So I decided to try playing Nahlakh. I took a stab at running it under DOSBox and everything seems to be working except the sound. It just give a short staticky burst when the game starts, and then nothing. I tried running the setup program and picking all the right things, but I'm guessing I need to do that and also some configuration file tweaks to get it working properly.

So, two questions:

1) Do you happen to know some good DOSBox configuration file settings for nahlakh?

2) When, exactly, do sounds play? So I'll know when it's working properly.

Thanks!

1. I'm using D-Fend Reloaded and this is how the CONF file looks:
[code]
# This DOSBox configuration file was automatically created by D-Fend Reloaded.
# Changes made to this file will NOT be transfered to D-Rend Reloaded profiles list.
# D-Fend Reloaded will delete this file from temp directory on program close.

# Command line used when starting DOSBox:
# -CONF "C:\Users\P\AppData\Local\Temp\Nahlakh.conf" -NOCONSOLE

# Config file for profile "Nahlakh"

[sdl]
fullscreen=false
fulldouble=false
fullresolution=original
windowresolution=original
output=surface
autolock=true
sensitivity=100
waitonerror=true
usescancodes=true
priority=higher,normal
mapperfile=C:\Users\P\D-Fend Reloaded\mapper.map

[dosbox]
machine=svga_s3
captures=C:\Users\P\D-Fend Reloaded\Capture\Nahlakh\
memsize=16

[render]
frameskip=0
aspect=true
scaler=normal3x

[cpu]
core=auto
cputype=auto
cycles=auto
cycleup=10
cycledown=20

[mixer]
nosound=false
rate=44100
blocksize=1024
prebuffer=10

[midi]
mpu401=intelligent
mididevice=default
midiconfig=

[sblaster]
sbtype=sb16
sbbase=220
irq=7
dma=1
hdma=5
sbmixer=true
oplmode=auto
oplrate=44100
oplemu=default

[gus]
gus=false
gusrate=44100
gusbase=240
gusirq=5
gusdma=1
ultradir=C:\ULTRASND

[speaker]
pcspeaker=true
pcrate=44100
tandy=auto
tandyrate=44100
disney=true

[dos]
xms=true
ems=true
umb=true
keyboardlayout=US

[joystick]
joysticktype=none
timed=true
autofire=false
swap34=false
buttonwrap=false

[serial]
serial1=dummy
serial2=dummy
serial3=disabled
serial4=disabled

[autoexec]
@echo off
SET PATH=Z:\
keyb US 437
mount C "C:\Users\P\D-FEND~1\VIRTUA~1\"
echo.
C:
cd\
cd \NAHLAKH
Z:\config.com -securemode > nul
NAHLAKH.EXE
exit
[/code]

2. I think the only sounds (primitive ones) are in combat when attacking and casting spells.

For most fun I recommend making your own spell list and not use the Hint Book. The Hint Book is still useful as a manual, though. I found I had to use DOSBox's movie capture function when fighting spell casters, so that I could see which spells they cast, since the text tend not to stay on the screen very long.

There is a good thread about Nahlakh (and Natuk) at the RPG Codex: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/nahlakh-and-natuk.97459/

Thanks! At first glance, your sound settings look the same as mine, but if the only sounds are in combat then that might explain why I didn't hear any. I'll take the default party into a fight just to test the sound, maybe it's actually working properly.

And I already came across that RPG Codex thread when I was googling things over the weekend. It's certainly informative. Is that you as "octavius" over there? I intend to try to learn spells through play rather than use the hintbook, but the hintbook seems nearly essential for understanding character creation. I'm the kind of player who wants to understand exactly how to design effective characters for my party, rather than just taking my best shot and seeing what happens, so the limited documentation can be frustrating.

Another question: How to tell which weapons/armor are better than others? The hintbook lists the material modifiers but not the base stats (as far as I could see), so I don't know if a great sword does more damage than a battleaxe, etc. When they're from different weapon skills it's not a big deal, but what about e.g. different types of one-handed swords? Scimitar vs. longsword or something?

Unless that info is in the manual or hintbook and I missed it...

Yes, I'm octavius. I usually register as PetrusOctavianus, but I never though I'd be a regular at that site. But it turned out it's no better site for discussing old and obscure CRPGs.

I suggest using the hint book as a manual, but just ignore the spell listings.

You can Examine weapons to get their Damage ratings. Lots of items will be just the same item with different names, though.

