Alorael at Large

There's no end to the Third Army. You can keep walking into the area and mauling them forever if you'd like, though it does get boring eventually. Your reputation takes a hit, of course, but by that point in the game it's unlikely to matter much. —Alorael, who believes that the general opinion of Spiderweb would be a resounding yes on the question of typing. Proper English or honest attempts at achieving it are appreciated.

For the doors along the side hallways, unlock does the trick. The central door with a special description can't be opened at all. The door sounds like it could be opened with an electrum key, but it can't. Exhaustive searching has revealed that not only is there no way into the room without cheating, there's nothing in it anyway. —Alorael, who will point out again that long-dead topics ought to stay dead.

There's always the Exile Trilogy CD, and BoE is $15 with any other game. If anything deserves a price cut, it isn't BoE. It could have the price raised and it would still be more than worth the money. —Alorael, who doesn't think that Jeff makes so much that he'd turn away even a little bit of money from people registering Exile because they're hard core retro fans and completely opposed to isometric perspective or something.

Experience is divided evenly among all party members, so a party with two members gets twice as much experience per person as a full four person party. —Alorael, who has a much easier time with four people. However, some swear by two or three person parties as well. Singletons are almost universally agreed-upon as challenging.

They are, however, worth a tidy chunk of gold. Apparently they are either collector's items or shopkeepers are too ignorant to know the difference between good crystals and bad crystals. —Alorael, who is unaware of any skill requirements for proper use of mind crystals. If you have it, you can get the ability it contains.

I use four, a pair of fighters and a pair of mage/priests. Doubling up on magic abilities is a good thing. —Alorael, who occasionally gives his fighters magic skills. He's found that he usually ends up just going in with the standard hack and slash, though, so it's not worth it.

It's under Add Special Items/Traits. Apparently addiction is a trait. —Alorael, who has always gone with the pack a truckload method himself. He hasn't lost his addiction yet, although it's getting a bit pricey. He may have to start sniping richer people in fancy SUVs soon.

Yes, I spoke too soon. You can also use force barriers to prevent splitting. Barriers at least two spaces thick in all directions, with room for one fighter to stay in with the Doomguard and hack away, will prevent splitting. But that's a phenomenal waste of spell points, difficult to pull off, and ultimately at least as much of a headache as just killing the thing. —Alorael, who has never been able to set up the force barrier blockade faster than he could wipe out the Doomguard and babies.

The chance of free Spidweb games is nil, but Jeff is very good about giving out new registration codes to people who are unregistered for a variety of reasons. As long as you have the name that was on the credit card you registered with and the address you used, you can get another code. Again, email is the way to do it. —Alorael, who doesn't think he's missing any information required, but it's been a while since he had to request it. If Jeff needs to know more, he'll let you know. Spidweb beats most larger companies for being helpful hands down.

There's no way to prevent it from splitting, so you should make sure you do as much damage as possible per hit. Heavily bless your strongest fighter (or several fighters, if they're all about equal). Then whack away, making sure that you always hit the original one. Copies appear with only as much health as the parent Doomguard had after it was hit, so with enough work, you can kill all the copies if you want. However, as soon as you kill the first one (probably the original), the portcullis will open. At that point, if there's a way through all the Doomguards, run for it. If not, you'll have to do some more hacking and slashing. —Alorael, who can also recommend the editor if you're completely and utterly stuck. There's an option in one of the menus to remove that doomguard and open the portcullis.

I believe there's a Null Bug without its anti-magic field in the Tower of Magi as a research specimen. I know it's there in E3, but I don't recall whether or not it's still present in the Avernized version. —Alorael, who cordially detests many enemies under many circumstances. Doomguards are probably the biggest pain, generally. At least they're never used as generic enemies to be tossed around like goblins.

I keep Ur-Basilisks, Null Bugs, and Gazers, but I hardly ever summon either one. They're not necessary. Creatures that are just fighters or casters, not utility creatures, are even more useless. They just steal experience when they kill things. —Alorael, who doesn't think that guessing which doomguards are hostile and which are copies of the contraband summoning is an important question. Part of the problem is that copies of the creature are set to the default setting, which means the duplicates are all hostile to your party. Only the original will be on your side, and its propensity towards creating an army of enemies hardly makes it a great help.

More helpfully, you should post this in the Blades of Avernum forum. —Alorael, who would wave the magical move topic wand if he had one.

It's a lovely picture of a vahnatai, but it is regrettably contained in a double post. Most unfortunate! —Alorael, who gives it a blue out of 144.

You're not going to be able to pull off a frontal assault on the fort, obviously. There is a way in, but not until you register. —Alorael, who wouldn't worry about it. Even if you register, you're not going to get through until the plot is ready for it, and at that point the correct means of entry become perfectly clear.

Pyrog has it. Go to his lair, pick a fight with him and his many giants, and ransack his treasure rooms. —Alorael, who can give directions to the lair on request.

The key to getting through the forest, which many people seem to miss, is moving diagonally. On a computer with a full keyboard, you can use the numeric keypad. On any computer, you can use the mouse. You have to step diagonally a few times to get through the woods. —Alorael, who also highly recommends the automap. It's hard, but with some squinting you can see exactly which path to take.

Her name is Silverlocke, and she'll sell to you when you have a high reputation. I'm not sure what the critical number is, but you can get it after ending one or two plagues and doing some side quests. —Alorael, who recalls her wares being overpriced and unnecessary. Knowledge Brews are nice, but you can buy them for less elsewhere.

In Exile? I don't recall vahnatai having an especially high chance of dropping vahnatai gear. That only really holds true in the Avernum games. —Alorael, who can suggest knocking around in the various towns with hostile vahnatai. The monsters might not have swords, but there will certainly be a few lying around.

Buying food and resting also works wonders. —Alorael, who doesn't exactly think that it's fun to rest for a hundred odd days straight. But he's done it, so you can too.

That depends on the game. In Exile 2, the vahnatai city of Olgai has a shop with waveblades. In Exile 3, search through Ghikra in Upper Exile for the weaponsmith. —Alorael, who is sure that there are other vahnatai weapon shops in E2. E3 has more places to find waveblades, but not in shops.

—Alorael, who believes that "gladius" simply means "sword" in latin. They did buy a great deal of weaponry from the Iberians, but the advantage was in the design and the tactics to go with it, not the metal and the smithing.

Jordan -> Dnojar -> Bojar B ?= Dn —Alorael, who doesn't really have anything much to add, except that the name Jordan was better than Bojar. Bojar sounds like an overreaching apprentice who happened to find a cool spell. Jordan sounds more like the eccentric and evil genius who finds a way to adapt and control magical slime technology.

In fact, it's better not to fight them. There's a secret passage in the northern wall of the room. Try to keep your party out of range of the Crystal Souls' spells and send them through the secret door in combat mode, hasted, one at a time. —Alorael, who found using the Wait command very helpful for this.

You cannot join the Guild. You just get them to sneer at you instead of attacking you. —Alorael, who likes the Church of the Divine Lucre. It adds a touch of legitimacy to the worship of the Almighty Dollar (or Coin, if you prefer).