Mah Al Ibara

P.P.P.S. Almost forgot: Ssschah gave me a message to you about "Owing you a great debt" and about how "neither I nor my kin shall soon forget", and then he start throwing in Slith words that all just sounded like "hiss" to me, and that's when my eyes glazed over and I started thinking that it was probably overkill to go into that last fight wearing the Crystalline Plate when I probably could've taken Dork-ass out just as easily wearing the Mercuric Chain, which got me thinking about sweat, and then I started wondering if Avernites know some tricks to keep stuff from rusting that we don't know about. And then Ssschah said, "I trust you will pass this message on to Dionicio," and I'm like, "Hey, consider it passed, dude." So Ssschah says "Thanks." I think.

Dionicio, dude, I am SO sorry. I knew you were up there in that cell, but I didn't want to bother until I had cleaned out the riffraff, you know? I thought, I'll go get him when I'm ready to take on the Big Guy. I swear, man, that was my plan. But when it came time to go in for the kill, I just, like, totally blanked, you know? I mean, it's not like I forgot about you. Hey, how could I forget you after all we've through together, bro? It's just that, well, you being up there and all ready and raring to help me out just kind of...slipped my mind. You know how sometimes you get up and go to the kitchen, and then you're like, what did I come in here for? And you end up doing something completely different? LOL Yeah, it was just like that. Except in this case, the fate of both our nations was at stake. So anyway, somehow I managed to take out Dork-ass (LOL) without your help (although, of course, it would have been a LOT easier if I had your help, cause I know you totally rock in a tight spot, dude), and then, just as I'm about to leave, I go "Oh, sh*t! Dionicio!" And I run upstairs and throw open the cell door...and you're, like, gone. ... So I'm thinking, whoa, I hope he got out all right and isn't, like, totally pissed off at me, but then I walk outside and it's, like, this horde is charging the fortress, and there's General Redmark with that totally '90s beard of his and all hell breaks out and then everything was, like, completely insane for, like, three months, and all the time (I swear) I'm thinking, "I gotta find out what happened to Dionicio." So, dude, are you alive or what? Are you, like, totally pissed? Because I would understand if you are, man, completely. I'd be pissed off, too. But, hey, you're the king of irony right? I'm sure you can appreciate the irony here, because, it's, like, totally ironic, isn't it? I mean, there you are, with some kickass spells, all ready to help and all, and I, like, go in without you. It's kinda funny, when you think about it. I think some day we'll all look back on this and laugh. So, no hard feelings? Drop me a line when you find time, dude. Oh, note the new e-mail address. Yeah, I know. "m-pire_hero1@empire.go.em" Totally gay, I know, but I've got an image to keep up. You know how it is. Later, Aldous P.S. Cordelia and I split. She said I wasn't "intellectually stimulating enough". I'm like, "Hello? I'm a soldier?" She seemed to find me "stimulating enough" when we were on the road. Besides, it's not like I'm totally stupid. I'm a "3," man, which is enough to keep from being charmed. Sometimes. On a good day. So who do you think she went and hooked up with? Remember Lark? Yeah, that Lark. Talk about rubbing salt in the wound. Is it supposed to make me feel better or worse that she dumped me for a chick? Anyway, I've been seeing this nephilim archer chick named Meow. (No joke: that's her name.) She's great, but I've got these allergies, so I have to get shots once a month. Maybe you know this, but nephilim chicks are pretty hot. Except for that hairball thing. Sheesh. And she won't come near me if I haven't bathed in, like, six hours. P.P.S.: Mycroft tells me to tell you, "Please, please answer my e-mail!" I swear to god, he's been writing poems about you. Like, really bad poems, too. I keep telling him, "Get over it, dude, you know Dionicio doesn't swing that way," but he says his "gaydar" tells him otherwise. Anyway, just passing the message on. Oh, and he tells me to tell you that he reminded me twice to go back for you before the big fight, which may be true. I don't remember. What can I say, dude, I'm just a "3". LOL

Bump. Found new trinkets that can shorten the process.

Originally Posted By: Synergy He's going to piss you off even more when you try to kill him. The confrontation is a teeth-gritter. -S- Definitely. My second time through, I killed all the other critters first, retreated and refreshed, and came back again to take on G and his army of shades. Even then, it was a hard fight.

