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Originally Posted By: Dikiyoba Any and all constructive comments are welcome now that the story is complete. What did you like? What didn't you like? What was confusing or sloppy? Your comments help make Dikiyoba a better writer, so please speak up. I found episodes 5 and 6 (and to a lesser degree, 4) to be much harder to follow. You ran into the Chrono Cross problem: there were so many characters that few of them got very much story time at all. In addition, there were so many subplots going on at the same time that it was hard to follow those. It was just too much to keep track of. The result is that my summary of episode 6 would sound something like this: "Ecksian failed at taking over the board or maybe world (I think), Dintiradan succeeded at taking over (I think), a lot of people and rats ran around in different small groups trying to do various things and sometimes getting killed. A lot of stuff happened with scripts, things might have happened to Arancaytar and Stareye, and oh, Tyranicus stopped dying." It reminds me a bit of those flowcharts people make to try and keep track of all the X-Men continuities, or the timeline of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or whatever. But in those franchises each comic book, episode, or whatever just focuses on a few characters and one or two things happening. Maybe there are two things going on at once and you jump back and forth... but in these last scripts, the constant jumping among 50 characters in different places was disorienting. Compared to episodes 1 and 2, where you had strong, clear plot going on with the Ur-Noob and that linguistic disease, and the problems with revivals, etc. There were still plenty of cameo characters, but the story tended to focus on a smaller group of characters for a longer period of time -- for example, when that group of 4 or 5 people got trapped in the tunnels at the end of episode 1. I think you were aided in this by killing off so many people in episode 1. Then when subplots came up, like Zephyr Tempest or whoever it was summoning demons, they were dealt with as a single deal rather than being yet another segment of the story many chapters in a row. The jokes and dialogue have remained good and I'm confident that I would have liked the story had I understood it better.

No, that's Violet. Indigo has no adjective.

This sounds suspiciously similar to a (fixed) screen-scrolling bug from some old Geneforge and Avernum games. I'd suggest emailing Jeff about this directly -- he might want to hear about it and might have a fix handy as well.

Slaty: After 400 years of experience, I have come to think that Salmaran may not be responsible for the Spam. Tulge: What do you mean? Slaty: I have come to think that someone, or something wanted us to see all this. The different events over time, that we have witnessed. It is almost as if some entity wanted to relive its past. Lilit: Lilit know! When people die, elders say, see whole life pass by! SoS: 'Tis true that mortals do relive their most profound memories before death claimeth them. Yet those memories most often are sad ones. Slaty: Thinking things like, "If only I had done this," or, "I shouldn't have done that..." triggers unpleasant, old memories. Tulge: Will that happen when our time comes? Tyro: Probably...who knows? Tulge: Is there a point in time you'd want to return to, Tyro? Tyro: No...not really... Tulge: I'm sorry, was that something I shouldn't have asked? Tyro: It's ok, it's just something I don't like to think about too much. SoS: Salmaran playeth an integral role in the fortunes of this Entity... Terro: ...so who is this Entity? Slaty: It is unknown, whose memories these are. It may be something beyond our comprehension. Our journey may come to an end when we finally discover the identity of the Retrioentitity. ... ...shall we turn into the night?

The last part of 2006 was kind of spammy in the sense of people intentionally making empty posts to boost their postcount... and a contest about it to boot... but there was still less to wade through than in the olden days. This reminds me, you guys are REALLY going to love RETRIOACTIVITY FIVAL.

Originally Posted By: Ephesos We seem to be rather short on Spiderweb Lore as of late... a lot of the people from the original deathmatch vdon't really hang out here anymore, and not as many people have filled the gimmicky gaps. This is very true. Although it began in 2007, the Deathmatch really sprang out of a short period of vibrant cultural activity here, in the first half of 2006, when tons of old gimmicky members were still around, yet when the boards were already less spammy and more thoughtful than in the real old times. Also, get off my lawn. Originally Posted By: Student of Trinity Think of postcount as XP. This analogy works so long as different characters have dramatically different rates of advancement.

William Shatner is neither popular nor a comedian. No offense to him, that's just how it is.

The Nine-Headed Cave Cow smiles upon thee, Shatter. But do note that participants were given the chance to opt out. Also, mwahahahaha. You guys had best watch out for RETRIOACTIVITY TWO.

Guess that's my bad. Fixed -- thanks Waterplant and Randomizer.

Define "viable." In both Avernum and Geneforge, the default difficulty level is easy enough that just about any build is viable. If you really mean "optimal," than neither series really presents a lot of choices. I would actually argue Avernum presents more choices since the best Geneforge builds, outside of the G2 Parry build, inevitably involve creations and Mental Magic and nothing else. In Avernum, different combinations of melee, magic, and tanking are all possible.

If I'm not mistaken, two trainers train Lethal Blow, and the one in Eastern Great Cave trains it for significantly less money. I could be misremembering though.

Speak with Gladwell in Patrick's Tower.

Heh, nice, didn't even think of that.

