Laertes

Also, there are plenty of sites where you can harvest herbs that regrow after a while. Those herbs have monetary value. It'd take a little while but theoretically you can farm infinite money just by selling potion ingredients. I wonder if anyone has calculated how quickly you could make money just by traveling to all the mold patches in a looping journey, while giving them all time to regrow.

How useful is the mental resistance ward? I usually kept that one on throughout the game, since getting one of my party charmed/terrified/stunned was more annoying than pretty much anything else.

In late game, you can have more money than you know what to do with if you take the time to find all the treasure in the game. I've completed a playthrough without selling a single crystal, gem, gold bar, or magic item. That's because I like having them all glittering in my inventory, but if I did sell them all I could have a few extra tens of thousands of coins. Despite not having all that cash, I still was able to buy all the skills I needed. The only thing I couldn't afford was training skills I didn't really need, like getting extra luck for everybody, or buying unnecessary skills like sharpshooter for my mage, or first aid for everybody.

Ah, good to know. Kind of a bummer.

I feel bad about killing the dragons. They're helping me after all, and they're also an endangered species. Also, I can assume that both dragons will return in any sequel so killing them would make my play through explicitly against the canon storyline.

To maximize a skill, do you have to put 10 points in it before you go to a trainer? Or can you put points in it past 10, as long as you haven't spent 10 skill points on it yet? For example, let's say I level a skill to 6, then have a trainer add two points for a total of 8. Can I still spend 4 points on it to level it up to 12?

Well, "mot" is a "pithy or witty saying" and "rax" means "stretch". It's pretty fitting considering that Motrax is a wise dragon that talks at length. Aside from stretching out conversation, he's also old so his lifespan is stretched out as well. If the name wasn't intentional, it's a nice coincidence. And maybe Khoth is inspired by the Egyptian God Thoth. In Avernum 1, Khoth is a dragon scholar whose lair is an immense library. You have to return a stolen scroll to him as one of the quests. In Egyptian mythology, among other things Thoth is the scribe of the Gods and credited with inventing writing, along with science and magic. So his name makes sense for a knowledge hoarding dragon.

So across from Erika's tower, you can use the orb of thralni to reach a lava isthmus with an efreet blacksmith. He offers to sell you stuff, if you pay him a tribute of 5,000 coins first. I'm a little short on cash at the moment and can't experiment. Anything worthwhile there?

I found the commander encounter in the Half-Finished Fort quest interesting...

There's a bunch of good treasure in there, but I ended up leaving the place alone. Unlike Delrin-Bok they aren't bothering anybody until you intrude so it would basically just be straight up grave robbing.

Is there an advantage to going with pole over sword training?

I assumed that they were out on the surface leading a secret resistance movement, fighting not just for Avernum but all the oppressed people of the empire as well.

Does nullity work against mob abilities? I considered capturing a vampire, but I wasn't sure whether it would actually function.

If you choose to let the commander go, can you still complete the quest? I'm feeling sympathetic towards her, but not enough to skip a quest.

I suspected simulacrums level with you. The drake I captured long ago can still hold its own in a fight, despite being a lower level specimen when I encountered it. Ultimately, the best summons are ones that buff your party so the PCs can do more damage. Anything with group battle frenzy, like an eyebeast, is very useful regardless of how much damage it does on its own. And something with immunities or lots of health is handy just as a meat shield.

Another fun thing: having the security pass to walk by an empire checkpoint, but choosing to fight anyway.

I don't think there's a right or wrong way to play the game. One of the great things about these games is that you can set your difficulty beyond just picking the difficulty setting. How many characters to play, how optimized to make them, how frugal you are with mana/scrolls/potions, what level you tackle different challenges at, etc. There are infinite difficulty levels. And even if you're not going for 100% optimization, it's still interesting and useful to learn how to do it. My party isn't particularly optimized but I've definitely incorporated some useful tricks I've learned here like getting adrenaline rush and hardiness for my casters. Plus, it's fun to learn how other people are playing, even if you're doing things differently. I've definitely appreciated reading all the different strategies here. The archer will have the advantage of high dex, so a lot of attacks will miss them. You can use them as a sort of mediocre tank if need be, as long as you heal as necessary. They do take more damage when they get hit than casters or melee types do (since they have no hardiness or resistance), but that isn't too big a problem as long as you avoid letting them be the focus of all the attacks at once. Also it isn't a bad idea to give your archer a little bit of melee skill and hardiness as a back up. You can use the sword or pole skill towards the battle disciplines anyway, even if their low strength keeps them from being too useful. My archer has about 6 points of pole and hardiness and they're often on the front lines alongside the swordsman.

I like giving party members specific roles. Feels more like a classic fantasy story than everybody being amazing at everything. Right now I have. 1) Swordfighter tank. 2) Archer, with a little bit of pole weapons skill as a backup. Further nerfed in combat since he has most of the tool use and cave lore. That being said, archers are actually pretty fun to use. Landing two ranged shots a turn is pretty cool, plus the occasional curse, and the high dex means that enough attacks miss him that he makes a decent secondary tank. 3) Dedicated priest. 4) Dedicated mage. There are only a few exceptions to their niche roles. I took 1 point in priest skills for the fighter and archer so they could minor heal and cure. The priest/mage both took sword skill to unlock hardiness and battle disciplines, but their strength is so low they can't actually use swords in combat. And of course, I'm buying as many skills for everybody as trainers will provide.

Various types of hoarding. Making an arbitrary collection of something. One of my characters is amassing as much cloth and coal as they can in their inventory, and never selling any of it. Never selling any unique item, even if I don't plan on using it. The floor around the tower of magi portal is littered with enchanted armor and weapons. I'm also trying to see how long I can go without selling any crystals or gold. One of my characters has an inventory full of sparkling treasure.

That's a pretty good deal though, right? After all, you'll earn the xp back eventually. From testing with it, it doesn't seem to have a minimum xp to work. I have two characters with about 10% xp bar, and two with about 30%, and it totally drained all of them but still granted the point.

What do they do? Do they benefit or hurt your character?

I hope that's just a fluke. I have all my extra treasure I don't want to sell sitting in messy piles around the Tower of Magi portal and it would suck if it evaporated.

Here's an annoying little thing I discovered. If one of your party gets charmed and fights your simulacrum, the simulacrum turns hostile against your entire party. Even after the charm is gone, the creature remains hostile. I don't know if this occurs with all summoned creatures or just simulacrums. The way I found was particularly annoying, since it was a drake. After it turned hostile, then it summoned a pet, which was also hostile, and I had to fight both of those in addition to all the monsters I was already up against. I'm curious if the drake had summoned the pet before it turned hostile whether the pet would have stayed on my side or not. Furthermore, your mage cannot summon a new pet while the hostile simulacrum is out since it still counts as yours. And I don't think killing them grants any xp.

In general, I find battles where the game gives you allies pretty interesting. I consider it an extra challenge to make sure that none of the friendly NPCs die while working with me.

Thanks! Now I can unload all those magic notes, empire plans, and sugar from my inventory.