Mea Tulpa

In retrospect, it does seem like creating new scenarios might have made BoA sell better. Of course, it also would have extended the time it took to develop BoA, which already was the highest of any game he's made, IIRC. DWTD was released with BoA, though, wasn't it? That was new, though admittedly I didn't like it very much, either.

The Exile engine actually did precisely that. It didn't track when you got poisoned, but every other round poison damage occured and the odd rounds it didn't, globally.

I am pretty sure that all these rewards don't care how big the packs of crystals you hand in are, only the total number you've given. Once you hit a certain target, i.e. 10, a reward may be given. I don't think she gives a reward at every 10 though. What guide says that?

Investing in shaping skills does not make a particularly big difference, beyond allowing you to make the more advanced creations. It's not bad, it's just not as useful as buying other skills, especially magic skills. (as a lifecrafter, you will likely get the most benefit out of blessing and mental magic.) Strictly speaking the power option is probably to just raise magic shaping and eventually make wingbolts. Fire shaping does have good creations, though, especially the cryoa early and the drayk midgame. investing in both gives you more versatility early on, at the cost of a little power.

Somebody else will know this better, but I think physical and magical damage were balanced fairly differently in different Avernum games -- although the general formulae were similar, magic was more powerful in one, and weapons in another.

I forgot about another thread where I had emailed Jeff asking about the obscure ones. This still refers to G3, but it might be relevant to G4. http://www.ironycentral.com/forum/ubbthr...ents_#Post64447

I have never really understood why VoDT is insulted so much in the Blades community. I liked it too -- and it is obviously the Urgeneforge as well.

Infinitely reusable spellbooks worked when spell knowledge was boolean: either you had learned it or you hadn't. Now that it is a number describing strength, it would require a whole extra set of arrays to track who had read what book. It would be messy, and take time to do, and it really wouldn't add anything. Deleting and replacing PCs is almost always a bad idea.

I still hold that Serviles, Infiltrators, and Lifecrafters have more or less comparable ground in terms of powergaming ability. Lifecrafters have the most raw power, Serviles have the most flexibility to utilize different tactics, and Infiltrators are a happy medium.

Exile was probably harder if you didn't take advantage of the less balanced parts of the engine (bless, curse, haste, slow, armor bonuses, antimagic fields, simulacrums, silverlocke). If you did, it was pretty much a cake walk, although still one with a lot of tactical variety and points of interest.

My favorite was casting Fire Barrier to block the line-of-sight of the stubbornly immobile NPCs.

I think the only list for G4 is Synergy's, which gives all the effects known: ENHANCING ITEMS — ARMOR/WEAPON EHANCEMENT BLESSING CRYSTAL — Armor: Avoid Blows / Weapon: Bonus to Hit RUNED RUBY — Fire Essence — Armor: +7% Fire Protection / Weapon: Fire Damage CHARGING STONE — Cold Essence — Armor: +7% Cold Protection / Weapon: Cold Damage RUNED AMETHYST — Acid Essence — Armor: Acid / Poison Resistance / Weapon: Drips Acid IVORY SKULL — Curse Power — Armor: Bonus To Hit / Weapon: Curse Target RUNED ONYX — Magic Essence — Armor: Resist Effects (Fire 3% / Cold 3% / Energy 8% / Acid 10%) / Weapon: Slow Target TINY ORB OF MIST — Speed Essence — Armor: Harder To Hit / Weapon: Faster Blows STEEL SPINE — Armor: Damage Attacker / Weapon: Extra Damage ETHEREAL BINDINGS — Stability — Armor: Stun Resistance / Weapon: Drain Life GOLDEN CRYSTAL — Strong Blessing — Armor: Resist Effects (Fire 10% / Cold 10% / Energy 10% / Stun 5% / Mental 5% / Poison 5% / Acid 5%) / Weapon: Stronger Blows I did some more detailed exploration for G3, some of which still applies. It may give you some idea how some of the abilities not described work: http://www.ironycentral.com/forum/ubbthr...tions#Post67654 The Tiny Orb of Mist is very poorly understood.

I think it is just checked to see if you have used it at all. If you used it, deleted all your PCs one by one and replaced them, you still couldn't use it again.

I will say that one of the things I like least about the Geneforge engine games is the fact that most equipment gives teeny tiny bonuses that aren't even incredibly noticeable when stacked. 1% hostile effect resistance does not add to the game, and neither does 5% fire resistance, or a 2% armor helmet. Annoying, annoying...

It's probably an acronym in Nephilian

You also claimed you were donating a prize to the Themed Party contest. You didn't

Originally Posted By: Evnissyen There's a reason -- don't ask me to pinpoint it exactly -- Then don't argue with its rebuttal. Seriously, if you're not willing to articulate your own reasoning, why should we pay any attention to the conclusions you draw? To translate: You: I believe X. Others: X is wrong, because Y. You: I still believe X, but I can't tell you exactly why.

Summoning is great for singletons. On harder difficulties it is still quite tricky keeping the summons alive, buffed, etc. But they help a lot.

To play devil's advocate for a minute, the biological damage caused by exposure to flame or extreme cold can sometimes be pretty similar. However, unless the resistances are replaced by "Resist Burns," "Resist Shock," "Resist Lacerations," and the like, this is pretty irrelevant.

It has already been suggested (by Clois in G1, among others) that serviles are just shaped humans. Since creations apparently come about by modifying the tiny scrolls of already existing creatures, this seems pretty reasonable.

Elves also tend to be represented as highly intelligent and often magically apt. Elves also usually have lifespans in the hundreds of years. This definitely does not describe nephilim. (And in Tolkien, for that matter, elves are actually large and strong and obnoxiously good at everything.) It's not halberds, it's two-tined spears and javelins. And dwarves typically sing lots of songs and drink lots of drink. More importantly, dwarves tend to have serious trouble with magic, whereas the sliths are represented -- particularly in Exile 1 and 2 -- as being possibly more magically apt than humans. There are some parallels, but I think they basically boil down to "dex-oriented race" and "str-oriented race" -- while nearly everything else is not congruent.

Thanks for correcting me on G2 - I forgot about those! Shows you what I was paying attention to...

Didn't G1 have an one-shot instant-reputation-changing servile like Darian did in G2 and G3? I can't remember if it was Clois or Darian or someone else, though.

Actually, that's not really true. "Crafting" in the sense of handing items to a machine/person/anvil and getting something else in return exists in each game, but it is very limited in the first two -- G1 just has machines that make crystals and wands, and G2 just has people that make stuff like that plus one artifact constructed by Learned Darian. Anvils with their plethora of artifacts and enhancements exist only from G3 onward.

I read Ender's Game when very young. At the time I had never heard "bugger" spoken, and I had never seen "booger" written, so I got the idea that "bugger" meant "booger" and spent the whole book picturing this race of giant boogers.