Bugs and warnings

[Drawpier]

I have finished the main quest. It took me 40+ hours. On the one hand I am an expert at Darklands having played the hell out of it back in the day. On the other I somewhat took my time playing. Sort of a stroll down memory lane. Along the way I only came across two bugs of note. The first one if I remember right existed in the original game. That is that occasionally an item called "null" might appear in your inventory. You can't sell it or use it in any way. The only thing to do is drop it. Not a big deal but fyi.
The second bug I came across was a bit more serious. In the final dungeon there is a room where you have to fight swarms of stinging inseects on your way to find an item that you need. That item is behind a hidden door and down a corridor. The first several times I tried to go through that door the game bugged out on me. Trapping my characters in a no man's land as the game refused to render the hallway behind the door. This was almost a game breaking bug but after several reloads I was able to inch my guys close enough to the item and was finally able to get it. I ran into a similar bug in some of the other dungeons but not nearly as bad. Still be aware that cooridors behind secret doors may cause you some problems.
Now a few warnings One is that although your character is limited in what he/she can wear by weight you characters pack can have as much stuff in it as you want. Subject to one limitation. The program can only hold so many lines of text. So if you have one guy who is holding all your alchmemical components along with tons of other stuff and you need to have an npc give him an item and that limit has been reached you just won't get the item. Something that you will not know until you go and check your inventory and see that the item you need is not there. From what I can tell the limit seems to be sixty lines of text. So be aware of in particular how much stuff your leader is carrying.(Since he is the one who will recieve quest items from npc's),
Next for you noobs a warning about this game.
You are not playing an mmorpg. Here in Darklands you must READ EVERYTHING!
This is particurarly true once you enter the endgame series of quests. You will be told where and when certain events will occur. This information is often buried in the text so you must read every word or you will miss it and not know where to go or what to do next. Also have pen and paper ready at all times to write down such things along with quests etc. Remember this is dos days. The game will not keep track of such things for you.
One other final bit of random advice. If you are in a knocker mine and you come across a thing called a "gnome fountain" do not try to fight your way out. The gnomes will keep coming forever. Your only option is to find the stairs down to the next level as fast as you can and flee (f key) for your lives down those stairs.

[The Black Baron]

I never play Darklands without using an actual RL journal. Whenever I get a quest, find clues or receive instructions, I pen them down. It is the only way to keep track of things, since there is no such thing as a "quest journal".

Thanks for the warnings, Tim!

[Gilmaris]

You never encountered the colour glitch?

[Tweed]

Darklands Domains actually has a utility that will read saves and keep track of active quests you've been given so you don't have to keep that stuff written down, but it won't keep track of sabbat meetings.

Starting to feel like a pitchman.

[Drawpier]

Originally posted by Gilmaris:

You never encountered the colour glitch?

No. I actually know the bug your talking about. Vaguely remember having some problems with it in my old dos release. But not such problems with this download.

[Usurper]

Whats the Colour Glitch exactly?
I have the GoG version btw.

[Tweed]

Originally posted by Ursurper:

Whats the Colour Glitch exactly?
I have the GoG version btw.

Sometimes the colors on your characters would change randomly after an encounter, with no way to fix it. I think I had it happen to me once or twice on my original copy. You can make something similar happen just by switching character shapes during their design without switching their colors and get people with oddities like blue hair or weird colored clothes.

[Azureblaze]

The colors bug not only changed my character colors, several of my characters got a visual sex change as well (model) - I just rolled with it.

[Usurper]

Ah ok,thanks =)
Thougt first i had that Bug,cause everything on the worldmap is white...found
out that its Winter.

[makerofshoes]

My characters are only a few months old and I've already encountered the color glitch, usually it would happen after playing a long time...I'm actually kind of glad to see it :)

[Philippe_at_bay]

My recollection of the color glitch is that not only would colors change, but they would change to particularly garish hues. I also have some dim recollection about purple and green hair.

There was a related bug in the interface where you selected costumes and shield designs.

I have a vague impression that this is the game that killed Microprose. There were so many bugs in it that they had to keep grinding out expensive patches, and this was before the days when internet downloads had become common. For many years I had a stack of floppy disks (the smaller hard ones, not the large ones, but I may have had some of them too) that were sent to me after one of their patching attempts.

[Jershal]

Ok so what I was observing is more of a warning, and a little bit of a bug perhaps:

So I found that if you stack saint buffs for a single stat they don't stack. Only the last blessing will apply to the modified stat. However when blessings are removed after a day the effective stat will be reduced by both buffs applied. So this can reduce effective Int, Per, or Cha - which doesn't heal back nicely with any saint or in game mechanic - other than waiting for a long period of time. After about a week (more or less) you recover 1 point.

you might want to change leaders from your Charismatic leader while travelling, to avoid inadvertently dropping their charisma.

In testing a debuff replaced with a buff does not result in an elevated stat, so if you use peter and lose half your perception, you can buff it to remove the debuff and it doesn't effect the baseline stat when they both wear off.

[Jershal]

saving a game and loading a game from the inn is greyed out, unless you go into your character screen and open equipment, formulae, or saints. then the options are unblocked.

If you queue up alchemy for the day, save it, then load it, you will b edropped into the main menu for the inn. If you go back to taking up residence you can then select another task for your alchemist (such as praying) and both the alchemy and the other task will execute. (usually)

[Jershal]

Its hard to tell exactly whats happening but after having used saints and a 45q Greatpower potion , and its long since they've worn off.

my weapons seem to have unbalanced themselves. My shortsword does incredible damage (20-30 even against plate) but long bows and composite bows do very very little damage (3-5,) and shortbow does exceptional damage as well. (around 20)

something is happening when the greatpower potion wears off, i think, that changes the base damage in the item table, I think. the quality of the weapons are not visually any different. It appears using other weapon based potions, like strongedge or deadly blade, removes this effect (at least while the potions are active)

[Jershal]

35q alchemical ingredients seem like an inconvenience, but a bug I found gives them a purpose:

when you load up a formula the ingredients available to "increase quantities" draws from your largest stack of ingredients, usually your 25q stack, however the only stack that is "spent" when you execute your daily mixing is whichever stack is topmost in your inventory. So if you queue up a bunch of potions using rare ingredients, but with 1 35q version above it in the inventory, it only uses that 1 35q ingredient, and no more.

edit: After some testing it appears the quality isnt the way this works, its having the quantity 1 stack above the full stack, so if you have 256 of a component you can move the small stack above the big stack and only the small stack will be 'spent' no matter how many potions you make that day.

[Jershal]

If you load up an alchemy formula at an inn, save the game (after unlocking the save feature by going into inventory) load that game then go to store or recover items from the inn, when you leave that exchange interface your queued alchemy work will be completed without having spent the day doing the work. (process advances clock by one hour)

this allows one to use their intelligence or alchemy blessing for longer

though its a bit... cumbersome... an exploit to utilize.