SECOND OF THE CAPITAL POSTS / SECOND OF THE MARQUÉES NOIRES: It has been YEARS THREESE since the MIGHTY DEATHMATCH of SPIDERWEBBERS did begin. Now it shall be finished. RETRIOACTIVITY ONE commence! OFFICIAL RULING -- DEATHMATCH ROUNDS 5 AND 6 5.1. Alorael vs. Nicothodes Alorael has ranged attacks. Nicothodes does not. Alorael is a cold, calculating min-maxing Angband player who is not going to fall prey to Nicothodes' fatal cutness the way NetHack players fall prey to the charms of nymphs. Alorael's skribbane diet renders him pretty uninterested in Nicothodes' cookies. His name-changing will make it quite hard for Nicothodes to use her conlangs against him, too. Bang, and the world just got uglier. Alorael wins. 5.2. Ephesos vs. Stareye So, let's look at the big picture here and take everything into consideration. For their elements Stareye has Radon and Ephesos has Copper. Radon is a big health hazard which has been proven to cause cancer. Unfortunately for Stareye, causing Ephesos to die many years from now is not going to help him. Copper by itself doesn't pose a health hazard, but after a few minutes in the fires of Divine Retribution it could be made into any number of nice weapons. Unfortunately for Ephesos, there's no time for that. Likewise, their actor counterparts aren't going to give either much of an advantage. Sure Daniel Craig could bring the gadgets and agility of James Bond with him, but LeVar has experience making fancy gadgets as Geordi in Star Trek. He probably knows more than enough to keep Daniel at bay if not stumped. Glower power and alchemy are easy to cross off, once again. The question is whether glower power also somehow blocks the rest of Ephesos's "flower power" aka his druid powers and environmentalism. Not likely, considering that flowers are only a small part of the natural world. The Sword of Damocles will not help in this match since Ephesos' clover boots give him enough luck to avoid ending up under it. The antimatter machine is more of a defensive machine than anything else and in this match there is nothing for it to defend against except maybe crickets. But I think it's unlikely our fighters would bring either of these into play. Both have scripting abilities with Stareye's scripting hallmark as special spells, while Ephesos's design hallmark is terrain and the environment. This gives Stareye more offensive capabilities and Ephesos traps and perhaps distraction techniques. Ephesos also has his priestly spells to counter Stareye's scripts but both of them will be using their energy pretty quickly at this point. If Stareye can just outlast Ephesos, he still has his boot to smash his skull in with... but does he have enough of an edge to outlast him? These fighters are very evenly matched. Jewels and I deliberated over the final outcome of this match for almost a year -- sadly, this is a true fact. But it's time to break the stalemate. DEATHMATCH IS BREAKING OUT ALL YOUR RULE ARE BELONG TO US GOODBYE ANALYSIS THEORETIC, HELLO NURSE Ephesos and Stareye continued to grind away at each other with slings and arrows for quite some time. Jewels turned to Slarty and exhorted him to act, but he refused, and the two began to argue as well. While they were all distracted, a pale, astral figure crept into the arena and began to gesticulate. Suddenly, a tremendous and blinding explosion of shadows engulfed the fighting area. When the shadows cleared, Ephesos and Stareye both lay unconscious on the ground. The astral figure stood between them, his hands raised in victory, one of them grasping a slith spear. "I am Emperor Tullegolar," he proclaimed, "and I claim victory in this Deathmatch!" "How did he do that?" asked Jewels. "An alien damage type, my dear," shouted up ET, "shadow damage. Your precious officers are defenseless against it!" "Imban!" screeched Slarty. "Become him and remove him." But Imban shook his head. "I can't, Slarty. He's not using an account. That's just an astral proxy." "Fine. Icshi will change what happened retroactively. Icshi--" But when Slarty turned to Icshi, he saw that Icshi, too, had collapsed on the floor. He had turned an awful shade of yellow, and his hair was falling out in clumps. "I'm dying," Icshi said. He turned to look at the arena, and with his dying breath, choked out a warning. "Retrio... activity... is in... the... air... for... U... B... B..." Then he vanished. Slarty sighed. "I guess I'll have to take care of this myself!" He stood up and began to walk down to the arena floor, but was stopped suddenly when Alorael stepped out from one of the rows and pushed the butt of his rifle into Slarty's chest. "This is my battle, not yours, Slarty. You need to stop breaking the rules." "You wouldn't shoot me, Alorael. Besides -- Sticks to Steaks!" And before Alorael could react, his rifle turned into an especially tasty-looking steak, which fell to the floor. "Moove Slowly," he continued, then pushed Alorael out of the way and continued on down to the arena floor. "I knew you would come, Slarty! You've been trying to destroy me for years." Emperor Tullegolar cackled. "But now it's my turn. You can't touch my astral form." "Blah, blah, blah. We've heard it all before. Well, here's something you haven't heard before. Emperor Tullegolar's astral proxy -- meet Slartucker's astral oxy! Hamsubstantiate Self!" There was another great flash of shadow, and Slarty's form began to transform. He began to fade and stretch out in multiple dimensions, and his outline glimmered and shifted, and he began to resemble a man less and less. When his shape stopped shifting, he had become the outline of quite a hideous creature -- a giant with fifty heads and a hundred arms, each of which bore a sock puppet of the Nine-Headed Cave Cow. A hecatombchire! "It's like a patronus!" Jewels exclaimed helpfully. "Except, um, not really." Slarty's fifty heads roared, Emperor Tullegolar uttered a war cry, and the two astral forms charged at each other. Each of the heads on each of Slarty's hands moved in to facepalm Tullegolar, nine-hundred facepalms in all; but Tullegolar began to shape, and swiftly, one after another, a massive herd of ornks charged into Slarty. The sock puppets and ornks met in a confusion of cattle, and a minute later they were joined by Slarty's own Simuleacrums. Tullegolar thrust his slith spear into Slarty, again and again, while Udder Destruction rained down on him. Tullegolar planted his flag in Slarty and Slarty dropped his desk on Tullegolar. Political cartoons and pages from Encyclopedia Ermariana flew back and forth in the melee. At one point both of them stopped fighting and began drawing complicated charts that would lead in some esoteric way to victory. At last Slarty opened his fifty mouths and bellowed, "BOVINE THUD!" For a moment nothing happened, and Tullegolar used the time to slice through Slarty's form several times with his spear. Then there was a great rumbling, and it seemed as if the stars themselves began to shake. A shadow loomed over the arena, growing larger and larger by the second, until the spectators could see, above them, a cow far larger than they had ever imagined possible. The cow was, in fact, larger than the arena, and it plummeted towards the ground face-first. The spectators only had a few seconds to scream before everybody present was facepalmed into the ground. There were no survivors. The very last to perish was Jewels. She managed to free her head from under a fold of fat and survey the wreckage as she died. It was a pity that nobody was around to hear her faint last words: "Deathmatch has no save and restore."