You'll need Iron weapons against demons. Iron items also protect against magic and seem to make it harder for your characters to use magic themselves.
Silver weapons are also important against undead and were creatures, especially in the early game.

Thanks for the info! Yeah, I'm re-reading the manual now and it discusses the Examine command. I should have read that more carefully. I also forgot about the "use the damn help screens!" advice it gives.

I think I'll take a shot at actually starting playing today, after I confirm that sound is working.

EDIT: Yeah, sound is fine. Onward to party creation!

Good luck!

Creating 8 characters from scratch can be a bit of a chore.

One thing to keep in mind is that at generation each point costs the same, but later it will cost more (in gold) to increase the higher a stat is.
And STR is vital for spell casters, which is rather unintuitive for an experiences cRPG gamer.

Yeah, I read about needing strength, but I'm worried I skimped on Intelligence too much, as my casters (especially my priests) were pretty bad at casting spells. My priests can't even use the "heal up" command, and the only spell they know is one that stops bleeding without healing damage, so I have no obvious way to heal besides paying for it at the temple. Unless I'm missing something? Resting only seems to restore strength...

Also, when is food used? Once a day? Can it be used to rest and heal? (It's been less than a day for my party)

I may start over and make a better party. My first party managed to get through the dungeon underneath the first town (at least, the part with thieves in it) but I think I specialized too much with their skills, such that I can't really use the equipment I found in there. And I may want to tweak my casters' stats. I was afraid to skimp too much on health or dexterity, for fear they'd be too slow and immobile in combat, so I only boosted Intelligence to 50, with the rest distributed to the other stats (favoring strength). Should I change that around for my casters? My fighters' stats seem good -- I'm assuming it's OK to lower their Intelligence as much as possible -- but I want to reroll their skills.

By the way, you mentioned using video capture to see what enemy spellcasters are casting... I was able to see this by lowering the cycles in DOSBox. This also slowed down the sound effects, making me suspect that the default cycles setting (3000) is running the game faster than intended, since the sound effects sound too high-pitched. But of course, the high speed is nice for getting through long battles faster. Fortunately cycles can be changed on the fly; I'm going to tweak my config file so it increments in big chunks (say, 500 or 1000 cycles) so I can cycle down to catch spells and cycle up for fights without mages.

Another random question: did you often use the aiming feature? Targeting specific body parts on enemies? My starting characters don't seem skilled enough yet to make it worthwhile, but I wonder if it becomes a big part of fights later on, or if standard attacks are fine most of the time.

(Parts of the quoted post irrelevant to this reply.)

I did check out the site some time ago, but there are a few issues with the site that make it not that good an option:
1. The fact that the site software uses the term "brofist". This, of course, can alienate (potential) female members, who do not like such terms. (It's one thing fr this to be some user's doing; it's a whole other thing for it to be enshrined in the forum software.)
2. Everything seems to be thrown on one forum, with a game (or game series) typically getting only one thread. This is not a good options, as it leads to threads that are too large to be manageable, and makes it harder to find the specific discussion that one is interested in. (GOG's approach, where each game or series gets a separate forum, works better.)
3. I remember seeing a thread that had rampant transphobia in it, including (IIRC) the use of slurs. That is the sort of thing that should be unacceptable on any forum, and should be deleted on any forum that has *any* sort of moderation at all. (GOG, even with its rather limited moderation, will delete the sort of posts I'm talking about if reported.) From this, I conclude that either the place isn't moderated, or the moderators are evil (and this doesn't reflect well on the userbase either)..

Waltorius,

Spell casting can be frustrating in the beginning.
You just need to practice your casting so that your Magic and Praying skill increases. If you can't cast simple healing spells your starting skill may be too low.
You may also be able to get som healing potions.
Have you tried the Heal Up (U) command, or do you cast healing spells manually?

I can't remember the details about food, but IIRC it's used once a day, it doesn't really play that big part (the concept was ditched in Natuk), and you only take some minor damage if not fed.

Using the slowing down of cycles is a good idea (why didn't I use that?).

It may be a good idea to have one character with as high INT as possible, to get as high Prayer/Magic, Merchant and Music skills as possible. I had one Priest character for this, in addition to one more rounded Priest, 2 Mages, 3 warriors (Elf with Sword and Shield, Dwarf with Axe and Shield, and Half-Ogre with 2H Swords), and one archer doing double duty as pack mule
Later in the game you will be able to find trainers that will increase your stats for money.
At character generation Dex (for warriors) and Int (for spell casters and support characters) are probably the most important stats, since they directly affect your starting skills. A decent starting Magic and Prayer skill is especially important. Music and Merchant is also highly useful.

