Kelandon

Now that you're getting to the other scenarios, too, I should also point out that your list of "play in order" is missing one (and possibly several) groupings of scenarios. Most (all?) of TM's scenarios (not just Mad Ambition and Echoes: Renegade) are in the same universe and generally should be played chronologically. I mean, in theory. I'm not sure that in practice it makes any real difference. Um, you'll see what I mean. Also, I'm not sure if Ephesos's scenarios are related in any way, or if Smoo's scenarios are, but I kind of vaguely thought that they were. Either way, doing scenarios in level order is likely to be confusing and not of any benefit; you'd be much better served doing pretty much all scenarios in chronological order, grouped by designer if you feel like it (i.e., all Eph scenarios in chronological order, then all Smoo scenarios in chronological order, and so on).

Because Nobody's Heroes is a lot shorter, you'll presumably get to the next scenario (The Magic) fairly quickly. The one thing that I want to say, in light of what I've seen about your playing style so far, is that you should make sure at the end of The Magic to talk to the main characters again. Some of the dialogues change after the climax of the action, and it's worth seeing the additional things that people have to say.

Occasionally, the text bubbles have been cut off because they go off the screen. (For whatever reason, when a text bubble would run off the screen, the text bubble doesn't display at all.) No text bubbles are cut off on my copy, but I've seen it I think two times on yours. Most recently, Ithik's question to the Goddess was cut off — he asks her whether she is the goddess of the Khalthanad. "That was certainly a thing that happened." Lol! Probably my favorite cut scene in the whole series.

No, that's not quite right. This came up earlier in the thread. Check out the comment on deduct_ap() in the editor tech support page: I guess Jeff didn't update the docs when he did this, and apparently it broke again later, but this was the intended behavior. I don't know why you would assume this — it's not true. In BoA, the item description is automatically generated from the item's stats, so it's never wrong. (At least, I've never seen it be wrong, and it's safest to assume that it's not wrong unless you have really strong evidence that it is wrong.) I don't know why you would assume this either. At high levels (and sometimes at low levels, depending on stats), the damage per level is the dominant part of the damage. Per the item description, the Crystal Wand does 12-120 points of damage plus 1-10 per level of Bows skill and 2 levels of Dexterity. Suppose your Dexterity is 24 and your Bows is 4 (that is, Bonnie). That means you get 12 + 4 = 16 additional levels of 1-10 damage. That's 16-160 from the damage per level on top of the 12-120 base — so the damage per level add-on is actually larger than the base. And if you trained up Bows a bit more, for example to 10, the damage per level add-on would be 22-220, which is almost double the base. In case anyone cares: And we're just about ready for the big reveal! Looking forward to the next episode.

It's also possible — likely, even! — that you're not looking as hard as one would have to look if one wanted to find everything. You... sold... the Crystal Wand? The weapon type was Thrown Weapons, but the item description said that it used Bows skill, and several of your characters have Bows skill. That was... not a good decision. (Although, given the bug exploits that you've found so far, it may not actually matter going forward. I am looking forward to Anthala's Mine, though, because the enemy there should be less vulnerable to Bind Foe/Cloudkill.) I suppose I should've brought this up earlier, but the Liverpool accent for Machrone doesn't quite fit because Machrone isn't exactly from the Empire. He's... well, you'll see. Eventually. And lol at the idea that this was the dramatic moment I was talking about! No, the biggest dramatic moments are still coming up. It's not for nothing that the Peninsula Camp sequence is tied with the Lava Ocean for my favorite part of the scenario. EDIT: In light of the below, I'd like to emphasize that this was all intended with good humor. Maybe some gentle ribbing, but with a smile. I am enjoying these episodes — less so the combat where you use bug exploits constantly, but oh well — and am looking forward to the rest.

