Minion

When you enter Hectar, there is a chance that Orathion may be under attack by a Giant Cockroach in the church, and unless you get to him in time he will be killed. I can't say for sure if this is triggered by entering the town bearing a message for him, but that's the only time it's happened to me. Also there is a post on the Gale quest board for Terak, and before you have accepted that quest and brought the message to him, make sure not to sleep in his inn, no matter how tempting it may seem.

4 hours ago, Clintone said:

If you're talking about a archery as a side skill for your mage in this game though, I'm surprised it could hit anything. I had a halberd-wielding mage with almost half its points into strength and the other half into intelligence and I remember it getting really bad accuracy against about everything except the smaller, easier enemies. Against bosses and tougher enemies it'd have under 40% to hit chance. It did get better with time though. 

The bow remained my wizard's most effective choice of single-target attack for most mid-level enemies, like giants. ursags and cave demons, throughout the game. Against more powerful enemies, the lower hit chance made Acid Spray or Firebolt more reliable for serious fights (otherwise I just had him use his bow because it was faster, and caused a bit more damage when it hit).

30 minutes ago, Clintone said:

I wonder if the best strategy is, if you only have one weapon-fighter, making a melee/pole user of some kind would make the most sense. If you have two weapon users, archers might be better because you could snipe off summoners and the remaining minions won't usually be much of a problem anyway.  

In my case, archery worked out fine as a side skill for my mage, particularly since the extra points in Dexterity helped him act first in combat (with the help of a bit of Quick Action, including from items), but I don't think I would ever have benefited particularly from having a full-time archer over any of my other characters. It was a long time since I played Nethergate and the original Avernum trilogy, but I believe archery was a useful complimentary skill for adding a bit of ranged firepower to your fighters, especially since the range was slightly longer than the first-turn movement range of most enemies. I'm thinking that perhaps archery was more useful that way, as an additional skill for non-casters to pick up with it's own tactical advantages, but not necessarily the focus of an entire character build.

18 minutes ago, BenS said:

In my 2nd game, on Hard, I have an all-human party: sword/shield guy who became a dual-wielder; pole weapon user; archer; priest/mage. I was worried that having only 1 offensive spell caster would gimp me, especially on a more difficult setting. Not so much! Having the 2 front-liners (w/ Backstab of course) side by side, or coming to the rescue if something's threatening the spell caster (good luck hitting my high Dex archer!)...this game has been an absolute blast w/ this set up.

I ran this party setup for the remake of both Avernum 1 and 2, and I found that not having a separate priest and wizard made a lot of tough fights too difficult without the ability to both heal and cast offensive spells, even forcing me to occasionally switch to Normal instead of Hard, and I was never really able to up the difficulty to Torment. Otherwise it's a fun party that allows you to fully utilize all the great equipment you come across.

Have you checked your junk bag?

13 hours ago, Clintone said:

 

I have a saved game at level 20 in the troglodyte temple. The game is at hard right now. There's a cave demon. My glass cannon nephilim archer with maximum sharpshooter just hit the cave demon with three arrow shots. The highest damage was 135 points of physical damage, with 489 damage blocked, without getting a critical hit, with the lemonwood longbow. 

 

At level 20, my well-rounded dual-wielder with the icy or flaming longsword and Radiant Soulblade (both easily obtainable at that point) for about 75-100 with both swords and does an additional ~50-75 in elemental damage (or something, it was probably a bit more than that) with one hit, meaning that with Adrenaline Rush or Battle Frenzy, he will be dealing two or three times as much damage per round as said archer. He also has plenty of HP, great initiative and decent mental resistance, and Parry and Hardiness.

13 hours ago, Electrons are Eigenmetric Solitons said:

You were able to wield radiant soulblade & one of the elemental swords?  Did Jeff remove the broadsword classification for the elemental swords at some point (v1.01?) then?  Even recently I was unable to equip both.

Radiant Soulblade has Basic Attack: Sword and can be wielded in your off-hand, which my swordsman has been doing since before the patch was released.

