Alorael at Large

I'd go with the Mithral Sword and Fury Crossbow. +1 AP is, in my opinion, the best ability you can get on a piece of equipment. The Black Halberd is strong, but it doesn't give you an extra attack to work with. —Alorael, who has no idea about A1. He can remember that he didn't use Demonslayer much, though. It's great against demons but really nothing special in other circumstances.

Behold, the Inflatable Moderator appears! Lord V, you have just taken the Code of Conduct, spat upon it, and kicked it for good measure. Recant and repent or bad things will happen. In other words, don't use homophobic language or semi-profanity. If this degenerates into a flame war, I will be sorely disappointed. —Alorael, who was actually enjoying the topic. You know, horses aren't much of a solution to the problem. Only the few bands of humans, nephils, and sliths can get them to move in any way. It's not possible to have an entire army use them as barricades.

Things do start to fall apart in A3 if you lag behind. The longer you wait, the more demolished Valorim gets. This never makes the game unwinnable, but it can make quests impossible to complete. The other Avernums are less affected by time. I know there's a certain place that can only be entered on the first day of a month in one game, and there are holidays with various effects, but nothing major. —Alorael, who prefers the A1/A2 irrelevance of time to the need for speed in A3. He hates being rushed even if it isn't much of a rush after all.

Look around in the Tower of Magi, particularly the library. You'll find a book that mentions Haakai. Go talk to the apprentice by the pool in the southern hallway and mention it to him. He'll direct you to a meessage left in the tunnels outside the tower. Head out, go through the usual bump-into-walls tricks, and you'll find a stone spire that gives you the password. It's "disaster"' incidentally, but you can't enter it yourself in A1 like you can in E1. —Alorael, who misses that in a number of circumstances. Sure, it's nice that you have to go actually find the information in the right order, but there's a certain appeal in having to actually remember the password for yourself and figure out where to use it.

There can only be one Xian Skull topic. You really want to speak to a number of people in Lorelei. Lyle may be one of them, but I don't think he's the first. Just chat with everyone and someone will send you to someone else, who will send you to someone else, who will tell you to speak with Foxfire. She can be found in any of the towns near Lorelei. Buy her key, head to the series of islands south of Storm Port, and enjoy the madness. —Alorael, who advises taking several hallucinogens first. They greatly heighten the experience.

Do you have the amulets, and did you remember to have Erika activate them for you? If not, you'll have to suffer through a few more teleportation episodes before you can reach the platform, assault far too many vahnatai and their summoned underlings, and finally fiddle with the control panel. —Alorael, who can no longer remember for certain if Rentar-Ihrno continues to teleport your party indefinitely as long as the beams are not properly aligned or if she only gets five teleportations total. He suspects the former, but he's not sure. So if you can eventually reach the platform, chances are good that everything is arranged for the grand finale.

Neither are present in Exile, as so many have pointed out. I'm afraid the death node wins, and the humans (Exile and Empire) and vahnatai are the only ones who have them. Sliths, however, can make impenetrable barriers as in Lost Bahssikava. Vahnatai are even more skilled with their barriers. Humans are mostly restricted to building a better force barrier. —Alorael, who still doesn't think that saying that all adventuring parties join the Exiles is fair or accurate. He can say with some assurance that his parties would play favorites, and the humans wouldn't be one of them.

Unless you have a very good reason or highly insightful addition, reviving a dead topic will earn you frowns. Reviving a topic that has been dead for more than a year requires truly extraordinary circumstances. These aren't. —Alorael, who shouldn't continue the zombie march of the topic. On the other hand, as long as it's alive, let it shamble to its own second death in peace.

No, Black Shades cannot be targetted with anything but physical attacks. If they're in impassable terrain, I'm afraid you get to experience the dubious joys of feeling many, many spells with no chance of retaliation. —Alorael, who never succeeded in killing Sulfras. He never tried very hard to off her, either. Call him crazy, but he doesn't like killing dragons. Too much work for a quick reload.

I still play once in a while. I am bound and determined to come up with a tolerable way to use a Roman party, but I just can't do it. —Alorael, who just can't handle a magic addiction on top of his already colossal skribbane problem.

