S M Adventurer

Exile was one of my first RPGs I ever played too. I also found it annoying that monsters regenerate everywhere in the Exile trilogy, but there is an advantage to that. You can farm practically all the gold, equipment drops, and experience you want out of the regenerating monsters. Although it's still annoying if they regenerate and you are really battered from a fight with other monsters. The Avernum games were a pretty nice conversion from Exile. I've beaten A1, A2, almost beaten A3, A4, A5, and A6. The spell system is nice, and it is good that monsters don't regenerate then. Still, you probably should give Exile 2 another chance. It may not have the best GUI, but it has an epic plot. The game mechanics are nice and easily exploitable, as you said. Anyway, give it another go.

There's a question I would like to ask about shopkeepers in the first Avernum trilogy and BoA. Do the shopkeepers ever restock their items? I recently bought all the Energy Potions/Elixirs I could find in shops plus all the alchemy ingredients I could find in them. Not sure if I'll ever need more now, but I'd just like to know.

That custom character graphic looks really good. There was a topic on making and using custom character portraits on the Shadow Vale forums. Here's the link: http://forum.nethergate.net/index.php?showtopic=1218 The topic was about custom portraits for BoA. I'm guessing that you should be able to do this in A1-3 and of course BoA, since they have the same engine.

Okay, in Avernum 3 I managed to end the Golem plague without any trouble at all. (Lightning Spray easily killed the first four types of Golems, and Fire spells killed the fifth kind.) However, in Exile 3, the Golems consistently own me. I guess it's because of the different engines between Exile and Avernum. Avernum is much easier than Exile I noticed. The Golems are very powerful and hard to kill in the Exile 3 engine. A Fire or Ice Golem's breath does upwards of 80 damage, and the Jeweled Golems are very troublesome since they have an even more powerful breath weapon, plus their acid spit. The worst are the Demon Golems, due to the fact they resist pretty much anything, cast spells, and have a lot of HP. Golems of Blades are a little easier though, since they have no long range breath attack, although they do a good amount of damage in melee. However, most Golems seem to be heavily resistant to both physical and magical attacks (especially Demon Golems.) I just wonder how I'm supposed to get through this quest without either dying or resort to using the character editor. (I don't want to cheat.) They are still hard even with the Make Game Easier option enabled in the Preferences menu. The last time I went through the Tower of Shifting Floors really killed me, even if I did cheat. Especially considering the Golems regenerate and I often ran low on SP. Anyway, enough of that ranting about them. Does anyone have any good strategies or techniques to make taking down each kind of Golem easier, and help me survive the Tower of Shifting Floors? Exile 3 that is.

My Favorite RPGs: Baldur's Gate II Diablo II Castle of the Winds Dungeons of the Unforgiven My Favorite BoE Scenarios: Adventurer's Club 1 Adventurer's Club 3 At the Gallows Falling Stars Shadow of the Stranger Spears

Again, I'm not sure if this was mentioned already, but I found a bug with the current release of OBoE. Cockroaches have their ability set to Petrification Touch by default. Now that Petrification Touch has been fixed, call me shocked while I was playing a scenario in the current release of OBoE that one of my characters was turned to stone by a bite from a Cockroach. This doesn't seem right. This should be changed. The correct ability for the Cockroach would most likely be Causes Disease or something like that.

Yeah, in A1 and A2 Bind Foe at level 1 was a great spell, since nothing could resist it. In my playthroughs I purposely avoid getting the spell at level 2 or 3. Invisible monsters are very annoying to deal with because you can't target them with magic. At least they are only two invisible monsters. Any more would be even more frustrating. Back to E3, I liked to the vast number of spells too. Some spells were useless, but others really come in handy sometimes. My favorite spells are Firestorm, Divine Thud, Bless Party, Major Haste, and Major Blessing. Wound also deserves a mention. It is very useful for taking out monsters that are immune to everything, as the damage type is physical and unblockable.

I managed to find and save some walkthroughs for Alcritas' scenarios using the Wayback Machine. The pictures that were in the walkthroughs are long gone, but the text is intact. I can send them to you if you PM me your email.

I'm not sure if this was suggested yet, but I'll mention it anyway. My suggestion is that there should be If-Then Special Nodes that check if the party contains a Nephil or Slith character. You are able to do this in BoA apparently. It would be cool to be able to make it do so in BoE too.

