Murreh
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As always, the Strategy Central lists are huge and detailed, but I think I see one thing preventing 100% awesomeness: the "Energizing Boxes", "Charging Boxes", "Blessing Boxes", "Augmentation this or that", "Magical Machinery", etc. Their name varies from NPC to NPC, map marker to journal entry, people on Google to people on this forum. I wrote down their locations in Notepad for when I had items worth blessing, like the usual checklist of "barriers I can't dispel yet", then deleted the information once I had used a box. Eventually, far into the game, I had no little notes left about their locations. ...Then I found out by accident, real-time days later, you can use them all more than once (Grove was bugged and free and I figured if I could use HIS box twice, maybe they all have more than a single use... and they seem to). I went looking more than once for a list of their locations, and couldn't find it. I'd suggest someone with authority standardize the name, and together we make a little list that one of the forum fairies can add to this topic and the Index. Whether people bother or not, I'll start with the few I remember... Portal Fortress and Kelner have one, that's on the list already. Far southwest in the Tower of Magi Grove (an NPC) in north-central Sharimik has one for 1000c GIFTS (Bigail spiders) have one Greendale (northwest of Gale) has one Edit: Winn in Blackcrag has a blessing box for 4,000c, four uses (at least I got four... if you then tell Winn you want to use her box you'll spend another 4k and the box's charges remain expended) Upper golem factory has a box, central north I assume there's one or two I'm not remembering and probably a few I haven't found yet, but still... it's a start. Just imagine all the Googlers you'll help in the future and how much frustration you'll save the world if you contribute! Knowledge is (more) power(ful items)!
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I don't know if it's relevant to anything, but I had a moment a couple days ago and had to do some playing around with munchkin stuff. Given the difference between 50% armor on one piece and 5 10% pieces (which is 20% less effective overall, about 60% damage taken instead of the "expected" 50%) you want as much armor on a single piece of gear as you can get. Runestones that grant 4% physical damage reduction update the character sheet's "armor" listing. Hostile Effect Resistance does not affect armor (at least not on the character sheet, easily tested with a Radiant Choker) and neither do Golden Runestones. If "physical damage reduction" and armor are basically the same stat (besides armor giving the extra half-as-much non-phys resist) and HER and Runestones are basically the same stat, and having more of a single stat on a single piece of gear (or place in the calculation) is better... ...does it really matter which enchantment is placed where? Are Golden Runestones actually more effective on gear that already has HER, and is there any real difference between putting 4% Physical Damage Reduction on your four lowest-armor pieces of gear (possibly 6%, 6-7%, 6-9%, ~10%) or putting it on your four highest-armor pieces (probably 40%, 38%, 14-16%, 10%)? Golden Runestones on Avenger's Greaves, Evasive Wrap, etc... or wherever you have room... does it matter? As far as I could tell, the answer is no. There were plenty of setups where the 4% Physical Damage Reduction rounded 79% armor to 80 or 85% to 86, or times when that 4% HER from a Golden Runestone was the difference between 88 and 90% acid resistance, but *where* I put the enchantments didn't seem to matter. If there's any difference between "ideal" locations and "intentionally as bad as possible", it doesn't show up on the character sheet, or at least I couldn't make it happen. Didn't matter which character I used, which gear I used (endgame or semi-decent, like the difference between Iron Shield and Titansteel Shield, Chain Greaves or Pitted/Scorched), whether I had skills allocated, whether I used 5 pieces of gear with HER or none, I got a big fat nothing. No combination of things got me a different result when the only change was which pieces of gear were enchanted. The only thing I really noticed was that lots of 4% Physical Damage Reduction on high-armor gear seems to make total armor more effective (the gear seems to calculate its armor as 42% armor, rather than 38 and 4, as 44% rather than 40 and 4, etc) simply by having more armor on a single piece of gear, as expected. It seems the armor *is* added up per-item because of that, including the enchantment, but I couldn't see that effect with HER/Golden. If the game does actually calculate accurately enough for moving around a couple 4% bonuses to make any difference at all, the difference is so small that rounding on the character sheet makes it invisible. That said, it *is* possible to have multiple characters with maxed out resistances given the available gear and charms (and making sure Resistance Chant and Blade Shield are up when appropriate). My Tinkermage and Nathalie both have 90% to everything (except mind/curse on the Tinker and curse on Nathalie). A third character, Khalida in my case, can still reach 85-86% armor and 83+ to most other things, but they start running out of ideal gear choices once two other characters have perfect setups. That much munchkin probably doesn't matter because even on Torment Tinker/Blademaster/Sorc can slap around Velusa like his power is meant to be a joke, but I was curious, and maybe somebody would care in the future for balance adjustments
