Vent

Mister House is nobody learned you it's not a well educated behavior to talk with someone else about someone who is present? Ok let say you have learned something today. Otherwise my Tank and my Pole/Bow warrior hit quite well without following the very restricted advices quoted in OP, ok Hard difficulty and I have to see later in the game. If OP is right, Avadon remake class design is a quite huge design failure, I'm surprised Jeff felt in such trap. That some class choices are better that is sure and it's rare RPG provide good balances everywhere. But that only a restrictive path is well playable without a lot of pain, that's something else. There's so many RPG where there's plenty fans arguing and explaining with a mass of details that Two Weapons is the most powerful choice. It's such a classical that I always look at those sort of thread with a lot of suspicion. In DAO there was plenty quote like that about Two Weapons being uber, expect that in later updates it's Two Weapons class that got some skill coming from 2 Hand Weapon class.

Woo War Blessing providing 2% instead of 10% I won't waste money to learn this spell, too bad because it's typically good stuff to help in stronger fights. About Dual Weapon vs Weapon+Shield vs Two Hands Weapon, it's really a classical of RPG, and there's always a tendency too look at it only from the offensive/damages point of view, and only too look at the final result of the build and forgetting the long time before to reach the final state. For Weapon+Shield in Avernum there's also Hit penalty from the shield once you start get more worthy shields, so for Hit penalty it's sort of close to Dual Weapons. The real difference between 2W vs W+S is to put points in Dual Weapon skill or put them elsewhere, and if you do so, you still can switch from 2W to W+S. You not only need put points in Dual Wielding to not suffer the higher To Hit penalty, but also need invest at same level the Skill Quick Action which is in my opinion a skill for later levels. That's a lot of skills points you could put elsewhere, at least during first levels. Now if later parts are significant problem of difficulty it could worth the penalty during multiple levels. I don't say 2W isn't the best option, just that it's not that clear. Also suffer many penalties during most part of the game, just to get the most powerful build during the end of the game is often illusionary. Now from reading the posts of this thread it is supposed to happen quite sooner than the end, but even for last 30% of the game, there's area to argue about that and nothing that clear. The comparison with Two Hand weapons ie Pole is more direct because it's separate skills and you can't seriously train both Poles and Swords. Well, 2HW don't have any range bonus. Some have a "AOE" effect somehow increased, 20% instead of 10%. The damages tend be slightly higher, will depends a lot of all weapons found and I don't know yet the set available. For now a Slith Warspear is clearly the best damage input and you can find it rather soon, but it has none AOE effect which is replaced by some fire resistance. So 2W vs 2HW ends more or less in much less skills point spend for 2H and better To Hit vs More damages for 2W and the option for W+S and trade More damages with more protection and a slight improvement of To Hit. Well, clear math on damages would help to compare, but also will depend a lot, not of the class and skills choices, but of the weapons available. For a Tank ie my current main warrior I feel that 2W options not good, better sink points into more protection. For my secondary warrior, that would be a nice option, but I'm looking at something different than what suggested by this thread, mix of Pole and Bow, for now it works, it seems from this thread that later I'll regret because of lack of specialization. But really if the game can be played only with pure choices, Bows OR (exclusive) Swords/Poles, that is a little sad. At Normal I doubt it's a necessity, on Hard I bet it's not and I'll see if I regret later.

Well thanks to give me an advice, but I feel the under layout of your answer is that I shouldn't use Call Beast anyway because it's pointless and too weak. That's wrong, at least Hard difficulty, Mage level 7, INT 10, Spellcraft 2, Magic Spells level 7, Summoning Focus 1, Magic Efficiency 1 through an item. The summons are very random so it can be a weaker one. For sure when not weak most don't do that much damages, but receive hits and attract the attention of one or few monsters and survive more than just one or two rounds, and sometimes it's even a strong summon. It's less useful against a very strong enemy but sometimes it helps anyway for taking busy some weaker enemy with the strong one. Moreover I don't have yet the spells Shade Summoning or Summon Aid. I think I can buy Shade Summoning but I don't have the money to waste in two learned levels of this Spell and haven't find the book yet. For summon Aid I'm not sure I even found yet a mage teaching it.