Actually, all the horses are ridden by those same small bands of adventurers, which are just as likely to be composed of sliths or nephils as humans. The vahnatai and humans also have disproportionate numbers of instant-death nodes/scripts, which gives them an undeniable edge. —Alorael, who is sure some enterprising mage could find a way to create a mobile death script. Then let other races beware!

There's no way to make a scenario do that, but you can make duplicates of items you have in a scenario. That means that you could go into the scenario, pick them up, leave, and get second copies of them (and third copies, etc.), but to be honest you'd have to delete the items from your storage scenario after retrieving them with your party. —Alorael, who doesn't know any way to have a scenario rewrite itself. If you can program that, you can make a scenario that works as storage without further coding intervention.

The dragons were Ermarian's first intelligent race, although gazers, eyebeasts, maybe gremlins, and other oddball species could have evolved on their own (though gremlins are humanoid, suggesting vahnatai origin). The vahnatai arrived from another world. No, they didn't deliberately create competitors. They just had to deal with the ones already firmly entrenched. —Alorael, who sees enough minor similarities between dragons and sliths for there to be some connection. Perhaps the vahnatai and dragons collaborated on that race, or perhaps the vahnatai gave them to the dragons as a gift. There's even less in the games to back that up than there is for the vahnatai creationism theory, though, so he'll leave the sub-theory alone.

As I said, that's the common explanation. There's no reason that it has to be the same in the world of Exile. From Diplomacy with the Dead (not techincally Exile, but Avernum is the same world) we know that not all vampire bites cause vampirism. And until I see a necromancer turn into a lich, I'll reserve judgement. Maybe they're just zombies with less decayed brains who had centuries to work on learning magic post mortem. Humans have a huge numerical advantage over the nephilim, who were all but wiped out by purges on the surface. They also do not have any powerful mages or priests to match against those of the other races, and their warriors tend to be less powerful. They have no central organization. In short, they would be easy pickings for any other belligerent race. The full numbers of sliths are not known, as most of them live in their kingdom beneath Exile (again, extrapolating from Avernum); in fact, the only ones seen by humans were cast out as barbaric heathens. Unless the civilized sliths are just as warlike and more organized than the known sliths, and unless they discovered the fine art of making armor and bows (javelins really aren't great ranged weapons), they would probably fall to hordes of human archers behind heavily armored soldiers. Vahnatai numbers aren't known, but there probably aren't as many vahnati as humans. They have the most skilled fighters and mages, the most powerful weapons and spells, and the ability to manufacture more troops on demand (slimes, roaches, troglodytes, giants, alien beasts, and especially golems). They function as clans with no unifying authority, but if the Crystal Souls could agree to kill other races, the vahnatai would quickly fall into line. The only thing they don't have is armor, but you don't need it when you can order walking statues to kill things for you. —Alorael, whose money is on the vahnatai as well. Heck, they created the other sapient species. They probably created horses as well!

Pearlblossom gives you a sneak peak at life in Castle Aethdoc. She also acts as a warning that all is not roses and giggles in sidhe land just in case the contract didn't make that abundantly clear. —Alorael, who doesn't see anything wrong with dialogue that serves only as a reminder of a number of legends regarding faeries. It beats the wishes fish.

Both the goblins can be found along the eastern side of Shadowvale. One is in a trash pit and, if memory serves, the other is in a pile of rubble right by the river. I think the second one is on the northern shore, but I could be wrong there. —Alorael, who is sure that followingthe eastern wall of the Vale, with a possible detour to the bridge, will get you to the goblins one way or another.

If soldiers in battle feel the kinds or levels of emotions that lead to shambling zombies or wailing spirits, there would be more undead hanging around Ermarian's battlefields than there are. In fact, there would be no need for the military to dig graves. Normal dedication to a cause doesn't cut it. Soldierly esprit de corps, patriotism, and the rest don't either. Anger over being betrayed (or becoming lunch to a bunch of really ugly demons) is more likely. But really, only a fraction of a percent of people don't stay dead. —Alorael, who also suspects that steps would be taken by opposing armies to prevent the undead ranks from swelling constantly. Surely priests could come up with a good way to keep their dead dead.

