Ess-Eschas

Hmm, that’s an interesting exploit you’ve uncovered there. You’re quite right – the cap for skill points does not apply to a newly created party member. It’s not a huge difference, since you can only gain a few levels above the cap, but it's a difference nonetheless. It’s also something you can only encounter near the end-game. I suspect that’s why it hasn’t been caught before! However, as I’ve said a few times on this thread, it’s not overly helpful us knowing on these boards. There’s not much we can do about a bug like this! So, can I encourage you to take this information and send it Spiderweb’s support email? Even if it ends up not getting fixed in Queen’s Wish 1, which it might not given that the release was a little while ago now, your information will make sure it gets fixed in the sequel! Here’s the address: support@spiderwebsoftware.com

You haven’t found any arrows because they’re not necessary for this game. You can use your bows without any separate arrow item – just equipping a bow is enough to start using ranged attacks. Just think of the Hand as being well-prepared, and always taking enough arrows with them. In other words, you can use your bows right now. Give it a try! Otherwise, welcome to the forums! We’re always happy to help answer questions, so feel free to stop by again if anything more comes up!

The vahnatai enchantress glowered at the visiting adventurers, her every breath feeling like an attack on their very presence in her inner laboratory. And yet, they could feel her gaze looking over their weapons, their scars, their equipment, carefully won over many exploits. Her eyes sparkled. “Perhaps you may be of some use. There is a tome of great value that was stolen from our lands. I have determined that it was taken by a group of demons over the chasm-filled lands to the north and east. Such a trifle is not worth my time, but perhaps if you retrieved it, I might consider letting you know the secret of quickfire. “The tome is formed of several sheets of micah, bound by –” One of the adventurers groaned. “Really? I thought we done with all the demons. Is this all worth it?” Another member of the party nodded. And then they started, as if an idea had just come to them. “Hey, we found this great, powerful sword. We don’t need it any more – we’ve already fought the battle it was important for. “Say, how about it? The magic sword for your knowledge of quickfire? We get the spell, you get powerful magic, we get out of your hair. What’s not to like?” Renter-Ihrno frowned. And yet, if the sword was as powerful as it felt, and had the ability she thought it did – it sang of control – perhaps it was a worthwhile trade. If she could better work with the nearby demons, maybe she could make some headway on the summoning projects she’d drafted a few years back. Maybe talking to these adventurers wasn't such a bad idea after all ...

I suspect we may be talking at cross-purposes. I think Kelandon and I were fairly clear in our explanations, so it’s possible you’re misunderstanding a certain point about the game mechanics. There is a difference between character creation and character training. Character creation happens right at the very beginning of your time with a party. This occurs when you select a new game, and you are presented with a screen in which you define your party. This is the same screen, incidentally, in which you set the character type for each party member. When you’re creating a character, in the same screen, you can click on ‘Edit Statistics’. In addition to allowing you to add traits, this also allows you to spend skill points to improve your party. This is the case regardless of your character type. If you select a Custom character type, you are given a full set of skill points to assign to your character as you see fit. The idea is that you assign these skill points before you start the game. Otherwise your new party will have negligible skills, and will be extremely weak! If you assign Mage and Priest Spells to a character on this screen, they will have access to the level 1 spells described in the posts above. If you think about it, it makes sense. You’re creating a character with a past, one that you only start interacting with when you create the party. If these characters have trained in magic in their past, they are going to know some spells. By contrast, if you teach them magic within the game, those spells are not just going to crop up out of the aether – they need to be learned from sources that can teach the information to you! All of this is different from character training. This happens after a party is created, and is something you do during the game itself. The problem, then, is that you are not assigning points to your characters during the creation process. Maybe you’re doing that because you want to spend all your points at once, but it’s also making life more difficult for you – including the need to teach yourself basic spells!

Just to clarify this, you can gain a level of a spell from a level 3 location at any time – getting to locations too early is not your problem here. In order to raise a spell to level 3, however, you need to do two things, and you can do them in any order: 1. Buy two levels of the spell at a trainer. 2. Learn the third level from a special encounter (e.g. a book, quest reward, etc.). If you’ve been using the spell list on the forums to find the level 3 locations, but your party isn’t able to cast level 3 spells, then you may not have bought the right number of levels from the appropriate trainers. If you want to complete your lists of level 3 spells, check back with people you buy spells from – you should see them still offering to impart some knowledge to you! If you would like, there is another post on the forums that can help you find these people: http://spiderwebforums.ipbhost.com/topic/21049-spells-earliestcheapest-to-buy/

Again, I needs must disagree with you, Warrior Mage. As Kelandon mentioned, all characters that are created with some levels of Mage or Priest Spells gain some free level 1 spells. This is irrespective of the type of character – even Custom characters get these spells. A Custom character is nothing more than a character with no points assigned. There’s nothing else special about the class. The number of spells you gain depends on the level of the appropriate skill (although no additional spells are given after you pass level 6). You can gain a maximum of 8 or 9 free spells per class depending on your choices. This is a useful mechanic, and can sometimes be used to save money and make things a little easier in the early game. It depends on the type of scenario you’re playing!

