Particular order of play?

I thought it'd be nice to revitalize this board a bit with a question. Should one wish to replay PoG and all of the current completed plug-ins (whether or not one has played them or not) is there a good order in which to activate them? Or would one simply activate every plug-in they have and play that way? I can see that getting a bit confusing.

harpnbass

@harpnbass, on Apr 17 2006, 09:45 AM, said in Particular order of play?:

I thought it'd be nice to revitalize this board a bit with a question.

Thank you! Let's hope we can get some good discussion going on this.

For the purposes here I'm going to ignore the "cheat" plugins because I don't believe they enhance the game. That limits my recommendations to mostly quest-oriented plugins with three exceptions.

Let's start with the exceptions.

Bankers Guild is really a cheat plugin but, to me, not offensively so. And it can get really boring sometimes to kill a gazillion monsters just to be able to buy the next piece of armor you need.

Dernath Merchant and The Mushroom Lady do not have any quests but do add shops in places where they are welcome. Dernath did need a shop and the Mushroom Lady's goods are in keeping with the wares available elsewhere and fill a need primarily for a Ranger.

I would load all three of them along with Trinity at the start of the game.

On to the Quests:

An Ancient Tomb and Gone Fishin' were written with the demo version in mind and can also be loaded at the start. Gone Fishin' , however, was pirated from Damsels in Distress (The original idea for this segment was hatched by Stark Bledfast) and if you are going to play Damsels in Distress , you may not want to spoil the fun later. I'd say it's best to leave Gone Fishin' out of the mix.

Damsels in Distress was intended to start very early in the game and eventually cover most of the Kingdom and add new territory as well. The author (RD) made an error in designing the Goblins which were added, and they replace the Goblins throughout the game with ones which are slightly harder to defeat. This was not caught by my beta testers. If you wait until you are at level 5 before you activate this plugin you will probably not notice any difference. Do not load Damsels in Distress and Gone Fishin' at the same time.

Sapphire , Spells Expander , and Legend of Mana'haraa all are best if started when the player has reached somewhere around level 14 to 16. Spells Expander is, of course, best if your character is a Conjurer. Playing it with a Swordsman or Ranger is just not as much fun.

World of Cha0s takes over when all the quests for Spells Expander have been done so there's no point in making it active too soon. Again, this is best when played by a Conjurer.

Part of the fun may be in keeping all the storylines straight. I like playing with lots of plugins active. It's like life itself where you may deal with family, school, work, and band rehearsals all at once. Have fun! ~RD

I personally used the regeneration cheat plugin; I'm used to games that allow you to regenerate or regain HP/MP for free. I didn't feel it really spoiled the game at all (like some of the other cheats would have).

@macmaxbh, on Apr 19 2006, 04:14 PM, said in Particular order of play?:

I personally used the regeneration cheat plugin . .

I almost included Regenify in my list because I, too, like this plugin. As you pointed out, it's not an offensive cheat. There are other regeneration plugins which, in my opinion, regenerate too fast.