Actually playing old Wasteland: things I dislike

[Drool]

This is often taken for granted and regarded as a limitation of technology. But it's the same when you read a book or play a PnP RPG or play discrete strategy games like chess. No story time passes between the action. WL world map time and encounter time are on a different scale (or maybe more accurately, a different dimension) from story time.

This abuse of time reminds me of an AD&D campaign I was in. There was a series of caves inhabited by various monsters. As a party, we were extremely methodical in our approach. We'd clear out a cave and then spend weeks hauling everything back to town, resting to heal naturally, and shoring up the defenses. Then we'd move to the next cave.

By the time we got to the fourth cave, the hobgoblins had seen the writing on the wall an left. They even left behind a little note saying they were gone, that anything still there was ours, and asking us to please not hunt them down and murder them.

[CaptainPatch]

FINALLY sorted out the Sewers. When you first get there and encounter that first section of the river of sewage, there is NO place to anchor a rope. (The business with the rope doesn't come up until you are crossing a chasm that looks more like a well.) The strategy that does work is to get to the Westernmost section of river, and then cross one party member at a time. (And, no, there's no place to anchor a rope on the South side of the stream either.) If you try to march the party across as a single block, if any ONE of them slips, the whole party slides East towards the exit. And it seems there is _always_ at least one member slipping. If a lone party member on his own is cross, he's less likely to slip two steps in a row. That is, if he slips, he slide a space or two to the East, but then in his next movement, he gets to step out of the current. What kills the party movement is that while A slipped this time, next movement B slips and the party slides East instead of South. Then next movement, C slips and party slide East again.

[Drool]

I don't know what you're doing wrong, but you most certainly can use a rope on that first section. I've done it on both the PC and the C-64 version. I'll take my team over to Vegas when I get home from work and take screen shots.

[MDF_MadDogFargo]

FINALLY sorted out the Sewers. When you first get there and encounter that first section of the river of sewage, there is NO place to anchor a rope. (The business with the rope doesn't come up until you are crossing a chasm that looks more like a well.)

Hmm? You mean the very first section of water after you enter the sewers? That's where you have to set up a rope! You can set up several ropes actually and walking between them through the water (walking west) can raise your Swim skill quickly. (Helps if everyone has Swim.) Maybe you have to take a step back from the edge and use the rope one space away from the river?

[Drool]

Stepping up to the river:



Selecting the rope:



Throwing the rope to the south:

[CaptainPatch]

Damn! I tried that in EVERY space along the North bank and all I ever got was "Nothing happens."

[Drool]

That's really weird. I walked along the northern bank to see if there was a special message ("looks like you could use a rope here") or the like to hint that you had to pass a Perception check, but I didn't notice anything.

[krellen]

Damn! I tried that in EVERY space along the North bank and all I ever got was "Nothing happens."

You actually use the rope on the water.

[ad1066]

Yes, one step that's missing from the directions above is "Direction?", and press Down.

-- Ben

[Hell Razor]

Playing from floppies in the old days meant you could always yank out the disk to prevent an auto-save you didn't want. In fact, we would just flip up the disk door. My buddy got lightning fast at that move. I played from the hard drive on a PC, not so easy.

You could also reload areas of the map or the entire map at any time, allowing you to restart with your party intact (or reset your party, too). I don't remember any special utility, this was just part of the original PC release.

Time travels much faster in the overworld map. And, if you travel out into the hottest part of the desert (identifiable by the color pattern on the tile and the message that it's really hot), there are no random encounters. And a macro bypasses the key buffer. All that together means that as long as I could get to the deep desert, I could heal the party as many points as necessary in about 5 - 10 seconds by hitting f10 once or twice. I actually found this to be a very satisfying mechanic. It required me to be able to be able to use my own healing skills or a doctor for hire to get people up to UNC, and it required me to be able to exit the danger zone and get out into the empty desert, so it wasn't magic insta-heal. But once I was there (provided everyone had a canteen) I could almost instantaneously rest as much as needed without being disturbed, making it not nearly as time-consuming or annoying as it seems to have been for others.

I don't recall having too much trouble figuring out the sewers, other than having to scour it for all the parts, and having to exit numerous times to get to the desert for healing. The rope thing always seemed obvious as I recall, but maybe it wasn't.

[Herethos]

These are the options you have when you run the setup/install, I've never tried the reset tool so I don't know how it works or looks like, but this is the proper setup program.