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SPOOLERZS ZOMG U RUIN MEH LEIF "like viewing the Alsace-Lorraine issue as an American: who cares? Why should I care whether the semifeudal mageocracy or the clannish, feud-ridden tribal collective gets this terrible forest?" Yeah, that. All my long-winded nonsense in a few words. "Why should I care? Oh, I don't... but I won the game, I guess"
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Sorta what I meant, perhaps the things I said were misread. I'm the kind of person who'll play Mass Effect games and I bother to read all the codex entries and say everything that can possibly be said in different playthroughs to experience the characters and their philosophies and interactions. I'm the kind of person who'll install literally hundreds of mods in Fallout:NV and spend 500 hours on a complete playthrough, more than once. One of the first birthday presents I ever actually wanted was the Exile Trilogy on CD, something I discovered on some random collection of shareware ADHD silliness with like 150 different games. I still make fun of people who care too much about graphics by showing examples of the old Exile stuff and saying it's just fine "because story reasons". Most of Jeff's games are fantastic and even iconic to people who've played them, an "example for all" that awe-inspiring technical feats don't mean anything compared to good writing. Personally, I tried to play the original Dragon Age (and ended up uninstalling it and reinstalling it 4-5 times in disgust and frustration) because I *hated* the gameplay, it was awful. Eventually the gameplay and my own determination to see what the fuss was about grew on me and it quickly became one of the few games I've ever played through more than once, even becoming one I've played through 3-4 times (much like most of the Exiles and Geneforges and their rewrites). Once I simply accepted the gameplay and learned to deal with it, the story and lore took over. Part of why people generally disliked DA:II was a drastic change in gameplay and storytelling that was so different from what people got used to that it was... abrasive. The only thing that really made up for DA:II's failures was continuity of lore and how much I love Eve Myles' voice. The Avadon series suffers from some of the same issues, drastically simplified character creation and party assembly (and changed world exploration) that works against what Spiderweb fans are used to. People don't like change once they find something they like or get used to, and trying to be "new and better" can be dangerous for that reason. Part of the "let me fight the big scary dragon already" isn't just an impatience for endgame or conclusions to plot pieces, but a subconscious need to close the story, to get things over with. It's... kinda boredom, and DA:II had that problem for a lot of its gameplay. If you're paying enough attention to the lore, enjoying the experience, like to figure things out and explore your options, you almost don't want to fight the big scary dragon; it becomes a mission to understand the big scary dragon, figure out what it wants and why it's doing what it does how it feels and how it sees the world, figure out whether killing the big scary dragon is worth the time and effort and what effects it might cause within the lore and the world you've been presented. Done properly, you kinda feel sympathy for whatever you're about to destroy and see the merits of whatever decisions it's made, but decide that the path you've chosen is better for yourself or for all (depending on how munchkin you go in your gameplays). You can't really be forced to care about something, and human nature is to rebel against anything that feel forced (we want to be our own people). The slower an idea is introduced, the more details we have, the more urgently a situation seems to need a fix, the more reasonable an action seems, the more we want it to happen and the better we understand it, empathize with it. Something about the Avadon games falls a bit short of that effect when it comes to storytelling. Maybe it's the parade of characters and issues vs the patchwork/exploration of them, maybe it's the sheer number of issues and lack of details, but it's there. They're still fun games and are good for a many-houred playthrough that consumes far more of our lives than we'd like, but something is missing that some other games have. There's a *spark* that just... doesn't happen. The attempt at Avadon's world is probably too big for the amount of work that could have feasibly gone into making it happen, and it suffers a bit because of it. And to clarify, I still love you Jeff. Don't take any of that as derogatory, you still introduced me to the kind of game I've always loved most
