Unawares

Very minor point, I noticed my human characters ended up with a total of 23 traits (that were trained), not 24. I undervalued swordmage a bit in my character planning, one or two points for my back row casters was needed to make use of the best equipment options (and I may decide one of them should even have 3). In the front I have an Armored Mage (swordmage 4) and a Tank Priest (no swordmage required). Recovery could be useful for a tank. My Tank Priest is able to maintain Blade Shield full time, thanks to a total of 50% increase in fatigue recovery time. All items, no points in Blademaster, this is just enough to make it work (reduces fatigue time from 6 to 4). Getting 10% from the trait would allow a bit more equipment choice.

Agreed!

100 wine will complete it, and you get paid for all 100.

Share which battles you found most "interesting"! However you want to interpret that... Consider the constructs in the third guard post. You don't have to fight them, and you don't get anything if you do, but I found it to be one of the most challenging and satisfying battles in the game. The difficulty of constructs increases with each trigger... and you can't go heal and come back, it resets back at the goblins! Kudos if you make it all the way through!

Just curious, any chance there are follow-up "shady" quests to be found if you complete the tools quest in Dharmon? I skipped that one...

The max would be 29 or 33 depending on possible Haste process when I hit the adren rush. I'd guess the Haste DID process, because starting at 15 is pretty easy and with a haste that should take you to 30 AP after the adren rush is triggered... and if that triggered the problem it would be showing up a LOT more. (Activating adren rush still takes action points. Then you get the +20 AP, or if your action took you to negative AP it just sets you to 20 AP.) I suspect it breaks somewhere around AP 31 to 33.

Armored Mage, Tank Priest, Priest and Mage. The Mage uses mercuric armor + gym, with frenzy he sometimes gets a lot of AP. In this case four 10% gym checks must have succeeded.

Thanks Dikiyoba!

Has anyone taken out the two doomguards in the second guardpost? I'm wondering if they drop anything interesting. I skipped past them and found they weren't there when I returned, did I miss something?

I've discovered you can break the Action Point system. If you start with 18 AP and trigger adren rush you lose all AP and the character's turn ends. It seems mere mortals have limits. Starting with 16 AP works fine, haven't got around to trying 17 AP yet. Of course this isn't a problem in practice. Better to whittle those AP down a bit before triggering the adren rush anyway.

The sign in the SW corner gives a useful hint too.

I went back to the nasty spider cave, after I'd returned one crystal soul already. The web barricades on the way there had reformed, and in the center of the lair I found a new creature I couldn't attack - a cave crawler with name in blue. Nothing happens when you try to talk to it (might be some "doesn't reply" generic response). Odd.

Actually I think I got some description of the painting when I didn't know to look for the button.

Collecting every scrap of food I can, and carrying it all with me. Always. Ok, except by the hungry statues. And even with all that choice, Tabby still didn't want any of my food. 8( Of course, going down rapids dwindles my collection a bit. As long as it's just the mushrooms I guess it's ok...

Ah! Thanks Randomizer, problem solved then. 8)

I might have a bug with the rampaging Ghasts quest. I'm pretty sure I took care of them early, then went up to Silvar and got the quest to remove them from the job board. Talking to the person who is supposed to give the reward doesn't register it. No sign of the Ghasts mob anywhere around that undead cavern area. Any ideas how to fix?

Thanks Lilith. I doubt it would have been linked to the lever anyway, if I was doing it I would focus on the actual puzzles themselves. Probably just wishful thinking on my part... I would have had fun putting something like that in a game. Of course, I'd make sure it couldn't be figured out from the scripts too. Grin...

Having something to eat with Mentos.

I had already seen your analysis (in lots of detail) on how some of these things combine... kudos on that work, by the way. Still I was determined to find a way to make good use of that BF discipline. So I finally ran the numbers myself, coming at it from a slightly different angle. And I have to disagree with you Slarty. It's actually much WORSE than you've described it here. You only break even in round 4 if there is no haste, and you have no action point items / gym skill in play. That's the best possible case. For every meaningful case with haste in play, it takes until round 5 to break even. By round 6 (last round of the BF discipline's effect) the BF discipline does pull ahead by a respectable amount (typically about 0.7 actions more overall). EXCEPT! In round 7 you can trigger the Adrenaline Rush again. With the BF discipline you still have to wait another 4 rounds to trigger again (assuming recovery of 1 fatigue per round). In summary, my Berserker Mage is still cool, because Avernum ladies dig the whole Berserker thing. And when Battle Frenzy and haste are on, getting three actions per round a quarter of the time is like "waa hooo!" Just don't tell anyone he actually gets his Frenzy from a bottle instead of using the discipline.....

I have an idea for Battle Frenzy, testing it in my current playthrough. My Berserker Mage will have something like 8 melee, 4 bow, 6 gym plus trainings and will wear Mercuric for torso armor. If I can't set up BF with haste, a manual trigger is a nice option to have. And in a long fight starting with BF I might choose to wait for BF to expire and then manually renew it, as opposed to leading with an Adreneline Rush. That's the theory. We'll see if I actually like it in practice...

Awwww... I was hoping for a consequence! 8)

Ok, cleared eleven constructs and nothing interesting. Crystal box / chest still has same contents when checked. Not sure if holding off on opening the exit / chest door would have made a difference. Would be quite satisfying to find something hidden here... but will let other minds poke at it further! 8)

Chuckle... I may do that yet, but it seems counter to the theme of "patience". In room 1, completing good path when all lights are purple, orange, green, or off doesn't have an immediate observable effect. Given that the later rooms would be unreasonable for such an approach, I then stuck with clicking when all lights in path are on, whatever color. Cleared all three puzzles, opened the exit door / chest door, and then went back to the room 2 lever, which allows you to churn out constructs. Hey I could maybe fill the whole room with them! 8) Ongoing...

I'm trying to figure that out myself. Tried the steady increase in construct strength, but if there's an end to it I'm not strong enough to get to it. I had a theory that you might have to wait until the lights flash in a certain way along the path until you click. Tried the first room, skull path waiting for all lights to be off (which is rather a test of patience, four lights!), didn't have any different effect. It occurred to me that a trick of that sort would be a true test of patience... 8) Maybe will try something similar with the good circle now. Those later rooms would have a lot more lights... 8(

I'm walking around outdoors and suddenly I notice 3 of my party is continuing on, while the forth stands still (sort of, legs moving but going nowhere). Apparently they stop for potty breaks in this game? Would have been polite for the rest of the party to stand guard. "Wait up guys!" That one I wanted a screen shot for, but couldn't figure out how to take it (full screen mode). Print screen and paste from clipboard didn't work. Is there a print screen command implemented in the game?