ex post slarto

Divinity? Ugh. Divinity was completely wretched. It had more bugs than the Eastern Gallery, and was just very unintuitive.

How are those actually applied, though? I remember having a hard time finding a strong correlation between Magic Resistance and the damage I sustained from magic attacks. It doesn't resist 5% per point at any rate, I don't think.

Yes, armor only affects physical damage. Yes, armor provides half its value as fire, ice, and energy resistance. However, the equation is exactly the same for any type of damage -- you just take fire resistance (for example) into account instead of armor.

Masochism. Ug is too repulsive for anyone to occupy adjacent party slots.

To be honest, I'm not sure there's a single game for which we've actually reached a reasonable consensus as to what Luck does. (Well, except the Exile series.) Luck is one of those skills for which the documentation and in-game blurbs are generally aberrant. I do think it always has that 2% bonus to hit or to dodge. Beyond that, who knows.

Quote: Originally written by Emperor Tullegolar: Don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of the man and his work, but he had a crappy final battle compared to Rentar and even Hawthorne. His whole final fortress was boring, too. Limoncelli was pretty cool, but mostly because of the little description boxes that came up describing what he looked like and how he died. Garzahd's final battle sucked in A2 because it wasn't designed to be fought like that. Garzahd's stats in E2 were drastically different, and the suggested method for beating him (mindduelling) was purged entirely from A2. The fortress wasn't great, but were the others better? At least it wasn't full of pylons. Agreed about Limocelli, though. He was done well.

Well, my last post turned out to be a little alarmist. The underground tunnels were less extensive than I remembered -- of course they don't reach the eastern half of the Gallery. I think I was just so traumatized from the clawbug graphics that I exaggerated it in my mind. Here are the final totals. I have not included any bugs created by the Chitrach Queen (though I have included the Queen herself, which might be controversial -- is she really a chitrach?). The parentheses give a breakdown of the bugs found in the chitrach labyrinth vs those found above ground or in the farm crevice. TOTAL: 227 (123/104) 120 Vanilla Chitrachs (53/67) 81 Plated Chitrachs (51/30) 5 Hivetender Chitrachs (5/0) 4 Gnawing Chitrachs (0/4) 4 Frenzied Chitrachs (4/0) 4 Dormant Chitrachs (4/0) 3 Infected Chitrachs (3/0) 2 Eggtender Chitrachs (1/1) 1 Venomous Chitrach (0/1) 1 Mindwarp Chitrach (0/1) 1 Reddish Chitrach (1/0) 1 Chitrach Queen (1/0) Nonetheless... 227. RIDICULOUS. DIE, CHITRACHS, DIE.

As far as I can tell, there are zero respawning chitrachs except for the bugs created on-the-fly by the queen. I'm somewhere between a third and a half done with the underground areas now, and I'm close to 200. Suffice it to say that this was not the best-designed poll ever. ...anyway, this is ridiculous. Right now I'm hoping it doesn't make it to 300. Sheesh. I remember that the last level of Wizards & Warriors was supposed to be really hard because it had 100 monsters in it. ChronoTrigger made a big deal out of the "100 beasts" in Magus's Castle. But those monsters were all varied, and they did not all have Parry and Riposte with a poisonous attack. Thank god they no longer use the clawbug graphic, that's all I can say.

It sounds like Elite Warrior is the clear winner, with Natural Mage, Fast on Feet, and maybe Toughness vying for the second spot. I don't really remember how much I actually wanted to wear encumbering armor in A1; if I did, I'd take NM for easier casting of Slow and such, and just for simplicity. Fast on Feet is good early but useless once you get speed enhancing items. But early on, the 5 levels of spell bonus will make a difference since your skill points are so spread out. So I think my vote is EW + NM.

Ugh, terminology people! Things will get very confusing very fast if you use "level" to refer to "tier" when every creation also has an experience level. Some low tier creations can compete with high tier ones, but in order for that to work you basically have to devote all your energy into making them as soon as possible with a high shaping skill. Cryoas vs Cryodrayks is probably the best example, since there are no other ice creations and cryoas CAN be just as good as cryodrayks, with a few plusses and minuses. Cryoas however are uniquely suited to this, since they are available very early but have a high base level. But you can certainly have Artila, Vlish, Roamers, or Drayks that are playable in the endgame, if perhaps not preferable. The one big downside to low tier creations is their lack of mental resistance, which gets very annoying eventually. (ALL tier 4 and 5 creations have very high mental resistance.) There are items which can help compensate, most notably the Stasis Shield, but some of those are hard to acquire.

