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How, when Alorael asked you to edit your posts, he didn't mean that you'd have to delete previous content and edit in new content all the time. He was just asking you not to doublepost. There are very young members on this board who'd probably triple- and quadruplepost without thinking much about it, if the mods didn't insist on editing.

You need a trainer to increase your skills. There's one in Fort Draco who, for a small fee, does offer that service to you. I've forgotten how E2 handles the procedure. If it is the same as in E1, ask 'train' and a menue pops up that lets you choose the character you want to buy the training for. Alternatively you can just click on 'buy' in the dialogue window. Not every town offers training, just as not every town has a sage who identifies your stuff, or a fletcher to get new arrows, or an alchemist to stock up on potions. edit: seems you found out on your own while I got me a coffee, but I let the post stand as it is

It should perhaps be mentioned that 'Dark Waters' is a part of E2/A2, while 'The Za-Khazi Run' is a scenario that comes with Blades of Exile/Avernum. Quote: Alorael, who disagrees about Avernum being linear. The plots and their arrangements are exactly the same as in Exile. You are right of course, Alo. It was nevertheless what I felt when I first played Avernum. I didn't try to analyze the why and would have to replay the games to see what led to that impression.

E1/A1 is your entrée into a cave world, an underground terrain where those unfortunates who didn't manage to obey the empire's strict set of rules were thrown into to die or struggle to survive with no option of return to the surface. You get the idea? When powerful mages were banned to the caves they fought monsters and demons and created conditions that made life possible, even enjoyable down below. Your party arrives in Exile/Avernum, so you explore and get to know the world and participate in its struggles. You may finally assist a mage seeking revenge and assassinate the surface emperor. In E2/A2 you are part of an underground world at war with the empire. The emperor's death has shown the cave world's unexpected power and the empire now seeks to annihilate the pit. While the war is raging, magical barriers appear everywhere, blocking the paths, barriers of a type unkown and not of surface origin. It appears that a people far older than you and natural citizens of the caves has taken offence because of a deed you know nothing about. You will have to be your people's ambassador and journey into the unknown. In E3/A3 your battle with the empire has been successful and your people have started to contemplate means of returning to the surface. You are an insignificant party sent to the surface to explore; you are easily replaceable. But what you meet above is unforeseen desaster, and if you ever want a chance up there you'll have to support the surface dwellers, if they'll let you. E2/A2's plot is by far the best and it is therefore the most highly recommended game. E3/A3 gives you both cave world and surface experience which has a charm of its own. Also E3 is easier to get used to than E1 and E2, because of its changed dialogue system and overall appearance. The Exile series is less streamlined, less linear and 'polished' than its Avernum remake. There's more freedom to follow your own paths and much more to explore. The graphics, though older, nevertheless are of higher quality than the Avernum ones. Avernum is technically more advanced and that's what a lot of people prefer, but the original draft had more content.

A4 is a mixture of Avernum and Geneforge elements, therefore no outdoors anymore. If you ask just me, it successfully got rid of almost everything that made me fall in love with Exile a decade ago, but those who like the occasional hack an' slash seem to enjoy it nonetheless.

Notus once said that there is one open slot. So you can add one sound to the whole lot. See here: Missing Sounds Petition

The sounds are within the .exe, the folder's name is "100", and they range from 1 to 174. They are .wav files. You can either replace an already existing sound or add a sound, though I've forgotten, if adding a sound gets you into trouble. edit: you could ask Jeff, if he'd tolerate a couple of replaced sounds for a specific scenario. Don't see why he shouldn't.

edit: double post, sorry.

Quote: Apparently this has something to do with the age of the game. I don't think so. Not with Win98. Why, those games even run on XP. Write a mail to Jeff Vogel, he may know what to do.

The problem has been mentioned before as related to A4, but some people said that Geneforge shows the same pecularity. See this topic: A4 Windows 99% cpu time

Thanks for this link. That's what I was looking for and couldn't find.

Good to hear. Microsoft doesn't have the patch, but here's a link to a tech support forum with patches for XPHome, XPProfessional and Win2000. Tech Forums

This is the topic where SkeleTony talked about the help file he had that fixes your problem: 16 But MS-DOS error And this is a link to the help file: XPHomeFiles.exe edit: And, Mr. Vogel, as I said in that old topic, quite a few people encounter this problem. It would be great, if you offered a link to the patch on your company's site. SkeleTony isn't often around, so I seem to be the only one now who still has the link.

This is the topic where SkeleTony talked about the help file he had: 16 but MS-Dos error And this is a link to the help file: XPHomeFiles.exe

Quote: It needs to be 16-bit 1024x768, not 800x600. I know. It is a bit irritating though that the Windows version of A4 gives you an option to change your resolution to 800x600.

Quote: if some of the speeches got tweaked a bit to allude to Avernum's actual modest size. You don't have to play the trilogy to learn about Avernum's size. Just look at Silver's Annotated Maps. They give you the outdoors, sectioned into many different parts, each clickable; each clicked section showing you its villages and towns. Avernum's huge.

You have to find the rune, report back to Anaximander and present the evidence to Berra. That opens the path to Erika's tower.

Pretty, pretty things, there they are again. Thanks a lot, Silver.

I've found that my anti-virus program (AntiVir) interacts strangely with my graphics card (NVidia GeForce), not only when playing games, also in some other cases. Would some of you who run anti-virus software in the background turn it off and watch, if that makes a difference? It could just be my software that's creating a problem for me, or it could be a more generalized weirdness.

I do not know if this will help, but should you have any anti-virus software running in the background, turn it off. I've found recently that it can interact strangely with video and 3D functions.

Jenn in Grindstone hides piercing crystals in her cellar. You need Tool Use 10 to disarm the traps guarding them. Also, if you have cleared out the cave behind the barrier in Grindstone's mine, one of the shades should have dropped some piercing crystals for you to pick up. Should you have already used all of those, then I don't think you'll find more in the demo. Don't know about the Eastern Gallery. From what I remember the third testing area is supposed to be somewhere close to Fort Dranlon (though I may have that wrong). One of the shades points to the location before testing starts.

Quote: The problem with heavy loads on the CPU is the intense heat that is generated. Yes, and that can kill your motherboard, if you don't take care. So this is something that should be looked into, especially if it is true that a lot of JV's customers are young kids, who wouldn't know about such things and how to handle them. edit: I checked again: I had A4 just sitting minimized in the taskbar and nothing else running. Even so it eats the full 100% of my CPU.

You wanted an example, Thuryl. Here's one that demonstrates the problem pretty well. This is not a particularly dark section of a dungeon, you can see a lot of details, even tiny ones, at least as long as their colour contrasts strongly with the colour of the floor: all the little stones are easy to make out. But tell me, how many rats are there? No, it's not two, it's three. A lever would be practically invisible. Colours that are close to each other are hard to distinguish. If the dungeon were a bit darker, you'd not see any rat at all. I'm using a brandnew flat screen and still try to get used to its brightness, so my problem is probably less pronounced than that of many others. edit: the eye feels fooled or tricked out. Because you can see so many tiny details in the distance, you just don't expect to not be aware of large objects right in front of you.

It's not completely dark, just too dark to see properly. I can see bones, because they are light yellowish, but everything that is not brightly coloured is difficult to distinguish, sometimes impossible. Everyone in his right mind would light a lantern in such a place or cast a light spell, if that were still possible.

Silver, so good to see you. What happened to your maps? We are missing them badly. Will you put them up again?