Micawber

Loss of 1 point of reputation isn't that serious. Although personally I always try to avoid the divine lucre patrols (on horseback). You know, you can even pay 5000 to join the church of the divine lucre. This also decreases your reputation, so Jeff is even-handed. You do at least get left alone by the patrols (as well as a boost to magery).

You need to look closely at the symbols on the two scraps. First, work out which is the top half and which is the bottom half. (There is a torn edge which splits the two halves.) Copy the symbols down in order from top to bottom. You will find a sequence of 5 symbols. It goes round-shaped thing, line-shaped thing, cross-shaped thing, line-shaped thing, round-shaped thing. (Personally I don't think the symbols are very clear.) You need to work the button, the lever and the wheel in the sequence indicated by the *-shaped things. If you see what I mean.

Yeah, the 64k was illustrative rather than precise; if the limit was indeed of this magnitude it would be 65536 (=2^16). In terms of game experience, my PCs in Avernum 3 have definitely exceeded 70,000 experience, so I would guess that this particular number has a maximum ~128k or even higher. Whatever. To get back to the original question, for purely practical reasons there does have to be a limit of some sort, but I do think the limit Jeff has set in all three Avernum games is annoyingly and unnecessarily low.

Quote: From the manual: I have ruthlessly pared away all of the stuff that caused busywork and confusion without adding fun. So why did he add tedious creatures like pylons, turrets and shrubs? They're really repetitive, if fighting turrets isn't busywork I don't know what is. For me there is no obvious creature missing from Avernum 4 - we have all the traditional sliths, nephils, spiders, bandits, ogres, goblins, undead, cave giants, drakes, golems, vahnatai, etc, etc. Even the chitrachs make a re-appearance, dammit. I just wish he hadn't added the trap-monsters.

Quote: Originally written by Randomizer: The "new" monsters from Geneforge were used because they were available to insert quickly into the game. Someday the graphics will ready to bring back all the great monsters of the old Avernum games. No it wasn't about graphics it was about combat strategy. Jeff wanted to write a GF-style game in the Avernum world. But it results in a world that's unrecognisable - impossible to believe that A4 takes place in the same world as A1-3.

I think it depends on whether you like Geneforge or not. If you prefer Geneforge to Avernum or find them equally enjoyable, then get A4. If you preferred Avernums 1-3 to Geneforge then I think A4 is going to be a bit disappointing, however YMMV. The threads Kel referenced have already covered the ground of what's wrong with A4 fairly well - concentrating on the technical engine matters (and the egregious plot). Actually for me I find the engine is liveable-with and as for the plot, it never stopped me enjoying A3 so it won't stop me enjoying A4 either. No, my top gripe with A4 is that it throws away too many in-game features of the world of Avernum and imports too many from Geneforge. No more traveling by water, no more secret tunnels. Instead instant travel and shopkeepers who only stock 1-2 of each item. Also the monsters - I don't want to see submission turrets, crawlers, artilas, pylons, spraying shrubs or spawners in my Avernum games. They belong in Geneforge, which up until now has been a separate world. The spawner in particular was a real slap in the face - and in fact the toughened-up "chitrachs" were suspiciously like clawbugs with a facelift. Edit: Adding to list of things imported from GF.

Quote: Originally written by Old Scratch: Yes, but from a game designer's standpoint, why have a cap at all? From a programming point of view, the numerical values are finite and have a fixed length. In the Avernum code I think I am right in saying that no number can exceed 64,000 values. The game enforces a cap in order to avoid weird errors - like negative gold (which has been known to happen in the Exile games).

Well, the 15000 limit in A3 is at least less miserly than the 9000 limit in A1. The most expensive things to buy are the special skills - anatomy, parry, blademaster, magery, etc. Generally I get around the gold cap by buying every level of these skills as soon as they are available which brings my gold rapidly down to zero every time. By the time I've got as far as 5 levels of all the skills available, it's pretty much the end of the game. If you don't need the money, don't pick up the loot.

Most boring spell? I'll go with summoning - when the monsters cast it it drags the combat out for longer, while when you cast it it costs a lot of energy and potentially stops you gaining experience. Most boring monster? I'd say guards, actually. Very tough with lots of health but without any interesting abilities to make it challenging. In E2 I remember you sometimes met entire parties of guards and it took AGES to kill them all, without being any sort of threat.

There's also a pattern of speech issue - in written dialogue, for example in literature, grammatical "mistakes" are often copied from local usage, hinting at things like accent and rhythm of speech, which can less easily be conveyed in print. I'm not saying that's what Jeff is doing in this case; but the use of "there's" with a plural is fairly common in speech.

Except then he'll just complain how dark it is inside, and how much your gloves chafe... you'll never get away. I dumped the skull outdoors - so as not to inflict it upon anyone else.

