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Tom

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About Tom

  • Birthday 06/05/1919

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Garrulous Glaahk

Garrulous Glaahk (8/17)

  1. You get +1 if you take the box of contraband that Dexter in Almaria gives you for his second quest and turn it in to the authorities at Fort Spire.
  2. I looked around for some statistics regarding a Celt party stealing things from the chests under the Faerie Bazaar, but hard numbers are seemingly even harder to find. I know the rune alarms before the chests can be bypassed with Luck--how much, I don't know, but I have seven points across the party and that's enough. But the chests themselves are driving me nuts. Can they be bypassed with Tool Use? If so, how much? Or are they like Reptrako's one treasure box (the one with Sylak's Bowl) and need Dexterity? Again, if so, how much? Or is it the case that Celts simply cannot get the goods without setting off the bells? Also, along similar lines, are the wired chests in the Bazaar Master's house the same way?
  3. The problem I had with the unstable mass was that I couldn't control where the copies went. Out in the open in the Drake Pillars, I could get swarmed quickly if my Daze spell didn't work. It tried to butt them up against the nearby wall (the one with the goblin encounter), where I could use some rocks and stalagmites to my advantage. I would have tried clearing the goblins out of the room and leading the mass to the single-space corridor, but I didn't like having nowhere to run in case things still got out of hand. With the outside wall, I could still cut and run for town.
  4. I can't speak for Kherrr, but I think you've missed out on the other quests. There are only a few batches of scuttlers that give eyes, and unless you saw a counter when you started killing rats (in the main text area at the lower right), then you've missed out on that one, too. As a thumb rule, go straight to town and pick up all the quests you can. Then go exploring. The job board is always the first place I go. In the older Avernum games, you could get away with wandering because there was a discrete outdoors, which tended not to have anything major or plot-related going on. Since there is no more outdoors, you can get away with less.
  5. I prefer the complete experience myself, but rather than go all the way to Gale with a pile of money I couldn't afford to spend that early in the game (and have to save-and-load the whole way because of the high-level monsters) to get the spell from a book that I probably didn't have enough Lore to read, I simply found the third stone circle. The first two are north of Kriszan and on the Isle of Bigail (north of Kuper), so I still had to go on a field trip (I picked the one north of Storm Port, waaay on the east side of Valorim, though there's one north of Lorelei if you don't want to walk so far and don't mind fighting harder monsters), but I had a fairly easy time of it and got the dexterity increase as well. If you don't want to fight the Haakai at the end (I always did--complete experience, remember), you can stop after the Move Mountains circle and still avoid the encounter--just remember not to walk into any other circles once you find them, as the fourth and fifth don't let you refuse their 'gifts'.
  6. This is certainly a minor question at best, but it's been nagging at me for some time now and I'd wondered if anyone here might have some insight. At the end of Avernum 3, the Empire granted land to the Avernites who wanted to live on the surface. Does that mean that there is a part of the surface which belongs to the Avernite Crown, or is it that the land is still Empire territory, but inhabited by former Avernites who chose to renounce their citizenship and emigrate to the Empire? Ordinarily, I would have thought that the land belongs to Avernum. That is certainly the implication given in the final quests and ending of Avernum 3. But the presence of Empire traders and the like in Avernum 4 lead me to doubt; why would they come down to the caves when they can trade up top, especially given their near-unanimous dislike of the living conditions of the caves?
  7. Indeed. If it was absolutely necessary for anything, the game would force you to get it. But you have the option to get the other two magical weapons instead . . . . . . Did you already obtain a different magical weapon from the Bunker? Once you commit, you cannot go back and get another.
  8. Could Solberg's first name not have conceivably been Cheeseball? Perhaps he projects his eponymous misery upon his familiar.
  9. If you went to Ghikra and saw the shade (after the portal that lets only one person through), then you should be well past the point where you can order the weapon from the Bunker. Did you talk to Ostoth in particular (he's the one at the southwest corner, as opposed to Enla and Pathass, who are both on the north side), and are you aware that it takes a couple of days for them to actually make the weapon?
  10. As I recall, you need to go through a couple of dialogue options before he asks you who might be responsible. Also, did you check the right wizard? There are two wizards and a slith in the Bunker. Are you absolutely certain that you checked the crystal shards with the right person, and did Anaximander tell you specifically to go to New Cotra?