Doesn't Natural Mage make ALL spells better in A1 (including Priest Spells)?

I think my numbers were too low, in fact. I've now cleared out the entire "ground" level (unless there are chitrachs on the slith peninsula, but I don't think there are) plus the chitrach crevice under the farm, since that is a contained area. The caves that stretch for 20 areas are untouched. TOTAL SO FAR - 103 CHITRACHS 67 vanilla chitrachs 30 plated chitrachs 6 unique chitrachs (4 gnawing, 1 venomous, 1 eggtender) Needless to say, this is unsettling. I hesitate to guess what the numbers will be after I tackle those caves, but... oof.

I recall that the earlier versions of Divinely Touched were crappy, and basically gave you several wimpy abilities that did not grow stronger over time -- beast call, and so on. I don't remember if A1's version was like that, but I'd be cautious about it.

I've been playing A4 again and after all my whining about the Eastern Gallery chitrachs, I decided I needed to keep a count of them. So far I've killed 15 chitrachs, but I haven't ventured into the swamps and I haven't gone into a single underground area with chitrachs. So consider this poll kind of like one of those elementary school exercises where you have to estimate how many jelly beans are in the candy jar, but instead, you're guessing the number of chitrachs in a cave. CLARIFICATION: This counts plated and all other varieties of the bugs as well, though I am keeping a count for each type of chitrach, also.

I don't know exactly what's going on with Realmz, but I do know that the person to ask is not Tim anymore, it's now Skip Meier, who seems to have taken over its day-to-day admistration and communication duties. (I'll save Thuryl the trouble of mentioning that it all went downhill after version 4 anyway, which it did.)

Note that Parry's damage reduction *does* apply to ranged and area attacks. (All magic attacks go in one of those categories (or melee) -- "magic" is not an attack type.) The damage reduction against magic (i.e., against energy, fire, ice, etc.) is again much lower than against physical attacks, but you can get a reduction of around 15% or 20% without too much trouble. That's useful.

Quote: Originally written by Cryptozoology: Quote: Originally written by Spidweb: The game mechanics (level gaining, combat mechanics) will be much closer to Blades of Avernum This makes me a little bit sad, since I thought Nethergate's engine was a particularly good fit to its setting and plot, but I'll wait and see how it turns out. Agreed. The moves to the BoA skill point system will make me especially sad. And dialog... meh. Although I am really looking forward to the remake and will certainly buy it, I wonder if I'm going to end up doing with it what I did with Avernum 2... never finishing because I got distracted by wanting to play the original instead.

Divinely Touched doesn't grant Parry. Only Elite Warrior does. There are also some items that give a Parry bonus. Parry is unquestionably a great skill, but how does its (greatly reduced) blocking rate against missiles make it broken? Admittedly you also get a little damage reduction, but the block rate against melee attacks is so much better.

Let me get this straight: you're not going to buy G5 because G4's Bob didn't give specific enough directions? Was G3, with its complete lack of plot, better in that regard?

Is this question ever going to die, like it deserves? Jesus. While we're at it, Guile isn't Magus, either.

Weird. I'm almost sure Str + items added damage in previous games, but haven't tested that in G4. Anyone try it?

No, he never said that, Nioca. This is a ridiculously propagated myth. He said there wouldn't be an Exile 4, and he said that back in 1997, I think, years before Avernum was even conceived of.

This topic receives a nine-headed cave cow pie.

Are you sure that drayks and drakons do fire damage? Can anyone else confirm this about windows (or possibly updated mac versions as well)? If so, that's a HUGE change, which among other things makes drayks and drakons less consistently useful. I know there are a few minor errors that crept into the page. To be honest, I doubt I'll update it. G4 has lost my energy and attention.

Well, keep in mind that the Rebellion as of G4 only really supports creation rights for Drakons (and sometimes Drayks). The Drakons, essentially the surviving part of the Rebellion, were going to destroy all the other creations with the Unbound anyway. So the choice isn't really about creation rights anymore.