Aoslare

G3 certainly wasn't a "big" improvement, though there were some small improvements made. The bigness of G2's improvement is debatable as well.

Actually, I am beginning to think that Alorael's daily name changes are the waste product of the supercharged Angband name generator he's been working on all these years. The PDN changes when he is forced to reroll.

I don't remember, but did Pacifist prevent summoning spells? If not, that's an obvious out. Granted, Garzahd would be pretty tough to deal with with summons, even with Simulacrum and a huge pile of energy potions.

Quote: Originally written by Emperor Tullegolar: Honeycomb: I think the Avernum 5 honeycomb was the most accurate representation of a cave in the whole series. In real life, caves aren't all on the same plane like Avernum is, they go up and down and all around and whatnot. No -- the most accurate representation of caves was back in Exile and Exile II, when the combination of frequent written descriptions with undetailed gaphics meant you had to use your imagination. Anyway, like Thuryl and Randomizer, I grew up on those old school dungeon crawlers, but I never liked that element of them. Regular 2-D mazes are one thing, but including lots of ups and downs just turns navigation into a headache without actually making it any more interesting. It's just taxing. I mean, who truly enjoyed the 32 x 32 x 10 labyrinths of the old Wizardry games?

The chitrach icon was, thank god, replaced with a new one someone on the boards designed in the later (I want to say 1.02, but I think I'm making that number up) releases of A4. Chitrachs were bad enough without looking like clawbugs. Hallelujah to a number of Jeff's comments, especially the one about no pylons. And I agree with Alorael about the seamless world. If it's a new area, it wouldn't be so bad; the caves of Exile simply weren't designed for those kind of maps and don't lend themselves to them well. To pick one example from the games, Upper Exile would work okay, I think.

Better yet, play Nethergate.

TM isn't the only one not here. For a very long time before G4, the only GF posters whose PDNs I could easily recognize were myself, Delicious Vlish, and Student of Trinity.

I guess the Darkside Loyalists would have been better than Rentar II, but I don't find them a very compelling villain either. The one upside would be the potential to resurrect the Scimitar.

There is one feature that the GF/Avernum 4 save game dialog desperately needs. A way to delete more than one character of the save description at a time. Or, at a bare minimum, the ability to hold down delete instead of having to press it once discretely for each character.

No, only the E2 heroes. Here's the mention -- it's Solberg: "True enough. I was one of the first wizards here. I fought in the first war against Grah-Hoth. I helped build the Tower of Magi. I had the honor of assisting the adventurers who destroyed Grah-Hoth once and for all." "Then I had the further honor of assisting the adventurers who contacted the vahnatai and helped us win the war against the Empire. I have had a hard life in Avernum, but at least it was full of achievement." "The first group? Nobody knows. They disappeared. Some think that they eventually found an escape route to the surface, though I have my doubts." "The second group? They are in Avernum still, helping repair the damage from the Avernum war and working to build relations with the vahnatai."

In-game, you either get stuck in the castle and get killed by a swarm of guards (if you didn't get all five brooches) or Erika teleports you to safety. I don't think anything is said for sure in later games (beyond the fact that they disappeared), though it is implied that the heroes went up to the surface -- which makes sense, given that they successfully found and navigated the last remaining exit from the caves.

The biggest problem with starting over is that, due to the nature of Shaping, it would be difficult to completely eliminate Shaping power. I mean, look at what happened in G1. How do you purge not just an island, but the entire world of canisters, textbooks, geneforge components, and so on...

No, it doesn't. Presumably you joined the Anama, so you have a stockpile of 128 Piercing Crystals. Right?

Whoops, I was thinking about spellbooks and canisters counting towards trainer limits in G1 and G2. I'm pretty sure trainer limits are based off the same hidden variable as skill cost, though. I may be remembering the result wrong, but I know I tested putting points into Luck to see if it affected the cost at all.

I know scripted events and canisters counted towards cost in G1 and (I think) G2, but I thought that was no longer the case. Actually, canisters I'm not sure about since there are so few stat-boosting ones in G4, but I seem to recall the Dillame Luck boost not moving the skill cost at all. Trainers, though -- the people you can buy up to skill 2 in a skill from with money -- do increase the cost.

The problem you experienced with the cave slimes was not a revival problem, it was a monster problem. Those cave slimes SUCKED. They were boring, but also numerous and somewhat difficult. At least there weren't map twenty sections of them like with the chitrachs, but they were definitely not one of the highlights of A4. Every time I hit one and it spawned multiple new slimes, I sighed. And here, here about that stupid portal. I don't think I would have minded clicking twice by itself, but it was click, load, click, load -- forcing me to alternate paying attention and waiting in a very irritating pattern.

Some of the Sholai already look disturbingly like they are wearing TNG-era uniforms.

Actually, Firebolt did 1-6 in G1, 1-4 in G2, and 1-3 in G3. Most of the damage numbers for G1-3 are available at Rebalancing between games . It's also worth pointing out the obvious fact the Firebolt does fire damage while thorn batons and javelins do physical damage. In G1, resistances in general were uncommon so it didn't matter much. In G2+, many enemies have mild resistance to physical damage. Fire resistance isn't rare, but it's definitely less common.

Next request: Wingbolt attired in a hot dog bun.

*facepalm* so who's your alter ego, upon mars?

That settles it. The next time I play a shaper all my creations are going to be named after Hebrew letters and sephiroth. Malkoth the Fyora. Tiferet the Vlish. Ayin Eye!

I think it took about two or three minutes. There are two simple, non-interacting operations per iteration, and there are sets of 5 and 8 possibilities which factor neatly into 40. Clearly this doesn't add anything to the emaciated list of practical applications of studying phonology. But I can permutate characters like a madman.

By Jove... this must mean that there are really forty members of the Fyora family: Fyora Cryoa Zyoar Wyroa Rtyoa Oyora Lryoa Iyoar Fyroa Rcyoa Zyora Wryoa Tyoar Oyroa Rlyoa Iyora Fryoa Cyoar Zyroa Rwyoa Tyora Oryoa Lyoar Iyroa Rfyoa Cyora Zryoa Wyoar Tyroa Royoa Lyora Iryoa Fyoar Cyroa Rzyoa Wyora Tryoa Oyoar Lyroa Riyoa

In G1, what you do with the Geneforge (and Trajkov and Goettsch) is actually the major determiner of the ending you get; what sect you joined, if any, can cause significant changes but you stay within the same branch. G2 and G3 are both very straightforward. G2 has 4 or 5 endings, depending on whether or not you count Aodare's ending the same as Zakary's. You probably should. G3 has 2 endings. G4 is a bit like G1. Although there are 3 possible endings as far as the fate of the world goes, each one has pretty big variations in what the PC's fate is, based on things other than the Unbound.

This is another situation where premises were designed for G1 and made perfect sense, but were not updated accordingly with the new settings. The rapid experience gain made sense in G1. It was accounted for by the fact that you were using canisters (a pretty fair assumption in G1). Other people couldn't do it as well because they weren't Shapers, but the ones who used canisters *were* significantly more powerful.