Alorael at Large

A Mind Crystal, you mean? I am 100% sure that there are no soul crystals in A1. —Alorael, who isn't so convinced that every single vahnatai corpse is really a vahnatai. Even in Avernum they must have had their Calista Flockharts with strange fashion tastes.

You have to confront the innkeeper, strangely enough. If you have a high enough reputation, he'll hand over the amulet without a fight. If not, you can get the whole town (and maybe the whole island) mad at you. —Alorael, who believes there is another option besides strongarm intimidation. He can't remember it, though, and he didn't use it. The reputation isn't that hard to come up with.

The dialogue option system lets players speak with more complicated phrases, though, which can open up more sensible dialogue and avoid the tedious search for the right keywords. Perhaps an ideal system would contain both dialogue options and an "Ask about word..." option (and make it require the whole word!). Many dialogues wouldn't have any hidden pieces, but it would be there if you need it. Actually, that can already be done with BoA, I believe. Maybe people will use it. —Alorael, who sees one huge advantage to dialogue. If you see Bill trying to steal the magic gem and then have to trek across the world to notify Police Chief Dan, you don't want to have to remember Bill the whole time. Or Bjilllmekmektwingleson, if that happens to be his name. And if you haven't caught him in the act, you shouldn't be able to lay the blame on him based on outside knowledge.

The Cooling Amulets also give a small amount of resistance to fire damage in general, which helps at just about every stage of the game. And if you want a cool sword, you can do worse than Wyrmslayer. —Alorael, who believes one can do better even in the demo. There are, for example, some nice stone short swords lying around that aren't a waste of a perfectly good special item.

The Alien Blade and the Mind Crystals are vahnatai artifacts. There is also at least one crypt with either corpses or paintings that resemble vahnatai. What other spindly bug-eyed humanoids that wear funny robes do you know? —Alorael, who is more interested in knowing how many of those were in E1. The Alien Blade was, but the Mind Crystals weren't. How about the strange cavern (or Strange Cavern) and generic crypt?

By the time I run out of quests to do, I'm quite happy to get on to the hacking, slashing, and maiming of assorted beings in the name of causing a cool explosion and getting out of the game. —Alorael, who has very little patience for A3 when it loses what little thread of plot it had to begin with. On the bright side, there are enough quests that it truly takes an effort to get to that point.

As noted above, just say "Sand" to Commander Johnson and you'll be able to enter. It's not terribly exciting or useful, but it is, in the words of the GIFTS, neat. —Alorael, who would advise reading the spoilers in the topic if you want spoilers pertaining to the topic.

E3 doesn't let you alter SDFs in the editor, unfortunately. Unless Jeff wants to hack your file, which I doubt, you're stuck doing it over again. On the bright side, there is almost certainly something you missed the first time around. Probably many things. Exile is like that. —Alorael, whose advice for solving the woes of unregistered play is registering. C'mon, it's cheap and you know you want to see what happens with those troglodytes and giants...

There's no way to add any item that's not given in one of the lists, and those you can check for yourself. —Alorael, who even has the latest version of the game. Unless you have a black market version of the game that comes with advanced features in the editor, you're out of luck.

Barcodes don't help. Even if it identifies GIFTS by number, you'll still have to find the right number because you'll be told to get the quest from Spider. But only after you've talked to Spider! —Alorael, who can't imagine that the GIFTS would call each other by number. Even if they did, they'd probably get them wrong. Besides, do they ever stand still long enough for a barcode reader to identify them?

The Thought Crystals get you out of one moderately difficult battle. If you win the battle by killing your enemies, you set yourself up for more trouble later on and missing an important but not essential meeting. However, since you don't need to win the fight, just get through it, the Thought Crystals aren't amazingly helpful. That's pretty vague to avoid spoilers, but I think you can get the idea. The Thought Crystals are a minor help if you know what you're doing and a moderate to significant help if you don't. —Alorael, who wouldn't take Wyrmslayer anyway. It's not a very good sword against anything but lizards and dragons, of which there aren't too many. The Cooling Amulet is a better deal. It probably slightly reduces all fire damage. Probably, but not certainly.

The only critical event is the one around day 160. Incidentally, I don't think fiddling with the date will prevent catastrophe once you get the first message warning you that the world is about to go to hell. There's an option in the editor to turn of the timer, though. Other than that, there's a steady progression of minor decay. Nothing is game shattering, but a few minor quests can become unobtainable or impossible to complete. If you hate timers, just turn the clock back to day 1 every once in a while. As far as Blades of Avernum goes, whether or not there are day-dependent events depends entirely upon the whim of the designer. Some choose to use them and some don't (or some did and some didn't in BoE). —Alorael, who abused the A3 editor himself until he was ready to deal with day 160 (which happened on day 162 or so). Being rushed isn't fun, and games are supposed to be.