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At first, I was all for siding with the mages, and despising the religious feel of the literally-religious Chantry probably helped with that... but as you play through the games, it becomes an extremely complicated set of issues. Maybe there's actually merit to some of the religious views, not just in belief but in actual fact. Maybe persecution of the magically-inclined isn't fair, but life isn't fair, and people are terrified of what happens when human nature combines with power. Sure, a little boy accidentally setting someone's hair on fire isn't a reason to lock up entire populations in a tower, but the fact that mages actually *do* attract spirits and demons and such might be. That human nature combined with enough magical power *did* actually lead to such a catastrophe that it created a religion and actually created the main evil race of the first few games and warped reality forever might just be a good reason to see things from the other side. Even some of the most powerful mages spend their lives controlling other mages and lobbying for more... "governmental" or institutional control of their kind, because while they can't change what they are they've *seen* the damage that can be done by even a few mislead people. And then you combine fearful and sometimes-unreasonable persecution with human nature, people who feel they should be exempt, those who don't believe or don't know the reasons behind their own persecution have a solid foundation, you get rebellion. Several entire games revolve around that single mythology, that conflict between two or three factions and their splinter groups, and it pays off. You may still never be convinced that your initial feeling about a group was wrong, but there's so much information and atmosphere and philosophy (and atrocities here and there) that maybe your dedication wavers now and then. To me, that seems to be part of what the Exiles and Geneforges had that Avadon sorta slipped up on... the world got too big and too petty and too complicated for the player to get lost in the minutia of the lore. "Reach beyond grasp" comes to mind, and Jeff sorta said as much. Somebody needs to clone him a few times and drop copies of his brain into the extra bodies to increase his grasp, we need more Jeffs to actually flesh out the ideas he's got, remove the time and effort restrictions on his vision
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That's part of the issue I've seen with a lot of the Avadon series... it's obvious that there are lots of reasons for the upset of most parties, but few of them really seem to matter, or said reasons aren't stressed enough to become important to the player. I realize the whole Free Roads/toll thing is only part of the Wyldrylm rebels' issue, but it seems like a problem small enough that it shouldn't lead to rebellion. Problems with the Free Roads leading to settlers moving in and slowly disrupting the shamans' nature magic is an issue, as is the perceived "intrusion" that comes with it, but somehow it doesn't seem to have enough impact on the culture to have incited rebellion (beyond maybe some pride or unwillingness to find some sort of compromise or different methodology for the rebellion). Can't remember who, but somebody said "any country willing to give up a little freedom for a little security will lose both and deserve neither", and the Wyldrylm seems to have taken that WAY too seriously. Maybe if the effects on nature were much more apparent and much more... culturally abhorrent than just tradition, and the Free Road/settler thing had much bigger effects on the land, maybe if it were more apparent that the rebels had tried many different things, even extremes, for hundreds of years (in an attempt to find a compromise) and been repeatedly punished for trying to be reasonable... and their gripe was entirely with Avadon's enforcement powers because of it, rather than the Pact's laws as a whole... Eh, even the other disputes feel the same. Almost all the conflicts like the Beraza Woods feel like "squabbles" over little to nothing, just ignorant and prideful people being idiots for the sake of creating factions so there can be conflict. Now perhaps if, for example, the Free Roads and loss of tolls controlling traffic were crippling the entire region and increased settlement disrupting nature had somehow actually *caused* the Corruption and was making it worse, and there were other similar problems with other factions, I could see the storyline falling into place nicely. The Corruption (and other disputes) could become a mysterious Grah-Hoth, something that could actually be fought and worked against, something worthy of saying "No! We won't stand for this any longer! Redbeard/Avadon/whateverfaction get outta mah house!" As things are, it all feels like murder over a misplaced plate of pancakes. Maybe there's too many factions for any of them to really matter, seems a common-enough sentiment. The amount of writing that would be required to do all that is enough that I don't even want to imagine what it would take, much less actually do it... can't blame anyone for not going that far.
