Beat A1 and A2...Onward to A3!

[Arch-Mage Solberg]

I've been replaying the original Avernums in anticipation for the upcoming release of Avernum:Escape From the Pit. So far I beat the first one in 3 weeks and the second in a month. I just beat the second one yesturday. I plan to start on the third tomorrow. I hope to be done before Christmas.

 

I was just wondering if anyone else was also doing something like this?

 

Post #637

[Venatrix Avia]

Yes, I'm doing the same, but am lagging a bit behind you - I'm still towards the beginning of Chapter 4 of A2 right now.

 

I'm hoping that perhaps this remake of A1 might finally help me understand the new engine well enough to play the second trilogy games. I really *want* to play them, but I've yet to make it very far into the demos of any of them. Somehow I just can't seem to wrap my mind around the new engine. I find the graphics far too visually confusing and can never figure out what anything is supposed to be.

 

I know A1 like the back of my hand, though, so I'm hoping that perhaps the remake will serve as a kind of 'new engine tutorial' for me...

[Earth]

A1.1's and A4-6's engines aren't same.

[Randomizer]

The remake is closer to Avernum 6 and Avadon than to Avernum 1.

[Lauren CW]

I am playing through the 2nd avernum game in and taking notes for use in a DnD campaign I'm running.

I would have done the first game, but I'll probably just run it as a prequel, and it will be easier for me if I wait until A.EftP is done to play through, rather than playing a.1 and getting bored of the series before A.EftP comes out.

[Thoukydides]

I planned on playing through A1 on Torment for the first time back in August. Deciding to analyze the mechanics of nearly every stat and trait kind of delayed my progress by a few months. Just last week I finally decided to begin playing the game and got sidetracked into making a damage spreadsheet and a skill point planner - and I still haven't left Fort Avernum. The good news is that I should have until Spring before the PC release of A:EftP.

[Venatrix Avia]

Originally Posted By: Earth Empires

A1.1's and A4-6's engines aren't same.

Well, okay, but judging by the screenshots that have been released, the graphics look very much the same to me. And since visually decoding the graphics was what I found so problematic about A4-6, I suspect that the one might well help me to understand the other. Hope so, anyway. I found it quite encouraging that I instantly recognized the ground floor of the Nephil Fortress in one of those screenshots, which then made a lot of other things suddenly visually comprehensible to me.

In this play-through, I've finally come to accept that I just don't *use* wands and scrolls. In previous games, I've always stockpiled them, but then I never wind up using them at all. So now I'm just selling them all off. I'm finding this a strangely liberating experience. I'm decluttering my cache!

[Randomizer]

The maps are the same, but Jeff's added a new town and additional areas to some of the older maps.

 

Graphics have been updated with some new ones for characters.

[Trenton.]

The newer avernums and avadon engines are based on geneforges. Hence all the sprites that are reused, not just for characters, but also for setting. Ever seen the gym locker looking storage box in the avernums now?

[The Mystic]

Originally Posted By: Arch-Mage Solberg

I've been replaying the original Avernums in anticipation for the upcoming release of Avernum:Escape From the Pit. So far I beat the first one in 3 weeks and the second in a month. I just beat the second one yesturday. I plan to start on the third tomorrow. I hope to be done before Christmas.

I was just wondering if anyone else was also doing something like this?

I'm not doing this currently, but I have done it several times in the past. If I have time, I might do it later.

[Thoukydides]

I have recently discovered an interesting bug in A1 and I was wondering if any of you could reproduce it or if you've noticed this in your own playthroughs.

 

Dexterity appears to give significant resistance to stoning, but this is not given through Defense, or any of the derived resistances, and Gymnastics does not give any resistance either. I have noticed that characters start with a base resistance of 30%-40% and 10 Dex gives ~90% resistance. In addition Luck does give resistance, however, I assume this is a result of "Lucking out" and not because of the derived stats.

 

I suppose most of you who completed the game killed all the the basilisks already. Although I suppose the bug might exist in A2 if anyone wants to check.

[Venatrix Avia]

How odd.

