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Skippy the bush kangaroo

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Everything posted by Skippy the bush kangaroo

  1. By the time it mattered I had no encumbrance problems equipping as many fine lances as I wanted because of Elite warrior. (The time it mattered for me was while X was casting his spell - until then I'd just been collecting them for the hell of it.)
  2. During testing I upgraded from 10.4 to 10.6 on my C2D 2.4GHZ Macbook Pro - that made an appreciable difference to framerates. Went from ~15fps to ~20+ in complex area. What OS are you running on your MBP?
  3. Originally Posted By: Dantius X finishes his spell? Can a PC cast it? That would be AWESOME!!!1!!1!@!1!1 Yes. No. (It is a lifetime's work for one of the greatest mages Avernum has ever known.)
  4. The usage is 'normal'. 50% means that it is maxing out one core. It will take whatever processing it can get and give you the highest framerate it can manage - at least for the main thread. If Jeff starts taking advantage of Grand Central Station in 10.6 it might just get multithread aware and breakout from that one core limit!
  5. Originally Posted By: Earth2025 We will see when beta-testers get their hands on A6. I doubt shield will get abandoned since extra-protection helps against boss-monsters. We will also see how long it takes for it to be redone when the beta-testers abuse it for all it's worth. I predict at least two iterations of the system between whatever it is now and whatever it is when the game is finally released. One thing Jeff can rely on beta-testers to do is work the system for all it's worth - that's what he 'pays' them for.
  6. It's your game - you do what you like. But I think there is a line - Thuryl's approach crosses it to my mind but yours is merely grey. Just because you can do it doesn't mean you should do it.
  7. Originally Posted By: Thuryl Wow. I can confirm what everyone's been saying about War Tralls: they're pretty sweet. Roughly twice the HP of a Wingbolt and almost as much damage for a comparable essence cost. They've got fairly balanced resistances: nothing bounces off them the way wingbolts can ignore magic or drakons can ignore fire, but they can survive a round or two of punishment from almost anything. I've got four tralls now and I honestly see very little reason to use anything else. Shock Tralls (with Regeneration Aura) are even better for the really difficult areas (the final battle and the challenge dungeon for example) The greatest thing about the Tralls for me were that they were almost set and forget - you didn't need to waste AP healing them nearly as much as you need to with other creations that need to be babied along. And that translated to dishing out a whole lot more damage.
  8. This game is different - Regeneration Aura makes them "stable". A Shock Trall (with Regeneration Aura) is a very useful creation - 12AP every round and significant missile damage.
  9. Mental doesn't scale?! Mass Madness in the middle of any large camp just rocks. You have yet to live unless you have Charmed an Unbound.
  10. Apparently I liked the Ring of Eye's Purity: +6% armour, +3 Battle magic and 3% energy preservation. Sorcerer's don't lack for damage dealing ability - but damage taking was forever the problem. Battle creations helped soak it up and I felt they were ultimately more useful than creations with any sort of fire power. (Until the War Traal when it all comes together.) And it all becomes worth it when you walk solo into a big camp, cast Mass Madness and then sit back and watch mayhem ensue. The larger the swarm the better. A charmed Drakon is pure gold. But just watching 20 or more creations fighting among themselves is pretty funny.
  11. I was just about to add that. Strength is a core skill for all characters I think - just to wear enough armour. But that mitigates the extent to which a Sorceress can be 'optimised' - I believe that a combat spell-caster will be better than a shaping spell-caster for that reason. That is part of the reason for my view that the Sorceress if fragile in the early and mid-game. If you invest in strength early you aren't really playing to the strengths of the character, but if you don't she is fragile. (And there are better rings to wear if you are a spell-caster than strength boosters.)
  12. The Sorceress is Fragile. That is fragile with a capital F. She needs battle creation shields but chews up essence at a prodigious rate so you can't have too many. She just can't dish out enough before running out of essence in the early to mid game. And her weak combat skills mean that if an enemy attacks her instead of her shield she takes it rather poorly. When she gets to the endgame she is practically invincible, Mass Madness is sweet - but the mid-game can be quite dicey.
  13. Quote: Originally written by Thoughts in Chaos: The other fighter (significantly weaker) takes all of the Tool Use, Nature Lore, First Aid, etc. for the party. Why would you concentrate all the Nature Lore and First Aid in one character? That makes it much more expensive. You only need to use a few points to get level 2 or 3 for every character which is significantly less than getting to level 12 for one character.
  14. I won the battle by making rather extensive use of Group Heal - on the sentinels. Just struck me as an entirely apposite way of dealing with the battle. Sing it with me... "Everything you know is wrong Black is white, up is down and short is long And everything you thought was just so Important doesn't matter"
  15. Quote: Originally written by Everett Goldner: ...except that you don't need his rewards if you decide to turn the character editor on. Indeed, if you turn the character editor there is no need to take any quests, kill any monsters, collect any loot, or even play the game. Think of the time you can save and the hassle you can avoid!!
