kensuguro

I think you can kill Sulfras without much problem if you're level is high enough to finish the game. (in normal, not sure on higher difficulty)

Whaatt... that's pretty serious issue in the first time user experience.. it's a usability issue..

It'd be interesting if they employed people from the Abyss to rid the enemies for pay. I mean, they can kill for a living. Sounds like a pretty good deal, esp for the murderer folks.

whaatt.. you can eliminate all of Kyass? That's heart breaking. I think I killed all the dragons and Thantria. Thantria just got on my nerves, such an attitude. I guess I can off the hermit. So there really aren't any other places other than the land exit and Erika's place where enemies spawn on user action?

I don't really have time to replay the whole thing, so I'm just running around finishing quests and looking for things to kill. I already killed the town in the Abyss, killed Sulfras, and finished all quests that I can finish. I can still: 1. go through sulfras' place and kill respawning monsters on the passage to land. (that last room with the runeward and steelward giants) You get a ghostly blade and resurrect scroll each time, so I'm keeping this to keep count how many times I killed those bastards. 2. go to Erika's place and kill monsters that spawn from doing the maze the wrong way, not too much fun, but still something to do (turns out they don't respawn) 3. wander around 'till a monster spawns, but this is boring. Is there anything else I can kill? It'd be nice to go back into Hawthorne's castle since the castle guards keep respawning.

ey, the don't get paid enough to fight. lol.

ah, ok. so it's not all that awesome. I was wondering if it was a part of a scripted event since I remember it being a special item. Oh, found it.. I guess I took it from a coffin in the foul cavern. btw, another strange item is the strange cloak.. I guess it just shimmers? fashion statement? It doesn't seem to have any special properties. I guess it'll make you look like this, which is totally rad lookin'

I have a wavy sword I picked up somewhere (forgot where) that's not enchanted.. is it supposed to do something? It's not really powerful either, but I remember picking it up as a special event kind of thing. Know what I'm talking about?

Ya, I was confused with that part too. there is no physical key, it's the crystal.

Just out of curiosity.. there are shady ninja type characters in both Avernum and Avadon. I guess they're not really ninjas like ninjas from Japan, but more like a secretive clan that kind of "look" like ninjas. In my mind, I tend to think of these types as high egility/dexterity theives.. are ninjas pretty common in fantasy rpgs these days? They seem kind of out of place to me. Ninjas and dragons.. just a bit strange. Tho, I am Japanese, or at least grew up partially in Japan, so my views are definitely biased. Interestingly, even in Japan ninjas are somewhat of a fantasy thing. They're real, historical, factual clans, but because of secrecy and maybe some strategically planted lore, they tend to be thought of somewhere between fact and fiction.

Ya,I agree about killing the leader not necessarily placing you in control. As rebellious as their project may be, it seems to be carried out in a civil manner. Besides, if you're there to unite them back to Avernum, it's exactly what they don't want, so of course they're going to be pissed. I do wish Kyass good luck though I'm not sure what happens to them later in the series. It's an interesting concept. Avernum getting all resources and power is not much different from Hawthorne's absolute power (maybe without the paranoia and evil intent) but would still create a huge power asymmetry. Then the weak would come together and demand equality. So an opposition or independent force like Kyass is a good form of checks and balances, if they're able to coexist with others but cooperate when required. (sort of like independent states and federal government) Though somehow I'm lead to believe that Avernum is not such a peaceful and diplomatic place.

Did you buff with wards and cloaks? I haven't tried on torment yet, but planning to, and was wondering if that'll make some difference. I'd imagine invulnerability would still turn the battle upside down even on torment.

I wouldn't be surprised if certain npcs were just hard coded that way.. is this just a particular guard in the royal spire? (you're talking about hawthorne's place right?) Also, could it be that the particular guard has modifier items that starts his hit rate way above 100%? Or that torment level starts enemy's hit probability above 100%? But I guess it's still strange that there's such a huge variance. How are you measuring hit rate btw? Are you tracing out results from a hit rate function through a debugger or something?

I bought a bunch of spells and money flow was alright. I think I had most spells by the time I got to stagnant tunnels. It seems like you missed lots of quests, or are hitting points that are above your level. I can't map it out exactly, but the quests need to be done in a specific order. Go whack some random monsters and do the smaller quests. If Areneas are killing you that quick, you may have also missed smaller "kill the boss" quests. Which Arenea cave are you talking about? The one by the friendly spiders? Or the hidden one with the queen in it? The queen one is much harder.

yeah, what would have been nice is if you killed Athron, you could have just gotten the password from the death, like she tells with last breath kinda thing. Then you'd have the option to kill, and foolproof password retrieval.

that's strange, the invulnerability potions made it super easy for me, but I was past lvl 35 at that point. Where did you read there are 12 different endings?

well, sounds like dual wielding pretty much dominates. I'm going to have 1 guy dual wield, was just wondering if it was worth it to make the other guy a pole weapons guy. But since there are a bunch of nice swords later game, it's enough to have 2 dual wielders with 2 enchanted swords each. Actually there's enough enchanted swords for everyone to have a cool sword. The enchanted pole weapons and bows just don't seem to make enough of a difference to make them effective esp when compared to swords.

