Micawber

Characters called Patsy and Eddy (from the TV series Absolutely Fabulous) appear in Blosk in Avernum 2. In Avernum there's a fort called Saffron (another character from Ab Fab). Edit: Saffron is also a spice of course, so the latter could be a coincidence. But Patsy and Eddy live next door... Edit 2: Just noticed the sage in Blosk in E2 is named Saffron too. So that makes 3 characters in the same town.

Quote: Originally written by JadeWolf: Where do you find the spell Doom? There's a stone circle in Western Shadowvale (south of the Faerie Bazaar), at which you have to pray periodically. If I remember correctly (caveat: this is a long time ago) the first time you pray you get a different spell. The second time you turn up you have to fight some sort of monster. The third time you earn the spell doom.

Even using the number pad, up isn't north. North is 9, East is 3 and so on. This is very confusing, and makes it very difficult to navigate by keyboard while looking at the automap. Back on-topic again, I like BoE better than BoA for all the usual reasons why many people prefer Exile to Avernum (more distinctive graphics, more spells, less easy, etc).

I did a bit of experimenting on this. If you sink all your skill points into shaping skills (as a shaper) then it's better to absorb your creations and replace them from time to time. However if your shaping skills aren't going up more than half as fast as your creations' level, then you should keep the same creations - because they do get very strong by levelling up - until you learn to make a substantially better type of creation. For example for a while I had a well trained stinging clawbug which could kill ghosts etc quite easily. If I absorbed it and tried to recreate the new version always had a lower level! Nevertheless it was manifestly better to have a rothghroth once I learnt the ability.

Quote: Originally written by Jellyfish: When I try, "You shake your head no" I assume this relates to the giant's cavern. You need to walk towards the secret exit (past the lava) as far as the trees. Then a message pops up "if someone wanted to escape, this is where to do it" or something like that. Now go back and talk to all the prisoners again, ask them about escape, and they'll leave, and you'll get a reward!

Quote: Originally written by buppy20022003: no credit card and i wude like to know if i can win the the game and not have to register You can't. You only get half the game unregistered, and you can't beat the game without playing the second half. The help file suggests other ways to pay besides credit card. Or, you could go to the bank and get US$25 in cash then post it. Note this is not recommended by the post office - but was suggested by my bank teller to avoid charges!

Quote: Originally written by buppy20022003: can i get to the great circle in the unregister game?? No chance

Quote: Originally written by Jellyfish: I am on windows XP, and exile 3 is not loading. It's just an empty window, and nothing happens. When I try to close it, it tells me that the 16-bit subsystem may be unstable, whatever that means. anybody know what to do? I had that problem when I first "upgraded" to an XP box from my beloved 95 box. Amazingly, I did what the people say, and downloaded the latest sound drivers; it actually worked like they said it would. Other factors that may account for my successfully running E3/E2/E1 on XP: on the shortcut properties, I selected run in compatability mode (W95 compatability). Plus I have found Exile is a bit less likely to crash on startup if you've "warmed up" the sound drivers using Avernum first.

Thanks Jelly - that's a useful tip! My flatmate recently bought a bassoon; spiderweb's jingles really clash with Weber or whatever it is he's currently playing. Quickly experimenting, it seems you can supress the startup music in A3, BOA and GF2 this way. Alas I tried and it didn't work for A1, A2 and GF1. Someone who has a mac will have to enlighten us for GF3...

Quote: Originally written by buppy20022003: i have the one on bigail so i have two of three ware is the thred 1. In Krizsan Province, to the north of the Inn of Blades, in an area cut off by the river (to get there you have to go through a secret passage in the mountains south of Farport). 2. On Isle of Bigail, in the mountains north of Kuper. 3. In Karnold Province, north of Storm Port (you have to go through a secret passage into a little mountain, after crossing the river). PS: I'd forgotten how much I like town entry sound in Exile III - sort of energizing, much better than the equivalent sound in Avernum.

Quote: Originally written by avernum master: I've played A3, thing is, The GIFTS (Giant intelligent Friendly Talking Spiders) Are down in lower avernum in A2. In A3, the Gifts of the isle of (cant remember the name, cochroaches place.)Say that they used to live down there, when you go to the ToM if you open one of the doors, you find a GIFTS in there. So where did these things come from? Are they in A1? If you talk to all the spiders in A3, one of them (his name is Spider, if that helps) tells you they started out in Avernum, where they met some nice adventurers. But then they went on a Great Journey out of the caves led by the chief spider, where they have settled on Bigail. The GIFTs are also around in Nethergate; they pass through the nethergate at the end of the game (maybe into the Avernum universe?)

