Introduction - A battle begins...

SSI's AD&D "Gold Box" games were released in 1988-1992 and set in the fantasy worlds of Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance. They were among the best of turn-based CRPGs and are still being played today.

Features

Gold Box Companion is a tool for all the Gold Box games plus Unlimited Adventures and the two SSI's Buck Rogers games. It offers automapping, easy-to-use journal entries and helps with some of the interface issues to make playing a little less tedious.

• HUD above DOSBox window with hit points, character icons, XP meters and effects. Shows good effects in green, bad in red. Also shows if a character is level drained.
• Fix-command for Pool of Radiance. Works with the other games as well. Instantly heals the characters. Optionally also fixes level drained characters. Can not be used while in combat.
• Temporarily change demihuman race to human to avoid experience level limits.
• Optional level up without visiting training halls and without race-/game-related level limits.
• Store the list of memorized spells and restore the spells with a single click. Can not be used while in combat.
• Automap with party location. Notes can be added to the map.
• World map view. Shows party location in some games.
• Combat view. Shows character / monster locations. Shows if character/monster is held or helpless.
• Journal entries.
• Optional auto-identify of items.
• Autodisable quickfight after combat. Some of the older games didn't disable quickfight between fights so you could enter a dangerous fight with quickfight on.
• Character editor. Reads/modifies memory so it's instant compared to save file editors. Can not be used while in combat.
• Teleporting. You can teleport to a chosen location on the map. You can also teleport on the world map in some of the games.
• Save Game Editor also included. You can edit party composition (swap members in/out), edit inventories and effects. You can also copy full inventories from one save slot to another so you can use this to keep your items in Pools of Darkness where most magical items get destroyed when moving through the Limbo.
• Some modding tools for changing the font and editing game data.
• Lists saved games chronologically with a description of the location (map name).
• Able to backup to latest save game with a description.
• Playing paladin or ranger in Pool of Radiance. Can be exported to Curse of the Azure Bonds.
• Very experimental monk class for Pool of Radiance. Can be exported to Curse of the Azure Bonds.

What's new in v2.32 (15-February-2017)

• SETUP GOG button for quickly setting the game folders for GOG-installed Gold Box games.
• When the GBC level up is used, character names are no longer colored as to able to level up in game. Note that you have to somehow refresh the DOSBox screen (going into a menu etc.) for the color to return to normal.
• Party location arrow was previously drawn with the Wingdings font. On some Windows country/region settings the glyph could be wrong. The arrow is now drawn as a polygon.
• Hopefully better indoors / world map identification.

What's new in v2.31 (30-January-2017)

• Hopefully fixed a bug where the HUD and map windows were not shown on multi-monitor setups.
• Setting for the HUD window to stay on top. Off by default.
• Added a hack for paladins and rangers in Pool of Radiance to get fighter-levels during combat so that they get the sweep-ability. These levels are removed after combat.

What's new in v2.30 (18-December-2016)

• Optional level up from the HUD. Also adds some modding options for the classes.
• Encamp-fix optionally fixes level drain.
• Optional auto-identify of items. Identified when put in a character's inventory. You still need to cast "detect magic" to detect magical items in loot.
• Paladins and rangers in Pool of Radiance.
• Monk in Pool of Radiance / Curse of the Azure Bonds. Very experimental...
• XP tables as text files (can be opened from the search wizard and editor windows).

Requirements

• Windows XP or newer. This might help if you use Linux (it's in german, Google translated).
• DOSBox DOS-emulator to run old software on modern computers. If you use the GOG-versions, you don't need to install DOSBox.
• Any fantasy-themed Gold Box game, Unlimited Adventures (with or without UAShell), Buck Rogers: Countdown to Doomsday or Matrix Cubed. If you don't already have these, check out GOG.com for the Forgotten Realms and Krynn -games.