It's use is the same as for Sylak's talking skull in Nethergate; it keeps you company and occasionally gives you hints.

I agree about shaping skills. At the moment there are too many special artifacts that you equip for making creations and then remove immediately. This feels a bit artificial. The player's investment of skill points in shaping skills should be worth more. One possibility would be to decouple a creations chance of going rogue, or getting scared when wounded, from its intelligence skill and link it instead to the PC's shaping skill in the relevant category. The disadvantage with this is that intelligence >2 then becomes meaningless for creations that don't have a missile attack. Another possibility is that your creations act sooner and have more APs the higher your shaping skill - justified by the idea that better shapers can control creations' movements more closely. Acting sooner is currently linked to dexterity but could easily be unlinked. Any AP increase would have to be done cautiously, for instance level 8 shaping gives (a chance of?) +1 AP, level 12 gives (a chance of?) +2 AP. I conjecture there are not many players who currently take their shaping skill above 8 when playing normally (for myself, I'd rather spend the points on intelligence). A further possibility is that higher shaping skills should influence the creations' armour or resistances. AFAIK at present the only way to increase a creation's resistances is to buy endurance for the creation or to equip special items. I'm not going to suggest anything radical like lower essence cost for creations, or a new third tier of creations, because this would alter the balance of the game too much, and I don't think Jeff would want to do that. Hmm, I'm sure I didn't start out to write at such length...

Nice to see someone so keen on Avernum 1 - just wait till you see Avernums 2 and 3, they're even better! For spell locations, etc see sig | | | V

In A1 and Nethergate, left click moves two spaces, right click moves one space. In the other games, left click moves one space and right click is used for looking.

Quote: Originally written by Thuryl: I don't see how it could be deliberate. I mean, how can there be 7 crystals that fit onto the broken bits in the crystal cave when only 6 bits were broken off? What's wrong with this argument is that it assumes Jeff is always logical. It is possible he made an illogical deliberate choice.

Maybe not, but then some people sleep with two. Or even four.

That would be the Excel viewer, then.

Quote: Originally written by Note to Self: Couldn't you have just used the Character Editor to give yourslef three ranks in each spell, thereby bringing the spells closer to the same level? As for using the character editor, I don't play that way. But anyway the spreadsheet is meant to be interactive - so you configure it for your actual party at the current moment to decide which spell is currently most efficient to use. In the excel version (sorry) the white cells are editable, so you can select which level you wish to compare. I think the version I uploaded had been configured for a party that was just starting chapter 4. Quote: Also, Cloud of Blades really cannot be compared to any other spell. Cloud of Blades does weapon damage, while the other spells do magic/ice/fire damage. True - it only gives damage level comparison, without taking into account damage type. E.g. if fighting rakshasas go for cloud of blades, if fighting haakai go for repel spirit. However in Avernum 2 most of the time you're fighting empire soldiers, so the damage type doesn't matter so much. EDIT: In response to Tyranicus, I have used openoffice/staroffice in the past (on Linux) and I found its word & excel filters were far from infallible, and weren't able to import every file. I didn't want to assume that the thing would be openable using openoffice. If it is, that would be useful to know.

I've noticed that people around here are keen on statistics. Well, I've been trying to devise a formula to measure the relative merits of spells in Avernum 2. My current working model is as follows: A spreadsheet which enables you to calculate the results of the formula is here -- this uses the damage and target info from the Avernum 2 help file (except that the number of targets for divine fire, as per the help file, is obviously wrong - given as 1+B/12 but more like 4+ or 5+). You need a programme like Excel or Openoffice, in order to be able to open this spreadsheet. EDIT: The spreadsheet can also be opened using Openoffice. Thanks Tyranicus. <Disclaimer>Don't take this too seriously. It is in no way intended to be definitive -- just a bit of fun.</Disclaimer>

Quote: Originally written by Dikiyoba: In A2, Dikiyoba's party keeps every pillow they run across and later move them all to the rakshasi lair so that the party has somewhere comfortable to retire to once they complete all the game quests. That is a genius idea. I always thought it was unfortunate that there are many fewer pillows in Avernum than there are beds.

I like the dragon - what's his name - Reptrakos or some such. And Gobbo; what a great guy. I too find it sad that no one posts here anymore but, alas, by now everything there is to say about Nethergate has been said. I also find it ironic that Tyranicus corrects Kaemin's spelling, but himself confuses your and you're. What's that they say about people in glass houses?

I guess that rules out ghosts then. Oh well.

Yeah, like the way there's night and day in Avernum 3 but it doesn't make any difference to the game (no extra undead, no sleeping NPCs).

I'm glad Kelandon explained that FYT=fixed your typo. I have been going around for years, actually thinking it meant something else... rather more abusive.