I still can't figure out whether a pole weapon+cleave is better or double sword (non cleaving) is better. I remember seeing swords with cleave but it seems like all higher end swords don't do cleave. I do see that in general, a high hitrate double sword does more damage than a high end pole weapon. Anyway, is there a clear verdict on which does more damage with cleave/hitrate considered?

I did grah-hoth, hawthorne, escape since that was the order I triggered events in, but I was past lv35 for all of them so the fights were very easy. (just tedious) Hawthorne was hard until I figured I could just use invincible potion. (I had a bunch) Then it was so easy that I thought I did something wrong. Would have been nice to have done escape first tho, since the fights at that point were too easy and became just annoying to have to whack my way through. With Hawthorne, I was careful about not running out of magic half way into the castle, but I don't think I had trouble.

well, the only issue with avernum for me as far as storytelling goes, was piecing together the story. I think the individual parts are written very well, I just couldn't put everything together into a cohesive story. When the stories clicked, or I triggered things in the right order, it was like reading a book. I played about half way into Avadon too, and really liked to storytelling in that one. I guess some people don't like its linear-ness, but it made more sense to me. Character focus was nice too. I really like Jeff's writing style. Not overly fiction fairytale, very descriptive, and very approachable. If the goal of A1 was just to explore and get comfortable with the area and its societies, then it definitely served its purpose. I am curious as to how the story unfolds A2 onward. There's definitely material for an epic story. (as if A1 wasn't epic already) From A1, I definitely got a good sense of the underworld, the inhabitant's world view, and the overall setting of the game. Sans the people of Spire in the Abyss. I took them all out.

Sort of agree on the slug fest part.. later game battles really becomes a formula for who deals more damage in the shortest amount of turns. So for me it was like haste/battle frenzy, 2 double sword dudes whack, priest does divine (whatever the earthquake thing is called), and mage does arcane bunch of crescents flying out. And the rest is healing/re-haste when needed. Only strategic part I think is which ward you use, and which cloak you use. I usually do ward of elements and cloak of blades. Can also add war blessing and protection if needed. Still, the difference was minimal because most enemies would die very quickly. I was over lv35 by the time I figured out what I needed to do to finish the 3 missions. I also think the situation will be different in torment or hard. I feel that I can get away with this formula because my throughput is so much higher than most enemies in normal mode. The story issue I think is more from the bits being presented in bits and pieces, and not having a good way of piecing them together into a cohesive structure. But it's been discussed before so I won't go into that. (basically just UI to organize storyline will help) Though in terms of content, I do wish that things changed more as a result of your actions. Like the towns changing after you kill off giants (soldiers becoming bakers, fishermen, etc) or even a town's economy changing if you help kill of bandits. For the most part, you just go back, report to the quest giver, and get paid, end of story. That felt a bit dry. I felt that a good portion of the game was search and recovery type stuff, which takes time, but for me wasn't very rewarding since these types of tasks feel like filler material. It bulks up gametime for sure, but just not very rewarding. Hunting stuff down is fun, killing off giants and dragons is fun. Hunting, and taking something from monsters is even more fun. Nephilim and Nephalim, slith tasks were cool because there's actual conflict, and you help resolve it. That's cool content.

ah, cool. gotta remember that. On one occasion I had to load to get out of the situation. Fortunately I save only minutes before, but ya, it'd suck if I hadn't saved in a long while.

that's seems more memory intensive, but I guess it's easier to contract out or delegate that way. Character + weapon (with anchor points) could be less resource intensive, but then you get into z order problems unless the arm and the body is on a separate layer.. but doable. Then you can have 1 swing animation and swap out the weapon asset only. Of course, that's on the dev side. Blitting complete spritesheets (char+weapon) is def less cpu intensive.. I guess you can bake the character + weapon animation to a new sprite sheet at runtime, but that'll add to load time. Ah, anyway, just thinking out loud here.

I didn't really get why I got attacked tho, accidentally clicked through some important text.. (caught the iPad before it fell on my face) Is there a strings file or something where I can read dialog text? I know I missed quite a few key ones.

that was an interesting subplot. Esp with the niphilimess working with the human.