Randomizer

That is strange since that's only the first round. There should be two more rounds of worms appearing. I've come back later when I've run a singleton without seeing this happen so maybe you have a corrupted game file?

Energy potions go quickly for a singleton. The black wight and Dirty Desiree are easy examples for a singleton that take a few reloads. You come down to a choice between energy potions/elixirs and knowledge brews later on in the game. Having high intelligence helps avoid that problem since as a singleton you'll have twice the spell points of a normal character. Running with a human is risky since those damage battle disciplines all apply to spell damage too. Even if you don't add to combat skills after the start they add up quickly.

A normal difficulty singleton probably can do 90+% of the game. Torment lowers the amount. You start out low in spell energy for the area below Blackchasm Outpost. You finish up after kill Newsom and reaching the stairs at level 3. For this area you need some combat skills to compensate. The unstable mass is the only fight that really needs a weapon over spells. With slow and daze you can minimize the splits so maybe you can do it your way. Combat skills are really helpful to get shield breaker battle discipline for the boss monsters. I think your method might work if you pick the right order for doing the demo. Picking when to increase tool use was always a problem since combat and spell skills are needed first. You can come back for loot later on since almost all the encounters can be done without TU. The best way to deal with swarms is daze which is more effective if you are raising spellcraft. The other is choosing a position to minimize attacks on your character. Wait on increasing magery until Shankar's Tower in chapter 2 since you can buy it then. Arcane lore and nature lore start with the trainers in chapters 2 and 3. Then you can raise them and go back for spellbooks and loot. Dispel barrier needs level 11 mage spells, but there aren't that many barriers in the early part of the game that can't be taken down with piercing crystals. You need summoned creatures for shields for the AP drainers. The altar demon is a case where it's hard as a singleton.

You should have seen the original version of that encounter. It was known for one shot kills of party members before they could react. Hasen is a mage, so he needs to be neutralized early. Daze will usually deal with the fighters before they spread out so you can use range attacks (wands and javelins) to get Hasen before he buffs too much and starts summoning an army. This is also a good place to burn a lightning scroll.

Tried to test it with a newer party versus Dirty Darius, but at 83% chance to hit without the protection spell I couldn't get enough data to tell the difference. I'll need to find an older game with a better build to test it.

If you have a creation with you then it's possible to never personally strike a blow. You will find it hard to get through several areas without combat. Mental magic to improve the effectiveness of daze and strong daze, charm and mass madness will help you avoid some fights and gain "friends." Too bad this doesn't work with undead. I tried it once and found that it's possible to do most of the Forsaken Lands but it's takes a lot of reloads later on in the game.

Quote: 1. Don't steal from the merchant Fuller's basement in Harkin's Landing (even if no one catches you). I can't hand mined crystals in to him because I did this. There is another merchant in the Vahnatai Lands that buys mined crystals at a higher price and with better rewards. During testing I sold most of mine and missed out on a lot of cash. Quote: 4. Wait until you have made it to the city of Muck before dealing with the giant queen in her spire. You may want to make a different choice. The same goes for reporting Muck's supply cache. You can get both rewards for dealing with the giant queen if you cash in the Highground reward first. There is an interesting response from Highground after you kill the queen, but at least the town doesn't go hostile. The Muck cache quest depends upon whether you need the item more than cash. By the way there is nothing to stop you from looting the cache yourself except a conscience. Quote: 5. Hold off on killing Shafrir (if you plan on killing him) until you reach Muck, there is a message for him on the job board. Don't forget to ask for Solberg's Calipers. At least if you haven't killed Solberg. 6. Be careful with exploring Tranquility without the proper bracelet. After killing about 15 golems/sentinels in self defense the entire area goes hostile about destroying their defenders. This doesn't apply to the Sentinel Workshop. 7. Keep several saves in case you make a major mistake so you don't lose most of your game. 8. Leaving Tholmen alive in the Howling Depths can pay off in the long run no matter what you want to do in the end.

Email Jeff with as much information as you can remember about your purchases. Name you bought them under, address, which games you have and which ones you might have bought. Send any email addresses that you might have used if you bought them online and then wait for a reply.

Never tried the cheats so I don't know. You can always go back there and kill them in self-defense . At Solberg's Tower the door to the south tower is magically locked and requires the key from Tiacoura to open. The east tower requires finding a lever in a nearby room to open a secret door to the outside and then there is another to the bottom from outside. Look around and you'll find it.

Go see Tiacoura about helping her with her research. You need to go and see Solberg to get an upgrade in your bracelet before you can help. Tiacoura will tell you where to get Tower keys. Jeff upgraded the door difficulty so you won't get up there before getting the quests.

The question is answered and this topic has wandered off a cliff.

Use the "u" command to get a letter appearing next to the hidden lever. There is one there that you need to get past the wall ahead of you. Some of these levers are well hidden by objects and some are fakes so it pays to do this. There are a few walls that fall only when chitrachs on the other side attack. Below Shafrir's Tower there are a few spots that you can see, but you can't get to except under certain conditions.

I tend to use elite warrior for anyone that uses weapons and fast on feet to go first and get the occasional extra AP. Playing on torment it comes to positioning your party so melee attacking monsters have to come to you while you weaken them with range attacks. Missle attackers have to be dealt with quickly by closing and reducing their effectiveness. Anything that makes an attacker lose attacks is needed. Slow is really helpful, but use the wait command so you cast it last in a round. Otherwise they can use haste to negate its effectiveness. I could make a demon waste it's turn rebuffing. Summon spells are sometimes helpful, but I didn't use them much until A4.

