Micawber

I don't know how many there are, but it's too many. I voted 100-125, assuming you walk past every nest, trigger every event and as Randomizer says take more than a couple of rounds killing the spawner, sorry queen.

Oh good grief. Surely you can do better than that. Even edit.com is better than notepad.

In this case it means better and stronger. Really ur- means original or earliest, but in usage it has come to mean extreme or outstanding in a general sense. For example:

 

1983 Sunday Tel. 13 Mar. 14/6 Russell Hoban is an ur-novelist, a maverick voice that is like no other.

The one in the Display Warren, you mean. That's the second rothgroth you meet, if you kill the one in Gull South Docks first.

 

[/pedantry]

Yep, however you will have to be patient; you need the key from the north geneforge first.

... until the next rebellion.

 

I too favour the Shapers for game purposes, but I was intrigued by the Trakovite ending, which pointed the way to an eventual resolution in Geneforge 5. Given that, and what Jeff said earlier, it's pretty clear that in Geneforge 5 the PC will be given the choice over whether shaping itself should be allowed to continue. I'd say probably not.

Well, I can't argue with the math...

My point was really that a lot of the Exile trilogy spells are duplicative. Consider:

Minor bless, strength, bless, bless party

Minor heal, heal, major heal

Scare, fear, repel, group fear

Stumble, curse, holy scourge, curse all, holy ravaging, ravage enemy

Now in Avernum this can all handled through a single spell by altering the number of targets and base spell strength.

In Avernum in addition, related spells are more often brought together, for example cure poison, cure disease, cure acid are all in a single spell. There is an all-purpose cure mental effects spell in place of separate spells for cure dumbfounding, cure sleep, cure paralysis, cure terror, cure charm. Bind foe is another example of a composite spell (unfortunately, since this means you lose the ability to web foes if you allow this spell to improve).

Admittedly Exile had a few extra useless spells, and the magnificent series of wall spells, but in the final analysis Exile and Avernum do have similar numbers of spell effects, it's just in Avernum you access them through fewer spells.

Learned Darian will probably be able to fix it for you (may have to wait a while, though).

Yes, I was rather hoping the 'half-cast' effect would be fixed in GF4, but it isn't unfortunately.

Or using canisters.

What? In the rebel ending, you become a general and lead a troop in the rebellion. Meanwhile the war goes on and no one really wins. The rebel/shaper endings are basically the same, but with the PC on the other side.

My lifecrafter has no trouble hitting with essence shackles and his mental magic is only 7, with the only spellcraft from quest rewards. Not that I really need essence shackles, with cryodrayks, ur-glaahks and wingbolts to protect me

That's a bit of a non sequitur; Erika wasn't exactly the easiest person to destroy. Erika wasn't the most popular person in-game, either (she did cause the war which takes place in A2).

I think the main reason the number of spells reduced so dramatically was the introduction in A1 of spell levels at 1, 2, 3. With the need to make each level of a spell different there were in effect 120 spells rather than 40. Remember, many of the spells in Exile series were of the form slow, slow group, slow and curse, slow and curse group, etc. In A1-3 this is now handled by 1/3-1/2 as many spells.

 

Of course Avernum 4 has changed that, with its Geneforge-style spells system (but smaller number of spell circles) where levels don't mean much. In A4, there could in fact be more spells as a lot of effects aren't available to the party at all, or are only available through potions.

Who has tried to run a game using entirely disposable creations (pyroroamer, unstable thahd, etc)? Jeff has introduced so many short-lived variants this time, I assume he intends it to be a viable strategy to create a few unstable creatures just before each battle.

 

I suppose this would work well with a PC type who is capable of surviving on their own for a while when their pets are gone. So Warrior or Shocktrooper?Any experiences?

What he said.

 

For me, none of the recent Spiderweb games installed straight from the CD under Vista. However, as I hate autoplay and prefer to browse to the install.exe file on the CD anyway, this didn't worry me.

 

Browsing to D:\Install.exe on my GF4 cd worked fine.

Good heavens, so you do. My mistake.

 

Edit: How sneaky to change this - it is explained in the PDF instructions, but nowhere in the game itself.

No, you don't. You can make a cryoa with fire shaping level 1, a cryodrayk with fire shaping level 2, etc.

No I think for maximum rage you would need to set it to 12, not 1.

I would like a cure party spell, because divine restoration or whatever it's called in this game comes too late in the game.

You killed her? How barbaric.

That was my reaction, too. It came second only to the news that carrying items in your pack would no longer cause encumbrance.

Actually, they can in GF2, but this 'feature' (i.e. bug) was fixed in GF3.

No, you only need fire shaping skill 2 in order to create drayks.