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Why in the world would you ever increase a melee shadowwalker's dexterity? Originally Posted By: Soul of Wit There are items and runestones to help with poison, cold and acid, too. The issue is that he's relying on dodging to survive, and Dex does not help you dodge poison, cold, and acid. At least, if the ability descriptions are to be believed. According to the descriptions, Endurance helps you dodge those three. Is there are enough breathing room on the evasion front, even on Torment, that you don't have to put every available point into Dex? If so that makes this seem much more doable. Also, I wonder if there is a way to do this by piling up massive quantities of Endurance -- only -- and relying on a combination of healing abilities to keep going.

Originally Posted By: Randomizer Basilisk Games have lots of players complaining that part way through Eschalon they find that their character builds become unplayable because they made them too general. Eschalon is an INCREDIBLY poorly balanced RPG. Stuffed full with abilities that are either easily breakable, or totally useless. Don't get me wrong, I like it a lot, and there are even things about it I prefer to SW games. However, game mechanics are definitely not one of them. Originally Posted By: othersean ...but I don't see how guessing the right things to pump makes a game fun. If you approach it analytically, it's not about guessing at all -- rather it's more an alternating combination of empirical research and logic puzzles. Of course, very few people approach it like I do, so your point is probably more relevant than mine.

Less good nothing, that sounds completely worthless. Are you sure it's not +15% to healing abilities?

Q: It seems to me that there are enough evasion and dex increasing items, and points available to put into dexterity, that an evasion-based torment singleton should be viable. Is this correct? A blademaster seems best suited to the endeavor. Or would poison, cold, and acid be to much for him?

Not more than one a turn. Two altogether, over the time they are around. Okay, sometimes they die first, but my hellhounds tend to stick around just long enough for a second shot.

Originally Posted By: madrigan 4) Summoned pets were all really weak. I never got to the salamander, but the wolf and the hellhound were not formidable at all. Nonetheless I had to spend points on that skill in order to get skills I actually wanted. Although the wand of major aid, I think that's the name, summoned much stronger allies. I'm not sure, but pet strength might be affected by difficulty level. That was true of summon spells in Avernum 4-6, anyway. I find the Hell Hound quite useful on Torment: he soaks up some damage (incredibly important at that difficulty setting), deals some via Spine Shield, gets two shots of flame breath which are great against large mobs, and helps to set up shadowwalker backstab damage. I'm not sure the salamander/drake are worth the cost in skill points for the skill, but one pet at least is useful. None of his individual effects are that amazing, but it you add them all together, he's quite a bit better than most offensive abilities.

Originally Posted By: Colonel Haste My vote for the most useless skill is maxing out the bottom middle skill for the Shadowwalker, which gives you a chance at going into battle frenzy when you are hit in melee. At least for me, since I'm pumping Dex like crazy to avoid getting hit and for better razor disk attacks, I think I got a free battle frenzy maybe twice and I'm now at level 26. This would be much more useful for the Blademaster who isn't likely pumping Dex. Strong, strong disagree. It sounds like you are playing your Shadowwalker as a ranged fighter. That's difficult, IMHO, especially early on since you can't pump the ranged attack skill higher than two skills (melee attack and backstab) that don't help ranged attacks. The middle bottom skill -- backstab -- is AMAZING if you use shadowwalkers in melee. With 8 points put in plus a single specialization, you get 45% bonus damage for backstab. This damage moves shadowwalkers from having slightly worse damage output than blademasters, to better damage output. Backstabs are fairly easy to set up with my party (2 melee shadowwalkers + 1 shaman with summons); YMMV. The riposte chance isn't great but the battle frenzy chance is amazing. You get a 24% chance already at that level, and if your shadowwalker is in the front lines, it'll activate ALL THE TIME, doubling your damage output. For skills with multiple abilities (backstab at level 1+, riposte at 3+, frenzy at 7+) once you get to a second or third ability, the previous abilities continue to increase as well.

That's an opinion, not a well-known fact. There are still plenty of us here who prefer Exile.

Stunning has a limited effect on bosses (when it even sticks in the first place) since many of their attacks -- especially on higher difficulty levels -- are scripted actions and not regular attacks. Scripted actions generally aren't affected by disabling statuses.

I saw Stunning Bash cause stun... once! Powerful disabling status effects are a problem for game designers. For effects which are strong enough -- instant death/petrification, multi-round daze/stun, etc. -- abilities that work a reasonable percentage of the time become overpowered and possibly even broken. That's why most such abilities, in most games, almost never work and so never get used. Geneforge dealt with this by making Daze very effective, but only if you invested VERY heavily in Mental Magic. This meant you could get this powerful effect, but you had to give up other capabilities to do so. It's hard to force that same choice in Avadon.

Aimee _was_ one of the original banished wizards: Erika, Patrick, Rone, Aimee, and Solberg were all in that group. All available evidence points to Linda and X being later arrivals, although Linda was probably only a few years after them, based on some retcons Jeff made in Avernum 1. And of course, in terms of the Triad of the Tower of Magi, Linda, X, and Mahdavi literally were their successors. Also, Garzahd FTW.

Poser... oh man. That really brings me back: http://www.stripcreator.com/comics/slartyvsdesk/340386 http://www.stripcreator.com/comics/slartyvsdesk/342420

The real trick is going to be in the 2017 reremake of Nethergate: Click to reveal.. Sylak's Sellable Trowel

Minor detail: Svarl's 2nd quest is not given until AFTER Ogre Raiders. Which is silly, but there it is. Also, you may want to list Zhethron's hoard, because it is possible -- although very tricky -- to steal it. Yes, the hoard he sits on. I just stole it, and let me tell you, I haven't had that much fun stealing from a dragon since Pyrog!

yeah, SW newsletters are normally a few weeks after a game is released. I assume this is to catch those last few bugs before advertising it fully.

I haven't seen the hint book, nor the warning. What is it?

I'm not sure how "adding a few lines of code" -- even if it really is just a few -- would ever be easier than just hitting the delete key.

Dantius, in your old age, I do believe you're getting funnier (and less offensive). I got a fairly odd, round CD case with the original Nethergate, which was only available on CD. That was 14 years ago I believe.

These are all of the "cheats" available by using the Shift-D window. I have not personally tested all of these, but this is everything listed in the game data, besides the SDF changing command. healmenow -- restore all HP rechargeme -- restore all Vitality shieldsup -- provides massive shielding status effects to party backtoavadon retrain -- resets the active PC's stats and skills to level 1, so you can change your choices iamweak -- gives XP iampoor -- gives gold giveasnack showmeall -- show all NPCs on automap dontshowmeall -- undo showmeall whereami -- gives PC location in coordinates showwaypoint -- beta-testing leftover sorrysevilin -- these codes make the 4 non-player PCs happy with you, if you made them mad sorryshima sorryjenell sorrynathalie fps -- show frame rate When you use a cheat code, you will no longer be able to earn Medals until you leave the region you are in.

That's a bug. Any time you are able to use an ability right after using another ability (without having AP left over) it's a bug. These have been mentioned here, but I haven't heard any response from Jeff. Consider emailing him: spidweb@spiderwebsoftware.com

The camera did not strictly follow the party in recent Avernums, and in Geneforges it was very close to how it works in Avadon. The lefthand-arrowkeys righthand-mouse method of moving has been necessary for a looooong time.

*i: I notice that you commented on the reactors, but not the spent fuel pools. For the last several days, most reports have commented that the reactors seem relatively under control, but there is more concern about the spent fuel pools. What do you think about the problems with the pools?

I agree with VCH -- the zones are now large enough that it would be a real time-saver to be able to click-to-set-destination on the (very nice) tab-map.

What was that miracle energy plant in SimCity 2000 -- Microwave Plants, right? How the heck did that work?

I'd agree with that assessment. PRETTY careful. I'd also say that "pretty careful" is not adequate for most any large adequate engineering task, let alone something with the potential to cause devastation over a wide area. Don't get me wrong: I think nuclear power is great. (I grew up on SimCity; I have to.) But the fact remains that some (not all, but some) of the problems Fukushima is experiencing result from design flaws that American engineers foresaw, and complained about, when this model of reactor was first designed and used, which was decades ago in the U.S.