I haven't tried to loot Highground, on the sly or otherwise, and I haven't tried killing Melanchion. I've done the other places Sleeping Dragon recommended. On on my third play, and this time I was planning to diligently horde my mined crystals, but the Vahatnai lands seemed far away and I lost my patience. Now that I just got through the Howling Depths, I wish I had hung on to the mined crystals I sold. And I've been typing "u" ever twenty seconds or so. Thanks for the ideas!

Clever! I'll try that my fourth time around.

Question about Randomizer's spolier. Click to reveal.. Torum? Where is he? I seem to remember running into a demon who had settled into an abandoned Vahatnai dome, but I don't remember a name or title.

Do you know how to get to Gladwell? You can't kill him by going in through the front door. You have to use the back entrance, which is accessed by the undead-infested wasteland adjacent to the Fang Clan's little fort in the Azure Gallery. That same path also leads to the Soultaker's Pit, but you might want to save that area for later. Like the lich area in the Vahatnai lands, it's not a quest but just an optional advanced area.

Hm. I thought you could get back through that passage again (assuming the calderas don't kill you). The other way to get back to the Vahatnai lands without cheating is to proceed to Melanchion's keep, where you will find a teleport pylon waiting.

There is a path that leads from the northeast corner of Kherebass to the other side of the Vahatnai gate. Since you didn't get them to open the gate, this must be the path you took to get to the other side. You go down the stairs in the northwest chamber of the Kherebass area, go through the gate to the south, there's a big cavequake, calderas start blasting away, monsters appear from all over. A fun time to be had by all. Well, that is the path back to the Vahatnai lands, too. But it's a lot easier going back. (Still have to watch out for the calderas, though.) Seeing the crystal soul, Epiron-Bok, is easy, because he wants to see you. I assume you've spoken with everyone you can in the Vahatnai fort? Well, if you approach the room that houses Epiron-Bok, you'll find the door blocked by a guard, but (if I recall correctly), when you try to talk to the guard, you get a message saying the guard moves aside at Epiron-Bok's request. To get the chunk of Epiron-Bok, ask politely. You only have to give him some of your intelligence and endurance in return. (Hey, that's what you get for accepting Gladwell's geas. Didn't you suspect it was too good to be true?) About the cult, yeah, you need to get through their home base, which is, as I said, near Melanchion's island. If you get in the boat on the eastern side of the Vahatnai gate and head south, you will eventually come to a large gallery. Melanchion's island is right in the middle. Hard to miss. About the raised area under the Vahatnai lands that you can't get to, I couldn't figure that out the first time either, but I did the second time. Have you gotten the Hraithe Lord quest from Lark? If you have, then talk to Epiron-Bok (the crystal soul), and he'll tell you how to get there. You can't enter without his instructions. You have to get the quest from Lark, and to do that you have to complete her prior quests. In order, Lark's quests are: Baquba the Aranea Venomous Mongbat Pit Crawler Lost Shade Moref Mindwarp Chitrach Whirling Thrasher Hraither Lord Black Horror If you don't do these quests, you miss out on a lot of fun and rewards.

Don't worry: you'll meet again.

Wow. It's hard to imagine how you could have done all those things in that order. So you have the Gladwell geas, I take it? Killing the mayor of Muck will simply get the Vahatnai to open the gate to the east. But it sounds like you already got to the other side of the gate. The only way I know of doing that is the hard way, in the cadera-filled tunnels. That path exits (on the eastern side) nearby Cienna's abandoned camp. Isn't that how you got to the other side of the gate and met Ruth? I think you can get rid of the giant diplomacy quest just by telling the charming mayor of Highground that you killed the giant queen. She'll be pissed off, but there are no consequences, other than a Fang clan ambush on the road between Highground and Muck. The alternative route Donicio seeks is north of Melanchion's island. You have to fight your way through the monster-loving cultists' lair. WORD OF WARNING: Since you seem to act before you think , DON'T kill the cultist leader UNTIL she has opened the gate for you. If I recall correctly, the gate can only be opened by her. You can (and must, I think) attack her at the ENTRANCE to the lair, but once she flees inside, DO NOT attack her again until she has opened the gate.

Not that I can tell. I tried it both ways, and there was no significant difference. It doesn't even prevent you from joining the Darkside Loyalists if you kill her. Do you want a spoiler as to what happens in both scenarios?