That is incorrect. Kelandon is a better designer than that! Bahssikava makes allowances for all party sizes and compositions, including singleton parties. This includes adapting certain fights, such as the one you mentioned, and even suitably changing the text to refer to the player in the singular. It says as such in the Readme. There is no reason why Bahssikava cannot be played by a singleton party. You are mistaken. I hope you don’t mind if I give you some friendly advice, Warrior Mage. This isn’t the first time you’ve written something a little misleading on these boards. Unlike certain social media channels, what you write on here stays easily accessible – and findable on internet search engines – for very many years. From now on, whenever anyone interested in doing a singleton run of Bahssikava searches the internet for information, they are likely to come across your post. They will read – on the official forums for Blades of Avernum – someone stating categorically that Bahssikava cannot be completed by a singleton because of poor coding (and you do use the word ‘fact’). Readers may be put off by that, and I imagine some would simply discount playing with a singleton party altogether. Now, of course that wasn’t your intention! You no doubt just made a slight mistake. However, by that small act of carelessness, you might end up negatively impacting on the experience of other players. So, please can I encourage you to check your facts before posting. If you can’t check your facts, then please make it clear that you are expressing an opinion or belief only. Little phrases such as ‘I believe that ...’ or ‘I suspect that ...’ go an awfully long way!

Unfortunately, I think I’ll only be able to use your saved games if you’re using a Mac. Recent experience has shown me that Windows and Mac save files from Spiderweb games of this era often aren’t compatible. Still, there’s no harm in giving it a try! Just upload your saved games to a site such as WeTransfer, and post the download link they provide either here or in a PM. If I can’t run your save games, I’d need to ask you to a very simple test with them. All I’d need you to do would be to implement my script changes, and then walk into Melanchion’s keep to check that he’s not there any more (i.e. to check that disposing of one Melanchion removes the other). That’s all!

From what you’ve said, it sounds like you have a fairly solid feeling about how to approach this problem already. However, I just wanted to add my own voice against the idea of homogenising the difficulty of the early dungeons, or of providing too much direction for the party. As you say, the power of a party rises rapidly in the very early game. This is a problem, certainly, since it means that the party can come up against a difficulty wall pretty quickly. But it’s also something of an asset – when a party comes back to an area that they couldn’t previously deal with, and then gets through it, it serves to really highlight the growth of the party. For my part, I think dungeons of varying difficulty can provide an additional puzzle/strategy element to a game. The party needs to explore what they’re presented with, push and probe a little, and find how which paths will lead to success. When they figure it out, it’s rewarding in the same way that, say, solving a riddle is. In some respects, I imagine this could have some interesting consequences for Homeland in particular; after all, it would imply that the party is gaining strength so rapidly through the help of the superior knowledge and experience of the people of the Homeland itself (either directly, or indirectly through interacting with the Expedition). It also works against the problem you mention, where certain dungeons will by definition become too easy. That can potentially become a narrative issue; after all, if certain quests are fairly straightforward, why didn’t the people in the Homeland do them themselves, rather than waiting for an unexpected group of Exiles? Of course, there are plenty of ways around this point, but ensuring that missions are consistently challenging, and sometimes overwhelming, is one fairly general solution. I also counsel against providing too much direction. Direction is good, and your idea seems a solid one – in particular, providing a strong hint for where the party should go first works against the potential frustration of hitting too many impassible dungeons right at the beginning of the game. I think that might be best being left as a hint rather than something forced on the party, since it allows some freedom for those who want to potentially try to do things differently, but there are plenty of arguments for the other approach. However, I’m not sure providing a guide for the order in which every mission should be played is necessarily the right approach either. It’s practical from a game-design perspective, but there’s a danger of it wearing away at the narrative and mimesis a little – it can come off as a little convenient, demonstrating the mechanics behind the world, and therefore potentially breaking the immersion a little. Perhaps the best example I can think of is the difficulty ‘gating’ Spiderweb tends to employ in its later games. It provides for a much smoother experience, yes but from experience of reading accounts on these boards, it can sometimes break immersion for some players in putting the mechanics before the plot. Of course, this is a tradeoff – had it been done the other way, people would have complained about difficulty! – so in the end it’s down to what you prefer, and what you think players might prefer. One other possible way around the issue is to provide advice, rather than necessarily direction. So, for instance, you could have a character suggest that the party try out a series of missions, or not necessarily try to complete each mission in one go. Or, if that came across as a little convenient, you could put that as a Tip of the Day (if you worked at it, you could force that Tip to be shown the first time a party reloads during Chapter 1, I think). That’s my two-penn’orth. In any case, it’s good to hear that things are going well – particularly that the Prologue is in such a good state! (Of course, it seems to imply there’s no fighting in there, too, which is interesting in its own right ...).