Most corpses don't end up undead, just dead. Spirits seem to appear only when people die very angry, very upset, or otherwise emotionally engaged. Vampires and liches are never really explained, but going by common explanations they probably come from contagious biting (though perhaps vampirism is only shared when the biter wants to) and from mages who just don't want to die, respectively. Random shambling undead are almost exclusively mindless shambling bodies raised by one of the previous categories of undead or a mage with too much spare time. That was rather tangential, but my point was that the undead won't win. There are actually relatively few undead capable of perpetuating the "species," although if they could get to a battlefield right after everyone dies they could make recruiters weep with envy. —Alorael, who also thinks that goblins deserve some consideration. They are much like roaches and ants: no matter what happens and how many die as a result, there will always be goblins left in the rubble.

In my opinion, sliths make good polearm fighters and nephils make good thieves/archers. For anything else, stick with human. Nephils get a bonus to their dexterity, which makes them slightly less likely to be hit and slightly more likely to act earlier in the turn order, but neither advantage is particularly beneficial for mages. An extra AP would be good, but nephils don't get one. Elite warrior is a no-brainer for any fighter except a slith. Since the slith polearm bonus doesn't stack with the elite warrior bonus and is almost as good, save yourself the experience penalty and take one or the other. Fast on Feet is also something I consider almost a necessity on melee characters. The AP is nice when you get it, but the real benefit is being able to move your characters first. Getting the tanks between the enemies and your casters means the Brittle Bones you put on those bookish types won't leave them helpless and exposed. Natural Mage lets mages survive the occasional melee attacker, and it boosts their spells. That's an easy choice. For priests it isn't quite as valuable, but if you're not giving your priests at least a little bit of mage ability (and vice versa) you're not getting your money's worth out of the characters. —Alorael, who brings this trait analysis to you on behalf of Silverlocke's potion shoppe. If you need skill points immediately, just drop by Silverlocke's! Open 24 hours a day unless your reputation is low.

And they split even better than doomguards. One becomes six in the blink of an eye and a step of a party member onto the horse. But yes, in fact, I have seen a horse (or six) die. Enormous explosions and collapses like that of the Filth Factory or the Woodsy Tower do the job. —Alorael, who does concede that they are effectively immune to everything but overkill. They are, however, quite tough. If they could do damage, they would win the war. But they can't.

I have only been occasionally punched by Alec, and I speak in the third person at least once per post. —Alorael, who is proud of to be himself. He wouldn't know what to do if he were myself.

Vahnatai always have the option of Resting until everyone else has made a mess of one another, then waking up and delivering an authoritative smackdown Rentar-Ihrno style. —Alorael, who hardly thinks that the Alien Beasts deserve to be their own group. They're good, solid vahnatai creations. Troglodytes are iffier, but one could make a case for them being a subset of the vahnatai army as well. Basically, the vahnatai have the numbers, the weird creatures, and the cool curvy swords on their side. How can they lose?

I can identify with people who don't bathe regularly or wear clothes and who regularly go into bouts of uncontrolled, violent rage... —Alorael, who doesn't think he'd make a very good Roman or Celt. Since he's not much like either one, he just goes with the cooler, magic-using group. No, he can't identify with using magic, either.

Celts for me as well. After going through Exile with total magic dependence, I wasn't able to kick the habit. How can one live without access to light and unlock spells? —Alorael, who also prefers slings to javelins. And he prefers woad to armor. And he just likes Celts more than Romans because, as everyone knows, barbarians are really cool.

No, but A3 shows what can be done with the engine. The programmers can take their ideas and do whatever they want. The inspiration comes more in the form of technical showcase than plot, although the plot has to be good enough to hold a player's attention. If A3 has a failure, it's in the fact that A3 doesn't nearly show the full range of BoA's capabilities, nor does E3 show BoE's. The scenarios that come with the editors are, on the whole, even worse. —Alorael, who still thinks it wouldn't be a bad idea to 'ship' BoA with the winner of the scenario contest. BoE could use an added scenario too. One of Alcritas's greats would do the trick, or Spears could be used as an example of a huge scenario with technical innovations.