Well, it seems we have a likely winner. I still dread going anywhere near the Tower of Shifting Floors...(shudder) But I'd also like to put in a word for the brigand madhouse, since it literally took me months to find my way in playing E2...and so little reward when I finally did get in!

Quote: Originally written by xixao: I would have no problem doing that, but as mentioned in a previous post, my hard drive failed shortly after the completion of this trainer, and midway through the creation of the BoA trainer. For this reason, I do not have the files to modify. I'm very sorry. Oops, I'd forgotten! Sorry to hear about that. Quote: You didn't experience this with the A3 trainer, am I correct? Yes, that's right.

For the record, I accept that your intentions are entirely benign. I wasn't suggesting you were spying on anybody and I'd like to make it clear I do not believe that or even suspect it. However the fact that this file is created on every run, and that it provides functions that can be used by keyloggers, creates an unwanted backdoor into my system. So I'd like to go back to my original question (rephrased now that I have more information): given that this library is not being used by the trainer, is it possible for you to rebuild the trainer without including the library?

I see that the Norton/Symantec website has no matches for h@tkeysh@@k.dll. The only download manager I use is internet explorer. However, I can assure you that every time I run your file trainer.exe that .dll is created on my PC. Not only that, but when the antivirus software blocks the .dll, I get a dialog box from trainer.exe showing the path of the .dll. It is totally reproducable. On the link below I saw that someone else experienced the same problem with a different game trainer: http://www.2-spyware.com/file-h@tkeysh@@k-dll.html Not one of yours; but perhaps they share common code?

Quote: Originally written by xixao: The trainer is stand-alone. No .dll's should be needed. Neither trainer uses any hotkeys. Either way, the trainer is safe to download and use. Just take a look at the replies to this thread. Plenty of people have been using it without any report of harmful files. You have absolutely nothing to worry about. Sorry, but when I try to run it my anti-virus blocks it and reports h@tkeysh@@k.dll. Before I execute trainer.exe, there is no such file in c:\winxp\system32. Afterwards, one has been created. Is it possible the download could have become infected on the server?

I'm not clear on the purpose of all this. Which spells do you really want to limit? Are you mainly interested in reducing the damage done by offensive spells - if so use immunities. Or do you want to limit the player's ability to heal themselves - you could drain their health instead, which is pretty much the same thing. If your intention is to totally rebalance magic/non-magic combat, that's do-able by other means: define an event, after which the principal monsters are replaced with clones where you've cranked up their non-magic abilities. You could use a special encounter to do the same for the PCs - add 20 levels to each of their non-magic stats - with the option to take it away again, when the crisis is over. And offer the party souped up weapons, giving them someplace to store their existing weaponry until it's all over. It sounds like a lot of work, but the effect would be really striking for the player.

I tried to install the Geneforge 2 Trainer, but my anti-virus software blocked it. From memory, the message said that the file "h@tkeysh@@k.dll" was not to be trusted. Is there any way you can implement this trainer without using that library? I didn't get this problem with the Avernum 3 Trainer, by the way.

Quote: Originally written by Flaming_valkrye: what do you mean ''as if your runing windows''? It doesn't say that. "save as if you're running windows". You missed out the word save , as in "save as". Which should be "save target as", btw. Wars have been started for less...

Jeff likes to describe certain of his dungeons -- particularly the Tower of Zkal and the Crypt of Drath -- as "obnoxious". But which one, if any, sent you into a sulk - because "its just SO ridiculous, how can anyone be expected to complete this..."? Or were they all a breeze to you, even with the torment setting?

I'm not sure precisely what you mean here. If you want to increase the cost, in terms of spell energy, every time a spell is cast I don't think you can do that. However if you want to increase the cost, in terms of gold, of purchasing spells in a shop, yes that is very do-able. In the seller's dialogue, test a stuff done flag and direct the PCs to the shop, but vary the cost argument according to the stuff done flag.

Back in the days of Exile, I used to take inspiration from the PC's graphic ("who does that remind me of?"). Can't do that with Avernum, because they all look pretty much the same. So I have fallen back on themes, such as: TV chefs (Delia, Jamie, Prudence, Rick) Russian composers (Borodin, Shostakovich, Mussorgsky, Gubaidalina) colours that double as names (Violet, Coral, Rufus, Ash) or alphabetic progression (Agatha, Bill, Carol, Dave)