Aiming is not important in the beginning (just hitting will be hard enough), but will be vital later.

Anyway, don't be afraid of rerolling those stats. It's quite a hard game, and there's no possibility of grinding, so you need a good start.

An update on my Nahlakh game in case anyone is interested:

My re-made party is doing well. I went for higher Dexterity on my fighters and higher Intelligence on my casters, including one priest with very high Intelligence at the expense of anything else. Unfortunately it turns out priests can't start with the music skill, so I'm stuck with one of my mages for that who only has middling skill. I've only just found my first instrument, so we'll see whether that's a big hurdle or not.

I've just finished the quest to eliminate the goblin chieftain from the second town, and cleared out his whole cave, including the tougher parts below. My fighters are getting skilled enough with their weapons that I've started having them aim their attacks, which has made a big difference in dealing more damage. One interesting thing I noticed, from reading about aiming in the strategy guide, is that the damage rating for a weapon may not be the best indication of how powerful it is, because different types of damage have different multipliers. Piercing damage has the highest multiplier, especially when aiming for vital organs. But most of the "fixed" loot I've found have been cutting weapons like swords and axes, and that's why my fighters specialize in. So they're all aiming for enemies' necks. So far only my archer is doing piercing damage (currently with a very fine tomeang, which I learned is a Malaysian composite bow), so she's pointing her arrows at enemies' vital organs..

Actually my archer is the one for whom this is relevant. She was using a crossbow early on, but then I found an enchanted prodd (which is apparently a crossbow that shoots rocks) which had a higher damage rating. And it doesn't use bolts, it actually has unlimited ammo. So I switched to that and sold my crossbow. Only later did I discover that the prodd does less damage because it does bashing damage, which has the lowest multiplier, instead of the crossbow's piercing damage, which has the highest.

Anyway, there's no clear direction of where to head next, except for a hint telling me to search the mountains for a tomb. I found some skeletal wolves to the southwest so maybe I'll head that way. I've got silver weapons for all my melee fighters and also found a spellbook teaching my priests the spell Mass Turn, so I'm pretty well equipped to handle undead. Should be fun!

I will say that many of the fights so far haven't been that hard and can be won with similar tactics (although they're still fun), but there have been a few standouts. In one, a weird teleporting demon started teleporting my characters around, breaking up our defensive line, and it also split into two demons whenever it took damage. So the fight became a chaotic free-for-all which was a nice change. Another was a fight with a lich and some skeletal knights, which in retrospect I shouldn't have attempted as early as I did. The lich cast powerful protective spells on itself and the knights, and then summoned a demon that also cast its own spells. My fighters could barely do damage, so I was relying mostly on my priests' turn undead spells to take the enemy down. That was tough but fun. Also I was able to catch a few new spells by watching what the lich and the demon cast. Most are too tough for my party to cast at the moment, but should come in handy later.

Keep 'em coming.
It's a great game that too few have played, so it's always interesting to read about people's experiences with it.

Continuing the complete derailment of this thread in order to talk about Nahlakh instead:

Haven't had that much time to play recently, but did get into some interesting battles. Golems gave me trouble, since they're incredibly resistant to magic and physical damage, and hit really hard. Eventually I realized that aiming my attacks at their legs would incapacitate them for a turn (the strategy guide says it reduces their move points to zero, which I did not initially realize would also prevent them from attacking) since they're slower than my characters. Once I figured that out they were easy.

Another memorable battle was against some priests and cultists in the woods. They had zombies with them, but my priests made short work of those with a few casts of Mass Turn. But after that, the enemy did not advance on my position, content to cast lost of prayers at my party from a distance, which do not even require line of sight. The trees blocked line of sight for my mages to cast their normal damage-dealing spells, and my own priests were busy healing people. I tried having my mages light fires under the enemy, but they'd just move out of them and keep casting. Since my front line wasn't doing anything, and my mages weren't being much use, I had my mages cast haste on all my fighters and sent them out into the woods on seek-and-destroy missions. Worked fine, and was a nice change from the usual defensive fighting.

