So I just got booted out of my game, that I hadnt saved in some time, because the DRM popped up and I just clicked a symbol. This is bullshit, I thought GOG disabled this shit, hell I could have stuck with my fucking free vaporware version if they cant be bothered putting the smallest of work into bringing a game over.

Well Im over it. I played a bunch since then and I have to say this is an amazing game and worth the small nuisance. My only recommendation to new players is save often, read the manual and play on the easiest setting. On the easiest setting, which you can change at anytime, you can look at any dialogue and hold the shift key to see what character best meets the qualification of an act and thier percentage chance win the dialogue option.

The symbols can be found in the manual which you can find in the extras downloads. This type of protection was common in old games. The same thing happens with Starflight with the starcops coming and arresting you if you get the question wrong. Because it is hard coded in the game it can be very difficult to remove.

I guess it is nothing extraordinary and the post was made some time ago, nevertheless I can give a simple advice for those who struggle with it:

Good way to cope with the DRM is to redraw the symbols on the piece of paper. It is only 19 symbols and if you have working hands it will take maybe 5 minutes at max (OK maybe 10). After those 5-10 minutes you have a peace for the rest of the game.

Of course if you have a printer you can just print them.

I hope that little advice albeit not outstanding, will help somebody.

just print or bookmark this:

http://www.darklands.net/tools/symbols.gif

Probably not necessary, but I just want to clarify. This is copy protection, way before the term DRM was ever used, something put in this game way before GOG existed. You might argue it's a form of DRM, but let's not start saying GOG is putting DRM in their games, like they're deliberately doing the opposite of their claim to be DRM free.

Paper, printer, so it proves it's not a drm.
lol the paper 'drm'.

A lot of the Sierra adventure games also have this kind of copy protection.

It was very common back in the old days.

cRPGs always came with some kind of code wheel or booklet or something you needed to reference during the game. In a lot of cases it was highly integrated into the setting.

I understood how these games worked, but up until this game every older GOG version of a game I had played you could type in anything and the game would work fine. I wonder why GOG disables some of these copy protections and not others?

This game turned out to be one of my favorite games and I recommend it to anyone who likes Medieval history and open world RPGs.

I personally would have put the period after "anyone", but your statement is still true. :)

One thing you can do with these copy protections is to play these games in Dosbox with savestates. That way, whenever the copy protection prompt shows up, you can save the game using the savestate and just revert back to it if you got it wrong.

Back in the day a friend gave me his copy but he lost the manual, so I had to play without knowing the answers.

Through trial and error and a lot of frustration, I eventually figured out what most of the symbols were.

Years later I found the symbol list online and was like "GEEZ I WISH I HAD THAT!" lol

'gnarbrag' posted the most common solution to this problem in use. It was originally provided in the Darklands FAQ 1.21 (Feb.'96) for users of some CD distributions that came only with text-based manuals (not graphical) and did not provide a code-sheet to compensate.

https://www.gog.com/forum/darklands/drm_bullshit/post5

You can find more detailed info at this link, as well as another rather clever solution by "Quadkorex":

https://www.gog.com/forum/darklands/spammed_by_games_copy_protection/post33

My apologies for not posting this years ago!

Cheers!
-mwirkk

Yeah the copy protection is obnoxious. Mainly due to the fact you can't tab back into the game without it recognizing it as an input, giving it a three in four chance of closing instantly.