Yeah, it does appear that you've missed both opportunities to get Major Healing at this point (because presumably you've reached the Peninsula Camp by now). I don't think you've missed terribly many other special spells — you missed a level of Destruction, but you'll get a level of Destruction fairly shortly anyway, so it doesn't matter too much. You'll go through a bit of the scenario with Destruction L1 instead of Destruction L2, but if you find the right encounter a little farther down the line, you'll still be able to get Destruction L3. (In general, you can get L3 of a spell as long as you know it at least at L1.)

Man, the deduct_ap() bug really makes these fights boring. Bind Foe had such a low energy cost in order to make it more enticing, but that was because you could only cast a couple of it per caster per turn. If you can cast it an unlimited number of times per turn, then you can immobilize everything all at once, which was not the intention. This is compounded by the other BoA bug that it appears to work on everything, not just the creatures it's supposed to work on. I suppose I could throw in some code to reduce the fallout from these bugs (basically, unweb certain monsters partly or fully every turn). That would probably be for the best. Also, you said you were frustrated about not getting enough loot per dungeon, but each dungeon has 1-2 artifacts pretty consistently throughout Exodus. So the loot rate is more or less constant throughout. The loot rate is relatively low — you don't find a lot of gold per encounter — but not inconsistent.

Just to be clear, Major Haste costs exactly the same amount of spell energy and renders exactly as many levels of Haste as Haste, except that it acts on every member of the party, not just one target. So there's never a reason to cast Haste in Exodus; Major Haste is always better. And as far as I know, there is no way to clean webs except by standing still (either in combat or outside of combat).

Maybe you're just not reading enough into "setting her free." Free from what? Free from societal convention that said that it was wrong to love a drakon, that's what!

Ah, true enough. Once Luck + Resistance is reaches 5, every level of either skill past that point improves protection from acid. Either way, though, Luck is superior when it's cheaper and you don't need any more mental protection.

Definitely bandwagoning Compact & Convenient here too.

Aaaaand the combat slowdown is back in full effect. I had reduced the slowdown in Manikoss because the point of the area was to run through fairly quickly, but it's back here, and — if I remember correctly — it remains in effect for a while. I've mostly been holding back comments on your build, but in this episode, you increased Resistance from 8 to 9 on a character with 0 Luck (and whose resistances were already through the roof). That makes no sense. The only thing you had any significant vulnerability to is Acid, but Resistance does not add to your protection from Acid. Luck would have been cheaper (4 skill points vs. 9 skill points) and each level of Luck adds the same amount to all of your immunities except Mental, and Luck also adds to your chance of surviving a fatal blow (which Resistance does not). Also, you said you weren't sure why Sheik is not as good at hitting and doing damage, but that's probably because she's swinging a butter knife. ChowGuy is not wrong when he points out that your choice of weapons is less than ideal. Skill point boosts are great and all, but 4-20 damage is still 4-20 damage. You more than doubled your average damage done when you switched out Fawkes's weapon. Probably the same would be true if you were to switch out Sheik's weapon with the next high-end weapon you find. I'm still totally mystified as to why you don't save after winning lengthy combats. You had to refight the Fire Golems (twice) because you didn't save after the first time you beat them.

You didn't read the changed dialogue from Thena (at about 16:30)! I guess you came back at 27:00, though. And yes, the homeland is different from Avernum — it's possible to grow vegetables in certain parts. Optional dungeons are fun!

It doesn't.

Lack of updating to v1.1.2 means that you missed the message that pops up when you walk out of Manikoss. Other bug-fixes and minor upgrades will become relevant very soon. So I strongly suggest that you update if you haven't already. Also, in terms of total progress, you're nearing the end of Chapter 3 (out of 5). I've always taken Fort Alora (the next dungeon) to be part of the Strange Cave sequence (which is Chapter 3). It'll be interesting to see how Chapter 4 goes; my guess is that you'll be fine for most of it, although there may be a dungeon late in Chapter 4 that you find difficult. I do love Chapter 4. That's the Peninsula Camp sequence that I've been talking about for a while. Looking forward to it!