Got Moref, too. Making my slith archer the "magnet" was easier than I expected. Just have everyone else retreat to the northwest corner while she shoots arrows at the golems from the center of the room, then when the golems have gathered around her, have the mage soften them up with Icy Rain. The golems pretty much do the rest themselves by punching my assault-blessed slith. Things went well until I ran out of assault crystals/elixirs and invulnerability potions. When my slith bit the dust, in order to keep the golems from moving to the northwest corner, I had to send my human fighter into their midst on a suicide mission. By the time I killed Moref, only my mage was left standing. Phew. Thanks again to Thuryl and Thrasher for the advice.

Originally Posted By: Thuryl You know you can get the Divine Fire spell by breaking into Solberg's private lab in the Northeast Quadrant, right? That's a pretty good area-effect attack for this point in the game. Worked like a charm. Having the Divine Fire spell made all the difference in the world. It also occurred to me to summon two shades, whom I also blessed with an assault crystal. The sentinels dropped like flies. Thanks. Now on to Moref.

Originally Posted By: Thrasher I had to keep the rest of my party up away from the fray, while my Slith fighter played the part of an attractor. How did you manage that?

Am I the only one who gets sent to the top forum page any time I click a link? Did something happen to all old links when the forums "broke" a few days ago? Alorael made all this great info available to us, but I can't access any of it.

Originally Posted By: Thuryl You know you can get the Divine Fire spell by breaking into Solberg's private lab in the Northeast Quadrant, right? That's a pretty good area-effect attack for this point in the game. Ah-hah. I knew there was a spell up there, but forgot what it was, and haven't been up there yet this time around. I'll sneak up there and grab it. Originally Posted By: Thuryl For Moref, it helps if you have a slith fighter with lots of fire resistance equipment for all the sentinels to crowd around, so he takes less damage from the explosions. I've got a slith fighter. I'll see what I can do. Many thanks again.

My second time through the game, I discovered the benefits of joining the Darkside (though I ultimately betrayed Dorikas) and was happily learning great spells from Ruth at great prices. But even with her prices, she has so much to offer, I was never able to max out my spell levels. I did just about everything my conscious allowed me to (wiping out the Fang Clan, wiping out Harkin's Landing, wiping out the Anama, wiping out Tranquility--since they had become hostile). I sold everything I didn't intend to use in my final battle with Dorikas. But I still couldn't come up with enough gold. In the end, my lust for maxed-out spells got the best of me, and I used the "iampoor" cheat code to get the gold I needed. I didn't attack the Vahatnai or Melanchion. And attacking other Avernum-controlled settlements is both hard to justify and may (correct me if I'm wrong) affect the outcome of the game. I suppose if you sincerely joined the Darkside, and killed Redmark, you could justifiably (?) wipe out everything outside Dorikas' fortress. This may be an overly broad question, but...where's the loot, dude? Where are good sources of treasure that can be turned into cash? BTW, I found most the settlements I wiped out to have very little real loot. Tranquility was the biggest disappointment here. Even old Solberg doesn't have much of value. (The biggest source of treasure in Tranquility is the Sentinel Workshop, which you get whether you attack Tranquility or don't.) Here's a more specific question. Is there major loot to be had by attacking the Vahatnai and/or Melanchion? Can you access all of Melanchion's treasure by killing him and his minions? Or are they forever out of reach, like that little locked room in the crystal shop in Ahonaria?

Originally Posted By: Evnissyen Matt: How'd you even find Redmark at Blackchasm at the end? For me, he disappeared from Blackchasm sometime toward the end of the game. Redmark disappears into the inner fort. If you kill Dorikas and walk out the front gate (the only gate) of Dorikas' fortress, Redmark comes running, as you no doubt know. But if, after you've killed Dorikas, you use the cheat code to leave the fortress without walking out the gate, you will find Redmark in the Inner Blackchasm Fortress. Of course, you have to get the quest to kill Redmark from Dorikas first, otherwise you can never get into the Inner Blackchasm Fortress. (Dorikas gives you the key to the inner fortress when you accept the quest.) BTW, if you didn't attack Ruth in Exodus, you can easily join the Darkside when you meet Ruth just past the Vahatnai gates without much sacrifice. I suppose the "cheapest" ticket to the Darkside is letting Tholmen escape at the Howling Depths, but since I had already killed him, I gave Ruth Solberg's notes. No big loss, since the benefits of joining the Darkside (learning spells from Ruth at bargain-basement prices) far outweighs any benefit you would get by giving the notes to Melanchion or doing something else with them.