Synergy is right since we discussed my failures during testing. I made it through the demo without too many reloads and haven't made it through chapter 2. My idea of exploiting parry to avoid damage got quashed when Jeff reduced parry from 5% to 3% so I couldn't rely on over 50% parry by chapter 2. A pure priest spell character has troubles with splitters and boss fights where slow helps. I went with a divine touched natural mage nephil. You really need the faster rate of advancement to get all those skill points. Sacrifice arcane lore and nature lore until a trainer and limit tool use to 7 for the demo and don't start with it. You will finish the demo at 14th level or just shy of it depending on combat and quest order. You gain levels at twice the rate of a party of 4. I tried divine touch elite warrior but you do need armor in the game and the strength to wear it unencumbered. Go with pole weapons since you need the higher damage in combat to keep from burning through spell energy. The main trick is to retreat after killing a few to keep from using potions. There are some other exploits like use slow and daze on the unstable mass to reduce splits. It doesn't split on turns where it has no action. This burns a few energy potions. Another is retreat into passageways and doorways where only one will attack you. The main problem is later in the game you face AP draining monsters. The draining slimes are back and Jeff added a crawler class that can do the same. Then there is a stun attack and the stunning blow battle discipline that cost you a round if hit. Even with skipping some of these encounters you still have one of the stunning attack summons facing Dorikas. Daze and strong daze aren't always reliable and there are a limited number of mass madness scrolls which can be effective with reloads. Charm (control foes) didn't work enough to help later in the game. I think that you have to go the high endurance/resistance route to limit damage that penetrates per round for torment. Even then swarms are killer. Summons aren't as effective except arcane summon near the end. I'm slowly playing a torment duo game that might be possible for the whole game. I forgot use javelins and steel javelins for the extra damage by increasing thrown missles. They work wonders and you can't sell them. Buy extra levels of bolt of fire, acid spray, daze, smite, and repel spirit so you can one shot monsters. With spellcraft between 4 and 6 it makes it easier. Having to waste 2 attacks to kill a goblin is wasteful. Icy rain can wait until chapter 2 when it's cheaper and the targets group themselves closer together.

I agree that evasion fails in torment at least past the demo. In normal it's suppose to last. I saw in torment at least in the demo that a shield did give a hidden evasion bonus. I was running a singleton against Dirty Darius and his two lizards. Using shielding spell and with the same dexterity and defense the only change was between spear versus sword and shield. The number of hits by the lizards dropped when a shield was equipped to more than just statistical variation. Unfortuneately you don't get to see displayed the increase in evasion caused by shield spell. I wouldn't count on a shield unless you are playing in normal. Synergy had some success running his singleton through the first 3 chapters.

I think you are wrong here - Quote: Augmentation - increases HP by 50% This is a shifting increase that declines as you go up levels if you list it as a percentage. I found in playing for endurance 2 you got 21 extra health and increased slightly with more endurance (it was more like 25-33% of actual health) and it never got to be a much larger percentage. Still those health points are significant all through out the game. The slith HP bonus seems right. It's nice at the start, but Sliths by the end game are 2 levels behind nephils which are 2 levels behind humans for the same XP penalty from traits. I never got past the upper 80% for armor/resistances, but in my game where I put hardiness at 8 for fighters and trained reistance, the goal was to reduce damage to a manageable level. I want something that can be dealt with by regeneration. Having 75 to 85% damage absorbed is reasonable for the last part of the game and needed because of area effect spells. Goro's Giant quest in chapter 8 routinely had 100+ damage past armor and this was having 75% absorbed. I was running with all characters wearing blessed breastplate (34%) as the main piece of armor.

As Clint Eastwood said playing Dirty Harry, "A man's got to know his limitations." Having a simple number makes it easier to plan ahead.

From what I've seen the special skills are the same as in Avernum 4.

It depends upon the game. In GF1 there actually is a use for flawed crystals beside selling them. Jeff varys which items are needed for quests and item ingredients that can be crafted into something useful. The best thing to do is consult a walkthrough to see what is recommended. Edit - Oh welcome to Spiderweb Software and please your sanity at the door. In future use the edit button to add and/or correct a post.

Jeff has already made plenty of different vlish. Besides with the right sauce they aren't that bad.

Have you tried spells? I'm pretty sure they respond nicely to fire, especially divine fire spell that can also damage one of the other ones at the same time. Jeff deliberately mixes up the damages so you can't do the same thing to each one. The white ones are more vulnerable to physical attacks but not as much to spells.

Otherwise you have to wait until you can get a boat and come around from the other side. Of course then you delay getting the best sword for the early part of the game.

Using this topic as a starting point you can get 2 items that give a combined 3 TU so you get to decide who wants to spend skill points on up to 15 more levels. You need much less to get through the game, but you will then miss treasure and experience. Placing the tool use with a fighter or a single class spellcaster is the best way to go from my experience. That way you can increase the damage potential of the other characters.

There is an easy one near where you enter the Tower Colony with the Royal advisor to the Tower.

Soultaker and the last test in the Lake of Trials were ones where I abused the summon horde of shades, but the one that pushed Jeff over the edge was the Master of the Pit. After Jeff revised the encounter to make it clearer what you were supposed to do, almost everyone testing it used the same tactic of summoning creatures and retreating to deal with the death curse. Even with most of the damage being done by the party and not the summoned creatures, Jeff decided to nerf summons to prevent the leave tank like divine host shades standing there pinning down the Master. For people playing with less than a full party, being able to recruit an instant army makes a major difference. But it mostly means a change in tactics where finding a position to minimize being swarmed is the key to dealing with hordes of opponents.