From the hints: Let me know if there's something about that that's not working and I can be more specific.

Hey, if you spot any bugs in the new version (updated just now), could you let me know? People stopped reporting bugs years ago, so I thought I'd ironed them all out, but apparently not.

And you (again) spent most of this episode killing the same respawning monster over and over again. I don't get it. And the respawning is the same in the west and the east; it's just that fewer monsters in the west respawn. The mechanics are the same. (It's literally the same code.) Also, apparently there was a typo in Status Nearby, so I've (once again) uploaded another version, without changing the version number. If you downloaded recently, redownload. And finally, those questions you have about the plot... those are good reasons to keep going. Exodus is not the last scenario in the series, and Homeland (the third scenario) was never released, so some things are not resolved. But....

The acid strike is 5d120, so that's why it's not a very consistent amount of damage. And one Diseased Roach, one Acrid Slug, and one Poison Chitrach respawn on the west side. Honestly, at this point, I don't know if that was intentional or an oversight. Probably intentional? Every time I come across something in Exodus that seems like it was done for no reason, I try to fiddle with it and realize that it was done for a very specific purpose.

Apparently, next year.

Unfortunately, in Blades of Avernum, spiders are insects. Also, I try to avoid gratuitously saying "I told you so," but I kept telling you that Bind Foe is really powerful....

So maybe it's tied to cr_speci_abil rather than cr_species? Weird. I'll have to test that at some point.

In that vein... a Protection Brew (which Silthokh sells several of) actually gives as much Invulnerability as an Invulnerability Elixir. You said you didn't have Invulnerability Elixirs, but you had access to something just as good (better, even). And apparently insects are vulnerable to Bind Foe? The documentation says that they shouldn't be, but it looked as though you were able to immobilize some Foul Larvae using that spell. How odd.

Huh. Weird. That still doesn't explain deduct_ap(), but I guess that answers the color issue. Thanks.

I think your build is contributing to your problems, but I think it's not the chief source of your problems. Your build narrows the range of workable options, but you still have options; there are just fewer of them. Ultimately, you're better than the last few episodes. You really are. You've beaten harder fights before. You just need to calm down and think things through. You're acting like you're the first person ever to play this scenario, but you're not. Dozens of other players have done this. Hell, at least 18 players beat the beta version of Exodus, which was a good deal harder than the release version. (In the first beta, the acid strikes in Under Manikoss did about three times as much damage as they do now.) Generations of players for over a decade have been beating Exodus. You can do it too. ------- One point I haven't harped on but probably should have is the usefulness of Enduring Barrier. Get into the habit of casting Enduring Barrier on everyone while you're outdoors. It lasts perpetually, and there's no reason not to start a combat with an extra 100+ health. Totally separately, I think the probability of an attack failing when it's directed at a creature with Sanctuary is something like 60%. It looks like a little more than half of them fail, but a lot less than 100% fail. As far as I can tell, this doesn't vary with level or type of attack, but I haven't experimented much with that. But regardless, that's correct behavior in BoA; that's how things are supposed to work. I generally didn't modify how statuses affect you (with the exception of the unblockable special spells going through Invulnerability), so whatever the statuses do, they do. It will never be a bug, or because monsters are overpowered, or whatever. Statuses do what they are supposed to in Exodus. ------- And finally, and I don't know how important this is, I think there's something wrong with your version of BoA. Not only is deduct_ap() not working — which I'm told has not always been a problem on Windows BoA (and was specifically fixed at one point) — but also some icon adjustments aren't working. A bunch of sliths are the wrong color, including Silthokh and Pithoss. I had noticed that Pithoss was the wrong color earlier, but I thought that maybe I was just misremembering (because when have icon adjustments ever been bugged? I've never heard of that). But no, I went back and checked, and yes indeed, some of the sliths are the wrong color. Could you post your operating system and BoA version number (as well as the source of BoA, e.g., Steam)? I'm troubled and want to figure out what's going on here.