New features?

[Kodama]

Hi all, old customer here. I purchased the Exile Trilogy long ago, then the first 3 Avernum games (I love the series). Missed Avernum 4-6 though.

 

I miss the various barrier spells in Exile which were taken out of Avernum. Can anyone point me to a FAQ or something explaining the differences between Avernum: Escape from the Pit and the 'old' Avernum?

 

What would you say are the major changes in this remake? I replayed Avernum last year so it's still kinda fresh in my mind, not sure if I should buy this remake now. Or wait until 2 & 3 are done, heh.

[Randomizer]

There isn't a place to find out the changes:

 

Junk bag added to collect loot to sell with one click.

Only items on the character and not in a pack count towards encumbrance to lower action points.

Battle disciplines were added in Avernum 5 to give fighters more options.

Additional dungeons, a new town (Freehold of Kyass), and more quests.

New items

Starting with Avernum 4 the wait command was eliminated and the action point system changed so you can move farther in combat (great for melee characters).

The dual wielding of swords from Exile is back.

Skill tree allows you to get higher level skills earlier in the game.

Traits act really different.

 

Welcome back to Spiderweb Software. Please leave your sanity at the door. Download the demo and try it out (demos are smaller ).

[Kodama]

Thanks, that was helpful. The changes do sound interesting enough, I guess that's a buy. Probably in a month or two though, currently busy with a bunch of other games, heh.

[Earth]

there might be another sale at winter (October) so you could wait until then and buy 2nd trilogy's cd and/or Avadon and/or Avernum 1 remake.

[MTrask]

Got the game last weekend. I played Avernum 1-3 too btw. No Exile but I did watch a friend play Exile 2. Those barrier spells were fun, shame they were taken out.

 

- Junk bag is great

- Wait command is eliminated? It's still there. Press '5' on numpad like in Avernum.

- The skills are now arranged in a couple of linear-ish trees, but they look so sparse

- Journal still does not have NPC tracking

 

Last point is my biggest gripe. A simple "town X: NPC Y: sells Z/is the mayor/sells boats/etc" list would be really helpful. Actually it's exactly what I write down in notepad. First time I played Avernum I'd gone to maybe half a dozen towns until I got a quest to find some NPC I vaguely remembered meeting before. Wasted a ton of time backtracking until I found the person. This taught me to take notes.

 

Why does this second remake still not have even basic NPC tracking? They could add it as an extra tab in the Journal, "Town/NPC list". This was one of the few tedious things I didn't like about the games. While I don't regret my impulse buy (it's frickin' Spiderweb Software, you know it's gonna be fun), this is one of those use cases you'd have thought they'd have fixed.

 

Everything else is mostly familiar. No "look" command though, and it's way harder to determine whether those pretty pixels are actual items or part of the background. Consequently I find myself jamming the "get" command a whole lot more. In Avernum it was pretty clear if something was on a tile, now you have to really pay attention.

 

On the bright side this means the art person did a bang-up job on the game (major props, yo), but I really wish there was a hotkey to toggle highlight items like in action RPGs. Pixel hunting gets tiresome. Or maybe I shouldn't be playing on my huge-ass monitor at such high resolutions. But that's why I upgraded my damn gaming pc

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: MTrask

Everything else is mostly familiar. No "look" command though, and it's way harder to determine whether those pretty pixels are actual items or part of the background. Consequently I find myself jamming the "get" command a whole lot more. In Avernum it was pretty clear if something was on a tile, now you have to really pay attention.

On the bright side this means the art person did a bang-up job on the game (major props, yo), but I really wish there was a hotkey to toggle highlight items like in action RPGs. Pixel hunting gets tiresome.

You can hit the U key to show all the things you can interact with nearby, although it won't show items lying on the ground, which sounds like your main problem.

[Randomizer]

Wait command used to be in combat to let a character delay his action without ending the turn.

[MTrask]

Yeah, Avernum's "use" also lit up stuff you could use by tagging them with alphabet hotkeys. Same here. And you're exactly right, it doesn't help my problem, which is seeing at a glance whether something is actually an item on the tile or just part of the tile.

 

Art is too good, first world problems Well, no, I still like the game, but this is irritating.

[Alorael at Large]

Originally Posted By: Randomizer

Wait command used to be in combat to let a character delay his action without ending the turn.

Of note, this allowed starting fights you knew were coming with two turns in a row. I think that exploit made Jeff yank the wait system.

—Alorael, who doesn't think he's ever seen NPC tracking in a game. He writes it down or remembers it when he thinks he'll need it, and it's never occurred to him that it's the sort of thing a game should tell you. But like a quest log, that actually makes a fair amount of sense.

[MTrask]

No, I agree most games don't track NPCs, but on the other hand, most of them tell you explicitly where person X is - like nailing an arrow in your compass in the HUD, or by spelling it out in the quest log.

 

I find that kinda too hand-holdy for my tastes - an NPC list would at least let me look the person up without resorting to either extreme: explicitly spelling it out for me where to find the person (and if I hadn't encountered him/her before they wouldn't be on the list, so yeah I still have to put in the effort of finding them for the first time), or forcing me to keep track manually by writing this info down outside of the game.

 

Alternately the Journal could allow players to write down our own notes there. At least this would be an in-game solution. I've played the Exile and Avernum games; for every single game in the series I always have a Notepad text file with a list of towns I come across and NPCs I encountered. Surely there's a better way of doing this. I bet most people don't bother to keep track, and when they need to find someone in a hurry, look up an online guide. That really doesn't help with immersion.

 

 

Hmm, didn't know about the two-round exploit; what I did was cast all my buffs before hitting the encounter trigger. Not being able to delay turns is kind of annoying I guess. Would kinda prefer to open with an aoe spell before having my warrior charge in. Oh well.

[Parakeet]

::winces delicately:: I used to use the wait command whenever a doorbell or offline household CRASH! sounded. I kind of miss it.

Parakeet

[Lilith]

the game isn't in real time you know, waiting doesn't actually pause it or anything because there's nothing to pause

[alecstevans]

A New Game plus is an unlokable video game mode. It allows the player to start a new game after they finish the game at least once. Here next game will be started based on the previously finished game experience and items. The New Game Plus is also known as "replay mode" or "challenge mode", or "New Game Ex".

[Slawbug]

Here's a surprise plot twist that spambot wasn't expecting. GOODBYE!

[nikki.]

Originally Posted By: Alorael

—Alorael, who doesn't think he's ever seen NPC tracking in a game. He writes it down or remembers it when he thinks he'll need it, and it's never occurred to him that it's the sort of thing a game should tell you. But like a quest log, that actually makes a fair amount of sense.

I just finished Fable 2 on the 360 (after finally having some time to do so), and this feature is present. So is a "jump to the nearest location to this person you've found" option, for collecting or turning in quests. It's incredibly useful, yes, and I do hope Fable 3 has a similar system (about to start that once ive finished some DLC).

[Catweasle]

Originally Posted By: MTrask

No, I agree most games don't track NPCs, but on the other hand, most of them tell you explicitly where person X is - like nailing an arrow in your compass in the HUD, or by spelling it out in the quest log.

This is one of the things I have tried to take into account in my hints pages. For instance, when Scab in Spire tells you about Asp, I have a link to Cotra. The same when Ramone in Almaria tells you about Chuck, I have noted that he is in Silvar.

[Jerakeen]

Wow, nice walkthrough, Catweasle!