Kelandon

That's not really what I was getting at. I'm willing to test, but only if Mono is easy to install. If Mono is not easy to install, then you may need to rethink what you're doing.

I'm playing on Torment, so Regeneration Aura is pretty much irrelevant. An Unbound gets two attacks per turn and can kill any of my creatures with those two attacks. I don't know what people are saying with this "much weaker melee attack" thing, though. I've read about that, but when I did manage to pin the thing against a wall, its melee attack was maybe 75% of its ranged attack. That still kills any of my creations in two hits (i.e. one turn). I did finally manage to take down Control Core B with a lot of Charm spells and copious use of spores. I've now gotten to the point where the five major factions all want me to join. I'm tempted to go kill Platano and then find out the disaster that is Rawal's path, but I think maybe I'll join Astoria and see where that takes me.

Charm! This must be the piece that I've been missing this whole time. I think I read that Charm was particularly effective at one point, but I ignored it because I was having trouble with golems and such at the time, for which it would make no difference. I finally made it to Ellek-Sss, and it turns out that you don't have to have joined a faction to get her to train you. This is kind of important. Ellek-Sss, as Lilith said above, trains based on reputation and Leadership, not based on Rebel faction membership. (Faction will also do it, but it's not necessary.) So now I can make Shock Tralls. I went back to the Fens to the Unbound city to see if I could now take down an Unbound with four Shock Tralls, and the answer is still no. Clearly I need to play more with Mental Magic, because right now I just don't see why I can't do this.

Rawal didn't seem as though he was going to turn out well, so I guess that's not much of a surprise. I keep wanting to call him "Barzahl," which gives you some idea what I think of him. What takes down Rotdhizons? The problem I keep having in Control Core B is that I can kill everything else but the Rots, and those are doing enough damage to my Rots that I can't handle the other waves. I've made it as far as into the fifth of the six waves, but by the end, my Rots are down to basically no health and are running off, confused, while my other creations can't do enough damage to the Rots to make any difference. And then one of the minds dies, and I restart. I've gotten Alpha and Beta to agree to help me, and i can fight off the Gamma wave easily. The Rots in the other waves are giving me hell, though.

I've now gotten myself two Rotdhizons, two War Tralls, and one very long-lasting Wingbolt. I'm keeping the Wingbolt around mostly because every now and then it's handy to have something that does/resists magic damage, and it's usually still pretty good in combat, but it's clearly the weakest of the lot in terms of taking damage. I've also gotten to the point where all three Rebel factions want me to swear to them. I haven't gotten to that point with the Shaper factions, which is my next task. Then I'll have to, you know, make a decision. I did end up using Greta to boost my Rebel cred, largely because Ghaldring will offer you Rebel quests based on reputation and Leadership, but Litalia seems to consider only reputation. I'm at level 40 now, which I think means that I'm getting close to maxing out. Given that the factions are clamoring for me, I think that means I'm approaching the endgame, although I still can't kill a freaking Unbound. When I join a faction, though, I'll get another level of War Trall, make some Shock Tralls, and see what happens. It seems as though it's much easier to join some factions than others, which I think is weird. Joining the Trakovites seems to be just about the easiest thing in the world, but joining Rawal might still be a little too hard for me yet. Killing Platano seems nontrivial. Same with joining Alwan. Wait, duh, I just realized something. This whole time, I thought that there were five factions, but aren't there six? Three Shaper (Rawal, Alwan, Taygen) and three Rebel (Trakovite, Ghaldring, Astoria)? The game explicitly says in a loading screen that there are five, though. (If the answer to this involves spoiling the ending—i.e. two of the factions are secretly the same—don't bother, but if this is an error, I'd be interested to know.)

You say this about a thread with Ephesos, TM, Nico, Sir David, Ash, Salmon, Alec, Slith, Dareva, Marlenny, Synergy, Archmage Alex, Spring, Thralni, Prem, Ben, and Drakey.

I have a Mac, but I have no idea what Mono is.

It's important to distinguish between drones and drone policy. If there's someone who really, really needs to be killed with minimal collateral damage, a drone can aim a hell of a lot better than most missiles can. On the other hand, when do people need to be killed? Right now, the executive branch pretty much decides that all by itself based on classified intelligence. This is sketchy. National security is not my area, so I don't have a really developed view on this yet, but I'm inclined to think that drone strikes should be used only rarely, and virtually never against anything but an extremely immediate threat. I think they are being used more than that right now.