What is there not to like about dragons? They hate humans, but it's rather justifiable. Humans drove them into the caves, and then humans proceed to butcher two of the five remaining dragons and imprison another two. For gigantic, powerful beasts with centuries of grudge, I'd say they're remarkably understanding. Not once do they decide to level Avernum just because. —Alorael, who has to admit that it helps that Motrax has adorable cats. And Khoth has a library that is truly worthy of copious amounts of drool.

The shield isn't unique. You can buy them in a number of places or get them randomly from killing monsters. —Alorael, who can't remember finding a Mace of Disruption anywhere. That may mean there isn't one outside of the editor, but it could just as easily mean he didn't look hard enough, or even that he found it and forgot during the intervening years.

1. Jeff doesn't make a habit of reading these forums. 2. Vahnatai PCs would probably have to have a crippling experience penalty to match the number of ways that vahnatai are supposed to be better than the other races. That wouldn't make them so much fun. 3. The legal issues of taking someone's suggested plot mean that Jeff would almost certainly avoid doing anything someone told him to do. Creative impulses only reinforce that. Now, your plot isn't much of a plot (in fact, it suffers from all the ills of A3's and then some), but still... —Alorael, who isn't sure why this is a numbered list. It just is. Deal with it.

With Blades one can set up any scenario one wants, pun intended. Therefore Blades must be disregarded. In the games, only Exile, the Empire, and the vahnatai have death nodes. What's more, they have death nodes that trigger whenever one of their number is attacked. That's a big advantage. —Alorael, who questions the reasoning that says that the Empire is the sure bet for a long war. The Empire is effectively under perpetual martial law to prevent rebellions. The vahnatai are not, and one clan of vahnatai almost manages to demolish a quarter of the Empire. It's the weakest quarter, true, but if there are more than five clans of vahnatai that can work together, the Empire is toast.

Rentar-Ihrno doesn't get away with it. Last time I checked, her clan gets decimated and her plotting is literally exploded by a bunch of goody two shoes adventurers. Then there are the vahnatai like Bon-Ihrno, but they deserve to die because their race is guilty of a single murder. The attempted deicide committed by humans is of no matter. —Alorael, who likes the vahnatai because, quite frankly, they're the only race that couldn't be lifted straight out of any number of other generic fantasy sources. And crystals are cool.

Besides mashing the A, B, C, etc. keys really quickly? Not that I've found. —Alorael, who wouldn't mind a feature like that himself. Sure, you'd still have to select manually when there are lots of enemies, but it would save time when frying BBEG #1, Underling #1, and Underling #2.

Maybe there are both, maybe I'm thinking of E1 and E2, or maybe I'm just nuts. —Alorael, who doesn't really think the nomenclature is too important. There are potions. You can drink them and they give you skill points.

The solution is to avoid using autocombat. It is terrible at best. Fighting may be annoying, but it's better than letting the computer run both sides of the battle. —Alorael, who can see that Jeff either didn't bother programming autocombat at all or programmed it so that the computer can play favorites.

The Black Halberd I have is only: +1 Strength +1 Dexterity +2 Parry +30% magic resistance —Alorael, who is still on version 1.0. That might explain it.

If you're using a Mac, there isn't one. Delete the Avernum 3 preferences in the Preferences folder in your System folder (or System Folder, if you're still on OS 9). —Alorael, who can't help with a PC. He would assume that the Avernum 3 Data folder is in the Avernum 3 folder, though.

Go to Sharimik and find the innkeeper. Buy his most expensive drink. He'll tell you to go buy the map from Masok and give you the conversation option to do so. —Alorael, who still insists that this is a positive feature of A3 rather than a step down from E3.

No. You can use the editor to do it, and then you'll see why you can't. The characters that finish one game are vastly overpowered for the beginning of the next. —Alorael, who believes that the potion is called a Skill Potion in A1 and A2. It only becomes a Knowledge Brew in the third installment.

Oh, all right. To flesh out the gradually increasing spoilers, the person is Commander Johnson in Fort Emergence and the word is "bunker" (or "bunk," since E3 only takes four letters). —Alorael, who will add that the building really is of minimal significance.