Great! That confirms my suspicions as to what is causing this. Many thanks for the answers, Carranzero! Don’t worry about doing any more work with your save games. All I need is one where Melanchion has agreed to help with the portal, and in which you’ve killed him at the gates, but where he’s still alive in his keep. It seems you have one of those already, so that’s all that’s needed! (As a bonus, it might be useful to have one before you’ve killed Melanchion at the gates, too, but it looks like you have one of those too). Now I know what the problem is, I have an idea as to how to fix it. I can’t promise that I’ll be able to do this immediately, since I have a few other obligations in the pipeline at the moment, but I’ll see what I can do. Once I come up with something I’d like you to test for me, I’ll let you know! Incidentally, if you ever work through Avernum 6 again, you might find it interesting to try and kill Melanchion at the gates before he agrees to help with the portal. Something quite different should happen!

I assure you there are no brandished pitchforks here, alhoon. I’ll leave that to Dante’s demons. We’re just having a civilised discussion on a point about which we disagree. That’s one of the reasons the forums are here! Just to be clear, I in no way thought that you were belittling the games, or that you somehow disliked them. I was just a little concerned that you were equating a lack of information with a lack of effort on Spiderweb’s part – an idea I’ve seen raised several times by a number of different people. While that might not have been your intention here, I hope it’s useful for you to know that your post did seem to imply that to some degree. It’s an odd language quirk, I think, that when someone criticises some very specific detail about a work, that criticism can often come to be read in a more general way. There are just a couple of points I’d like to pick you up on in what you wrote – you make some very decent comments on the matter. Firstly, I don’t think it’s fair to say that the current design of the Thahd discounts the importance of the balance between imagination and detail on Spiderweb’s part. It might do if it were a purely narrative point, but this is a more complex element – it’s essentially a graphics problem. If you look at the original Thahd graphics, you can see that they’re not very detailed. The Thahd is some sort of muscled biped, but it’s hard to make out much more than that. Such a design simply wouldn’t fly in the modern games market – people these days expect graphics to be complex. Since a generic biped wouldn’t work, Spiderweb has to add some detail to the design. And so they chose to link the biped to a specific creature – in this case, a humanoid feline. Following that line of reasoning, the design of the Thahd is a graphical decision, rather than a narrative one. Of course, it does affect the narrative, so it’s a tradeoff on Spiderweb’s part. It appeases people who want nicer graphics, but breaks mimesis for those who have previously played the games, and envisioned Thahds differently. In enacting this change, Spiderweb will have needed to consider the net good, and how many people benefit positively or negatively from it. I’m sure it’s not something Spiderweb did lightly. You’ll see, for instance, many comments on the Geneforge Kickstarter in which Spiderweb mention their intent of being faithful to the original content and style. This is something they are concerned about. I also just want to pick you up on your point about information coming from characters. It is of course possible to add information in this way, and you give some very good examples that do precisely that! However, there’s a danger too in using this sort of approach too much. Let me see if I can explain why. The problem of imparting complex information this way is that there is yet another danger to mimesis. The very occasional character casually mentioning something of importance is fine, but it becomes problematic when too many people start mentioning handy details like this. You see, what Spiderweb are doing here is trying to build a believable world in which you will be immersed, and in which you will believe, in some fashion. They’re also making a game. These two goals sometimes compete with each other. Ideally, you’ll play through a Spiderweb game not noticing it’s a game at all – everything that happens will feel perfectly natural in the context of the game world. As soon as the game mechanics start to show through, the experience feels less like being in different a world, and more like going through the motions of playing a game. To give you an example, consider a classic problem from Blades of Exile. Scenarios can only be so large, and whole worlds are really big places. So scenarios need to come up with reasons why you can’t explore the big wide world in which you find yourself. It’s hard to do this in the middle of a continent, so you’ll find an unnaturally large number of scenarios set in valleys, or on islands, or in vales. If you play a few, that’s fine. But play a lot, and it becomes quite apparent that some scenarios might be being set this way for reason of the mechanics, not because it makes for an interesting setting. There’s a danger of ‘yet another vale’ feeling less like a living, breathing place, and more like a convenient scenario setting. It’s exactly this sort of problem that can come up when imparting information in the way you suggest. If too many characters start mentioning helpful statistics, it becomes immediately apparent that the designer is placing these characters in the game precisely to give you those statistics. The characters start feeling less like characters, and more like points you need to click on to learn more about the story. Monarch becomes little more than a handy encyclopaedia dressed in a robe. This might sound extreme, but I assure you there are games that feel like this. Losing faith in the characters in this way is another breaking of mimesis. This is a point that Spiderweb makes some interesting comments on themselves. Let me quote Jeff himself – not the game designer, this time, but the curious character in Avernum 3’s Generic Dungeon: “I'm here to tell you my whole life story. What'd you expect? Isn't that what everyone's supposed to do? You walk in, some random weird looking heavily armed people from the Empire's enemy, and I'm supposed to just spill my guts to you. Right? “It's so implausible it makes me sick.” You see, Spiderweb does worry about these points! Now, just to be clear, mimesis breaking is a spectrum, like most things. Your immersion seems to be more solid than others, and that’s great! But Spiderweb needs to cater to whole groups of people. Sadly, then, they need to take account of those whose mimesis is a little more fragile! (By the way, really do read ‘Report on Probability A’ – it demonstrates the point about detail and narrative extremely well!)

