Slawbug

Oh huh, crazy. Bad memory on the separate interfaces I guess. Traute -- you can't scroll down to see more skills to buy?

...okay, so this is extremely weird. I didn't have AEFTP installed on this computer, so I downloaded it again and looked at the scripts. Erika indeed does not have a dialogue option for training skills, at all, just as Traute has discovered. However, there's lots of documentation from the game's release of people saying she did. Synergy, Randomizer and myself all put it in our lists and guides, it's on the AEFTP Annotated Maps, and there's casual discussion of it on the forums as well. We paid a lot of attention to trainers on release because in the initial Mac version (remember when the Mac version always came out first? nostalgia!) training the second level cost double price, and it was harder to afford everything... so I really don't think that was just a propagated mistake. Erika is the only trainer for some of those skills, so it would be a really strange communal error; we'd have had to invent prices for them out of thin air and everything. Notably, Nlambert also has it in their index... which was posted in 2018! So if it was (inadvertantly?) removed in some version upgrade, it has to have been in the last 6 years... or possibly it was simply never in certain versions to begin with? Either one is weird. The file in question (t66ErikasTowerdlg.txt) has a last modified date of November 14, 2011, which is shortly before the game was released. So it wasn't changed later, though maybe an older version was mistakenly packaged in at some point? I dunno. This whole thing is weird.

EDIT: Whoops. Nothing to see here :-)

Hi Traute, I merged your new topic with this one because it's exactly the same question. (A lot of these questions could possibly go in one big topic anyway, but 2 topics for the same question is probably overkill.) Is it possible there's a dialogue option you just haven't seen? It looks like Erika has the same requirements for teaching spells as for teaching skills.

alhoon, I was responding to your theoretical about "an Awakened-type Rebellion" so yes, "if the Awakened walked out of that mountain as victors" is exactly what was being discussed.

The point is though that the Rebels force you to do this, but the Shapers do not, which is one of the things that makes the Rebels harder for the player to digest. I see your point on strategy, however, considering how incredibly un-strategic most of the Rebel goals in G3 are -- mostly just a lot of spreading destruction for its own sake -- putting myself in the PC's shoes, it's hard to take that too seriously. I don't see how it would be better for the Awakened. Khyryk is closer to them ideologically than he is to the loyalists. If the Rebels did not exist, Khyryk expressing his views would only increase support for the Awakened -- it wouldn't make it seem like they were extreme and crazy.

Going Rebel 100% forces you to kill Khyryk in order to progress to the final island. I think this really epitomizes the problem. In a game that deliberately forces you to choose between terrible extremes, Khyryk is the lone sympathetic bastion of even-handed reason -- and the Rebel path forces you to kill him, but the Shaper path doesn't.

a lot of vlish

Khyryk is the one who becomes a Trakovite, though...

In Mutagen, when you shape a creation, you don't just pick a creation, you have various options to augment it. One could imagine the same sort of thing for spells. Commit essence to improve a particular spell in different ways -- maybe it costs less energy, lasts longer, does more damage, hits a bigger area, adds a chance of a secondary effect, changes its element, changes its effect entirely, etc. While this could be done on a per-cast basis, what I'm imagining is more like with creations: you spend the essence once, and that essence is committed -- augmenting that spell in your head -- until you release the essence (just like until a creation dies or is absorbed).

I meant more customization, just like shaping for other things.

Spell shaping, please. Not holding my breath on that one, but just imagine it.

I'd rather see the game expand in other dimensions, like with weapon shaping. There's already a whole pile of creations, and it's already a struggle to have all of them be useful and interesting in every game (though Mutagen was an improvement here). That list doesn't need to get longer just because.

Yeah, the more recent new games (Avadon and Queen's Wish) seem to have favored ethnic name generators/lists rather than pulling from the names of real or fictional people -- see category 18 in that link. Makes sense that a similar source could be used for town names.

Hey RedBeard -- the user you keep tagging is not Jeff Vogel 🙂 That said, please do not repeatedly tag the developer. Or anyone else for that matter. Some people find it annoying. Just a friendly mod request. Tags probably aren't going to get you a response anyway. If you have something that does need Jeff's attention, email (support@spiderwebsoftware.com) is probably the best way to reach him.

This is impressive. I was surprised at how much each of these images immediately conjured up for me the corersponding original pixel sprite, despite not having looked at them in a look time. Honestly pretty cool. Also, I appreciate the quantity of references to Shirley as original artist. Ha.

That's understandable, but you may notice it's the same people responding to most of these topics, so you're really just making anyone who follows the forum read it twice. Speaking as a mod: please don't do this in the future. Thanks.

Please don't post the same exact thing in multiple topics. Thanks.

There may be no single best build... but there are definitely bad builds. This is not a game where your stat/skill point choices don't matter.

*faceplant*

FYI - as the ".dat" might suggest, it's a data file. The contents are not stored in text form, so opening it with a text editor won't make clear the values that are stored in it.

I'd guess they are stored in the Settings.dat file from the saved games directory, but maybe not. Did you wipe that along with the saved games?

If Anaximander is telling you you can return to the Tower of Magi then you have reported at least one plague victory to him. The question you need to ask Levy is: "Have my achievements merited a reward yet?" EDIT: I don't know where in his dialogue tree it is, but it looks like it should always be present. He will either respond: Levy looks through a large book, checks again, and looks back up apologetically. "Nope, you've done nothing yet to merit a reward. Perhaps you should do some adventuring and check back later." or e.g. Levy looks through a large book, finds something of interest, and produces a potion from under the counter. "Well done! Here is the reward for dispatching the Alien Slime." The rewards for the early quests aren't that amazing. For the slimes it's an Invulnerability Elixir and for the roaches it's a Ring of Skill. So I'm wondering if you could have already picked them up and just not realized it?

Yeah Berra is completely irrelevant to Levy. Has Anaximander directed you to go to Levy for a reward? Also, are you playing original Avernum 3 or Avernum 3: Ruined World?

Hahaha, so many shades of "I can't imagine remaking the Tower of Magi one more time." And yet...