In my opinion, I don't care much about graphics. I think the graphics look good in the Avernum games. Even in the Exile Trilogy they looked nice. Sure they aren't as flashy as Diablo or Baldur's Gate, but they still are nice. I'm pretty attracted to the Avernum series by the interesting plot, cool battle systems, great gameplay, and good combat that sometimes requires more strategy. As for the character editor included with some Avernum games, I used to use it a lot. Every party I used to made for any Avernum game I turned into a god party by raising my stats to unbelievable levels. Nothing could kill my party. However, I am now playing the Avernum series (and Exile too) without touching the character editor at all. It feels good to play them without cheating anymore. Sure, I struggled at first, but I learned optimal party building strategies and interesting techniques to take down the big bad bosses. As of now, I have beaten A1, A4, A5, A6 without cheating. I was quite proud of myself to accomplish that. I'm getting close to beating A2 and A3 as well. I also nearly played all BoA scenarios without a God party, and beat them all. That's another accomplishment, especially considering about three of those scenarios were very hard combat wise. Overall, playing the whole Avernum series without using the character editor once gives you a great sense of satisfaction and accomplishment. As for the graphics, don't knock them until you at least tried to play at least one Avernum game demo. If the graphics don't attract you, it's the engaging plot and interesting gameplay that will pull you right in.

Originally Posted By: BainIhrno Now that we've had this running for a while, any chance we can make one for BoE as well? I second this notion.

My opinion is that they probably said ditch 1 of your characters so you have a space in your party's roster to take in an NPC. NPCs are typically stronger than your party, so having one in your party helps a lot. Note that for most NPCs you need to have your reputation at a certain level and/or complete a quest before they will join you. As for any other reasons for ditching one character, I don't really see anything else. Some people play singleton parties in the Avernum trilogy and delete the other characters. Besides more experience for each of the three characters, that's really it.

I'm not really sure if Limoncelli is Lysstak the Beast's ancestor. They could be connected to each other, as they both have very powerful haste spells or something making them much faster than normal.

Spears and Halberds are both two-handed weapons. You won't be able to Dual-Wield with either one of them. At least that's what I've noticed in all of the Avernum games.

Well, considering The Castle has only one floor in A1-2 and it's not in A3, he must be talking about Avernum 4. The Castle is very big. It contains stairways leading to all different parts of the Castle. You may have not explored The Castle completely. The second floor is still as large as the first.

Well, I'm pretty much nearing the end game. I just need a little help finding the Darkside Loyalists' base. I read you could find it where Erika's Tower used to be, but I don't see any way to get over there. How do I get to the Darkside Loyalist's base?

You bring an interesting topic. A bank to store access amounts of gold in would be useful. I think there was a BoA Scenario (Where the River Meets, I think it was.) that had some sort of bank in it. Of course, there wasn't much use for it in BoA, because the Gold cap was raised to 30,000. A Bank would be nice, but I don't think Jeff intends to put one in his games. A BoA designer could put one in his/her scenario though. I don't know if it's possible in BoE.

Thank you for the help. I figured it out on my own after a short while though. Apparently you have to go see Aydin in the Northern Islands about getting to Hawthrone before Erika talks about the statues.

In Avernum 1 there is a Living Statue in most of the towns. However, when I try to talk to them, they won't say anything useful. What do I have to do to get them to talk? I know one of them has a spell that I really need to get. Thanks in advance.

To answer your questions in the order you asked them.. 1. I don't really know exactly where the name Avernum came from. I assume Jeff decided in his rewrites of the Exile series, to give it a different name. 2. I don't think you can get into Sulfra's back room. This is one of the places that's impossible to enter. Even if you could enter it by cheating, there's nothing there anyway. 3. Same as above for Khoth's secret library. 4. I think you get an item called the Naturewalker's Torc. I don't know what it does, but that's what you get. As soon as you get the last cache you get this item. Hope this answers your question.

This was a good scenario. It had an interesting plot. Ghosts have been lurking around the Cathedral. I liked it. The graphics were very pretty to look at. The blue floors and walls were really nice. I loved the design of the Cathedral. The Empire ghosts had some nice graphics too. I liked the Catacombs under the Cathedral, it gave me a sense of what was going to happen if I didn't make it out in time. The Combat was not hard at all, probably because of the party level I was at when I started playing. There was some nifty scripting. I liked how the ghost archers could fire icy arrows, and then there was a ghost that had some interesting properties added to his halberd. The best part was how the ghosts came to life. You could actually see the spirits rise from the bodies. That was really cool. Now the ending, I really didn't get. Why would I be arrested for clearing out a temple's ghost problem? This part could have used some more explanations. Overall, this scenario is very cool. Awesome graphics, good combat, nice town/dungeon design, and a pretty interesting plot. Just the ending may have needed further explaining. It was still very fun though. Rating: [rating]Best[/rating]