  11. What plot could it have? All of the magical creatures fled through the Nether Gate. Seriously, though, it's not a terrible idea, but what kind of satisfying ending could there be? I might play it just to laugh at an adventurous bunch of friars telling a bridge troll, 'The power of Christ compels you!' before they get eaten (or a divine thunderbolt strikes the troll dead--maybe we could trade Druidism for Piety and let that decide), but where would the story go that is different enough from Nethergate to be marketable? Now, a Crusades-based version is something I'd want to see. Byzantine Greek fire? Dress it up a bit and use the Avernum quickfire graphic. Efrit? Actually, I think they already are in Avernum. Jinni? Maybe the story starts when some disillusioned page-boy is busy polishing yet another lamp, but just happens to wish for some adventure. Besides, with nine Crusades, plus a number of other, similar campaigns, the sequels practically write themselves. Get in on the ground floor, folks.
  12. When I originally ordered the Exile series, I got it on the special trilogy CD. When Avernum was released, it, like Nethergate: Resurrection, had a special discount price for those who had registered the original Exile . . . but that discount did not apply to those who had bought Exile on the special CD, since the CD, at forty-five dollars, was already significantly discounted from the seventy-five dollars it would cost to register each Exile game individually--and that doesn't count the character editor, which cost extra back then but was included on the CD. So, more recently, I got the original Nethergate fully registered on the promotional CD which cost fifteen dollars, and I'm not sure that the discounted twelve-dollar upgrade price applies to me. Frankly, I enjoy Jeff's games enough that I will be buying the new version at whatever price, but it would be nice to know for certain before I cut the cheque.
  13. I think that it wouldn't be a bad idea to incorporate some kind of new or experimental anti-chitrach weapon. There'd be nothing like showing some good-old human (and possibly slith--Pathass did make a contribution in 3) ingenuity and giving those insectoid sons-of-queens some magical whuffor. As was said, the humans have special anti-demon, anti-giant, anti-undead (a couple of those, I think), anti-lizard, and anti-Crystal Soul weapons, not to mention the super-powerful but non-specific jobs like the Jade and Black Halberds. The sliths have an anti-human spear, which, one must admit, is a smart strategic choice. The Vahnatai have . . . what? Some magic rocks and a sword that drips poison? So what! The humans can do that without magic (or could, in Exile). No wonder the Vahnatai can't control the chitrach population; they are too wedded to their traditional style of wielding bent swords and talking rocks to come up with any kind of original thought regarding the matter. Making Bugsbane (nice name, by the way) would provide an interesting opportunity for some clever thievery, or some kind of quest--new and powerful magic must be tested, after all--and would be a demonstration of Avernum's power, that it could make magical weapons which rival the legendary artifacts of old. I'd be all for it, plot- and gameplay-wise.
  14. The Sholai are too far away to be a significant threat to Shapers. Without a base of supply, a Sholai would have to pick sides. Anyway, the real reason for my post; to resurrect an idea from earlier, I don't think a pack ornk is all that bad an idea. Going from island to island in Geneforge 3, I had to make several trips for my Shaper Equipment, crafting items, Infiltrator items, etc. etc. I'd just make it, use it, and absorb it when I got where I was going, but some way to easily transport all of my myriad forms of delayed gratification in one trip would be quite nice. As far as weaknesses, I think the ornk has plenty built in--too many, to tell the truth. First off, it's a traveling buddy, so that knocks you down to six slots for the more deadly incarnations of my Shaper's wrath. Second, ornks aren't noted for their melee ability. Loaded down with six hundred pounds of crap, their already hideous melee ability would decrease further, if they could attack at all--what would be a good weight cap for an ornk? Third, after making a full battle group of seven war-ornks in Geneforge 1, I noticed their critical weakness: these suckers are slow. In combat, they get where they need to go just fine, but that's turn-based. Out of combat, if I'm dealing with patrolling roamers or worse, I need my characters to be exposed for as little time as possible. My PC had no trouble . . . until he had to run back and save the ornks. There are plenty of ways to work around or through these various issues, but if the ornk can be made into less of a joke creation, I'd not at all mind slapping an inventory on it. Maybe, like with horses in Avernum 3, you could even ride your ornks and double your traveling time!
  15. There are some friendlies down there. Did you grease them, too?
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