Originally Posted By: Thuryl BFor the endurance test, I think I ended up just killing any sentinels that attacked. If you haven't killed any sentinels in the other quadrants, it shouldn't make Tranquility hostile. Hmm. Naturally, I'm trying to kill them, but since about 16 of them have me surrounded within 1 turn of starting the test, and since my only area-effect attacks are Icy Rain and Lightning Spray, this is easier said than done. I suppose if I focused on a few at a time, I might have better results, but I only managed to kill about three of them before they overwhelmed me, and for every one I killed, there were another two waiting to take it's place. Originally Posted By: Thuryl Moref is annoying, but not that difficult even if you can't see the wisps. Try to wear all the sentinels down evenly with area-effect spells and then kill several of them in a single round to maximise your chances of getting the one with Moref in it. I understand this in theory, but I always find it hard to carry out in practice. If you stay huddled in the middle, let them surround you, then use area attacks to kill a bunch at once, you take a massive blast. But if you scatter your players, there are never enough sentinels (golems, whatever they are) in one spot to make effective use of area attacks, and of course new ones keep popping up at the far side of the room. It's tempting to just put both off until my team is lot stronger, but that probably means I'll gain fewer experience points, and of course you can't do the Warped Chitrach quest until you've taken care of Moref. I think A5 is the best game Jeff has made yet, but it is damned challenging, and the Moref quest is one of a few that I find tedious and unrewarding. At least the Haakai tribute quest, though hard, is interesting, but of course all this is subjective. Thanks for the advice!

I'm on my third run through A5, so I don't need tips on killing Moref or surviving the Endurance Test in the southeast quadrant of Solberg's lands. But I would appreciate more general advice. On my third go, I think I have played the game with maximum efficiency, as evidenced by the shortness of my quest list (just 5 items) and the relative ease with which I've been able to do tasks that were much harder the first two times through. So I was hoping I might be able to take on Moref and Malachai's Endurance Test before moving on to Anama, the Howling Depths, etc. (FYI, 3 of my characters are currently level 20, my slith is level 19, and everyone's armor ranges from 50% to 54%.) I tried the Endurance Test, and thought I approached it pretty cleverly: I had my characters huddled in a square, with the two magic users adjacent to the "neutral" sentinel, in order to minimize the number of sentinels that could attack at a given time. But to no avail. Even gobbling up healing potions and elixirs like Rush Limbaugh on pain killers, all my characters were dead before the clock ran out. I haven't even tried Moref yet, apart from clearing out the ghasts (or whatever they were), because that was even a tougher fight than the Endurance Test for me. (And, no, I never have seen the elusive wisp of light everyone talks about.) So the question is, is it a waste of resources and time to try these two quests before getting through the Howling Depths and into the Azure Gallery? Have any of you (without cheating) been able to complete these quests before leaving Tranquility? If so, is there some strategy I am overlooking?

When I find a place to be topographically tortuous (how 'bout all those portals in the lower level of the Sentinel Workshop?), I do screen grabs (Command-Shift-3 on a Mac), paste them together, add notes, etc. I did the same thing with the Honeycomb in A4. I'm doing A5 for the third time now, and this time I'm keeping notes of things I have to go back for (locked doors, magical barriers, traps) when I've reached a high enough level. I'm also keeping track of where I can buy certain ingredients (Energetic Herbs!), Wisdom Brews, etc. But these are the kind of things you simply don't think about your first time through, particularly if you've never played one of Jeff's games before.

Originally Posted By: Randomizer Besides you can only get a +12 Hackmaster blade. The pommel stone for a +15 is hidden on the ledge near Dorikas' Fortress. Am I right in assuming you're joking here?

I think it must be difficult for people who started somewhere in the middle to judge the older games objectively, simply because the engine has improved so much that going back to using the old engine is extremely frustrating. Fortunately, I played every Spiderweb game in order, starting with Exile I, so for me, apart from nitpicking about plots and such, it has just gotten better and better. As for Blades of Exile/Avernum, I loved the concept, but with that outdated engine, it's just too frustrating to play. Ditto with Avernum. What would be great is if Jeff could someday update the "Blades" engine in such a way that he could regularly put out upgraded versions that would have backwards compatibility, so that scenarios would not become obsolete with each upgrade. I know it's a lot to ask, but there's a long and proud tradition of asking too much of Jeff, and I'm not about to break with that tradition.