Mea Tulpa

Bump; made some miscellaneous updates. More to add: I know there's a bunch in QW and probably QW2 that I haven't sorted through -- any suggestions from that? Likewise feel free to call out any Kickstarter additions that are references.

Isn't Disarm Traps separate?

Hmm. I may be wrong on that. I guess Pick Locks is even worse than I thought it was...

I believe Magic Lockpicks allow you to open magically locked doors using regular lockpicking skill.

There are wands of fireballs in the Shayder sewers and Golddale mines.

I don't think there's a Move Mountains replacement. I also don't think you 100% need it to complete the game successfully, though it's been a long time...

So, you've replicated the Nephar Archers appearing. Which just confirms they are regular, expected enemies to find there. Now, can you replicate them disappearing? (Or appearing in the back of the fort at all?) It might be helpful to use "showmeall" so you can easily see all the enemies on the map, in determining whether they disappear versus are simply offscreen.

How do you even know you're talking about the same exact enemy units in both of these cases? Answer: you don't. It's a pretty big assumption, but you're presenting it as simple fact. So literally all you did was return the banner and do one level up for your team? No other fighting, you didn't visit any other zones, just Draco and back? (Also, I assume you'd have mentioned if you were using any mods or doing any script editing.) Look, there's two options here. Option 1 is that you have experienced a bizarre but significant glitch -- improperly appearing and/or disappearing enemies -- that no other player in the just about ten years this game has been out, has ever reported. Option 2 is that you are mistaken. There's a lot of enemies in that dungeon, and they mostly look similar. It wouldn't be hard for a few to get lost in the mix.

It's very possible, and it's not actually all that hard. The canister boosts are nice, but they aren't generally game-breaking. Still, you get achievements for each sect's victory; wouldn't be crazy to have a no-canister achievement too. I say, request this for the G3 remake.

"Rely on Bless" can definitely work, if you layer it enough consistently enough. Dex gives you +5% every so often, they come fairly often at first and are spread further apart as your Dex gets higher. Weapon skills use a lookup table to determine your base hit rate. The bonus is going to be greater than Dex until you get to a very high level, so you're right, it's more effective. What Dex gets you instead that does matter is dodge rate. (Although it probably doesn't matter at all if you just rely on Bless...)

Google suggests: - you may have an antivirus program blocking Avernum 5 from saving its prefs file.

Right-click on the app and choose "Show Package Contents" (IIRC) from the menu that pops up. This should then show you the data folders that are always visible on other platforms. (And make a copy of the app before you do that, just in case.)

Hooray! It won't save your prefs even if you run as admin? That's weird. I guess not a fatal error at least.

Which dungeon are you even talking about? If it's "the beginning dungeon" you have to leave and go to the world map in order to move between the two entrances. Which you've described doing in two different orders, in your two posts above, along with some reloading, and then a long time passing before you returned. It just sounds like the exact sequence of events in your save file is quite murky. If you're really invested in this, you could try to duplicate it with a fresh play, paying close attention to exactly where they are and what you do in between. But yeah, it's a pretty big leap from what you've observed to "glitch."

I can't, but maybe somebody else has one handy. I assume you've looked in the app folder itself. Some SW games put settings inside the Data subfolder, or somewhere else in there. Otherwise, could be somewhere in the Windows system folders. (Windows native file search is pretty terrible, so I wouldn't assume it doesn't exist just because it doesn't show up there.) The actual problem could be as simple as trying to set a resolution that your system doesn't allow. If it worked before you messed with the settings, that seems likely. One last thought, you could try running as admin. Maybe there's a permissions issue with where it's trying to save/read the settings. Alternately, do any of these fixes help?