All right, with the War Tralls and some creative use of running away so I could exit the zone at will as the battle went badly, I took down the Eye in the Western Passes and got my third level of Rot. Now, with a Rotdhizon, two War Tralls, and one surviving Wingbolt, I'm feeling a bit less underpowered. I still can't just obliterate everything in my path, but things are a bit better. I cleared my way to the third fort on the line. I think I'm going to try to do things in the southern part of the map for a bit and see what happens. I'll report back later. I'd never noticed Rot acid immunity or Wingbolt magic resistance mattering so much in previous GFs. Is the degree to which immunities matter new for GF5, or was I just oblivious before?

I looked at the trainer guide, but it looks as though you have to join a faction to get any of those trainers to train you in War Trall. I'm a little unclear on the Ellek'Sss situation, but it doesn't matter, because I haven't gotten to the Dera South Shore yet anyway. I broke into Gazaki-Uss and got the canister.

That person is offering me Drayk, Kyshakk, Battle Alpha, and Rotghroth. I don't see an option to train in War Trall.

Am I right in thinking that you need the Gazaki-Uss canister or to join a faction to get War Tralls? That's what it looks like from the various Strategy Central topics, but it's a little hard to tell. If so, I'll head straight back to Gazaki-Uss, because there's no point in doing anything else right now. I'm putting off joining a faction for as long as I can, partly on purpose and partly because I can't seem to do the next step for any particular faction at all right now. I seem to be a little too far on the Shaper side at this point to get some of the Rebel faction missions (Trakovites, Ghaldring, etc.). I'm finding that without the equivalent of Slarty's GF4 reputation analysis, it's a little hard to figure out what I'm doing on the factions. GF4's playing both sides was really nice.

I think it's sort of hilarious (and shows how far you are removed from the Spiderweb fanbase) that you say this about Avadon, of all of Spiderweb's games. Avernum 3 might be more vulnerable to this criticism, but Avadon is one of Spiderweb's shorter (and relatively plot-heavy) games. As Alo said, these games may not be the games for you, if you think this. I doubt that more expensive graphics would boost Spiderweb's sales enough to justify the cost. The crowd that Jeff sells to doesn't care. We liked Exile, back in the day.

On Diki's suggestion, I replaced the Kyshakk and Cryodrayk with two Rots, and this did help a lot. The issue I was having was that the two Wingbolts and the Kyshakk were doing magic damage, and the Cryodrayk was doing cold, so if I fought something with significant magic immunity (lots of higher-level things), I couldn't do much to them. Also, Wingbolts can take magic damage well, and Cryodrayks can take cold damage well, but nothing could handle acid or physical damage. Rots handle acid much better. The types of damage done and damage resisted line up much better with two Wingbolts and two Rots. I think now I can go up to the Western Passes and see if I can track down that Rot canister. At that point, I might be able to buy the second level of Rot, too, and get Rotdhizons. I'll report back. EDIT: And the answer is a firm NO, because the Rot canister is behind an Eye. Definitely don't have the firepower to deal with that yet. Maybe I'll go back to the Shadow Road, pick up some infiltrator garb, then head back to Gazaki-Uss to get some more canisters and Shape a War Trall. That is, assuming I can handle the creations that were in my way before, which is questionable.