That’s very kind of you to say, Carranzero. Thank you! Thanks also for your answers. I’m pretty sure I know what’s going on now, but there’s one more thing I need to check to be absolutely certain. After you turned in those first two quests to Melanchion, did you then ask him to make good on his promise and fix the portal? A special dialogue option should have appeared after you completed those two quests. I ask this because having Melanchion fix the portal changes a few things – including what happens if you fight him at the gates. It’s this change I think that has caused your problem, but it would be useful just to confirm that! Also, if you happen to still have a save in which one Melanchion is dead and the other alive, could you please keep it? I think I might be able to come up with a fix that would solve the issue – but it would be useful to have a save to test it on! Sadly, my own saves don’t have the quests arranged in anything like this order, so it would be a lot of work on my part to get a point where I could test things myself! Incidentally, nice work on the Bargha quest. It’s impressive to get through things that way!

Now hold on just a minute, alhoon. You’re making a huge leap in your logic, here. It’s one thing to say that certain types of information aren’t being included in a work, but it’s quite another to say that the creator hasn’t even thought about it or, worse still, doesn’t care. There are a whole variety of very good reasons why world-building information might not be included in a creative work. As someone who produces creative works myself, I quite regularly don’t include whole swathes of detailed pieces of information about a world in what I produce – and I think it might be helpful for me to explain why. One idea that’s already been mentioned is this: there’s a fine balance to be struck between detail and narrative. If you include too little detail, readers become confused and can’t follow what’s going on, or in extreme cases mimesis itself can be broken. But include too much detail, and the narrative gets disrupted. To give an extreme example of this, imagine a version of Geneforge where, when you first met Monarch, you were presented with 2000 text boxes describing his appearance. You learn about every freckle on his face, every slight imperfection in the weave of his robe, the way the light falls on every strand of his hair. A player might maintain interest for a while, but eventually they’ll become more and more bored. After a while, they’ll start to forget why they even want to talk to Monarch in the first place. If it goes on too long, they’ll quit the program and go and do something else. This is obviously a ridiculous example, but I hope it makes the point. Including too much detail about a world destroys the immersion in exactly the same way as including too little. There’s a really good example of a work that does this deliberately, by the way, that I’d encourage you to look up and read: ‘Report on Probability A’ by Brian Aldiss. But this isn’t the only reason. There’s another very import one to do with the narrator themselves. There are several ways to introduce information into a narrative. One is through an omniscient narrator figure, who simply tells you what you need to know. The other is through the inhabitants and details of the world itself. Video games tend to make more use of the latter style – it makes sense, after all, since you the reader are interacting with the world directly. This is the style that Spiderweb uses in the main, too. If you think about it, how do we learn about who Grah-Hoth is in Avernum, or about the various ideologies of the different Servile factions? We learn that by talking to people, and reading documents from inside the game world. This causes a whole bunch of problems when you consider some of the questions you’ve asked. For instance, in order to learn how big the world is, you’d need to find someone in the Geneforge world who actually knows the answer. Generally speaking, people with that sort of knowledge in a world like the one in which Geneforge is set would be in an extreme minority. Most people you meet might know the rough distance to the nearest town, or the distance they have to march to get to the garrison, but I imagine they’d be extremely unlikely to know how far away the coast is, or the next continent, etc.. There’s no reason for them to know this, and no easy way for them to learn it, so they don’t have the information to hand. This is perhaps hard for us to think about in a society with easy access to information through copious books and the internet. But if I asked you tell me the distance between Cairo and Tokyo without looking it up, would you be able to do so with great accuracy? The same would be true for much smaller distances in a society without easy access to technology and quick and simple long-distance travel. It gets more complicated when you start considering comparisons between the continents of the world of Geneforge and those