 

How do you know what your resistance percentage is? Does it appear in the text box when you resist an attempted stoning?

 

Two odd A1 bugs that I've stumbled across are the cloth/ore and horn/scroll bugs. I find it hard to believe that these aren't well-known, but I never see them mentioned anywhere. Have I just missed all reference to them?

 

On the off-chance that nobody's ever noticed this before (extremely unlikely, I know):

 

Both of the special ore-buyers, the smith in Blosk and the Mayor of Bargha, are incapable of distinguishing bolts of cloth from bags of ore. They will buy all bolts of cloth, even the little cheapie 10-coin ones, for the same price as they offer for bags of ore.

 

The same thing applies to Benth at the Castle and horns. He mistakes horns for historical scrolls and will buy them for the same price that he offers for historical scrolls (25 coins each).

 

Since unlike the ore-buyers, Benth is an ungluttable market (he never stops shelling out for historical scrolls), and since you can buy horns from Jason at Fort Duvno for only 12 coins a pop, this means that you need never run short on coinage in A1. Not that you likely would anyway, of course.

 

Anyway, probably everyone already knew all about the ore/cloth and horn/scroll bugs, but on the off-chance that someone didn't...

[Thoukydides]

I know the resistance to stoning through testing against a basilisk and counting the number of successful resists. Sadly the game does not display your resistance, it only shows whether you resisted stoning or you died.

 

I actually did not know about those bugs, of course I never carry around horns and I rarely carry bolts of cloth.

[Venatrix Avia]

That's dedication!

 

Since I have a nasty cold and am not going anywhere in the foreseeable future, I'll see if I can duplicate your results. Since I never go anywhere near a basilisk without loads of crystal equipment, I've not noticed how my unprotected characters fare against them -- other than "usually, very poorly." Hence the avoidance behavior. I'll load up an old save and see if I get similar results when I pump up someone's DEX.

[Trenton.]

I boosted my luck up to fifteen once. My character never died. I could have sworn I fought like 7 basilisks at a time and they each tried but they could not stone me.

[Venatrix Avia]

Thoukydides,

 

I've duplicated your experiment and got the same results. A character with DEX 10, all other skills reduced to their default, and no special skills or traits (no Gymnastics, no Elite Warrior, no Fast on Feet, etc.) seemed to have about a 90% chance of resisting stoning.

 

Level seems to matter as well. I first tried this with a character at level 10 (just because that's where my characters were in my first save that had them anywhere near a basilisk), and his chances were even better than your stated 90% -- on average, he was only stoned every one in fifteen gazes. Then I realized that you probably used a character at Level 1, adjusted my trials accordingly, and got the same results you did -- about 1 in 10.

 

- VA

[Thoukydides]

Thanks for your help Venatrix.

 

I don't think if level really does affect stoning. I originally used a level 17 character (he had just killed the Gap Drake and gotten various items I've been testing) and he had a 94% chance of resisting at Dex 10, 98% at Dex 30, and 92% at Dex 60. Each of my tests consisted of 50 stoning attempts, so unless you did a lot more tests than I did, I don't think 1:15 and 1:10 are enough of a difference (3.3%) to say that character level adds resistance. Plus it probably caps at 90-95%, and both your results are quite close. In addition, just tested my level 40 character with base Dex, 10 Magery and 3 Resistance and he had 38% resistance, compared to the level 17 base of 42%. I would say level does not have an impact on stoning resistance.

 

However, you did confirm that Dexterity will give significant resistance to stoning, so again, thank you. I was afraid that my copy of Avernum broke or got bugged when I upgraded to Windows 7. It makes no sense to me that Dexterity does this - unless maybe you can dodge a baslisk's glance?

[Callie]

I opened up Avernum the other day out of curiosity, and I would probably play through if it weren't for higher priority activities getting in the way.

 

One note: I had forgotten how clunky Avernum's interface was. The edges of the party's view are black.

[Lauren CW]

I have definitely never noticed any of those issues, whether it be the selling trick or the dex, and I am constantly on the lookout for that kind of thing. If there's any more you know of, I would love to hear them.