[CaptainPatch]

When playing from the hard drive, it seems that Reset isn't an option. (At least not with the version I got at oldgames.) Starting jumps you right into the game. Initially, you get to create your party. But once started, subsequent entries into the game take you directly to your last Save point.

[Drool]

That reset program was only included in the original PC version of the game. None of the re-releases have it. I'm stuck using the Reaban reset tool. It works, but it's slooooooooooow.

[CaptainPatch]

I had this glitch pop up. For some reason, I can no longer access the weapons merchant in Needles. (In a previous game, it was the merchant in Highpool.) Have not a clue what caused it. (Or what made it move to a different town.)

New gripe: If you exhaust your supply of power packs, you're screwed if that happens at Base Cochise. The only other viable weapon are AT weapons. But those don't Reload. So on odd turns you can fire, but on even you have to spend the whole turn swapping Weapons to arm the next AT weapon. And while you are swapping, your party is being hammered by some potent enemies that usually spread Death & Destruction over 3 or more party members. With a party of seven with Hit Points ranging from 43-60, with 5 Power Armors (14) and 2 Pseudo-chitin armors (10), IF I AM LUCKY, everyone then has single-digit Hit Points with at least 3 being UNConscious.

Bleah.

[Drool]

I think the merchant-wipe is related to saving the game on the merchant square and then reloading later. You essentially blank out that tile. I had it happen once or twice Back In The Day when I was playing on the C64.

Power Packs are a precious commodity, yes. I usually had more than enough because I didn't lean on NPCs nearly as much as most people. That made the Sewers a nightmare, but meant I had a wealth of ammo. The best advise for Power Pack management is to never use energy weapons outside of Cochise. Well, never use good ones. I'd use the Laser Pistols in the Sewers as one-shot weapons: equip, rip the clip to hopefully improve Energy Weapon skill, and then drop/sell it. Still, most things you run into don't require them, so I'd save them until I was ready to assault Cochise itself.

Also, the Mason Cannon is something of a sucker's weapon. It does massive damage, but it's woefully inefficient, and a fully loaded Laser Rifle (or Ion Beamer) will usually do more auto-fire damage. If you're going to use them, make sure the Rangers with the highest skill have them, and only do single shots unless it's panic time.

[CaptainPatch]

[mutter] Now he tells me. [/mutter]

[Herethos]

Yeah don't quit or "radio in" especially when standing on shop squares since that will save your game and overwrite the shop.

[MDF_MadDogFargo]

I had this glitch pop up. For some reason, I can no longer access the weapons merchant in Needles. (In a previous game, it was the merchant in Highpool.) Have not a clue what caused it. (Or what made it move to a different town.)

New gripe: If you exhaust your supply of power packs, you're screwed if that happens at Base Cochise. The only other viable weapon are AT weapons. But those don't Reload. So on odd turns you can fire, but on even you have to spend the whole turn swapping Weapons to arm the next AT weapon. And while you are swapping, your party is being hammered by some potent enemies that usually spread Death & Destruction over 3 or more party members. With a party of seven with Hit Points ranging from 43-60, with 5 Power Armors (14) and 2 Pseudo-chitin armors (10), IF I AM LUCKY, everyone then has single-digit Hit Points with at least 3 being UNConscious.

Bleah.

So, you're disappointed with the game because you used up your ammo too quickly? Sounds like a personal problem. In my games I generally fight HtH and don't waste that space in my inventory with ammo anyway. AT weapons take an extra turn to re-equip, but with big weapons like the RPG it kinda makes sense. Now, if you could order a pair of characters to cooperate on something like that an one reloads while the other one fires, that's the kind of cooperative actions I'd like to see in WL2.

[CaptainPatch]

Had another freeze happen so I checked out the Ctrl + F10 to "Capture/release mouse cursor". It does _precisely_ what it says: it brings up the regular mouse cursor while the screen itself remains frozen. But if you left-click on anything, you lose the cursor again. So, effectively, it doesn't do anything useful.

[Hell Razor]

All you have to do is make backup copies of the "game" files, I forget what they're called, I think "allgame1" and "allgame2" or something. Anyway, just copy those files into a backup folder, and any time you want to restart, just copy them from the backup into your game folder and voila, restart.

Power packs were a little hard to come by. Make sure you don't use energy weapons if you don't need to, and use single or burst instead of auto. But ultimately the previous answer was also correct - by far the most powerful weapon in the game is "fists." Get your pugilism and brawling and STR high enough, and your pugilist character becomes so powerful it is game-breaking. If he has a high SPD, too, then your enemies will never get another attack in on you again (except while you're running at them).