of Earth. No-one in the world of Geneforge can know that information, since they know not of Earth. And, if the narrator tells you, the danger is that it breaks mimesis – you’re taken out of the world of Geneforge somewhat to think about Earth, meaning that you become less immersed in the fictional world being described to you. For instance, are you still thinking about Monarch and his 2000 text boxes? I suspect not. I’ve been talking about something else, and it’s distracted your attention from that particular point – that’s the same principle as detailed information about something else (in this case, Earth) distracting the reader from whatever world-building the writer is trying to establish. This is all related to information that can be determined simply. Some of the statistical information is much, much harder to determine. For instance, how many people in the world of Geneforge know the exact percentage of people who could become Shapers? In order to know this, someone would have to study the population carefully, and in detail. That’s hard to do with small percentages. The study may not even have been done but, if it has, it would be in the levels of high academia – i.e. in the hands of the Shapers – and it would probably be esoteric information at best. It’s not something that is going to be stored in every renegade’s tower, or easily to hand in a distant output. Think about it this way. What is the exact percentage of people who have green eyes? Don’t look it up. Were you close? That’s the same situation being experienced by the people in the world of Geneforge on many points, not least the numbers of people who could become Shapers – most people just won’t know, and will probably not even produce a very accurate guess. There’s a third, more subtle reason. While there’s a balance between narrative and description, there’s also a balance between creative input from the writer and creative input from the reader. Whenever you read a creative work, your imagination gets to work on it, filling out all the details that the author misses out. You’ll imagine how someone looks, how something works, how big the city is. This is a good thing! It means that each person will have a slightly different, personalised view of the world they are reading – so it will speak more to them as an individual. My Avernum, for instance, will feel like a very different place from yours. The problem is that too much description limits this process. It reduces the amount by which a person can personalise the story as they read it. At the worst, it interferes with the process of reading a story directly. Have you ever read something, and then come across something that disagrees with what you imagined? So, for instance, someone turned out to be much bigger than you thought they were, or the nice stone-built city you’d envisioned actually turned out to be made of brick? This can arise from too little description, yes, but also from too much. To take the example of the person’s height, this only becomes a problem if you encounter a situation where someone’s exact height is important. Avoid that situation, and you avoid the contradiction between the story and the reader’s expectations – you solve the problem by reducing the amount of information contained in the story. So, I’ve given you three reasons why detailed information might not be included in a narrative. There are more, but this is a start. 1. Too much information breaks the flow of the narrative. 2. Detailed information needs to come naturally from the writer’s world, else there’s a danger of breaking immersion. This restricts the information that can be described. 3. Too much information interferes with the imaginative input of the reader. To put this into practical terms, when I produce a world, I think very carefully about how it’s put together. I think about its government, how people live, how various forms of power work, why people should be doing this or that thing, why they should be wearing this or that thing. But do I talk about a lot of it? Absolutely not, for precisely the reasons described above. Do I care about my worlds, and the detailed information about them? Do I think about them, and carefully plan all sorts of points that I don’t talk about? Yes, I definitely do. And I imagine Jeff Vogel does too. (If you don’t believe me, read Jeff’s blog posts. He has some very clever things to say about the words he writes into his games – and how careful he is not to include too much text.)

On a general level, that is indeed the case. However, given the nature of the flags that are set when either Melanchion is killed, I believe it may have been the original intention that killing one does kill the other. I think that would be quite possible in the current engine. That’s why I’m enquiring about the situation Carranzero is experiencing – I want to just check my assumptions on this point. If so, it might be possible to come up with a script alteration that introduces this very behaviour!

