Rent-an-Ihrno

often colliding software components can cause problems like that.

try using diskwarrior or conflictcatcher to check your hd.

but then, thats quite improbable if its the same on all 3 macs.

what else... uh... having the game installed on an almost full hd or hd-section could be the cause.

ah, what do i know.

you have a point there. for some reason, drakes seem to be much harder to stand against than supposedly more powerful enemies.

the best way i found to kill them is to use your magic only to defend. arcane shield, sanctuary etc should keep you from dying, and hasting+blessing should make it possible for your fighter to kill a drake each round.

this works best with a fighterpriest//fightermage-party.

i know, i just wondered where he found all those weird names. i mean, theyre beautiful and everything, (except footracer maybe), but wouldnt it be weird to be introduced to a ms. midori?

 

anyway, any more clues on solberg? (i wont ask about starrus since i suspect his role is explained in a4)

will he still be in the triad? who else?

but seriously, avernum mostly consists of storyline, texts, messages etc., does jeff do that on his own too?

 

btw, where does the name krizsan come from? (since his wife was mentioned, and i believe i heard thats her name... or was krizsan a girl of jeffs past... hm)

 

oh wait, im getting too much ot. uhh.... oh yes! assuming that a5 will take place after a4, i think avernum should be sealed off again. by some kind of accident maybe. to get that exile-feeling back, you know? and solberg and micah should be replaced. i like the guys, but 4 games are enough, theyre too old.

and i would like to see x in a more active role.

 

oh! and i would very much appreciate a more flexible dialogue.

i mean, apart from the much-discussed option of typing in things to say etc etc etc, i would like to be adressed correctly. a singleton should be spoken to as a single being, and maybe filling in <PN> (=player name) would be nice.

hm. i apologize for the tone of my last comments. i knew spidweb was small, but not that small.

of course avernum is not a graphics-game; for me it has always been a flair-game, a replacement for an adventure-book of sorts.

but still, mentioned feature seems well worth it to me.

 

er... if jeff does the programming, what do the other two do? share the story-part?

correct me if im wrong, but i assume that spidweb is no 1-man-company, and why the hell should i play their games if they dont even invest that amount of time in them?

 

edit: wrote spidwe.

but that wasnt so in the avernum trilogy... has that changed in a4 then?

@vaecrius: oh come on. avernum really is no big game, and those sprites are quite much all you see through the whole game. i think there should be some for everything, even the various armor-types etc etc, like it already is in some games, like in diablo 2 for example. would that really be that much an expense?

edit: messed up quote.

id already be satisfied if it would be possible to put things into barrels, drawers, etc again, like back in the exile-universe.

i wouldnt like a new game with the a3 engine, but perhaps with an improved one.

 

i wont start with the full-3d-demands again, since - though a baldurs gate/jedi knight/whatever kinda avernum would be cool - spidweb probably is far too small a company to do something much larger than a3/a4.

 

assuming that a5 will have a huge playing space, id really like to see better transport possibilities. for example, you could ask a merchant in some inn if he could take you along, or if youre a really powerful mage, you could teleport. blabla.

just imagine talking to people like thralni, or king micah before he was king micah, but simply micah!

 

actually, im sure that several people survived the first expedition. i forgot why while writing the column above, but who cares.

 

hmm. every avernum needs at least 1 major enemy. what would that be? not the sliths and demons again.. maybe a grand goblin infestation. or dragons. or both. or draglins.

i think alorael is quite right there, ephesos.

 

and damn, why didnt i think of the myth series? that would really be perfect... well, not perfect, but great.

 

the settling-thing reminds me of an escape velocity-mod... i very much doubt anybody knows it.. or the game itself. but that one was good. real good. that would be fun.

 

edit: of course, that wouldnt work too well if one didnt ignore that whatever you do in such an a5 doesnt work together with a1.

i dont like the whole idea at all.

 

what i would like though, would be an age of ... -type of strategy game, maybe replaying avernum 1/2. if well made!

of course ive passed through there, but the whole thing is so non-factory-like i never considered it to be the factory. of course, there is the crumbling factory, but was that one for alien beasts?

i mean, look at the golems. what machinery, what a complex! and you see exactly how those numbers of golems were made (and you get to destroy the things).

those crystal souls dont seem to have any connection to anything, they just stand there.

hm. why does the strongest of all monsters, the alien beasts, have the weakest source? a little building in tinraya, with 2 tiny, featureless rooms in it for breeding?

besides, that building mustve been grown AFTER the destruction of the keep of tinraya, because the survivors couldve given clues on who is responsible for it all.

so do the alien beasts have another production site?

you have to smash the crystal in his tomb after you kill him.