  16. Quote: Originally written by ewan: And in fact it's quite possible (oddly) *not* to kill the drake even whilst being geased. This surprised me - when I returned to the Drake cave (I'd been there earlier, but was just finishing up town quests before freeing it) I was able to choose between "I'm sorry, I have to kill you now" (which was my first indication that there might be a geas active) and "go free." The first indication that a geas is active is a message indicating an overwhelming compulsion to skin the drake. If you haven't taken the geas yet then you can free the drake. And if you have made it to Tranquility before accepting the geas then you don't need to do anything to the drake. But being able to free the drake after being geased is a bug that ought to have been squashed - it can cause nasty side-effects.
  17. Quote: Originally written by Californian: J...I don't consider this to be cheating.... Nor did Enron executives think what they were doing was cheating. They could get away with it and it wasn't technically illegal - it was just creative accounting; therefore it couldn't be wrong, could it? Of course it is cheating. You want to cheat - I'm not going to stop you. Just don't try to claim that you aren't cheating.
  18. Quote: Originally written by Prick Against the Kicks: 2) Is it possible to just wait till the late game to take the geas, teleport around to get the items and rewards, then kill Gladwell and remove the geas, all at once? I ask especially because Gladwell's quests all reward flat XP, rather than scaling it for your level, so you could get a massive amount of extra XP by waiting. Plus at that point it probably no longer matters if the towns get mad. A first test of part of that approach. I freed Almenona and then took Gladwell's geas. I could leave the area and enter Tranquility. So at least his restraint on you if you don't do his bidding hasn't kicked in - although I haven't revisited the scene of the crime yet. This suggests that it is at least robust to that particular 'mistake' and possible rorting. Although the reward for getting its skin is obviously lost.
  19. "This thread is to help people to not make the same mistakes that I did." But that's half the fun. Sure, read this thread after you play through the first time to find the stuff you missed. But enjoy the mistakes. Realise you don't need to get absolutely everything to enjoy the game. So, the mistake you should avoid: Don't think that you need to do everything perfectly to succeed or enjoy the game.
  20. Quote: Originally written by Randomizer: This is a tricky one… That would have to be the understatement of the year. This is the hardest fight in the game. I also spent ages using unshackle mind and not getting anywhere. After that I didn't work out that you need to equip sticks (or equivalent) so spent a lot of time killing myself/being killed. I still haven't done this fight to completion.
  21. 1) No. Free XP from mad towns? More looting? You certainly don't need to go back to them. Although I did make the mistake of parking my boat within the walls of one of those cities the first time around which created obvious problems. 2) There might be some problems. Certain choices you make may prevent you from completing Gladwell's quests. With foreknowledge you can avoid that. But I don't know if the internal logic of the game is robust to a) mistakes along those lines or manipulation in the way you mention.
  22. As per my comment in another thread. You need at least one 'melee' character and, occasionally, two. This is for purely tactical reasons. You need a sponge to soak up the damage and tie up monsters in melee. So, I don't think a party of four archers/spellcasters could make it through the game without some extremely tough fights (and fights that would otherwise be easy for a traditional 2 melee, 2 spellcaster party). A party with one melee/sponge character and the rest spellcasters might, however, do well... next game.
  23. I will make one argument for "melee" although it isn't really in favour of melee as such: You need a 'sponge' that attracts attacks and melees with monsters to stop them doing area effect attacks. If that sponge happens to beat on the monsters he is next to then that is a bonus. But you really do need to close to melee range with a lot of monsters to prevent them frying your brains out with a nasty area effect attack. My lead melee character is called Brick for this reason - sort of like an armoured sponge. Finally, I would like to add that my first party for Avernum 5 was actually the default party. I would think that 50% (?) of people are going to play that way and the game really needs to be playable for that party. You can go all Divinely Touched later, but if Jeff has done his job right - the game should be fun for that party. Munchkiness can be saved for later.
  24. Quote: Originally written by Prick Against the Kicks: The Flaming Sword does 1-3 per level, and slith spears do 1-4, so unless an enemy resists physical damage at at least 20% (and doesn't resist fire), the spears will do more damage. It would seem to be my experience that a lot of monsters resist physical to at least 20%, and typically more.
  25. Quote: Originally written by Randomizer: You take it off the Slith Chief Gleth-Sssin the main level of Khora-Vysss (expert area of chapter 3). Ahh. Didn't get around to backtracking. Mind you, it's only got two extra levels on the Slith Warspear, and I wouldn't think that would account for a 50-100% improvement over the Flaming Sword. It was my impression the Flaming Sword was doing more than the Warspear against non-fire resistant foes. What does the maths say?
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