Yes, there is? I think perhaps there’s been something of a misunderstanding here. That may well be on my end. However, I thought that I was fairly clear about this in my previous post. In it, I summarised Spiderweb and Jeff Vogel’s regular comments about Avernum 0. I even chose one particular example to illustrate the point, taken from 2019, since it gives some interesting details about what the game might be. To be absolutely clear on that point, the post I mention is one from Jeff Vogel in which he explicitly talks about Avernum 0. It’s one of many posts of his on the subject. That is, by definition, evidence that Spiderweb is thinking about Avernum 0! And, not only that, but even doing some simple planning about the initial concepts. Here’s a reminder of my previous comments:

But of course! Surely no-one would think it possible to really kill the Great Dragon? Long may he reign! But, more seriously, it seems you’ve stumbled onto a slight bug, Carranzero. From what I can tell, it’s just a small omission. You also have to play through things in a slightly unconventional order in order to see this. So, just to check I'm right in my thinking, you can tell me several things. Firstly, in which order have you been doing Melanchion’s quests? Has he sent help to the portal, or has he not yet done so? Secondly, when you returned to Melanchion’s Keep, was he happy, or hostile?

It’s been mentioned briefly in this topic already, but I think it’s worth giving a little more detail on this point. Spiderweb has consistently talked about an idea to put together a prequel game to the Avernum series: ‘Avernum 0’. This game would be set long before all the others, looking at the Empire’s first excursions into the caves. It’s an idea that’s been floating around for quite some time, but the designer of these games – Jeff Vogel – keeps on mentioning it. I think that’s a good sign. It even appears that very simple concept work has been done on the game – in a post on Reddit from 2019, Jeff Vogel comments that Avernum 0 would use a fort-building system in a similar way to Queen’s Wish. Of course, this is only a possibility! As TriRodent points out, Spiderweb has a lot to keep it busy over the next few years! However, given that Spiderweb keeps coming back to the idea, and given the popularity of the series and the recent remakes, I think there’s a fair chance that this might eventually happen at some point down the line. So, be sure to keep playing Avernum! Recommend it to your friends! The more people who play and enjoy the Avernum series, the more likely it will be that it will be continued! :) Having said that, I think there is an interesting way that the series could continue to a seventh game. While a lot of things were tied up in Avernum 6, there is one huge loose end that hasn’t yet been dealt with, a massive gun that hasn’t yet fired. So, here are my thoughts on this. It fulfils some of your wishes too, Kalnnas. Avernum 7 is set on the surface, many decades after Avernum 6. It’s not set in Valorim, as seen in Avernum 3, but rather in one of the Empire’s other continents – for the purposes of this discussion, let’s say Pralgrad. After the events of Avernum 6, the world changed. With the severity of the food shortage in the caves, and after the terrifying ordeal faced by those trapped by the portal disaster, the majority of those who used to live in Avernum fled to the surface. The surface was unready for the huge influx of refugees, and many of those refugees were suspicious of the Empire’s rule. While some of the former Avernites returned to the Empire, many of the refugees gathered in large communities at the outskirts of the Empire’s control. Initially just large expanses of tents and hastily-constructed shelters, over time these communities grew into fully fledged villages and towns. Not willing to forsake their home, and refusing to bow completely to the Empire’s rule, these communities started to organise. They even referred to themselves as ‘New Avernum’. While there is some integration between the Empire and the New Avernites, there is a clear distinction between the two. The Empire is wealthy. The Avernites are not. The Empire is strict. New Avernum is a hub of experimentation and excitement – and it can be very dangerous. You are a group of soldiers, newly conscripted into the army at New Formello garrison, a small city in one of the rocky, infertile wastes on the western reaches of Pralgrad. These are dangerous times. Reports have been coming in from all over the Empire of mysterious accidents affecting centres of magical learning. One tower would collapse due to shifting foundations, another fall to fire, a third still be destroyed by some of its experiments running loose. Every few days, another school is mysteriously ruined. And not just in the Empire – New Avernum is affected too. In spite of the best minds in both groups working on the problem, no-one can find anything remotely suspicious about what’s going on. All the accidents seem genuine. But there are so many of them that they can’t be, can they? The people are uneasy and frightened. Crime is on the rise. The army and their wizards seem powerless to help. And, as if sensing weakness in the civilised world, creatures formerly thought extinct are once more prowling the roads, waylaying travellers. That’s where you come in. A group of renegade nephilim have started robbing travellers on the road to New Formello. Your job is to convince them to stop – in whatever way you deem fit. *Load Title Screen* So who’s the villain? The one plot point that’s never been fully resolved is the dragons. Sulfras makes bold claims in Avernum 3 that the dragons fully intend to take revenge on the Empire for their policy of mercilessly killing off so many of their race. Sulfras’s rage is quite genuine and heartfelt, and I see no reason why they shouldn’t carry out this threat. And yet Sulfras and the rest of our familiar Avernite dragons essentially disappear in the second trilogy. Why? Because they are plotting their revenge, of course! While the dragons only wish to harm the Empire, after Avernum 6, the distinctions between the Empire and the Avernites has lessened – New Avernum is just caught up in the crossfire. You can tie this into the Second Trilogy quite nicely, too. One of the dragons that does appear in that Trilogy is Athron. She would, I feel, be one of the dragons attacking the Empire. But I think Melanchion would disagree. You have strife here between mother and son – one fighting the Empire and the other, reluctantly, supporting it. And, to give credence to the name of the series, the base of operations of the hostile dragons – and Melanchion – are in the caves of Avernum itself. So, what do you do? You’re a New Avernite. You distrust the Empire, with all its rules, arrogance and bloody history. Do you fight the dragons, ending the threat to the Empire and your own people? Or do you join them, dealing the Empire a deadly blow, allowing you and your people to move out of the blasted wastes, into the fertile lands where you feel you rightfully belong? The choice is up to you ...

