Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor
Not to be confused with Eye of the Beholder III: Assault on Myth Drannor.
This page is for the 2001 sequel using 3rd Edition Dungeons & Dragons rules. For the original 1988 Gold Box game, see Pool of Radiance.
Developers | |
---|---|
Stormfront Studios | |
Publishers | |
Ubisoft | |
Russia | 1C Company |
Release dates | |
Windows | September 27, 2001 |
Taxonomy | |
Monetization | One-time game purchase |
Modes | Singleplayer |
Pacing | Turn-based |
Perspectives | Isometric |
Genres | RPG |
Themes | Fantasy |
Series | Pool of Radiance, Dungeons & Dragons |
Pool of Radiance | |
---|---|
Subseries of Gold Box | |
Pool of Radiance | 1988 |
Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor | 2001 |
Warnings
Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor is a singleplayer isometric RPG game in the Pool of Radiance and Dungeons & Dragons series.
A known bug for the uninstaller included in the original 1.0 release deleted system files when the game was uninstalled, causing the operating system to fail. This can be fixed by using the 1.1 uninstaller patch (already included in newer releases).
Availability
Source | DRM | Notes | Keys | OS |
---|---|---|---|---|
Retail | Requires disc 2 in the drive to play. |
- Two retail versions are available: the original 1.0 release and a re-release that has been pre-updated to version 1.2 (German release: 1.28) and also includes the 1.1 uninstaller.
Essential Improvements
Patches
- If the original version is 1.0 (version can be checked in the main menu, bottom right), first install the 1.1 uninstaller patch to avoid the uninstaller deleting system files. This patch is not included with the 1.2, 1.3, or 1.4 updates. This patch is not necessary to install for 1.2 retail re-release, as that version includes the 1.1 uninstaller.
- The latest official patch is 1.4 (different files depending on language version). It includes game fixes from the 1.2 and 1.3 updates, but does not include the uninstaller from the 1.1 patch so that will need to be applied separately if using the original 1.0 release.
Game data
Configuration file(s) location
System | Location |
---|---|
Windows | <path-to-game>[Note 1] |
Save game data location
System | Location |
---|---|
Windows | <path-to-game>\savegames\[Note 1] |
Video
Graphics feature | State | Notes | |
---|---|---|---|
Widescreen resolution | Only runs in 800x600. Forcing a higher resolution with third-party tools creates bad visual artifacts on the edges of maps, breaks regions that are supposed to be black etc. | ||
Multi-monitor | |||
Ultra-widescreen | |||
4K Ultra HD | |||
Field of view (FOV) | |||
Windowed | See the glossary page for potential workarounds. | ||
Borderless fullscreen windowed | See the glossary page for potential workarounds. | ||
Anisotropic filtering (AF) | See the glossary page for potential workarounds. | ||
Anti-aliasing (AA) | See the glossary page for potential workarounds. | ||
High-fidelity upscaling | See the glossary page for potential workarounds. | ||
Vertical sync (Vsync) | See the glossary page for potential workarounds. | ||
60 FPS and 120+ FPS | |||
High dynamic range display (HDR) |
Input
Keyboard and mouse | State | Notes |
---|---|---|
Remapping | Only able to change hotkeys. See Remap Hotkeys. | |
Mouse acceleration | Adversely affected by Windows mouse acceleration. Disable "Enhance pointer precision" under "Pointer Settings" in Windows to fix problems with mouse acceleration in-game. | |
Mouse sensitivity | ||
Mouse input in menus | ||
Mouse Y-axis inversion | ||
Controller | ||
Controller support |
Controller types |
---|
Remap Hotkeys
- In-game help menu only displays the default hotkeys regardless of what you actually have them set to.
Modify keymap.txt
|
---|
KEY FUNCTION For example, the "display help menu" hotkey defaults to the following: F1 SHOW_HELP
|
Audio
Audio feature | State | Notes |
---|---|---|
Separate volume controls | ||
Surround sound | ||
Subtitles | ||
Closed captions | ||
Mute on focus lost | ||
Royalty free audio |
Localizations
Language | UI | Audio | Sub | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|
English | ||||
French | ||||
German | ||||
Russian | by "Логрус.РУ" | |||
Spanish |
Issues fixed
Game doesn't launch on modern system
Install the latest patch |
---|
Install patch 1.4 from here, choose the correct file for your language version. If your game version is 1.0 (can be checked on the bottom right of the main menu), then you must first run the 1.1 uninstaller patch and then the 1.4 patch. |
Use compatibility mode |
---|
You can also use compatibility mode for Windows XP SP 3 on the Pool II.exe, but that should not be required if you have patch 1.4 installed. |
Invisible objects and transparent characters
Use this fix if your characters appear as skeletons at the start of the tutorial, or if you can't see barrels and chests - a good way to check if you have this bug is if you play the tutorial and can't see the barrels in the room where you're supposed to interact with them.