 

(answer provided by rache's a3 site)

the keep of tinraya was caught by surprise and krizsan is laughed at even by the other cities in valorim for its the extremely weak forces the empire had sent there. both situations would look very much different if they wouldve been handled by powers similar to those sent down to avernum during the war.

 

the geneforge-influence is undenyable. but although i have no great love for geneforge, there you can at least choose sides etc, which would be quite a revolution for the avernum series.

actually, i hoped for a feature like that in a4 and the lack of this is the reason why i refuse playing the game.

 

edit: coming to think of it, wouldnt a3 have been perfect for a choose-your-side-rpg? (i mean more than 2 sides)

speaking of deliver-that-quests. wouldnt it be great if one could cancel minor missions? im thinking of "xxx will give you 25 gold for every research tome.." missions here. i always get them unwillingly while talking to someone, and they annoy me. i never do them but they take up space in my quest list.

 

back to a3. you really dont save the surface. you just relieve an unimportant continent of some pests that wouldve been erased anyway, once the empire wouldve unleashed their armies. you didnt kill the source of the plagues, you just destroy some replaceable tower. and you dont defeat the enemy of all humans, you make your allies enemies. and dont defeat them.

wouldnt it be smarter to ask the vahnatai kindly to let that stuff be and take their revenge in another way? you know, diplomacy, and such.

oh, alright! that explains alot. thx.

 

however, i still think that the player is put into a position of lacking intelligence in avernum. hey, maybe that lead to being thrown down there in the first place!

 

which reminds me, wouldnt it be cool if the game would randomly choose one of thousands of backgrounds for each character created? (i say one of thousands because i find the idea that first came to my mind unwillingly, that each character slot has its history for the according char, utterly useless)

 

by the way. (i presume these new topics arent off-topic since this thread was actually made for the whole garbage in my mind) it appears to me that a3 has by far fewer missions to offer than a2, that the existing ones are less interesting but linear although they dont really belong together, dont serve a cause that necessarily is to be supported, are exhausting ("could you please walk to the other side of valorim, grab some boring book and bring it here?") and in the end dont bring much fame? in a1, you win the slith and grah-hoth wars, in a2 the empire war, and in a3? please.

ive been walking around thinking about certain questions concerning spidweb-games for a long time, and i thought its time to go public.

unfortunately, i cant recall the questions.

two i remember.

 

1. how do resistances work in avernum (3)? my slith has a fire resistance of, like, 160% or something, and still takes up to 20 dmg from efreet or golems.

shouldnt 100% mean hes immune?

 

2. is it possible that the playable characters are a little stupid? for example, in a3, they ask every single avernite they meet "'unspec?'", "whats 'unspecified services'?" etc.

shouldnt asking once suffice, if they dont even know their own employee.? (yeahyeah i know its explained to the player that way)

or in a2, they simply dont understand what people mean with "our friends below" or "the surface filth/the great foe above"... hard to comprehend, right? annoying.

etc, etc, etc.

you guys are so conservative.

 

imo, the combat in the later avernum games tend to become a pointless hacking & slashing that really gets on my nerves.

 

it gets so much on my nerves ill never buy a4, and dont play the earlier ones too often anymore.

 

to add some abilities to melee and archery would do an immense good as i see it, since a) combat would be a bit more interesting and one wouldnt have to spend all that much time fighting and could concentrate more on the rpg-part of the game.

 

it was a rpg game once, you know.

you know, there are 3 avernums and 3 erikas, thus 3 towers and 3 rooms behind erika. i think in a1 and 2, you can get into the rooms around her, but not in a3. impossible. nothing in there.

so you all are right.

 

the building in cotra is the bunker. it will be available to help you later in the game. be around in upper avernum, and youll know when to get in.

 

even later than that, you can get over the runes in ghikra. you cant miss that point.

for buying spells, large towns are mostly the best place to look.

for level 3 spells, complete quests (of which none are available in the demo, i think) and search dungeons.

just playing through everything, and doing all you can do, is the better way to grow strong little magicians, imo. replaying something written in some faq to get a spell is ineffective and boring.

formello really is the first place to go, though.

yeah, i just noticed that playing a2. well, just use the editor. i dont think it messes up with the scroll and everything. but of course, that problem should be past by now.

i understand you demo-playing guys. it took a long time between the demos and the cd-pack for me, and its really like this: the a3 demo is best, but the full a2 is best by far.

all the important reasons have been listed.

though i might add:

a2: what an atmosphere! phew!

all the others: what an atmosphere. pah.

mit der zungenspitze. das etwas in den rachen verschobene r, das ich noch nicht als uvular bezeichnen würde, kommt zwar vor; aber selten. die regel ist mit der zungenspitze, so seh ich das und kenn ich das. ein paar seltsame deutsche städtchen ignoriert.