In paying careful attention to the lore of a work, I feel it always bears being careful about assumptions and inferences. If you’re using the argument I think you’re using to claim that the Thahd is sexless, that self-same argument would also apply to many creatures: think, for example, of crocodiles, or peacocks, or trout. Just because a creature isn’t obviously a mammal doesn’t mean that it has no physical gender! I feel I should also second TheKian’s comment about the lore of Geneforge 1. Far from being lore-light, that game features a significant amount of information. After all, it was the very first game in the series, so it had to set up the entire world, its inhabitants, politics and history – all from scratch. It also sets up the motifs that are explored in the later games in the series. It’s the strong foundation from which every other game flows! I still maintain that one of the best representations of a war involving shaping magic happens right back in Geneforge 1. Sadly, you are missing out on some critical parts of the world of Geneforge by not playing the first game, alhoon. Not least, your question about whether (and how) creations can reproduce is answered there. However, thankfully, you don’t have too much longer to wait now! And then all will be revealed! Otherwise, it’s nice to see a cockatrice appearing in a modern setting! The cockatrice was a common mythological creature during the middle ages, but it seems to have been a little neglected in modern times.

Patience, Warrior Mage. A badgered artist produces poor art – it’s much better to let a creative person work at their own pace! To put this into some context, Homeland is approaching one of the main Avernum games in size. Each of these games took years of work by Spiderweb Software, and that was their main occupation. Kelandon is working on this scenario in his spare time – he has to fit it in alongside his main occupation, and in amongst his other projects, not least helping to maintain these boards! That’s not to mention the current public health issues being faced around the world, making the climate for creative work that much more difficult. Homeland is going to take some time before it’s completed. As someone who is also working on creative projects of a not dissimilar scope, I can assure you that a few months here or there is nothing. I’m sure Kelandon will post an update here when he has something interesting to report! If you read through this topic, you’ll see that Kelandon has made excellent progress on this scenario. We’re on the home stretch, but we’re not there yet. Homeland will be completed, of that I’m sure, but it’s not going to be right away – it won’t be this month, or the next, or even a few months after that, I imagine. It’s going to take time, but it will happen. Until then, we need to be patient! So, why not use the waiting time in a constructive way? You’ve been learning to use the engine, so why not write your own scenario in the meantime? It could be anything you wanted. You could even write something in Kelandon’s own universe if you wished. How about a scenario looking at the original residents of Vasskolis, and how they dealt with the sudden arrival of the dragon Galthrax? Or looking at a Bahssikavan slith adventurer caught up in the chaos of the demon invasion of the city? Or a slith servant working in the ancient vahnatai empire before the fall, one who gets to see the demonic summoning by Vylas-Ihrno – the one that created the Lava Ocean – first hand? See if you can beat Kelandon – can you finish your scenario first?

Hello eddr2504, If I understand you correctly, you’re looking for the place where your party can activate the Empire’s portal from inside Portal Fortress. To do that, you need to enter the control tower. You can find this tower in the large courtyard at the north end of the fortress – it’s on the western side. Alternatively, search for these coordinates (you can find your party’s own coordinates using the ‘Location’ spell): x = 12, y = 18 In the control tower, you will find the control panels that activate the portal. If you’ve found the instructions, you’ll know what to do with them. Be sure to save your game before opening the portal, and keep a backup save at that point. Activating the portal starts a series of events that, if you’ve not fully prepared beforehand, can get the party into a difficult situation. Incidentally, it’s actually worth failing the portal mission just once. There’s an interesting ending associated with it. Try opening the portal all the way – you’ll know when that happens – and then leave Portal Fortress. The game will end, and your party will perish, but how that actually happens is worth reading about!

