Lauren CW

I was honestly kinda bummed out about when the food thing dropped in avernum. I very much like the idea that your characters could starve to death, as it made it feel like that much more of an adventure. In E2, when you're going down the dark river, and you go down that waterfall that takes all your food, you had to explore and find more sources of sustainence or die trying. It was downright interesting going around and finding hydra meat, or safe mushrooms to eat.

Originally Posted By: Darth Ernie what are you talking about! Drizzt used two swords. **this is reply to House of S** This is me, logging in at 3:00am to tell you that I read forgotten realms, and the reference is not lost on me.

I have to admit. I have been hitting the refresh button for like 2 weeks now hoping to see some screenshots. And when I saw the first one, my heart stuck in my chest. I was so afraid, so horribly afraid, that the outdoors was done away with. But when I saw the picture of the party leaving Fort Avernum, all was right with the world. THANKYOU, from the BOTTOM OF MY HEART.

1. Describe your perfect sandwich. My perfect sandwich would have to be a tomato-basil naanwich with hummus spread on either side and egg-salad with paprika inbetween.. Before I became a vegetarian, it would have been a steak'n'chicken bacon wrapped godwich that I used to make when I worked at subway. Chicken breast topped with steak, all wrapped up in bacon, on an italian herb and cheese bread, with swiss and cheddar, mayo, ranch, lettuce, and tomatos. 2. What is your favorite filling or condiment? Hummus 3. What is your least favorite filling or condiment? Olives/onions/pickles/mustard. All of them. 4. How often do you eat sandwiches? Fairly often, probably about 4-5 times a week. 5. Have you ever found something really horrible in a sandwich? pretty much just mustard, pickles, onions, or olives. 6.If you could only eat one type of sandwich for the rest of your life, what would it be? Fried Egg sandwich. They're easy to make, tasty, and vegetarian friendly. 7. White or wheat? Depends on the sandwich. Some of them are better with one type, some with the other. 8. Jelly or jam? Depends. Jam on english muffins, jelly on sandwiches. 9. Pickles or onions? No. 10. Cheddar or Swiss? Swiss. Or better yet, baby swiss. 11. Grilled or toasted? Grilled if I have to, otherwise none. I don't like bread that cuts my mouth. 12. Explain why sandwiches are better than wraps. There's no wrap that I could eat for the rest of my life. 13. Explain why wraps are better than sandwiches. They identify the hipsters for me so I can avoid conversation with them. 14. Is an open-face sandwich an actual sandwich? Why or why not? No, needs two slices of bread.

At the end of the game I had about 20k. You have plenty of money in this game to buy pretty much anything you want as soon as you see it. Only exception I can see is the 3k training for melee/range dmg. Then again, it is cool to steal from dragons.

Just finished the game. Here's my final reflection on the matter of shamans: Summons only do the most damage of any ability if the fight lasts long enough. The only reason ANY fight might last long enough is BECAUSE you have a shaman who's unable to keep up with DPS. With decent tactics and either scrolls/scarabs, you can completely replace the shaman and have just as good survivability, with better damage output. My ideal party would probably be two shadow walkers and a sorceress. It's easy enough to either juggle your pc's or use summon wands for backstab.

Vitality really isn't a big deal at all. I took everyone's endurance to 10 and left it there on hard mode, and only ever ended up using like... 4 vitality potions? And I did everything possible in an area before returning to avadon. If I had turned in every quest as soon as I could, I would never have used vitality potions at all. So don't worry about it. The cooldown system is rather annoying for Shamans. Everyone else is fine. The Sorceress, when outfitted with 3 attack scarabs, never ran out of attacks for me. And if she did, there's always items that negate the cooldowns. Which I also never used. Dex IS super powerful though. My shadowwalker didn't get hit once by the "Boss" at the end of the game. In fact, I was kindof disappointed by the lack of difficulty in the game, given that only one fight had me really THINK about a way to tackle it rather than rush in blindly and whack away. Maybe Torment will stretch my limits. Hard certainly didn't.

I'm about to go to Beraza woods for the third time. I'm level 30, and the only optional things I haven't done yet are killing the demon in Zhethron's lair, and killing the other dragon. Beloch was no problem, and I only used one heal spell fighting him. I typically don't need the summoned pets to tank hits for me, because Shima and Nathalie kill trash mobs in one round. During bosses or named fights, Shima does so much damage nothing bothers focusing anyone else, and nothing can hit Shima. I'm just trying to maximise damage potential on the Shaman so I can end fights even faster. I guess my problem is that I just don't NEED her at ALL for the roles that she shines in. Consumables do her job for her, except for vulnerability curse.

First: I'm playing on Hard. Torment is for my next playthrough. Um... Vulnerability curse...? Is about the only use I can find for her. All her buffs, I prefer using scrolls for. Summoned creatures just don't hit that hard, do little more than distraction. But the really hard monsters have AOE, so it doesn't help much. Her regular attacks (Both staff, AND dex) don't hit hard, unless MAYBE you stack her up with a bunch of missle %dmg items. Those are all on my shadowwalker, because he STILL hits harder than my Shaman. I rarely need any healing, and could probably better use the potions and scrolls I've been hoarding. So far she's been outclassed all aspects for the entire game, by Nathalie, and everything I've read says that Sorceress is the weakest class. I've tried a max dex build and a max int build, with respective gear, but she's still crap. Help?

