the ancient city, and the timer stops as the text box shows the final victory message: You Have Won!