Quiconque

Quote: Originally written by Spidweb: General Manfred Redmark, a distant cousin of Erika (though, of course, Erika died around the time he was born). Hmm... Erika died in 833. A4 took place circa 855. (There is no exact date given, but from various pieces of information in the game, we know it is very close.) Depending on how much time has passed between A4 and A5, this Manfred Redmark may turn out to be a pretty young general.

I think there may be a few more Roman/Celt differences. I tried killing Queen Rit as Romans and she didn't drop anything at all, for example. The Spider Queen is actually the Widow Queen, and she's listed twice. Sleek is also listed twice -- once in the Circle Warrens (?). The list also says you can get a Selkie Chief's Skin from Blackfang Woods. Is that true? That's a neat extra if you can, as you can complete the hagfen quest without going evil. Finally, killing Raven (which requires attacking an innocent) earns you an All Circle Scroll, which grants +3 to all spell circles. A pretty big deal for Romans.

Sylak's Wisdom Rock doesn't help knowledge skills, though it did in the original. It's an item you can use once per day to gain a miniscule amount of experience. EDIT: Or rather, Sylak's Enlightening Amber did in the original.

Thanks, Randomizer. I was lazy...

Aha! So you're saying Shaper Monarch is really Sylak.

I would assume it's to make the spell have some kind of disadvantage, given its strength. That said, it was certainly combat castable in the original, so perhaps this is a bug.

Reptrakos was really hard, as a singleton at least. The fire damage roasts any allies you summon and the melee attacks are pretty vicious. The other problem is that he regenerates quickly. So without either invulnerability or the special heroic brew AP boost, it's very hard to deal more than he heals while still healing as much as he deals. A traditional party might have an easier time, with a tank to take damage, one or two PCs on healing, and the tank hacking away with someone else on ranged attack (hello, Doom!). Using the secret entrance and letting him get mad might help set up for this.

Quote: Originally written by Spidweb: What I really wanted Avernum 4 to be was a journey. I had a lot of Lord of the Rings in my head, and I wanted it to be a long trip through many cool lands. I wasn't as happy with how that came out, because, in my view, the stuff you encountered on the trip wasn't distinctive enough. I think part of the problem here is that, pretty much everywhere, things were much more mundane than previously. Lava fields that once held an enchained, traitorous haakai, and a battle between demons and wizards that had been frozen in time, became in A4 the site of some random fire lizards, buried herbs, and one nearly empty crypt. The Unsettled Lands once held a mighty dragon and two complex multi-level forts full of different kinds of magic. They were replaced with one big fort full of a zillion pylons. And so on.

Strength provides triple the effect of the weapon skills (including Roman Training). (I think. I'm not 100% sure about this since I can only test with averages, but all my testing suggests it.) High strength also allows you to completely ignore Tool Use (and Pass Portal) which is great for a singleton. And it also increases your carrying capacity. I actually found that, after the very beginning of the game, I ran out of item slots far more often than I ran out of weight capacity. Unlike in older games, Fast on Feet provides the exact same effect as AP boosting items -- they all give a chance (25%? not sure) of an extra AP. But they all stack. That makes FOF useful even in conjunction with speed items, and it's still super useful without them. The Widow Queen drops an Obsidian Spear. Kill her early (after giving her the amber for the Boots of Apollo, and getting her advice for the GIFTS). Hero of Old costs too much MP for a light magic user to plan on using, so don't. With just 1 PC, you can choose to use combat mode and walkabout mode strategically. In Normal, most enemies should die in 1 to 2 hits if you're properly equipped and trained, so against non-ranged enemies, often walkabout mode makes battles simple. High resistance to an element can block nearly all damage from that element. These are also hard to get. Putting points into Luck and Roman Training can be useful simply to boost resistances. Items will eventually be outdone by your natural capabilities, but not for a long time. Wands of Ice are useful early on, and Wands of Fire and Void Crystals are great through most of the game, as are Call Hunt and Call Spirit scrolls. Potions are obviously all useful. Save Ambrosia and Heroic Brew for when you really need it. Basilisks SUCK, A LOT, and crystal gear doesn't seem to make much difference. If you can't sneak up on them and there are multiple basilisks, be prepared for gross amounts of reloading.

Whoops. I missed an adjustment, too! There's a huge one though that both sides can get.

I think you got all of the ones in outdoor scripts...

How exactly is using a skill 5000 times supposed to be less tedious than killing an enemy 500 times? I don't like the combat experience system either, to be honest, but a skill-use experience system is a giant step in the wrong direction.

Definitely better than I expected. The interface largely works extremely well for the Nethergate scenario, and is cleaner and somewhat easier to use than the original. The new skill system, the thing I expected to dislike the most, seems to work fairly well also. NR gets my vote for an excellent refurbishment.

Actually, not so lucky. You missed one adjustment Randomizer, and it's a big one, enough to tip the scales and allow powergaming of both rewards.