I would love to get my hands on a copy of the annotated maps, that I could put on my flashdrive. Is there simpler way to do this than opening up every page and hitting "Save picture as..." ?

Just partition your harddrive and install the Mac OS on the partition. Virtual box is way more trouble than it's worth, in my experience.

The free action tiny heal has saved my bacon numerous times already. I wanted to see how useful, if at all, the free skills become. Powergaming would probably see fast on feet on all of the characters, because there's just no substitute for free AP, and the combat order without bumping dex so high is really handy.

What all was in the Annotated maps? Does anyone have a sample of one? I'd be willing to give a shot at making some. I'm right at the beginning of a new playthrough.

I just started a replay of Avernum 1, and all my characters have divinely touched, and either elite warrior, fast on feet, or natural mage. I'm playing on "Really hard"-- Torment as it's later called. After taking out the goblins, a few outdoor encounters, and the bandits... My party is level 2. I wouldn't recommend the higher difficulties until you KNOW what you're doing, and wont waste skill points.

I've been trying to remember some of the riddles and puzzles the first three games put you through, and the search function hasn't really been helpful. Everyone just posts the answers to the riddles. Rather than having to play through all the games to find said riddles, could you guys help me out? I'm looking for ANY memorable puzzles/riddles. e.g. hellishly cruel laser & mirrors 16-32-64-128-256-512-? There's one about a coffin, shield, crown, and whatnot... One where you have to destroy all these barrels/crates by pushing them into water

Welcome to the forums. Please leave your sanity at the door. A2 is, in my opinion, the best game in the whole series, and has the most dramatic plot development that actually happens IN GAME rather than you being just told about something that happened.

Remember those wands of acid shower you've been saving? You have been saving them right? Acid and lingering lightning damage, combined with a tiny hallway or a door or some such. worst comes to worst back yourself into a corner so they can't completely surround you. Another neat trick is running around a corner and ending combat, then healing fully in about a second or two, or casting that oh so necessary haste/regen/shield

I did it using the servile, with a min-maxxed blend of melee and spells, favouring melee. I also had a bunch of goodies from killing the unbound, though. Can't remember if I was on normal or hard. I went back and did the stoneworks right afterwards, because I didn't feel like taking on podlings with a solo character on whom I had just expended the VAST majority of my resources (Pods, wands, etc...) Also, it felt somehow wrong to skip the stoneworks action to get to the storm plains. Disclaimer: I am also an inhuman robot.

It largely depends on which difficulty you are playing on as well. If you're on one of the easier difficulties, you may try just working up your battle magic, or melee (Whichever you prefer). If you go for some melee, I would get high enough mental magic to daze everything when they swarm you. Otherwise, battle magic on easier difficulty should be enough to fry anything that comes at you. On higher difficulties, you NEED a high mental magic as a singleton character in order to charm/daze the swarms, because otherwise they will kill you. I tend to prefer getting more offensive gear than more armor. It seems to me that if you're going to have to heal in combat, taking 20-50 less damage on a servile with over 600 hit points isn't going to make a difference, whereas being able to kill enemies in a single round is. Again, mostly preference stuff, and keep in mind the major factor for what strategies and which skills to pump up is the difficulty, which you can change at any time.

I would love to take a look at your work. Retroactive meaning that as he gets a higher intelligence, he won't gain more skill points just because of the modifier. Every level he gets after his modifier goes up will add to his skill points, but a character reaching level 10 going from a +3 to a +4 in intelligence isn't going to get 2x4x10 creation points, he's going to get 2x3x9 + 2x4x1.

It occurred to me you could use a system much like that of skill points for creations. Int modifier x2 per level skill points to be allocated into creation stats like str, dex, con, int. (Pending balance of course) You'd have to make a scale, but that shouldn't be hard if you keep it simple. 1,2,2,3,3,4,4,5,5 and such. That way you couldn't bump up too many creations to fast without a high int, and you would have to be a focused character in order to amass any sort of power. I was thinking of turning the shaping disciplines into feats for a different campaign. Each level of fire shaping feat gives +2 (Pending balance) to fire creatures primary stats. I would by far build this scale so disposable creations are better than the leveled up creations. I've been toying with the idea of creating several classes for shaping lately, I'll post them up when I'm done if anyone is interested. Collaboration would be awesome EDIT: Example: Andras has an intelligence of 17. His modifier is +3. It has been at 17 for his first 7 levels. So he would have something like 6x7 skill points for creations. at 8th level, he bumps up his intelligence by one, and he gets 8 skill points as opposed to 6 from now on. I would make this non-retroactive, so if he drops in intelligence his creations don't have to be re-written for the loss in skill points.

Nobody is going to mention Trajkov? He kicked off the whole series with his greed, and held his own people hostage to boot.

I haven't read song of ice and fire yet, just haven't gotten a hold of the books. They come heavily recommended though, so it's definitely up on my list. However, I did very much enjoy reading Neil Gaiman's blog on the subject of authors. It is incredibly well constructed.

I am really interested in trying this out. I haven't seen one of these AIMHacks in action yet, but they really perked my interest. I'll submit a character sometime within the next day.

^^ I had a door in my Geneforge campaign of DnD 3.5 And the party could not open it. The party started with an ninja who would have been able to do it, but he wandered off to be replaced by a Shaman. Nobody could pick the lock, and the door was reinforced. I left a scroll of Knock in a desk in the previous room, but nobody was able to read it. What they ended up doing was levitating the desk and launching it at the door.