I've now cleared out the lizardmen and frogmen. The frogmen cave had the toughest fight so far, which I was afraid was one of the difficulty spikes that PetrusOctavianus mentioned. They were mostly easy to deal with, despite the fact that they jump all over the battlefield and get around my defenses, but one battle with a whole bunch of frogman shamans and giant frogs was REALLY tough. Even though I split my fighters between the front and rear and magically summoned some stones to help keep my casters from getting hassled by the enemy, I just couldn't take down the shamans fast enough before they wore my party down. I tried going all out on damaging spells, or summoning tons of webs to try and snare them, or setting the whole corridor ablaze, but nothing was working. Finally I resorted to checking the strategy guide section on frogmen to see if there was something I was missing. Turns out there was: I had their elemental resistances and weaknesses all wrong. Once I changed up my elemental spells, I was able to take the shamans down much faster, and the fight was pretty easy.

That was a little annoying; there's no easy way to tell what enemy resistances are, and in this case it certainly wasn't easily guessed based on the nature of the foe. And it felt like cheating to look it up in the strategy guide, especially because that section is full of all the other enemy types in the game so it's a bit of a spoiler.

I'll also say that the Lizardman cave and Frogman cave were much less interesting to explore than other locations have been so far. And I'm really not being pointed in any particular direction right now, so my next move is to just explore the world map some more and see what's there. This takes a lot of in-game time, which makes me nervous because things get tougher the more time passes. I worry that I'm wasting too much time when really I'm just trying to find the next place to tackle. I'm also not sure how much money to spend at the moment. The only training available at this stage is to increase my characters' maximum health, which I've done to a point, but I'm not sure if I should be putting more money into that or saving it up for trainers I'll find later. My characters could definitely use some more Dexterity and Strength, for example. I basically don't have any way to gauge this. Certainly my party has had enough health to tackle everything so far, but I've also been making a lot of money from valuable loot on each of my excursions, so maybe I can afford more? Training does seem to be the only thing worth spending money on. Decisions, decisions!

Still enjoying the game overall, although I'm hoping the next cave/dungeon/tomb I find will be more interesting to explore. It's interesting, because the game is definitely a long one, but mostly because battles are lengthy. But they don't FEEL that long to me, even though I know they are. I guess I mentally look at what I've done and compare to other RPGs I've played where battles are much faster, and readjust my internal sense of time and progress to that. So I still feel like I'm early in the game despite having spend a lot of time playing already. My characters' skills are starting to get decent though; in fact my casters mostly qualify as "Good" in Magic or Prayer now, and in a few fights I've managed to cast some tough spells I didn't think I could pull off yet.

Oh, almost forgot... my lute broke, so no more music for now. I hope I'll find another one soon, as it's the only way to train up my music skill.

Glad to see you are still playing the game.

I see you had the same problems with Golems as I did, and solved the problem in the same way. :-)

I too found the Frogmen quite hard to deal with, although they are not one of the difficulty spikes I mentioned, since you still can choose between several places to explore.
You need to explore everything, both because you need to locate all the Jeweled Keys, and because you need all the experience you can get.

Since there won't be much backtracking, it's probably best to buy all the Health you can get when you can.
But later you can also use money to enchant items. Iron weapons and magic resistant items are especally valuable for enchanting IIRC.
Musical instruments are also quite rare, so be on the lookout for them.
Also, there's some very rare potions that increase STR permanently. Don't so the stupid mistake I did, and confuse them with regular temporary STR boost potions.

Yeah, once I looked up their elemental weakness, the frogmen weren't so hard, so I figured the really tough stuff will happen later.

I've now found another town, which offers strength training, and spent all my money on that. But from talking to the townsfolk, I realized I'll have to head back to the first town eventually to catch a boat, so on the way I can stop for more health training if I want. Right now I'm not sure whether strength or health is more important. I guess strength increases my fighters' damage? This is not explained clearly in the strategy guide, but the readme file says it's true. It will also let my characters wear heavy armor without getting slowed down. And of course my casters can always use more strength. But health is always good too.

Thanks for the warnings! I hope I haven't already come across a potion that permanently raises strength and thrown it away thinking it was worthless. Hopefully they're at least shown to be more valuable?

Now I'm off to fight some trolls. Haven't found their lair yet, but the patrols I've run into have been easy to defeat. My mages are just getting skilled enough to sometimes be able to cast fireball, which makes those battles easier. Onwards!