Parry does NOT give you dodging ability. It gives you parrying ability. They are very different. Parry chance is a flat chance that works the same against ALL physical attacks. That's why it works on Torment. Dodging depends on the accuracy of your opponent, which is why it ceases working on Torment. It's a moot point, because you need both. However, my advice would be to make an EW singleton and not invest in Parry until you get 3 points from the trainer. Then you only need a few more to unlock the next skill, and you'll still max out its benefits (at 17) before too long.

You can't access the correct area until you talk to the commander and get him to open the gate blocking the correct area.

Easy solution: download new copies of the games and email Spiderweb asking for new registration codes. If you have the address or credit card number you used when you ordered, that should make it especially easy. Jeff is pretty great about helping out when registered users need to reinstall on a new system.

Nope. Almost all of it, or possibly all of it, comes from Exile/Avernum 1. There might be some from Exile 2, not sure about that. Thralni IS mentioned a lot more. Karzoth is mentioned once or maybe twice (by name), and Marianne is only mentioned once, I think. Grahk's name is just on a single signpost.

Yeah. One of the keys to A6 Torment, I think, is that there are a lot more options to optimize things defensively. The Slith resistances are better, Endurance is better, Luck is a LOT better, and Hardiness and armor and Parry and the DT bonus are as good as always. A6 is -not- a game for glass cannons. Part of the trick is figuring out what is most cost-effective. For Parry, it starts out cheap but ends up hogging skill points, and with EW you can skip most of those while still getting the best effect from it. I tried playing with Daze, btw, and found that it was unacceptably inaccurate for a singleton, even with high magic skills. Gone is the Daze of G3 that could stop everything in its tracks every time.

There is no such thing as a Deflection Band. There is a Projection Band, which doesn't actually protect the PC at all. There aren't any rings that provide anything remotely close to blocking half of all enemy attacks, though. I think you are misinterpreting something.

In that early game portion, EW characters can easily wear the Blessed Plate and just not use mage spells. For a singleton there isn't much need for them early, anyway, and when you absolutely need Haste, you cast it precombat. Even on Torment, Slith + DT + EW gives you plenty of power with 10-40 halberds (also available without fighting) early on, even though you may switch to DW swords later.

With very few exceptions, the best armor doesn't encumber or doesn't encumber much, and there are a lot of accuracy-increasing items that increase your encumbrance allowance. That's the key point. You *don't* lose out on much armor protection at all -- if any -- by skipping Natural Mage. Not at any point in the game. Elite Warrior also makes armor-wearing easier, by the way, since it increases your carrying capacity by quite a bit. That saves you Strength, and you get free Parry (great) and free Blademaster. The latter gives you an effectively huge damage boost even with magic, since it allows you to use battle disciplines a lot more often.

We know a bit more than that, in fact: http://encyclopedia.ermarian.net/wiki/First_Expedition

Dodge quickly becomes close to nonexistant on Torment if you don't put skills into it. Randomizer put skills into his, as I recall. It is literally impossible to keep it going on Torment however, and all those dodge skills will be pretty much useless by the late game. Sliths are better because of the extra health, which has been increased, and the resistances, which have also been increased. Flat 20% bonuses to fire, poison, and acid resistance is pretty useful. However, the most important difference is that, thanks largely to the skribbane dealers, sliths will no longer end up at a lower level than nephils. This is significant less for the skill points than for the increased bonuses from Divinely Touched and Elite Warrior.

Plus, you left out Indigo.