Spidweb

Also, if you tell Redbeard to punish Vanatok's Stead, Miklosh is one of the villagers killed. I am considering changing this for v101, as it is becoming a source of confusion. - Jeff Vogel

For v101 I am changing the quest-giver's text to make it a little clearer what you have to do for this. - Jeff Vogel

For the record, I have no idea how The Corruption was created. I considered figuring it out, but I realized it was much more fun to write when I didn't know. I REALLY enjoyed writing everything in The Corruption. - Jeff Vogel

This will be fixed in 101. - Jeff Vogel

It's meant to be good. Otherwise, people won't bother to use it. Though I should check and make sure the cooldown is long enough. I wanted the tinkermage to feel powerful even in situations where turrets aren't working. (And the example about of it giving 31 turns of duration is a perfect example of why I made base skills stop affecting status effects. Balancing that just became too ugly, especially when you factor in how it was effecting abilities of enemy bosses.) - Jeff Vogel

I am reverting Nature Mastery base ability back to its role in Avadon 1 & 2, giving shamans more health. - Jeff Vogel

I just went through every ability and made sure that each ability had an appropriate tag for base ability that affects it. I also buffed up a number of PC abilities to make them more tempting. (Though this will be a slight buff for enemies too, but nothing game-breaking.) It nags me a little that the Blademaster's charge abilities go off of dexterity, but I'm leaving that for now. - Jeff Vogel

Charge Weapons is going to be rebalanced to be more in line with the other base level abilities. Edit: Base duration will be average of 4.5 turns. Each level increases duration for 1.5 turns. For tinkermages using weapon-type attacks, one turn to get double effect for this period of time seems like a reasonable ability. - Jeff Vogel

Thank you VERY much Mephisto for the saved games. When I have bug feedback like this, I can deal with bugs very efficiently. I did indeed make a mistake. I did a bit of rebalancing over a year ago, and I forgot what I changed and why I changed it. Basically, I was trying to get status effects (especially high-impact ones like Battle Frenzy and Stun) under control. I didn't want the player to have infinite double turns or be hit by 10+ turn stuns. This was what was nagging at me when checking this. If you character has 20 strength and uses COTF, for example, strength would give an extra THREE bonus turns. I can't balance around that sort of power surge. To keep these effects under control, I made them only be affected by your skill in the ability itself. Base stats like strength are reserved for affecting regular damage attacks. (So don't worry. Base stats are still very important.) So, basically, the tooltip is wrong. I'll make the following changes. 1. Change "Based on" to "Improved by" for clarity. 2. Remove that message for abilities not affected by base stats. Also, I'm still quite sure that int is helping to make turrets, but it's not helping enough. (As in, it takes 6-7 points of Int to get 1 level of turret). This isn't enough. So ... 3. Each point of int now has a 20% chance of giving the turret another level. (More powerful Tinkermages. That's what we needed. :-/ ) I hope this addresses these issues. I'm sorry for the unclear tooltips, and I'll make sure it's better in 1.0.1. - Jeff Vogel

How about this? Save the first save into the upper left save slot. Save that second game in the save slot just below it. The locations of your saved games is given on the support page. Compress Save0 and Save1 and email them to support@spiderwebsoftware.com. I'll see what is going on. - Jeff Vogel

After Avadon 2, it was clear that Tinkermages needed a nerf. They are still overpowered, but less egregiously so. I just went through the code step by step. Every level of Turret Craft has a 90% chance of increasing a turret's level by 1. Every level of Intelligence has a 15% chance of increasing a turret's level by 1. The key quote is here: "If any of the things I tested improve some other aspect of turrets (like total HP) but don't improve their attacks, I wouldn't have picked it up." Raising level increases EVERYTHING. Health. Chance to hit. Damage. Resistance to damage. Turrets are totally getting stronger when you up those skills. It's just can be subtle. The healing pylon was nerfed from Avadon 2 to Avadon 3. It was WAY overpowered. Hey, I might be wrong. If I am, I will fix it and apologize. However, I DO read my email at support@spiderwebsoftware.com. If you think something is broken, it might be worth dropping a note there before everyone on the forums decides everything is broken forever. - Jeff Vogel

I will look at shamans for v1.0.1. Any specific comments about issues with them are welcome. They are intended to be a support class, but I don't want them to be painfully bad. Edit: Is fragility the key issue? Having the basic effect of Nature Mastery be protection from damage might be a worthwhile change. Any particular form of damage worse than others? - Jeff Vogel

The bug reported for Steel Discipline (not Lightning Discipline) was indeed a bug. Fixed in 1.0.1. Thank you! - Jeff Vogel