I ran an all-human party of one swordsman, one polearm-wielder, one cleric and one wizard. For my two fighters, up until level 30 I put one point in Strength every even level, and one point in Dexterity, Intelligence and Endurance every odd level for five. I prioritized Dexterity and Endurance and only started putting points in Intelligence around level 20, which worked out fine since mental effects like Charm were quite rare until then, and the extra Dexterity allowed them to use Javelins quite effectively during the early part of the game. As for my cleric and wizard, I put one point in Intelligence every even level and one point in Endurance and Strength or Dexterity respectively every odd level up until about level 20, whereafter I focused on Intelligence (which gave about 6 extra points of Endurance and five extra points in the other stat). This kept my cleric an effective close-combat fighter until the mid-part of the game and my wizard kept using his bow over single-target spells until the very end (the damage was about equal, and he didn't even use Bow of Fury). Additionally, I made sure everyone took all five of every stat-increasing trait.

While my cleric and wizard were quite capable of causing large amounts of damage to multiple enemies, especially my wizard since his high Initiative allowed him to hit the enemy while they were still clumped together at the start of the fight, my two fighters were still my main damage dealers. The swordsman in particular was able to cause hundreds of point of damage with every attack once he moved on from sword & shield to dual-wielding the Radiant Soulblade and the Icy/Flaming Longsword. The spearman (later halberdier) outclassed the more defensive swordsman early on, but fell behind once the latter switched to two weapons, though he remained a solid damage dealer for the entire game (particularly since the Black Halberd and Quicksilver Plate go well together). Aside from the normal challenges at the start of the game (like being taken down by a single blow from a goblin or rat), despite starting out on Hard, once things got moving I had no difficulty at all finishing the game and doing pretty much everything (except fight the dragons, which I didn't really feel like). Additionally, aside from healing potions and elixirs, I only used about a dozen energy potions and a handful of energy elixirs over the course of the entire game (mostly ones I found lying around, hardly had a single potion made), barely used any speed or armour potions/scrolls until the very end (so they wouldn't all go to waste), and didn't use a single invulnerability potion or elixir.

PS: My fighters did get hit a lot less and were only rarely charmed or dazed, so those extra points in Dexterity and Intelligence appear to have paid off. Also, having your wizard always go first unless the enemy is a far higher level than you was a real help since it allowed him to take control of the battlefield field with Daze or soften up/take out large clumps of enemies with area damage spells (or both).

I would like to see you rank yourself.

9 hours ago, dave s said:

I mean, I get that it is realistic for a party of adventurers to find nothing but useless mundane weapons and armor in most shops. But RPGs have trained me to think that new towns mean new shops with better items. It makes no sense of course. But Avernum takes it to the extreme. There are basically no useful items in shops save a few herbs, crafting supplies and potions.

 I think it would be nice to have some added incentive to actually buy stuff from shops like people actually do rather than pull boots and cloaks off of dead goblins and bandits, not to mention armour and other equipment that needs to be individually customized.

22 hours ago, lucabar said:

Problem: I killed him BEFORE the scrolls/message exchange so now the Mayor of Sharimik tells me to go talk to him to advance the quest, and no other dialogue options show up. Is there a way to fix it?

My guess is that you will, quite naturally really, never be able to deliver any messages from King Vothkaro,  but you're not missing out on anything unique, just a couple of points of reputation, some petty cash and basic knowledge of the Dispel Barrier spell (which costs 1500 per level from a wizard in one of the outlying towns near Lorelei).

Sometimes you need to look for lone sections of mossy walls, not just cracked ones. I overlooked one of these in the Spiral Crypt.

It would be neat if all spellbooks cursed you or drove you mad in some way, though happily this theme has already been explored with the canisters in Geneforge. 

The Empire did evacuate most powerful magic-users to Blackcrag, so there are probably dozens of people there capable of removing them, except that they are in the part of the fortress where you are not allowed to go.

