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Tsvetushchiy

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Tenderfoot Thahd

Tenderfoot Thahd (2/17)

  1. Interesting! Jeff's justification doesn't seem to make sense from Avernum's point of view though. You'd only be comfortable sending Sliths and Nephils to the surface if you already knew that the Empire was indifferent. Always enjoyed the way that you step into Kriszan fearing violent hostility and are met with complete indifference.
  2. More fights than I'd like to admit went from fully winnable to irreversibly lost because I cured the wrong person, or attacked when I meant to heal. The level of organisation and effectiveness in Avernum is crazy impressive for a bunch of misfits, criminals and undesirables. Decide to go up to the surface? Build Portal Fortress, Fort Emergence, raise an army etc. Most people seem remarkably well adjusted. Where things are dysfunctional it's because of too much bureaucracy. If you see two experts on these forums arguing about whose strategy is correct, the answer is that both strategies will work fine on the hardest fights on Torment. Slith may not be well balanced, but finishing the game with a Slith and Nephil in your party feels like a good thing for species relations in the Empire. I'd never seen the Tower of the Magi event, so waited til the 150th day expecting some cool loot and maybe a fun battle or two. I've never felt so ashamed of my curiosity. What happened in the tower was more brutal and horrid than I'd ever imagined. But hardly less scary than this. Just after I'd got the message saying "Something terrible has happened, but you're not sure what", I rounded the corner and behold: https://i.imgur.com/sQq9LmP.png A gigantic horde of rampaging slimes were seething across Krizsan Province. I was terrified for a moment until I realised what had happened. There was a wandering monster spawn for slimes & bandits nearby, which inexplicably had continued working even after Bojar and the slime plague were defeated. The fact that one 25-year-old build an engine, a gigantic world, an epic story, plausible and involving characters, any number of jokes, a combat system, awesome spells and skills, and goodness knows what else -- it remains truly mind-blowing to me. I wish I had half Jeff's imagination, talent or energy. Eyebeasts, for me at least, have the biggest gap between how flimsy they look and how crazy tough they are. The most annoying thing playing the game was the lag I got every time I attacked. Seemed to be less bad when you were overkilling enemies, and worse when they were more healthy relative to the amount of damage you did. Playing on Casual eliminated the lag almost entirely. The difference between a hard fight and an easy one is two levels. And, more often than not, that's the difference between hard one and an impossible one too. Jeff thinks I'm a lot more interested in visiting random farmhouses or trading with 2-bit peripatetic merchants than I actually am. Anyone else ever try to talk to someone in town only to realise you're clicking a member of your own party? The Valley of the Usagi (on Torment at least) feels like the main turning point in the game, where things gets easier afterwards. ... except for the Golem Factory, which is always an agonising slog unless you set the difficult to Casual. The weird thing about stealing isn't that Jeff tells you it's wrong and then rewards you every time you do it. It's that there are items that aren't marked Steal. Like, "These bars of iron are mine. But I'm not possessive about those sacks of coal". No happy friendly spiders, you're cute 🖤 Smite (the giant-slaying spear) wins the prize for the game's most useless effect. Not bad, just really, really late. Could Rentar-Ihrno please explain why it's OK to tell Crystal Souls to kill me, but so shocking when I kill them back? I miss Wound, and I miss the Alien Slime's look from Exile. The current Alien Slime doesn't look very alien ... or slimy? The existence of giant bugs in Avernum is legit. Big creatures are more efficient, and so do better in environments where food is scarce. Like giant deep sea squid. Similarly, basalisks on the lost isles feel akin to giant tortoises on the Galápagos. A lot of other creatures however ... Daze is as useful at the start of the game as at the end. Wonderful spell. Most others are useless. If one scary creature is about to have their turn, you're ok. If two are, you need to reload. "Kill roaches for Nell" has the most disproportionate quest rewards in the game. I'm not one to turn down priceless crystals, but 200 gold and some useless herbs would have done fine. I can