Thank you for bringing this to my attention. For bug reports, specificity is everything. In this whole thing, I only found one skill that was specifically listed as using the wrong value: Call of the Frenzy. (I will look at the issue with Lightning Discipline separately.) Linking to old bug reports, especially 3 year old bug reports for different games which use code that was entirely rewritten for Avadon 3, isn't useful to me. I'm not saying Avadon 2 doesn't have a bug. I know you're trying to be helpful. But it's not helpful for this issue. Anyway. I just fired up the game in debug, used Call of the Frenzy several times, and went through all the ability code step by step. It DOES use strength. However, it doesn't use it much. Basically, it does a base amount of 3 levels, and then increases this amount by 5% per point of strength. So if your strength is 10, there is a 50% chance of increasing the duration by 1, applied 3 times. (So, on average, the duration becomes 4.5.) Because the change of every point of strength is so small, I can see why you'd think it was going off of the wrong ability. This is a small effect, which means this is a legitimate balance issue. Call of the Frenzy is a STRONG ability, so I am really nervous about buffing it too much. But I will change the bonus to 10%. This is a serious, top branch ability, after all. But hey, I might be wrong. I certainly have been before. If you are SURE Call of Frenzy goes off intelligence, why do you think so? If you think you can prove it, Send a compressed saved game to support@spiderwebsoftware.com and I will try it out. If there really is a bug, I will gladly admit I am wrong. If there are any other specific abilities you can name that have issues, again, name them. A saved game to serve as evidence helps. Thank you very much for your help! - Jeff Vogel

These issues will be much better in 1.0.1.

The font size changes all text bubbles and mouseover text. It doesn't change the dialogue text size ... this is limited by the need for it to fit on small monitors. (And a lot of people have very small monitors.)

Go into settings and look for the gameplay area setting. Try setting it to large and see if that helps. Also, I could use more info about your system. Like Mac or Win, what OS, native resolution of monitor. - Jeff Vogel

This is the way it has to work now. Alas, with the advent of Retina monitors, changing resolutions on OpenGL has a lot of problems. If you want to play the game in a different monitor resolution, manually change the resolution, then run the game in full screen mode. Hope this helps! - Jeff Vogel

Thank you VERY much everyone who posted in this thread. I read all of it, and a number of suggestions were implemented in one way or another. I genuinely think Avadon 3 will be a better game as a result. There are a ton of interface improvements, and they will be carried over to the Avernum engine as well for Avernum 3: Ruined World. However, I am now almost 3 regions into designing Avadon 3, and my focus is much less on the engine and much more on the giant job of just finishing the game. I doubt I'll visit this thread again, and further comments are best directed to the support email. Thanks again, and I hope the thing is ready late Summer, 2016! - Jeff Vogel

No unified inventory, sorry. What items are in what character's pack is a tactical decision. Plus, I just don't like this sort of system. It's immersion breaking for me. - Jeff Vogel

Thank you VERY much everyone who posted in this thread. I read all of it, and a number of suggestions were implemented in one way or another. I genuinely think Avadon 3 will be a better game as a result. There are a ton of interface improvements, and they will be carried over to the Avernum engine as well for Avernum 3: Ruined World. However, I am now almost 3 regions into designing Avadon 3, and my focus is much less on the engine and much more on the giant job of just finishing the game. I doubt I'll visit this thread again, and further comments are best directed to the support email. Thanks again, and I hope the thing is ready late Summer, 2016! - Jeff Vogel

It will just skip g and i. I'm really not sure about doing the same thing with the abilities window. 1. Starting the list with 'b' seems really weird to me. 2. I've had a million requests for the inventory window change, but this is the first time I've seen someone ask for the Abilities windows change. I think this is because the vast majority of the time, people close that window by picking an ability. - Jeff Vogel

In the inventory, pressing a button that opens the window now closes the window. (So pressing 'g' twice opens then closes inventory. Same with 'i'.) I resisted this change for a long time because Escape is always the default Back Out button, but it's been requested so many times. Also, items on ground now sort so that items that are worth something are moved to the front of the list. - Jeff Vogel

I am also adding ground effects like in Avernum. There are a bunch of them, that damage or bless/heal, or curse those who cross them. I've done a ton of adding skills and rebalancing additional ones. There are a lot of new skills. Weak ones are stronger. Non-tinkermage abilities got a lot of buffs, to help other classes catch up. Shadowwalkers have melee abilities that do way more damage (and are immune to friendly fire). Taunt effects are much stronger. Experience is rebalanced, so people will hit max level much later. However, characters who do all side quests becoming overpowered for the main quest is pretty much a feature of computer RPGs. (I've tried a ton of them this year, and ALL of them are like that.) - Jeff Vogel

Of course. Assuming, that is, that potions to restore fatigue are common enough and powerful enough to enable this. It will be doable, but not easily or often. Fatigue will work much like in spell energy in Geneforge, FWIW. Requested feature added: Tooltips for skills now say what base stat it depends on. I reworked all of this so that the stats abilities depend on make sense. For example, for tinkermages, melee depends on strength, missile abilities depend on dexterity, and turrets depend on intelligence. (So have fun training up that Int, tinkermage fans.)