Micawber

Originally Posted By: Brocktree Originally Posted By: Harehunter Divinely Touched is indeed a good trait to have, but is it really worth the XP penalty? Yes. Divinely Touched is indeed worth the penalty. I'd argue that Divinely Touched is so overpowered, it shouldn't be in the game. I agree 100%. I put Divinely Touched on all my PCs. In fact, the only reason not to do so is masochism. As others have said before me, The XP is penalty is meaningless, and Divinely Touched makes all characters considerably better even early in the game. By the end of the game, the advantages are priceless (or at least, worth several levels).

Originally Posted By: People "Mass appeal" is very far from "popular genre". Explain?

@Dantius: While I don't wish to dispute the historical analysis or the general thrust of your argument, I take issue with the particular contention that talented musicians no longer go into classical music but would prefer to seek wider fame in popular music. My experience has been that the more talented musicians are the most ardent supporters of, let's call it, our musical heritage. Classical music positively discriminates in favour of talent: it's simply not possible to perform a lot of classical music or opera without enormous skill and dedication. Whereas, from what I can tell, most of the mass appeal bands and artists these days seem to be selected for their looks and attitude, rather than any actual musical talent. [aside] @Alorael: All our alephs come to naught is now a contender for my favourite moniker.

I wondered if the "red flag" might have been a red pass.

Yeah, sounds more like E2 really.

I was replying to Celtic Minstrel. What he said was correct.

For some reason, I think it matters that they were Nazis before they were zombies.

Yes, I tried it once out of curiosity, and that is what happens.

Originally Posted By: Kyronea So, I'm confused by the plot. By that I mean, why would Rentar-Irhno bother with the weaker plagues at all? Thrift. The backstory is, Rentar had some slime coupons she wanted to use, and it was 2-for-1 on cockroaches. She sensibly had them delivered to the weaker, southern part of the continent where the soldiers weren't so tough, so they would have maximum effect.

Corruption Baton, Wand of Succor, Wand of Death are all worthwhile. In certain games, items are the only way to get speed effect, acid spray, diamond spray, mass madness, etc.

But we *want* useless spells... We miss the buzz of learning a new spell, and the opportunity to find out by trial and error that it is useless in 99.9% of situations

But... but... it worked in Star Wars. That was in the 1980s. Surely they have it sussed by now? I'm also confused why everything isn't powered by fusion, they have been promising it since 1951...

That would amuse me... for a while. After that I'd defenestrate it in a temper tantrum.

Several times wands/gems have abilities for which there is no equivalent spell. There is also a significant difference in AP cost. Ignore them at your peril.

Yeah, and you've never done that to an NPC

Those sliths sure do drop a lot of spears. It's good money too.

I would say Avernum 1-3 are much easier than Geneforge. So long as you don't catastrophically mismanage your party should have no trouble completing the game (except maybe getting stuck on some quests... but you can ask for help). That said a full party (4 pcs) will be easiest. I haven't tried with 3 myself but I can't imagine it would be much harder than 4.

I think a 16 bit app won't run on a 64 bit OS. You'll need to try using a VM (virtualbox is ok).

No, Exile Trilogy and first Avernum Trilogy games have always loaded very quickly. I played Avernum 1-3 when they first came out on an old pc I had bought in 1997, and there were no performance issues at all. The games since Geneforge have been much more resource-hungry.

This thread reminds me of one I started when I was struggling to motivate myself to play Avernum 4. I had similar troubles with Avernum 6 actually; Avernum 5 was the only one of the second trilogy I was actually looking forward to replaying (that may be because the map is more interesting, not being shared with other games). Having said that, on a replay the tactical elements of gameplay do add some interest to Avernum 4. And I definitely enjoyed playing more once I started following DV's suggestion and designing my party around 3 priests and 1 mage. Once you get divine retribution, having 3 priests is seriously fun.

For a singleton, definitely follow Alo's advice and run out of the room, if you can avoid the submission turrets the fight is much more survivable.

Foramen?

Originally Posted By: Dantius why is Britain's national anthem still God Save The [monarch gender title] and not Rule Britannia? Land of Hope and Glory is a better song than either of them. The lyrics are admittedly imperialistic, but then everyone believes that of us anyway, so why let that ruin a good tune?

Which version of windows do you have? You need to find out whether you have a separate graphics card or are using the one built-in to the motherboard. One way to find out is to run "dxdiag" (from the Start -> Run box), this ought to display the name of your display device. When you know the name, it should then be possible to google the name of the devoce and (hopefully!) download a driver (which is the software required to use the device properly).

Reading this thread reminds me that the way special skills work in the second trilogy just sucks. I wish it would go back to the way it worked in the first trilogy, once you learned a point from somewhere, you were mostly able to train after that (albeit a couple, like resistance, were just untrainable). [/rant]