Use dgVoodoo |
---|
General tab: Appearance: "Full Screen"; Scaling Mode: "Stretched, 4:3 Aspect Ratio" |
Issues unresolved
Constitution bug
There is a rare bug where you permanently lose hitpoints after unequipping an item that increases Constitution (CON). The bug only happens under these circumstances:
- Player equips an item that brings his Constitution to an uneven number.
- Player then gets a permanent Constitution increase (e.g. from one of the attribute-increasing barrels) which puts his Constitution to an even number and thus increases the modifier. This will now increase most CON-aligned values (like saving throw), but NOT the max HP, because the interaction with CON-increasing items is bugged.
- Now if the CON-increasing item is unequipped, the game will subtract hitpoints because the CON-modifier went down. But since the HP had never gone up previously, the player is now stuck with permanently less HP.
Also, you generally get less HP on levelup if wearing CON-increasing items, so unequip them before leveling up.[1][2]
Unequip Constitution-increasing items before attribute improvement and levelup |
---|
To prevent these bugs from happening, make sure to unequip all CON-increasing items before getting a permanent Constitution improvement (like from one of the barrels) and before leveling up. |
Restore hitpoints with save editor |
---|
If your character already fell victim to this bug, you can restore the values to what they should be using a savegame editor (one of the top two programs in the link). Use it to increase the HP of the character by his level (e.g. give +3 HP for a level 3 character). You only have to do this once, the bug does not "carry through" to later levelups. |
Get level drained |
---|
After getting level drained, it also seems to restore the correct hitpoints when level drain wears off. More research needed on this. |
Re-locked doors
Sometimes doors in the dungeon re-lock after you had previously opened them with a key, but the key is gone after use. This is a game-breaking bug that makes you unable to progress at all if it hits certain doors.[3][4][5][6] Despite what the patch notes say, this bug is still unfixed for some doors, at least for the first two ones in the first dungeon. A common scenario is that you explore a section of the first level, find Beriand's staff and return it to him - then after going back, the doors will be locked.[4][5] This makes you unable to finish the game, you have to restart and hope it doesn't happen again.
The only other thing you can do is re-adding the key by using a Hex-editor to edit the savegames. The hexcode for the two keys to the first two main doors of the dungeon is:
Key of the Living: 4A 03 00 00 3D 9E[4]
Key of the Dead: 49 03 00 00 3F A0
Use a hexeditor to re-add the keys |
---|
The standard light healing potion (not the one the merchant sells) seems to always start with 06 03 01 00, followed by four more symbols for each individual potion, so overall e.g. 06 03 01 00 20 00 or 06 03 01 00 25 00.
|
When this bug happens, some (not all) loot containers also seem be refilled, so you can loot some items twice. So it seems to have reset some parts of the level, that's what might cause the doors to be closed again. However, enemies don't respawn.
Network
Multiplayer types
Type | Native | Notes | |
---|---|---|---|
Local play | |||
LAN play | |||
Online play | GameSpy services have been shut down;[7] see GameSpy for workarounds. |
Other information
API
Technical specs | Supported | Notes |
---|---|---|
Direct3D | 6 |
Executable | 32-bit | 64-bit | Notes |
---|---|---|---|
Windows | The "real" executable is por2main.exe, not Pool II.exe (the latter just calls the former). The Windows 10 task manager shows it as "engine executable (32 bit)". |
Middleware
Middleware | Notes | |
---|---|---|
Multiplayer | GameSpy |
System requirements
Windows | ||
---|---|---|
Minimum | Recommended | |
Operating system (OS) | 95/98/ME | |
Processor (CPU) | Pentium III 500 MHz | Pentium III 600 MHz |
System memory (RAM) | 128 MB | |
Hard disk drive (HDD) | ||
Video card (GPU) | 32 MB of VRAM |
Notes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 When running this game without elevated privileges (Run as administrator option), write operations against a location below
%PROGRAMFILES%
,%PROGRAMDATA%
, or%WINDIR%
might be redirected to%LOCALAPPDATA%\VirtualStore
on Windows Vista and later (more details).
References
- ↑ sorcerers.net - last accessed on 9 June 2023
- ↑ gog.com - last accessed on 26 May 2023
- ↑ sorcerers.net - last accessed on 9 June 2023
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 https://sorcerers.net/community/threads/key-bug.11994/
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 https://www.neoseeker.com/forums/267/t280213-unlock-doors/
- ↑ gamefaqs.gamespot.com - last accessed on 26 May 2023
- ↑ Pricing | GameSpy Technology