Downloads

• gbc.zip
  Gold Box Companion v2.32 (15-February-2017). This is meant to be used with the GOG-versions of the game but might work with others too but then you have to use vanilla/plain DOSBox 0.74. Unarchive the zip-archive into some folder and read GBC.txt inside. GBC.exe is the main Gold Box Companion program, double click on it to start. SGE.exe is the Save Game Editor. There are also some experimental modding tools included.
• gbc201.zip
  Gold Box Companion v2.01 (16-October-2015). Older version that is not so picky about DOSBox version / game versions but lacks the effect display, combat view and world map view.

• realms.zip
  Saves near ending and before key moments for Pool of Radiance, Curse of the Azure Bonds, Secret of the Silver Blades and Pools of Darkness. Includes a save just before the Mulmaster Beholder Corps fight in CotAB and Gothmenes / Dave's challenge battles in PoD.
• krynn.zip
  Saves near ending for all the Krynn-games.
• krynn2.zip
  Big package of saves for all the Krynn-games.
• frontier.zip
  Saves near ending for the two Savage Frontier-games.
• gods.zip
  Hacked saves for Pools of Darkness. Party of 8 dual-classed characters with hacked equipment. Saves near Gothmenes and Dave's challenge.

• manshoon.zip
  Manshoon-encounter for Pools of Darkness. More info.

• formats.zip ... Description of character save file formats. List of all effects and items in the games.

• oystein_por.pdf ... Pool of Radiance walktrough by Oystein.
• pools.pdf ... Pools of Darkness walktrough by Matt Haag.
• dqkitems.zip ... Some hacked items for The Dark Queen of Krynn, by Redeye.
• passwords.zip ... Excel-sheet of passwords for the games.
• goldboxfont.zip ... Gold Box styled font.
• phlan.png ... Maps of all Pool of Radiance's Phlan-locations fit together.
• wilderness.png ... Maps of all Pool of Radiance's wilderness locations.
• daxdump.zip ... DAXDump and ECLDump by Simeon Pilgrim. Can be used to decode the run-length encoding of the DAX files.
• tlbutil2.zip ... TLButil2 by Itamar / Dan Autery. For extracting TLB-files (The Dark Queen of Krynn and FRUA).
• unp411.zip ... If you want to hack old DOS game executables, you probably need to unpack them first with this utiliity.
• hackdocs.zip ... File formats of many FRUA related files.

Screenshots

Some additional screenshots from modded games here and here. The modding tools are included in the GBC package.

GBC starts with a wizard to search for game/character data in the memory. You select a game, set the game folder, select the save slot then search. Saved games are listed chronologically and the map name is also shown.

HUD with combat icons and effects displayed. The bars are for Hit Points and XP. Map with autoexplore.

World map view in Pool of Radiance.

World map view in Dark Queen of Krynn.

Combat view. Stats and effects can be viewed by targeting a monster with the mouse.

A menu opens by moving the mouse over the HUD.

Level up dialog. Usable anywhere so you don't have to visit training halls. Ignores demihuman/game level limits.

Journal entries can be viewed through the menu.

Character editor. When in combat, monsters can also be edited.

Save game editor. You can backup saves, replace/add characters and edit inventory/effects. You can also copy full inventories from one save slot to another so you can use this to keep your items in Pools of Darkness where most magical items get destroyed when moving through the Limbo. You can even add monsters to your party (the combat icons do not show in the older games).

With the Monster Modder you can browse and edit monsters.

GBC supports Buck Rogers: Countdown to Doomsday and Matrix Cubed.

Forgotten Realms Unlimited Adventures (and UAShell) is also supported.

Pool of Radiance modded with the font from Pools of Darkness. Paladins, rangers and monks can be played as hacked classes. In the character editor, level 1 fighters can be converted to paladins or rangers and level 1 thieves to monks. GBC needs to be used for level ups. Imported paladins and rangers can be trained in training halls in Curse but monks always have to use GBC to level up and can not be further exported to Secret.