Kelandon

Except for the exploit above, this fight was meant to make people go "Huh, I need to find something different this time." It seems to be doing that.

Some of the dialogue in the area makes it sound as though you can't leave, and I find that combat puzzles work best — especially at the end of long dungeons — if you have all options available to you (restocking from shops, getting a different set of characters, retrieving stored items, etc.). Forcing the player to do something different is good, but forcing them to do something different when they don't have many alternatives available to them is a recipe for disaster. In my case, I really wanted to get a different set of characters, equip different scarabs, and grab some consumables that I hadn't brought with me.

Now, I didn't actually try to leave because there were a number of dialogues suggesting that I couldn't. I think those dialogues appear to be wrong, though; when I finished the Golath fight, I just opened the front gate and ran out. If you do tweak things in that area, I'd suggest making much more explicit that you can exit through the front gate — probably in the talk node tagged 27, which says that if you head toward the front gate, "the worst of their forces will see you." I'd suggest changing that to something that much more plainly indicates that you can escape and come back if you need to.

My method, which I finished a few minutes ago, was slower but simpler:

 

I had a shaman with a summoned creature specialty (he's my main character). If you send a drake or other "pet" inside, that doesn't trigger the dialogue or the closing of the gates. Furthermore, all the enemies are already "enemies"...i.e., you can attack them without waiting for the dialogue to turn them hostile.

　

So, I go into combat mode. I have the drake walk up while my characters stay outside the room. The drake alternates fire blasts and attacks on the bodyguards. When he fades away, I summon another. I just keep doing it 'til all the bodyguards and side drakes are dead (occasionally I exit combat mode to quicksave in case I accidentally walk a main character in). They don't even fight back, because the dialogue that "triggers" them hasn't happened yet. Or they're all stoned or something. My personal theory is that Dheless made them take a sacred vow that they would stay right where they were and not budge "until the Hand of Avadon arrives." And since no Hand had made an appearance, only this endless line of drakes, they had no choice but to sit there and get eaten one by one. A tribute to that famous Titan discipline. I like the image, anyway.

　

I suppose I could have killed Golath himself the same way, but I chose not to...I wanted the dialogue to happen. But he was a lot less impressive by himself, even on Torment. It's not Davd vs. Golath anymore.

 

With hard fights, I've noticed that this game and all of Jeff's games reward you for seeing how much you can get away with before the fight begins...in terms of character placement, opening and closing doors, summoning things, killing things, etc. This was just an extreme case.

 

Maybe this thread should be linked in Strategy Central?

Just hit a wall with this very fight and ended up using this exploit to kill off the two drakes before the combat started. Handy, if a bit cheap.

I'm not sure what we're talking about here. As far as I can tell, what we know is:

1) There are a few real Hungarian names in the Avadon series, some of which are applied to characters who have descriptions somewhat suggestive of in-jokes.

2) Avadon was inspired by a Hungarian opera (called "Bluebeard's Castle" in English) with two named characters (Judith/Judit and Bluebeard/Kékszakállú).

3) Mariann Krizsan is an immigrant with a Hungarian name.

None of this proves anything, but it is suggestive. Given 3) and 2), 1) isn't "surprising," but neither does it tell us much. It could be that some of Avadon's characters are named after Hungarian friends or relatives of Mariann. It could be that Jeff grabbed a "name your baby" book and just used Hungarian names that he liked. It could be that he put together interesting-sounding syllables and accidentally made Hungarian names. With only this information, we don't really know.

By design, not a joke. Wearing them gives the effect of one level of Focus Mastery (adding chance of critical damage). Honestly, it seems pretty clear to me.

I guessed that that's what it might mean, but it seemed sufficiently odd that I wasn't sure. It might be clearer to describe it in terms of the effect than in terms of Focus Mastery (i.e., "adds 5% chance of inflicting critical damage") and throw the "makes your brain more sorcerery" into the item description.

I was a bit worried in part because it doesn't show up on the stat sheet, as far as I can tell, even though other things that add to your skills (e.g., Blademaster's Bulwark) do.

Kel's Page is down, I can't access it.

Hadn't logged in in too long, but it's back up.

This appears to be about Avadon, so I've moved it to the Avadon forum.

All right, my revised prediction: the 2012 map except that Iowa goes red. This is my best guess based on present circumstances and the path of the campaigns so far.

I still follow topics here and occasionally play scenarios.

Also, here is my admittedly odd map.

You are predicting a massive landslide. Like, a 10+ point swing from current standings, large enough that the House would probably flip.

Out of curiosity, why? (Given current polls, trends, etc.)

Just to be clear: 1) Does Intelligence have anything to do with turrets (per the tooltip)? 2) Does Turret Craft in fact do anything (other than add buffs)?

I haven't gotten to a retrainer yet, so it's a little difficult for me to experiment with this myself, but I will be messing with it when I get there (which may not be for a while).

