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A6 - Changes from the earlier games


Randomizer

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There are a few changes in Avernum 6 from the earlier games:

 

Spells have changed.

 

Augmentation and all spells that raise health points are gone. You need to increase endurance to increase health, but you now get more health from the start with each level of endurance. Figure on 8 endurance for normal difficulty and 10 for torment level (unless you have low armor).

 

Essence shield and essence armor are now only as potions.

 

Haste is done like Geneforge 5 in that you have a one third chance per round of reducing action point cost to 5 from 9. Speed items (speed potion/elixir, Gremlim wine, speed burst scroll, and rod of alacrity) increase your actions points to 13 adjusted by encumberance.

 

Mage cloak spells increase damage. Curses cause poison or weaken opponets, bolts increase missle damage, blades increase melee attack damage, arcane increases spell damage.

 

Priest wards protect against a damage type.

 

Priest spell divine retribution now does magical energy damage instead of fire.

 

The mage unlock spell is gone. You need to have tool use to unlock doors and containers.

 

The Tinker's Crystal increases you effective tool use (TU) for unlocking things except traps. For a character with no TU a crystal will open a TU 10 door and with some TU you can open TU 20 doors.

 

Dual wielding is back. The damage per strike is less than with sword and shield, but those extra attacks add up. With enough quick action and a speed item in effect you can get up to 8 swings per round.

 

Magery skill has been replaced with Dual Wielding. Still with divine touch trait, trainer, and items you can with a few skill points get Spellcraft up around 30.

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Originally Posted By: Randomizer
Dual wielding is back. The damage per strike is less than with sword and shield, but those extra attacks add up. With enough quick action and a speed item in effect you can get up to 8 swings per round.


Careful, this also means you can get riposted up to 8 swings per round. tongue
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Originally Posted By: Thuryl
I'm pretty sure that riposte damage is proportional to the damage your attack would have dealt, so being riposted on a lot of little attacks isn't actually worse than being riposted on a few big ones.


It may not hurt my health much, but it certainly hurts my pride.
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I forgot a few other changes:

 

Monsters slowly repopulate most places. Really irritating having to keep killing chitrachs or worse the spraying plants.

 

Wands do more damage. A wand of inferno actually is very useful now. The downside is the AI targets the last attacker so be careful about area effect attacks.

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Naw, it's not that bad. The respawn populations are very low — one chitrach, for instance, in a place that once held dozens. It's enough to sometimes be a bit of a nuisance, but it makes the world seem a little wilder — the chitrach lair doesn't become your personal underground parking garage just because you went through it once. On the downside, farming is really not an option. The respawn rate is just too low.

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Synergy did find a way to farm experience with the skribbane collection quest, but you have to keep going out and kill things to get money to do it.

 

Most collection quests don't decrease in experience as you gain levels. They just don't give you that much for each item.

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After having gotten killed by a random enemy that respawned in the wilderness while triumphantly dragging my nearly-dead party from its most recent hard-fought victory, I have to say that this is a good change.

 

Really.

 

—Alorael, who enjoys the uncertainty more than the constant availability of free and instant healing anytime you turn around and head to a town.

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I believe I can claim some credit for getting wands majorly pumped, though the fact that Jeff did this right after I complained probably indicates that lots of other people had complained, too. I did mention 'Wand of Forty-Watt Bulb' and 'Wand of Wasting 5 AP' in connection with Inferno and Sparkling, though, despite their high value and placement in major dungeons; so I hope my forceful words had some tipping point value. Truly wands used to suck. Now, not so much. Fiery wands and Ice Bolt scrolls naturally are kind of small bore by midgame, but they still serve a purpose in pinging attacks. The other wands are all useful right through, though. A Wand of Death, in particular, is probably the single strongest attack you can make in the game, normally doing well over 100 damage.

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Originally Posted By: Randomizer
Most collection quests don't decrease in experience as you gain levels. They just don't give you that much for each item.

Really? Ugh. Since everything else decreases in XP as you gain levels, that means the best thing to do is hold onto all those items for the entire game, then use them at the end. Sigh
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Originally Posted By: Dantius
All designers that incorporate infinite monster spawn points with no means of disabling them, just included for the hell of it, are terrible, terrible, people. Jeff gets this one free pass, and that's it. Beyond that...


A4 had 1 respawn area at that wineyard but experience gotten wasn't much (it took long time to get 4th char to same level as others before going on Final Mission) and respawn rate was maybe once every 15 mins.
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Originally Posted By: Slarty: The Abridged Series
INFINITE CHITRACHS?

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO


When I met the first chitrach in the Eastern Gallery that was pretty much what I thought. Luckily, I met less than fifty chitrachs in the entire game, some of which were even summoned. You don't have to go there, if you don't want to.
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Jeff really should have had a character down in the chitrach tunnels below the Eastern Gallery taking a census. smile

 

I hated respawning because there are a few areas around Formello where you have a long trip back to recharge and you have to fight a slith or two on almost every trip.

 

I don't even want to think about the ones that spawn at the gates of Formello. Those one really slow down looting. It took forever to get past them to get to that knowledge elixir and the invulnerable potion.

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Originally Posted By: Monroe
Originally Posted By: Nullbuggery
A4 didn't have any respawning, did it?

There was an area out by Fort Kriszan that had them respawning slimes. That'd be the only place I can recall.

There was also the orchard by Camp Samuels where the slimes respawned....I hated that section, I always had to fight them everytime I walked by.
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I also hated the respawning lone guards and such in the slith lands, but at least they did remind me that I was in enemy territory. Probably larger respawns less frequently would have been more realistic, but that might also have been more tedious.

 

I gave up trying to re-take Formello when I realized guards were respawning fast. I guess I should have gone back and fought through, since most of the garrison doesn't respawn.