Hello suebee, It's worth mentioning that the vahnatai are only there to help you with the battles in the Basalt Fortress. They don't offer any further reward afterwards, nor do they directly contribute to the storyline later on. If you've done everything you need to do in the Fortress – and that should be fairly clear! – then, in terms of the game, there's no harm in leaving them there. You won't be missing out on anything. However, if you want, I can produce a little workaround to get them to leave. To do that, though, it would be useful to have a little handle on what exactly went wrong. If you'd like to get them to leave – and, remember, nothing additional will happen if you do this – then let me know what dialogue choices come up when you speak to Kabraxaz. I can work from there!

Hello eddr2504, You just missed a small step! There are two crystal switches on the main floor of the Halls of Chaos, and you need to flip both in order to change which stairway is open. One of the switches is near the northwestern corner of the level, and the other is near the southeastern corner. Once you flip the switch you missed, you should be able to proceed!

Don’t think that’s a bad thing, Warrior Mage! I just wanted to give you a little heads-up that people on these boards can’t always reply quickly, and that sometimes it might be easier and faster to check out things yourself. If you want to ask, then by all means ask!

Hello Warrior Mage, I’d like to build a little on Kelandon’s advice, if I may. When first starting work on a new program, engine, or something I have no prior experience with, there are always two things I feel are of particular importance: studying examples and experimentation. The resources you’ve been looking through are extremely useful, and include some excellent introductions. They contain some great reference material, and you’ll want to keep them to hand! Do check out Kelandon’s introductory article if you haven’t already, which is one of the articles linked above. However, reference material can be confusing when just taken on its own. Think of it this way. Imagine you’re trying to learn a new spoken language. Would you try learning the language solely from dictionaries and simple introductory texts for tourists? Wouldn’t you also like to see examples of real sentences, to hear people speak it in real-world contexts, and to experiment with saying simple things yourself? The reference guides are useful, but are made far more so when combined with hearing examples and trying things out yourself! The same is true here. If you want to get to grips with Blades, examples and experimentation are two key tools in your arsenal! Kelandon suggested looking at his scenarios, and I second that. However, it’s also worth remembering that the four scenarios bundled with the game (Valley of Dying Things, etc.) were in part written to demonstrate the engine. They’re full of examples of how to do certain things. So, first off, if you’ve not played the scenarios – play them! One you’ve done that, you can use the information they contain to help you in your designing. If you want to do something specific, think back to those scenarios and consider if any of them do what you’re trying to do. If so, great! You can look at that scenario in the editor, or in its scripts, and see precisely how it was done. I’m saying all of this because I hope it will be helpful. We are of course more than happy to answer questions on here. We enjoy doing so! But remember that it always takes a little time for us to reply. So, if you ask us about everything, you might find that waiting time adding up quite quickly! Generally speaking, it might be quicker to discover certain things from poking around in the engine yourself. Let’s take your question. You want to find out how to have a message appear when your scenario is first opened, right? Let’s try putting my suggestion into practice. Think back to Valley of Dying Things. You’ll remember that, when you open the scenario, a few screens appear telling you the story of what’s going on. So, let’s load the scenario and try to find out how that’s done. In the 3D editor, there’s lots of information that comes up at once. One of the possible menu choices is ‘Scenario’. That sounds like a good place to start looking! If you click on that menu, you’ll see various items, three of which are ‘Set Intro Text 1’, ‘Set Intro Text 2’ and ‘Set Intro Text 3’. If you open the first, you’ll see some text. It’s the introductory text for the scenario – exactly what you’ve been looking for! Now that you’ve found out how Valley of Dying things does this, you can do it in your scenario too! Load your scenario, navigate to ‘Set Intro Text 1’ and type in what you want to say – try a ‘Hello World!’. Of course, if you were looking into this yourself, you might not stumble onto the right menu response right away. It might take you a few minutes. But I hope this illustrates my point – a few minutes looking at an example and trying things out yourself can save you hours of waiting for replies on this forum, and then trying to interpret them! To summarise, we’re more than happy to help you figure things out! But don’t forget that you can also learn a lot yourself by poking around in pre-existing scenarios, and trying things out for yourself. By combining this with questions about some of the more tricky points, you might be surprised to find out how quickly you’ll learn how everything works – you’ll be designing scenarios before you know it!

It’s entirely possible that Steam behaves differently on different platforms, so your experience and mine might differ. But it’s probably worth just being clear on this point. Are you absolutely sure? On my version of Steam, if I log in when I have no internet connection, I’m automatically given the option to launch in an offline mode. So I never need an internet connection to access my Steam library. That seems like good design, after all – requiring an internet connection to launch a special mode for when the user has no such connection seems like an odd Catch 22, one that I’m sure the programmers would pick up on. Of course, my version of Steam may behave differently than yours. However, it seems to me there’s no harm in making sure yourself – just in case!