The Dink Network

Thank you for checking, Scratcher. That would certainly explain why I was unable to do more than 1 damage to Seth with the Herb Boots even though I had 35 attack points.

And yes, Mog (and the goblin guards - I wonder if they used to be stronger in v1.05 as well ? maybe I'll check at some point) were quite hard also. I'm not sure I would have been able to defeat the guards if I hadn't tricked them into attacking each other. Given that you barely have any space to move around the screen, these goblin fights were difficult; but unlike the Seth fight which was fun, these were just plain annoying.

For yeoldetoast : I managed to get Dink Smallwood v1.05a running on the Ubuntu-based "Tuxedo OS" Linux distro, with Lutris. I picked a 32-bit Wine prefix, deactivated every single DXVK option in the settings, turned on dgVoodoo2, and used taskset to slow down Lutris/Dink Smallwood to an acceptable speed, and voila. Fluidsynth is still required, I personally use this soundfont : https://musical-artifacts.com/artifacts/400, which sounds closest to the Windows soundfont I had when I first played Dink Smallwood all those years ago. The audio CD tracks also work fine, which is nice (yes, I actually had to burn a Mixed Mode CD for this).

EDIT : v1.05 stats for "hammer" goblins if I got it right :

sp_defense(&current_sprite, 2);
sp_strength(&current_sprite, 15);
sp_touch_damage(&current_sprite, 10);
sp_hitpoints(&current_sprite, 40);

And for "scythe" goblins :

sp_defense(&current_sprite, 6);
sp_strength(&current_sprite, 25);
sp_touch_damage(&current_sprite, 10);
sp_hitpoints(&current_sprite, 80)

I'm off to check the v1.06 stats, but I wouldn't be surprised if they were lower. Just look at those stats for the "scythe" enemies...

EDIT 2 :

v1.06 stats - "hammer" goblins :

sp_defense(&current_sprite, 1);
sp_strength(&current_sprite, 15);
sp_touch_damage(&current_sprite, 10);
sp_hitpoints(&current_sprite, 40);

Virtually the same except defense is a bit lower. However...

"scythe" goblins :

sp_defense(&current_sprite, 2);
sp_strength(&current_sprite, 20);
sp_touch_damage(&current_sprite, 8);
sp_hitpoints(&current_sprite, 60);

This explains why I thought these were stronger in v1.05.