find slime towers and friendly roaches, navigate Zkal's labyrinth and spelunk the deepest of stalkers, but finding Mundt was the hardest challenge of all. I was staggered by how many new hidey-holes, bosses and even major plot moments I found on my third "completionist" run. Never even noticed the Vahnatai tunnel before ... Some of the naming in this game is terrible. +x% to blessings/curses is ambiguous, and +x% faster fatigue recovery is the surely the most confusing way of expressing that. Balance The amount of gold available in the game is ridiculous. Found myself carrying round an inventory of steel breastplates and artifacts because I'd hit max gold and couldn't find anything to spend it on. A magic user can get Adrenaline Rush for free if they: equip the Discipline Blade (+5 melee stats), do +2 training in each melee stat, do Volosto training ... and then get a bonus from some other events that I can't remember. Kinda cool, and easily doable – especially with an archer party. 3 archers + 1 mage/priest was definitely OP. Never struggled on Torment. With 3 archers you can get 22(+?) gymnastics, and 2x20 sniper. Pretty sweet. Spell and ranged damage work best when you stack them. You usually need multiple archers to kill nasty spell casters in one turn. And often, magic usually takes, say, a quarter of a creature's life, whereas melee/ranged will, say, take half. So if you have one magic damage dealer, archer and fighter, the magic user will generally be redundant. But 4 magic damage dealers, and you evaporate your enemies. And if any of that was old hat, irrelevant, or trite, thanks for reading anyway.
  3. Having just played through on torment, I think that what make it so difficult was my expectations from previous playthroughs, and from playing Exile. The expectation that I should be able to go blow to blow with goblins from the very start. That I should be able to defeat Chief Cruncha in my first slog through the goblin hideout. That I should be able to defeat Gukhbar (sp?) before defeating the slimes. None of that worked out, of course, and I felt outraged and kept reloading and failing again. Eventually I learned some new tricks. I discovered Daze, learned a bit of caution, and used wands and scrolls for the first time ever. But mostly I changed the order I did things in. Struggling with Chief Cruncha? Kill some wolves and bandits first. Struggling with The Grinder? Complete the goblin quest with Commander Johnson, drop off the statue at Ghirka, and buy some spell upgrades. Gukhbar? Just come back later. After completing the game on torment once, I started a new game today and played through the first few hours just to see if it would be easier this time. It was – I'd even say that it was a breeze. Some of that's because I'd already played through the game and knew what options were available to me. But a lot of it was knowing that taking other options was OK.
  4. I was all for butchering and pillaging through most of the game, but stopped at the dragons. One of the best things about Avernum is how big it feels. When you start, majestic and terrifying creatures lurk everywhere, potent artifacts wait to be discovered, and the dungeons are fresh and full of mystery. But then you clear the place out. At times it almost feels like you're the Empire, out to enforce blandness. Killing the dragons would have taken the last bit of mystery out of the game. I left them alone.
  5. Does anyone know if there's a way of placating them without using cheats? I didn't think they'd get mad, since Lorelei never got mad when I (repeatedly) killed their skribbane-hunting guards. I've tried leaving them alone for upwards of 30 days, but still no change.
  6. The western nephil (loot) and southern rats will be a breeze, and so should the western ice worm (quest). You might still struggle with the chitrak infestation by New Formello (quest), the nasty worms in the eastern tunnels (loot) and the Slith villages by Erika (loot). And you'll probably need a good deal more arcane lore before it's worth buying the boat at New Cotra (spell books). It all depends on the difficulty though.
  7. I was doing the Filth Factory last night and picked up the large scales before getting into a pickle that made me reload. But the second time round I forgot to pick them up again before I incinerated the place. (I realised when I got back to Berra and he gave me an earful for having no evidence. I'm sorry Berra!) Is there any cheat to repair the problem? And if not, will I definately miss out on a lot of cool stuff? Is there any way to see the cool stuff desite my blunder? Thanks very much!
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