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I don't know if it's intended or not, but I smell Baldur's Gate all over that one. Swap Redbeard and Miranda's child for Baal and Sarevok and it's pretty darn close, including eventual combat between half-siblings and sometimes working with them. And somehow, even as cool as Redbeard can be, he's no match for the Lord of Murder and Destruction. If Dheless fanned the flames of war in an attempt to weaken the Pact and Avadon and eventually overthrow Redbeard and become keeper, you'd have an exact copy of Sarevok. Maybe you eventually find out the only reason Redbeard tolerates Protus is that Protus is a bastard child and even he doesn't know it. That'd be a wonky "huh!?" moment
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I haven't quite finished the game yet, but that's the biggest difference I've noticed so far from the others. Being the forum-common-enough Torment masochist, I've always had to replace Redbeard just to have done it, because it's a hurdle that's... *there*. If you don't spank Redbeard, don't beat Melanchion, didn't do the optional torture/challenge areas, "you didn't beat the game"... but the general feeling about meta-gaming to put down the ginger tyrant changes drastically from Avadon 1 and 2. Redbeard finally loses enough control that the player can SEE what everyone from the first two games is complaining about. He loses enough of his inspiring and amicable personality traits that he goes from "slightly abrasive but generally reasonable and pretty cool dude with a lot of power" to "barely tolerable nutjob whose destructive talents and authority need to be used as a tool until I can save the world from his inevitable hurricane of craziness". While I never doubted Redbeard's intentions (or rather, I never doubted that he *believed* his intentions), I definitely started to question whether his leadership was worth the cost. Because of Avadon 1 and 2, his descent into nutjobbery doesn't feel forced either, because the player can see it coming from literally two games away. No matter how much sanity or ability he lost, I never wanted to see Solberg go... but I finally *want* to kill Redbeard, and I'd say that's a job decently well-written. I do think part of what Avadon's missing (personally liking almost all the other Spiderweb games more) is the parade vs patchwork thing Slarty mentioned. It's... kinda the difference between being told a story and experiencing a story
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That must happen later, I suppose. I don't remember enemies (outside of special mechanics, anyway) ending up with capped armor in any of the Geneforge or Avernum games. Just this morning managed to plow through a rebel base and end a certain shaman, Khalida and Yannick were both getting crits on enemies at ~290-350 (arrows and firebolts, except against the part where Odil helps which is "special mechanics" because everything's overpowered in that zerg rush). Berserker Slash was still hitting for around 350-450... not sure just how far into the game I actually am, usually takes several weeks to do everything in these games. Only problem I've run into so far is that Khalida is by far my squishiest character, even with all the parry. For example, my main character (tinkermage) has resistances at 88, 90, 90, 90, 84, 84, 75, 61, plus turrets to help with positioning and damage absorption... generally eating pears and meat and bread is enough healing unless a dragon is eating my face. Yannick gets destroyed by acid and poison because it ticks for ridiculous amounts like it does in every Spiderweb game, but actually has as much physical resist as Khalida and is basically immune to the elements (13 Ward and Focus Mastery and 3-point party Resistance Chant with Blade Shield will do that). I suppose if I run into that physical reduction problem later on, there's always the retrainer if things get intolerable... that's a lot of purity stones gone on %missile damage gear though. Perhaps I'll be better off trying for slower fights and more shamany healing goodness later, never played with any of the other characters (except the first three you start with). ...And I left my sanity at the door back in Exile I. My sanity's so far gone I've even played the remakes more than once, I grew up on this stuff. I still remember begging for the original Trilogy for a birthday present way back in the day, back in the times when some games could still be purchased on floppies. I don't have any personal heroes, but a certain dude named Jeff would be on the list if I did
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I've always played all of Jeff's games on Torment (because if the difficulty isn't maxed, you didn't *really* beat that dragon/lich/manlybeardofmanliness/whatever). I mention that because I'm not sure exactly how Torment affects dice rolls and such in Avadon 2... hidden penalties in some games, doubled attack dice in others, etc. Anyway, was messing around with Khalida and weight limits and gear/skill setups (and after reading that basically all physical non-melee attacks are based on Dexterity, as are scarabs for half the characters) and I decided to see what magic I could work just for giggles... and the idea of a "blademaster" using a bow amused me. The best setup I came up with was so overpowered compared to all my other characters I figured I'd put it here just in case it helps someone at some point. Quick summary: Stab things with arrows for 1300 damage before armor. Stab all the things. Take their stuff. The build: The results:
