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Apparently, Jeff's next release is going to be a rewrite of Avernum 1. Again. It will be interesting to see what he does with the skill system. However, implementing UI and gameplay improvements like the junk bag is a no-brainer.

Dantius: The main reason scientists say it will not be as bad as Chernobyl is that the reactor is of a different design. Chernobyl's radiation particles were large and were propelled high into the sky by the graphite fire. Even in a worst-case scenario, the design of the Fukushima reactors involves smaller radiation particles, no graphite, and no way for them to be so dramatically distributed. But, yes, if things get unexpectedly worse, the proximity to populated areas like Tokyo is a concern. To be clear, we're talking about causing an increase in thyroid cancer over the next few decades, not mass radiation sickness, so it's an issue of possibly adding on to the earthquake deaths, not making the disaster orders of magnitude worse. This is one reason other countries are pulling their citizens out of Japan -- better safe than sorry. Japan, of course, has no practical way to evacuate large cities, particularly given the losses to infrastructure and resources caused by the earthquake. But there does not appear to be serious danger at the moment.

It's complicated. Short version: there are numerous compounding issues, and the situation is ongoing. General international consensus appears to be that the situation will end up being worse than Three Mile Island, but not as bad as Chernobyl. This means that it is unlikely to impact distant locations, and impact on locations outside the exclusion zone (~20 mile radius) will be minor and not long-lasting. However, things could turn out slightly better, or worse, depending on how current efforts go and on what the state of the fuel storage pools turns out to be.

Yeah, I have been preoccupied with Japan all week, horrified, unable to stop watching the news.

It is linked there, and has been.

There have been a number of different "favorite SW game" and "favorite game within SW series X" discussions and polls over the years. My statement was based on my overall assessment of all of those. In terms of comparing games across series, or just comparing series, that oscillates between Avernum and Geneforge depending on the board populaton at the time. Just following the release of a new game in either series, the balance would tip to that series. Nethergate generally does poorly simply due to lack of exposure; it gets very high ratings from those who have played it. Similarly, BoA's ratings are all over the place, but it never places well due to lack of exposure. Once upon a time, when the Blades Community was much larger, BoE won everything, but that was long ago, and now it too does poorly due to lack of exposure. In terms of the Exile and Avernum series (excluding Blades), X2 is the strong winner, and A4 is the loser. Feelings about the others vary, with A5 and A6 usually being in the middle. Of note is that E3 is nearly as popular as E2, while A3 is one of the least popular games. For Geneforge, individual opinions vary more widely than for Avernum, but the shakeout from polls and averages tends to adhere closely to a ranking of: G1; G2 and G4 in some order; G5; G3. I would argue, however, that now is the *wrong* time for a "favorite SW" poll. Many people are in the middle of Avadon, or have just finished it. I think it's helpful for a little bit of time to pass, so people's opinions can settle, and are not unduly influenced by "omg this new game NEW!!1!!"

And let's remember that second games tend to go well for Jeff: E/A 2 is generally considered the best of the series, and G2 is one of the more favorably viewed Geneforge games overall.

Many of the moral choices, which in any Geneforge game would nudge your primary rebel/shaper SDF one way or the other, do not affect any SDF at all. Maybe it is just because I am still early in the game, but I keep finding that to be the case.

Hmm. Maybe that's it, Master1. I interpreted all of Synergy's door notations as lockpicks needed, but maybe they are mostly "skill needed to not need lockpicks"... that would make sense, and would fit with what Randomizer said.

Oh, god. It's the Cordelia effect, in red bar graph.

Well, something does not add up here. - The item list lists upwards of 220 lockpicks needed to open stuff. - This list lists 105 lockpicks. - You wrote, "With the skill at 4 for most of the game, there are enough lockpicks to loot every place but one of Zhethron's boxes" [requiring 18 picks] One of those three pieces of information must be incorrect. Which one?

Since making that G4 reputation guide, I twitch whenever I see a moral choice in Jeff's games. It is relieving in Avadon to see that most choices have no consequence and adjust no SDFs, but it will take a while for my twitch to stop.

Would the back-to-Avadon shift-D code solve your problem?