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There was a chitrach respawn in A4. It was in a tunnel under the Great Cave, you went through there to get to the island with the Slith cultists challenge area. I think it's the one where they are sacrificing a human as you arrive.

 

Anyway, every time you passed a certain junction on the way back, a chitrach ran out. It caused just the sort of problem being discussed here in A6. I would be dragging my still conscious character back to the Castle and would have to run from this chitrach. Also, if I retreated in order to recharge and go back to the challenge area, I would have to spend resources fighting the chitrach on the way back. It was very annoying.

 

Anyway, I am very early in the new game, I just now got into Almaria. All the changes described in the original post here sound terrible, and are the kinds of things that make Geneforge less enjoyable for me than Avernum, but I was enjoying the game before I read the post so I guess I'll just keep enjoying it.

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  • 5 years later...

Do you eventually die if you don't have any food? That would be nuts! I remember when I fir started A6 and got a line of text "you have no food and are very hungry. You will be less effective in combat" I freaked because I didn't want to die from lack of food. I made a god party with the editor pinned at the top of the forum

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Do you eventually die if you don't have any food? That would be nuts! I remember when I fir started A6 and got a line of text "you have no food and are very hungry. You will be less effective in combat" I freaked because I didn't want to die from lack of food. I made a god party with the editor pinned at the top of the forum

 

As far as I know, you can't starve to death in Avernum 6, and food's generally not too hard to come by as long as you hold on to every piece you find.

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  • 6 months later...

Question: I'm coming into this from the remakes (Avernum: Subtitle) where you could only buy two levels of spell training (or 1 if you already knew the spell at character creation) + 1 level from a book. Here you can buy 3 levels AND one from a book (though not for all spells, apparently). Do they all stack, or does the book level replace one of the training levels?

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Question: I'm coming into this from the remakes (Avernum: Subtitle) where you could only buy two levels of spell training (or 1 if you already knew the spell at character creation) + 1 level from a book. Here you can buy 3 levels AND one from a book (though not for all spells, apparently). Do they all stack, or does the book level replace one of the training levels?

They all stack. You can get some spells much higher than level 3 in A6, but there's seldom much point in doing so. Unlike in the remakes, there are no new effects at the higher levels, just an incremental increase in power. You can get the same effect for all spells by raising your spellcasting skills. So except in the case of relatively inexpensive spells that you use often, it's a waste of money that you could otherwise use to train skills.
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They all stack. You can get some spells much higher than level 3 in A6, but there's seldom much point in doing so. Unlike in the remakes, there are no new effects at the higher levels, just an incremental increase in power. You can get the same effect for all spells by raising your spellcasting skills. So except in the case of relatively inexpensive spells that you use often, it's a waste of money that you could otherwise use to train skills.

Huh. Does that include barrier dispell? Which level should I get that to if not?

 

You're looking at the right stats. What are their actual stats in those three skills? Also, are they the same level?

Ah. No, the nephil is way ahead in levels. What is the formula, exactly?
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Slith - level 18, dex 7, quick action 5, gymnastics 1. Neph: level 25, dex 4, quick action 4 (when I first asked, it was 2), gymnastics 5.

 

Hah - checking their traits right now. I was wondering why the Neph was so far ahead of the rest of the party, and so much more frail - I forgot to set Elite Warrior and Divine Touched on him.

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Can you create Knowledge brews / elixirs or Wisdom Crystals in this one (or rather, get a late-game alchemist to do so)? Seems like they would be more useful than in the remakes. Kinda getting the feeling that I answered my own question, and have been lugging around dozens of Graymolds and Mandrake roots for nothing.

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Can you create Knowledge brews / elixirs or Wisdom Crystals in this one (or rather, get a late-game alchemist to do so)? Seems like they would be more useful than in the remakes. Kinda getting the feeling that I answered my own question, and have been lugging around dozens of Graymolds and Mandrake roots for nothing.

 

There is someone who will make knowledge brews for you, but you probably won't reach them until quite close to the end of the game:

 

 

There's a small Vahnatai colony deep in slith lands with an alchemist in it.

 

 

Also, be warned that energetic herbs are about as rare as mandrake overall -- you see more energetic herbs early in the game, but more mandrake late in the game -- so if you want to save up as many herbs as possible for knowledge brews you should be saving those too.

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Huh. Good to know. Can I get there the moment I get the boat, or do I have to wait until more plot gates open?

I haven't used up a single herb of any kind, including healing, hoping this was the case.

...

Oh, apparently the advanced skills don't stop at 10 here, though the costs scale of course. Any skills I should just keep pumping until I run out of levels / points?

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Oh, apparently the advanced skills don't stop at 10 here, though the costs scale of course. Any skills I should just keep pumping until I run out of levels / points?

 

It's hard to go too far wrong just by pumping Strength, Blademaster and the appropriate weapon skill for fighters or Spellcraft and the appropriate casting skill for casters, putting occasional points in Intelligence for casters and Endurance and Hardiness for everyone as needed. Fighters also want lots of Parry and 10 points in Quick Action, and if they're going to dual-wield you should get them around 6 points in Dual Wielding, pushing that up to 10 in the late game. Quick Strike can also be good as a late-game investment, especially once you already have either an action point boost or a few points in it from equipment. The links in the Strategy Central thread for A6 contain more detailed analysis of the value of specific skills if you want.

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Fighting in the Formello Arena. The Slith chief doesn't care to fight us - "the other sliths are dubious of this line of reasoning, but don't care to argue. He is called "the impaler" for a reason". Ok. We get him to fight us... "the other siths are dubious..." - what the hell. This isn't some obscure sidequest, that's one of the major unavoidable confrontations in the main game.

 

Just out of interest, could the Nephil prisoner survive the arena? Would that have changed anything?

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