After finishing GF4 in this topic, I've started in on GF5. I'm playing as a Lifecrafter (heard about the increased power of Shaping, thought it would be fun to try it). The most striking thing that I'm finding is that there isn't a natural progression of areas as there has been in virtually every GF game up to this point. Either that, or I'm completely failing at min-maxing (which is likely). What I mean is that I couldn't take down even a single unbound until I hit about level 25 or so, and I still can't deal with the hive of them in the swamps. The peripheral areas on the northern map are still giving me heck, and I'm at level 33 at this point. I've spent a lot of time wandering up and down to find new areas that I can handle: "I'm too weak to deal with the Dera region in the south, so let me hang out and kill Glaahks in Hatra for a while. Okay, I've dealt with Hatra, so I'll go back north and hit Lerman's pass. Can't deal with the eye, so I'll come back south and work on the Abandoned Farms. Hey, Thistlewood looks good. I'll fight some bandits out there." I've done a LOT more of this bouncing around than I've done in any other GF (or, frankly, any other Spidweb game except Avadon, and it was mandatory in Avadon). I think part of my issue is that I have the wrong creations. Right now, I'm traveling with two Wingbolts, a Kyshakk, and a Cryodrayk. I've had the Wingbolts for a while, so they're around level 38. The Kyshakk is level 31, and the Croydrayk is level 36. I've pumped Int but not as much the Shaping skills, so I have a lot of Essence, but I think my creations are lower level than they should be, and Wingbolts just aren't as good as in GF4. I now have the ability to make all tier 1-4 creations, although only a few enhanced (Cryodrayks being one of the only ones), and I suspect that I should toss my Wingbolts and Kyshakk for something else (more Cryodrayks, maybe, or some Rotgroths). I think the other part of the issue is that I don't have the right spells. I still can't cure poison/acid very well (takes two or three rounds of my basic curing spell), and lightning aura from Kyshakks was deadly until I got regeneration aura to (partly) counteract it. I do a lot of killing one enemy and running for the exit to go to a friendly town to heal statuses, and this just seems silly, but I haven't yet seen exactly what I'm missing. I also have a significant cash crunch, maybe because I'm not selling enough junk. I have piles and piles of gemstones that I'm probably never going to use, and I've not yet made any equipment with my enormous stash of eyes, scales, and such from different kinds of creations. Given all of the above, suggestions? I feel horrendously underpowered, and I'm pretty sure that I'm playing this game altogether wrong, but it doesn't seem as simple as the Avadon strategy (pump Dex, get critical hits and missile skills, and crank the middle columns).

I kind of figured that this might happen. I think Avadon has been Spidweb's most commercially successful release so far, so he 1) has some breathing space to work and 2) has a really strong reason to make something that the broader fanbase will like. This is good. I am looking forward to the new release.

Yay! An update in this thread that is actually news about Avadon 2, not random discussion of Avernum! Looks neat.

That's good to hear! I look forward to it.

I'm pretty sure that none of us here have ever mentioned meeting Jeff in person, and I'm pretty sure that no meetup has even invited Jeff.

It might be even nicer to alternate Avernum and Geneforge (A:EFTP, GF1, AV2, GF2, AV3, GF3, etc.) than to play either series straight through, come to think of it.

NG:R is generally one of the favorites on these boards. While it is in an old engine, almost everyone here will tell you that it's worth playing. Personally, if I were you, I'd finish A:EFTP, play Avernum 2 and decide whether you like the old engine, and then either... If you like/can deal with the old engine, finish Avernum 2, play Avernum 3 (this will take a while — it's about twice as long as the preceding two), play NG:R, and then either take a detour to Blades of Avernum (same old engine, lots of user-created scenarios) or move on to the new engine. Run through Avernum 4-6, and then go to Geneforge 1-5. Then play Avadon. If you don't like the old engine, you can either jump to the later games, Avernum 4-6, which were made in the newer engine and have minor spoilers for Avernum 2 and 3, or you can leave Avernum altogether and play Geneforge and Avadon as you wait for Avernum 2 and 3 to be remade. You don't have to remember the exact details of Avernum 1 for Avernum 2, so leaving it behind for a while is not too bad. Enjoy! These games are a lot of fun, and they get better as you go along. There are a few misses, but they're mostly really, really good.

This. I did something like this in Exodus, with each of the expedition towns having a crime level and flag check in the START_STATE. It runs fine.

I'd definitely start with the GF series, but I might hop over to Avadon after you're done with those, because you'll be waiting for Avernum 2 and 3 to be remade, and Avadon may tide you over for a bit.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that every murder victim deserved it, right?

If I remember correctly, part of the problem is that Jeff is not a huge fan of making code that is works under unanticipated stresses and is well documented. He can limit what you can do in a game much better and with fewer problems than he can limit what you can do in a scenario-creation application. He also doesn't have to explain the code to anybody in a game; it just has to work. The exact opposite is true of a "Blades of," where we need to know exactly what everything does. I think it's telling that Jeff (literally, I think) misunderstood the complaints of the BoE community for a long time. BoE designers complained that BoE had bugs: there were features that didn't work as described. To Jeff, these were just natural limitations, just as there are many things that you can't do in a game. The fact that he had put in broken pieces that suggested one ought to be able to do certain things didn't entitle anyone to do those things, any more than you can do anything you can think of in a game. (Think of the linearity in Avadon.) I guess what I'm saying is that a really high-quality BoG or BoAD would be fun, but that's not what Jeff would make. He just doesn't have the right mindset for it. He'd do better making a really high-quality AD2 and then AD3, which is probably what we will see, and that's for the best.