Okay, I played through a bunch of areas to get a feel for the game, cheated up to high levels and messed around with different ability distributions. Stared at the descriptions over and over. And I have some thoughts, in no particular order but numbered for convenience of discussion and quaint Seletinian homage: 1. I know the damage abilities towards the top of the tree have some nifty special effects, but I still think it's weird that they mostly do LESS damage than damage abilities in the first or second tier. And that applies to every class, I believe. 2. The Blademaster and Shadowwalker are remarkably similar. Great weapon and armor selection; excel at doing lots of damage to a single target, especially the shadowwalker. Both can do comparable base damage in melee or at range: the shadowwalker does crazy damage in melee if he can backstab, while the blademaster has one better area attack. I'm not sure about the support skills of either class, but the shadowwalker has great defense bonuses in the same column as his best offensive bonuses. This makes him seem better. 3. However, going ranged is nice since Dex boosts damage output as well as evasion, and the blademaster has that pretty area attack. 4. The Shaman and Sorceress. Both have a reasonable regular ST attack. Both have a selection of area attacks, and while the sorceress has more, the shaman's appear to be more damaging and better-elemented: has Jeff EVER released a game where fire and ice have fewer resistance problems than energy, poison and acid? 5. The sorceress does have some recharge time reduction potential, which, combined with her large number of area attacks, potentially means she could use an area attack every turn in a really tough fight. Is this ever actually useful? 6. The shaman's pets don't seem incredibly useful, and neither do the sorceress's miscellaneous abilities. Or does Daze belong in the spotlight again? If not, between everything mentioned above and the sorceress's general fragility, she seems really situational. 7. How useful is the shaman's group heal spell, really? It heals less than other heal spells and has a recharge time that means you can't spam it Avernum 4 style. And the two other, non-fragile classes, have their own healing abilities, albeit with recharge times as well. In tough fights, is it necessary to have more than a handful of heal spells? 8. Given the availability of retraining, including via the shift-D code -- the cheatless cheat we've always wanted -- it seems like the really big decision is which class to pick for your main character. On the one hand, you want to pick a class that you will never regret having to use. On the other hand, it's nice if you can pick a class you'd like to have two copies of. The first criteria seems to knock the sorceress out of contention entirely. I picked a shaman for my first game, following Alorael's theory of never-a-liability. And that's true about her. However, having two shamans seems a bit wasteful, while having a pair of backstabbing shadowwalkers seems quite convenient. And of course, having lockpicks in Avadon proper is convenient too. I dunno. Am I missing something here? Pick this apart, please!

I'm not sure a lockpicks list is necessary, if there really are that many of them. It would just be good to note on the list itself that lockpicks are only noted early on.

This might be a good thing to add to the medal screen in a future update. It makes sense that it works this way, but it's probably best to avoid overly frustrated players. If you ratchet the difficulty UP mid-game, will that also disqualify you from the medals? Or only if you move it down?

Hah! I'm vindicated. Vindicated after I abdicated my position, which I did after hypocritically ignoring my own advice. Victurrender is bittersweet.

I think Celtic Minstrel's idea about being consistent is a smart one. I would suggest that you also make a list of all potential backwards-compatibility issues so it is easy for people to check that stuff in one place.

Because G2 is the only game in the series where Guardians shine, and because Parry really is broken, and it's fun to play that way for once. Shapers are great in G2, but not as great as they are in G1 or G3.

All of Jeff's games were released on Mac originally. PC releases have always been secondary. Although PC stands for "personal computer," in the context of platforms and especially games, it often means things that run Microsoft operating systems: the phrase "IBM PC-compatible" was once rampant, and "PC" has essentially replaced it.

Originally Posted By: Randomizer Synergy left off some lockpicks near the end of the game and ones that you can purchase. With the skill at 4 for most of the game, there are enough lockpicks to loot every place but one of Zhethron's boxes. Now a singleton blademaster or shaman has to be very conservative with using them. If my counting is accurate, that means Synergy left off upwards of 180 lockpicks... there is really such a discrepancy? Doesn't seem like him.

If I read this list accurately, there are only 41 lockpicks available in the entire game! Is that true? I guess investing in 4 levels of a lockpick skill is anything but optional! Edit: WHOA, and there's at least 225 lockpicks needed to open all the doors and boxes that have # of picks needed listed here! That's crazy! You REALLY have to economize with lockpicks!

Originally Posted By: RosenVitae I'm wondering why I would be the first to appear with this issue on this forum. Because Exile was originally released 17 years ago? No, really, that's why. It's 17 years old, and there is a remake of it (Avernum) that's about 11 years old. Most people here have either played Avernum and have little interest in Exile, or played Exile long ago. Needless to say, given its age and the existence of a remake, Exile hasn't been advertised or promoted in over a decade. It's a terrific game, but, yeah, it's not exactly a hot topic.

Originally Posted By: Master1 Answer: why not? Because gratuitous embellishments which are repeated over and over again, but which do not actually serve to communicate or distinguish any new content when repeated, sometimes come off as pretentious?

All of the FAQs that I have seen have small errors. Generally, most of the information there is correct, and even in terms of technical information 80-90% of it is accurate, so for most people's purposes they are really not a bad thing. Besides which, they are mostly accessed via GameFAQs, which doesn't really have a correction mechanism aside from the original poster.