*facepalm* Read the post. I'm not talking about all of Lufia II, I'm just talking about the Ancient Cave. The rest of Lufia II clearly has nothing to do with roguelikes by any stretch of the imagination.

Quote: Originally written by Surprised by Joy: I'm pretty sure that party and roguelike don't go together. —Alorael, who considers ASCII fairly important but not essential to roguelikes. You could make a very strong case for Diablo as a direct descendent of Rogue. Roguelikes tend to offer far more choices, though. When was the last time you carefully created and destroyed walls to arrange the perfect chamber for killing an enemy slightly slower than you in a non-ASCII game? Agreed about Diablo. There are some intermediaries that cleave closely to roguelikes in almost every way aside from the graphics. Dragon Crystal was an early, console-based graphical roguelike. Dungeon Hack was a first-person dungeon-crawl roguelike that used (I think) a variant of the Eye of the Beholder engine, and AD&D ruleset, but with all the rogue trappings we expect. There are, however, party-based roguelikes. One of the earliest (and most unusual) is the Ancient Cave, actually a subgame of the SNES RPG Lufia II. It uses the characters, items, spells, etc. of Lufia II, but everything about it screams rogue. More recently, there is the Mysterious Dungeon series of games, many of which haven't been released in America. It began with Torneko's Mysterious Dungeon, a Dragon Quest spinoff that was basically just graphical rogue, but more recent offerings like Pokemon Rescue Team have incorporated multiple PCs. Sure, these aren't traditional roguelikes, but they have far more in common with the roguelike than with any other genre of RPG (or any other video game type).

The most characteristic feature of a roguelike is that it generates random dungeons on-the-fly. For most other elements, you can find examples of roguelikes that treat them quite differently. That said, the Avernum engine is really not an obvious choice for a roguelike.

FWIW, the term "ego items" in Angband comes from the AD&D term, whose meaning is more specific. Ego items were magical items imbued with an ego, that is, an intelligent personality. So a sword +1, +4 vs. undead would be a talking sword, presumably good aligned, obsessed with slaying undead. Angband borrowed the term because Ego items were allowed to have extra and multiple powers, and Ego items in Angband were a step above regular magic items but below artifacts.

One extremely annoying feature -- this is a carryover from the G1-3 AP systems -- is that you only get the chance to move again if you have at least 5 AP remaining after the attack. Note that item-based attacks are exceptions. Thus with 9 AP, you can use two crystals and then shoot something, but if you shoot something first, you can't use even a single crystal, despite still having the AP to use both!

Xian Trall? The Vahnatai Creationists are gaining ground... I'd better double up my mooving prayers.

Because it does. While all the battle creations have standard melee attacks, the gazer and eyebeast have special melee attacks with higher dice and ancillary effects. They do 1-6, or 1-8, and cause fear -- something like that. I forget the specifics. You won't use them much as their missile attacks are still better, but they're there.

Quote: Originally written by Student of Trinity: throwing rocks is just lame Quoted for paradox. I think it's worth being realistic. The shaping system is not going to get drastically redone for G5. Fyoras will still be the first creation available. This is just the way Jeff does things. Creation balance can certainly change though. There's been noise here about weak battle creations for several games now. I had previously been hoping for non-combat, non-PC slot creations, like a bag of holding creation. Some of the engine changes in G4 make these less necessary though. And in case anyone is still confused, there will never be a Blades of Geneforge.

It is worth pointing out that ALL melee attacks did nearly twice as much damage in G1 and G2. G3 reduced creation melee attacks from 1-8 dice to 1-4 dice. It is true, though, that G4 has way more swarms of melee critters. I'm not really sure what would make the best balancing factor, as it's a thin line to walk. I do think it would make the game a lot more interesting if melee and missile attacks both had strategic value, which would require making melee attacks a lot stronger to keep up with the missile attacks that ramp up to 1-12 and even 1-14 in the endgame. But increasing attack too much would be dangerous. The other option is to increase HP, or resistances. But I fear that this would make battle creations annoying without actually making them interesting or valuable. I like the double hit idea, and not in the form of Quick Action but in the form of bonus AP a la plated bugs. Battle creations with 10-11 AP then get a great increase in deadliness, but one that doesn't kick in until the turn after they reach their target. This makes them more dangerous as enemies, but they can be responded to before they kill things, and since their HP isn't getting bloated, they can still be dispatched with strong attacks, daze, and the like. It also makes them more useful as allies since it is easier for the player to manipulate how close they are to their target when combat starts. I'd say Clawbugs, Battle Frat guys, Glaahks, Rots, and Tralls all deserve the extra AP. Give plated bugs high resistance. Give Thahds and Tralls additional HP. Give Alphas and Tralls some kind of neat ancillary effect. And let the Tralls have high Quick Action too. Why can't the biggest baddest battle creation be deadly close up? The other thing this does is make stunning more useful, which is great in my book.

One other possibility that jumps to mind is that at some point in the code after the section you copied, you get stuck in a loop.