EDIT: It appears that we have a whole thread going on the failure of turret mechanics to follow in-game descriptions. I've been avoiding reading most of the threads here because I want to avoid spoilers for a while yet.

the Turret Craft skill currently seems to do absolutely nothing (except for the buffs that appear at levels 3 and 7)

That was true in Avadon 2 as well, right?

At the moment, my prediction is the 2008 map except Indiana going red. When is the deadline for a prediction?

This seems pretty fundamental. I'm going to email Spidweb about this, and I encourage others to do the same. It's one thing to have a vague, not-overly-helpful description; it's another to have a quite simple description that is just plain wrong.

Aww. I hope someday Jeff includes a trowel-centric quest in a game.

We have been so yearning to do something with those unsellable trowels.

Separate post for a separate thought.

The interaction that I found most interesting was:

Jeff: Somebody should ask what stories I would heavily rewrite if given the chance.

Fan: I'll take that bait, what stories would you rewrite if given the chance? Particular games, entires series, anything.

Jeff: When I redo Geneforge 3, I'll have to have lots of talks with people. That game never went over well, and I'd like to figure out why.

But the game I really want to rework the plot of is Avernum 4. Its story was thrown together and just didn't click. The game after that, Geneforge 4, was the first one where I put serious time into the story, and it helped a LOT.

I agree, and I could probably articulate problems with Avernum 4, but Geneforge 3 is the more interesting case. We've talked about this from time to time: G3-why do you dislike it, what do you like about G3? (which ironically contains a number of complaints), Getting bored...help!, New GF3 twist, and probably lots of others that I'm not immediately finding.

But it's interesting to think about what could be done to GF3 to make it better.

I mean, the Nether Gate leads to many places...

I always assumed that it led to nether regions.

Honestly, I think consumable items/equipment that operate independently of character build are impossible to balance effectively in any game that doesn't involve permadeath. If they are about as strong as nonconsumable equipment, or weaker, then they are completely pointless; whereas if they are stronger, they devalue character builds and remove strategy. Either way, they aren't interesting.

I thought the idea was that they would be stronger than nonconsumable equipment but only available once or a few times (assuming they're not freely replaceable), so you had to choose your spots. It adds an element of strategy — do I use this here or save it for something later down the road that might be harder? Can I beat this with my ordinary abilities or do I need to burn a consumable? Figuring out whether to use a consumable can be part of the puzzle of a combat (or whatever).

But am I missing your point?

Um, one of their examples is Bahssikava. In lecture 14, where they mention the BoA editor, the BoA example slide in the pdf is a screenshot from Bahssikava, town 4.

I always wanted something that I made to be forced upon unwilling college students, and now it is!

Here are some words for you to read that respond to your words, presumably in some cheeky but loosely appropriate manner.

less balance.

Wow. Avadon was already SW's least balanced game.

Just to reiterate -- the reason for using these highly inconsistent categories, was because the goal was not to look at geographic distribution overall, but rather to show the most relevant detail in the least amount of options.

I get that, but it doesn't look like you've succeeded at even that goal.

And the terms that you've used are not very clear to people in those regions (e.g., "Four Corners area" to someone in Arizona probably means someone in northeast Arizona, but I think you meant to cover the whole state).

All of the areas specifically listed definitely have multiple members in them, accounting for people who haven't answered the poll,

Having categories that make sense only when the people you expect to answer actually do answer is not great poll design.

Yeah, it might've been a better idea just to use regular geographic regions rather than these inconsistent categories. For the U.S., the BEA regions are pretty good (New England, essentially Mid-Atlantic, South, Great Lakes, Plains, Southwest, Rocky Mountain, essentially West Coast), although I might want a few more granular distinctions (Upper South and Deep South, for example).

For the rest of the world, continents seem like a good starting point — although, again, a few more granular distinctions might be nice (especially for Africa and Asia, because they're so large).

As much as I'd like to connect with Nikki, I'm now half inclined to screw the whole thing up by meeting, like, Andra or Eph instead.

Yeah, it looks as though I really need to meet Aran or Eph just to make the lines worse.

Yeah, what I was saying was that the "DC Area" region should be called the "mid-Atlantic" instead.

Drew lives in northern Virginia, which people probably would recognize as the DC area. At the moment, I'm splitting time between Baltimore County and Philly, but after this month I'll be in Philly full-time — and I don't think anyone would refer to either of those as the "DC area." Tyranicus is apparently in Harrisburg, which is definitely not the "DC area." But all of those places are part of the mid-Atlantic region.

You were concerned that "mid-Atlantic" would sweep in New York also, to which my response is that some people use the term that way, but some people don't, and if you have a list that includes "mid-Atlantic" and "NY area," it will be clear from context that New York is not part of the mid-Atlantic in this list.

So changing "DC area" to "mid-Atlantic" is less confusing.

I originally had it labelled as Mid-Atlantic, but that label would normally include New York too, wouldn't it?

Maybe, but maybe not. If you have New York separately listed, I think it would be clear in context.

I mean, if you're choosing between calling Philadelphia part of the "DC Area" — which no one does — and calling Philadelphia but not New York part of the "mid-Atlantic" — which some people do — the latter seems better to me.