After playing Canopy, I played this scenario. It was pretty good. I liked how TM actually made a fully functional boat using script. The boat combat was interesting too. Speaking of the combat, this scenario had it's difficult moments, but not of Canopy's level. I personally liked the fights with Profanus Pyre and The Immortal. They were well done and provided a good challenge without being impossible. The graphics were really nice in this scenario. I enjoyed the wall and floor set of that tower. An interesting tidbit TM decided to do is make portcullis work like doors. While it's not very realistic, since how else are you going to pick a portcullis to open it. The plot was pretty interesting. A province has problems with bandits and rebels. They were some nice twists in the plot. The items in this scenario, like those of Canopy, were nicely made, but were a bit overpowered once again. Not as bad as Canopy, but still. Overall, I had fun with this scenario. It was really cool and had amazing scripting techniques. The combat wasn't too hard, and the plot was good. I like it. Rating: [rating]Best[/rating]

What a time I had while playing this scenario (with a regular party!) I found to be very exciting and interesting. Let's review each of the aspects of the scenario. First, the one thing I noticed that is the combat was extremely difficult. Most bosses in the scenario had over 1,000 HP I estimate. There were some pretty nifty scripted abilities each of the bosses had, but I found one thing to be a bit bad. Most of the bosses seem to have the ability to remove Invulnerability from all characters at once. The Demonic Idol and many other future bosses comes to mind. Then again, I did play this scenario a couple of levels under the suggested party level I should be at. Still, I got through without too much trouble. There was a lot of interesting characters too, and the fight scenes were awesome. I liked how you needed to position that laser on that wizard in the Catacombs in order to kill him. Now let's start talking about the numerous artifacts and magical items that were in this scenario. They were really cool, and they helped me get through the scenario in one piece. However, a few may have been overpowered. That Adestrage Bow or how ever you spell it comes to mind for that. Before I got it, my Nephil archer could only do 40-50 damage per hit. Then he got the Adestrage, and now he does upwards of 100 damage. I do like the new animation for that bow though. The bow wasn't the only artifact you can get. As you progress in the scenario, you get more and more cool, useful, and sometimes overpowered items. Along with overpowered items, you get some overpowered abilities. Now they cost spell points to use. However, some aren't very useful. You don't get the most useful ones until you are near the end. I think my favorite was the Flame Sword type thing, your character takes damage and so the enemy. Nice work here. The plot was interesting enough to keep on playing and you meet some cool characters. I liked exploring that six floor Fort. It had amazing Cutscenes. Also, each time you complete a quest, you get tons of experience, which was enough to make my characters go up a level or three. The graphics of everything looked pretty good, except for a few white spots in the monster graphics. Doesn't really bother me much, so I won't take off any points for that. The ending was kind of abrupt, Spinderscher sending me to the depths of I don't know where I am. I really don't know how to respond to that. Overall, this scenario is definitely not for level 1 parties in difficulty. Even my party at level 30 was having problems. The custom items were nice, but somewhat overpowered. Graphics and plot were very good. It had nice cutscenes and good scripting. I liked this scenario a lot and will recommend it to people that like challenging combat and an interesting universe. Rating: [rating]Good[/rating]

Now this is a excellent adventure. The plot is basically quite simple. You are a party of newbie adventurers looking for quests. Here's the good part, there's also another party of adventurers you meet in this scenario, which is exactly like the pre-fabricated party in Exile. I also liked how the party of 6 used Exile spells instead of Avernum spells. The scripting to make all those spells work in the Avernum engine was great. My favorite was probably Mindduel. I also liked the humor used in this scenario. The witty banter that each of your party members has was so hilarious. Also, there was some humor in a few of the dialogue options. I personally liked how you could barter with Machrone to get a higher reward for bringing his box back. That was an interesting touch. Although I must confess, I didn't play it with a level 1 party. So the only combat in the scenario was with the four goblins, who I killed easily. Another nice bit was that your third party member would be afraid of goblins and when they finally encounter a group of them in that cave, she began freaking out and become terrified. The town/dungeon design was pretty neat too, I think my favorite would have to be the archmage's castle. Speaking of that, it's kind of funny that your party is rescued from jail by the other adventuring party. Overall, this scenario was very well done, humorous, and scripted well. I recommend to anyone who likes humor in a scenario, as well as a few things from Exile series. Rating: [rating]Best[/rating]

Wow, sounds like you are in quite a pickle. You find Repel Spirit at level 3 in the Remote Cavern in Northwest Valorim. I don't think you'll be able to make it all the way from the House on a Hill to northwest Valorim in one game day, even with Horses. It seems like the only way for you to get Repel Spirit at level 3 is to use the character editor to set yourself a few days back to give yourself enough time to go to the Remote Cavern and back. Oh, and Repel Spirit level 3 helps a lot during the Tower of Magi Disaster, but it's not required. If you collected a couple of magical items and artifacts while playing the game, and have Mass Healing at level 3, you should just be able to make it. Bring plenty of Potions too.