If you accepted the quest to kill the vampire but instead went back and killed the ogres (though I recall them actually being giants, except that the quest listing says ogres), you should still be able to talk to the vampire and accept his quest to kill the ogres. Once you do that and return to the vampire to claim your reward, both quests should be removed from your quest list.

It doesn't necessarily mean that they actively eat humans (which would be quite foolish while living in the middle of the Empire as it would invite swift retaliation), just that it's hard to resist when something tasty is standing right in front of you. Sort of like how it would be difficult for a human not to eat a candy bar lying on the table in front them despite having recently had dinner. It was quite obviously one of those encounters where you can choose carnage and plunder and be slapped with a reputation drop or curse, or just be on your merry way. Just like the Church of the Divine Lucre where you can pay an exorbiant sum for some basic spells and having people detest you, or take a 500 xp penalty and score some of the best armour in the game Though that assumes you didn't do anything as silly as anger the Anama for the measly contents of their treasury, in which case you at least get to boast that you finished the game on Torment+ (add one "+" for every Dread Curse you have).

Seeing what happens in the Tower of Magi with their free for all magic policy, I'm starting to wonder if Jeff Vogel is an Anama symphatizer. Anyway, I found the dragons but they said nothing about eating humans. Just that they had fed recently and were resting before hunting again.

To put it like this, if you go around robbing churches, why would you bother fighting off a bunch of drakes just because they eat people. That's what righteous heroes do, who haven't angered the only man holy enough to lift the curse the nefarious drakes place on them.

It's not like you are not warned at least a couple of times that robbing the Anama will have permanent consequences, and the unavoidable Dread Curses (at least if you want the loot) are all quite late in the game and all due to obviously evil or foolish acts like robbing temples that don't worship demons or breaking into the bedrooms of cranky hermits. The one exception to this would be the Level 3 Summon Aid spellbook, which isn't particularly useful so I suppose it's another one of those cases where the reward does not always match the obstacle. This discussion makes me wonder if perhaps you should have to accept some form of penalty to gain truly powerful spells and artefacts, just like how I find Dark Thoughts adds to the ambience of a party of adventurers delving into the dark places of the world. However, I suspect this would unpopular.

I'll have to find those drakes before my party heads to the final confrontation and see what happens.

Wow, you must be playing a really hardcore, no-reload Torment run to be so stressed out by a 500 xp penalty. I think I missed the drake one (where is that?), but you don't have to actually wipe out said cult to complete the quest, the Empire only wants to know their location. And it's not like that bedroom has anything particularly valuable in it, so you can choose to respect the wizard's privacy (which the curse is there to protect in the first place). The only curse I've noticed that was worth it was the cult one, since they have a Quicksilver Plate which otherwise requires a far tougher fight to get, and it goes great with the Black Halberd.

I had a similar experience where I was first unable to catch the unicorns with Nature Lore 12-13, but was later able to hunt them down without having increased my Nature Lore (either by skill points or items). I suppose your level might affect it somehow.

It worked fine for me until I picked up a Crude Halberd, which I used to great effect until I eventually found a Bronze Halberd somewhere. Or maybe that was the Molten Halberd.

If I recall correctly, you were rewarded the Lava-Fired Spear for defeating the source of the slime plague. A Crude Halberd is pretty much on the same level, actually, just without the magical bonuses.

The damage displayed for each weapon is the total number of damage levels or damage dice. You get one level/die per point of Strength and each respective weapon skill, and most weapons grant additional bonus levels/dice depending on how powerful they are. I use the word "die/dice" since each damage level adds a random number of damage (1-3 and 1-4 depending on weapon type, if I recall correctly) similar to how you roll dice for damage in tabletop RPGs. This does not take damage bonuses from items, skills or traits into account. Sharpshooter, for example, grants a 4% damage bonus per skill level, so the archer with Sharpshooter 10 would have a 40% bonus to damage.

Worry not, I had the exact same problem. They have that smoke-like effect when blue, so its an easy mistake to make.

I simply used to record any quest conversations in the journal to keep track of them.