My summons (at Hard difficulty) aren't really killing my party but some summons can explode when killed and do huge damages to the party or at least to close members. At first I believed it was only the Unstable Mass summon that could do that, but then realized Slime could too, perhaps for specifically violent death only. It's not even constant but it seems there's random so you can't even use it at your advantage. Here the poor tricks I used: Not summon at all, I end do that in a specific fight against a strong enemy after to have waste a fight close to win because of a last pointless summon. Not summon isn't a solution, that's clear. Keep a constant eye on the summon for healing support. That's was I was doing with Unstable Mass that was rare enough, but when I realized it was for Slime too, it's not an acceptable solution because Slime+Mass are too frequent summons. Increase Endurance level of my party, well already done for the close fighters, at level 7 my Survivor has 9 END and the second warrior mixing bow and pole has 7 END. But my Priest and Mage has low END. Run and escape the fight as soon as there's a summon of Slime of Mass, I have done that once but it's weird those summons happen too often. Lower the difficulty setting from Hard to Normal when such summon popup. No way, I tried play a bit at Normal and it removed a lot of the spice to replay this game through a remake. Now one point, my mage doing the summoning, has Call Beast level 3, Summoning focus level 1, INT now at 10 at level 7. Sure it doesn't help to have strong summons, but still. For me this is a design bug, but ok have you any advices on how manage this?

I backup my saves and tried a bit at Normal difficulty, starting from saves of Hard difficulty. Then get back to original saves and played again the same parts but at Hard difficulty. It's just some exploration, few dungeons and specific fights. So the difference was huge. This is an answer to OP and one of my post about difficulty at Normal. When a fight is very hard (too hard) and you switch from Hard to Normal and try again the same fight, it can be too hard even at Normal. But it's just not the right mission at this time, with a more global perspective, Normal is quite less difficult than Hard. Now at Hard, stuff like your summon killed that is creating a huge explosion killing the whole party at two extreme parts of a room (7 squares), that's awful. Also I felt there was an abuse of constant cast of Daze by some mage spiders, at Hard difficulty. But I'll open separate threads to ask advices about those two cases. EDIT: Well for the mage spiders casting a lof of Daze I suppose Ward of thoughts is the main answer, and possibly wait have it level 2 or even 3, plus some items with Mental protection. A spell to remove a Mental effect would help too, I haven't yet noticed it but I suppose there's one.

Perhaps the game difficulty at Normal is a bit too close to difficulty at Hard? But for Hard difficulty setup the game is Hard, woo that's not usual and that's cool! And also the wrong tooltip about DEX really need a fix.

Thank you, and you are welcome to provide more! For sure I read some in some of your posts or from other players. I mainly wanted put some focus on this point of the game... and hope get more idea from it.

I was wondering what was the various good tricks relative to fights tactics. Here few points I quoted: Swapping during movements: If you attack the path finding won't use the ability of swapping members, but if you move the path finding is using the swapping. So just move to the position where you'll attack and members will be swapped if they block a path, then attack. Swapping only without moving: In case you just want swap two characters, the arrow keys allow to move one step so you can use them to just swap two characters that are close but not in diagonal (I don't know the moving keys for diagonal). Use scouting in rude places: The beginning of a fight can be sometimes rather rude and with some random hard to predict. So when you are adventuring in a very rude place, enter in fight mode then scout with your first character and keep enough movement points to come back and setup an ambush in case there was some enemies after the corner. Check any repositioning opportunity before each attack: That can easily makes the difference between win and lost. There's many good opportunity to reposition, and even close attacker have opportunities. For example to move to a less exposed place, to move to opposite direction than other members in case the enemy is using cone attacks, to use the swapping possibility to exchange targets, and many more. Use doors and corridors: both could allow control a small front fight more easily. Use weaker enemies as protection: Sometimes you could even use small front fight to face some weaker monsters and shoot with long range and spells above them avoiding some tougher close range opponent. Learn identify enemies with area attacks: They are very dangerous so try identify them and position your team to minimize the number of members hurt by such attack. Against enemies using cone attacks: Position your fighter(s) attacking in opposed directions and in different directions than long range attackers. Against enemies using a ranged cloud attack: Have your group at least spread in two parts, like close range at a side and long range as far than possible. Have the priest in last position: There's many little advantage of this order choice. Have your main healer act at end of turn to make the best healing decision. At start of fights let the mage summon before the priest cast some support spell. This is done in the stats window (click the ? next to one of your characters, then move a character up or down in the lower-left corner of the window.) Find Healing Herbs, make free potions, use more often Healing potions: First places provides few spots that regularly provide few healing herbs, and an alchemist can make for you free healing potions if you provide healing herbs. So check those spots often, have more Healing potions, and use them a bit more often during tougher fights. Well that's what I think of, more are very welcome, or different opinion when you disagree. EDIT: Added explanation on how change party order as quoted Soul of Wit in a post.

What's a bit weird about this thread is how it gives the feeling the class system get totally screwed up and there's no real choices but just one path, well 4 paths. EDIT: Hit is a central problem in the game and dual weapon is the advised choice despite the hit penalty? That's strange.

Mmm well Lava bats are just one step further, it's not such a huge change lol. Also in original Avernum there was also Lava bats if I remember well and that cave was tough too. I noticed I have more than 1000 saves of it, if it's not my all time record, it's close lol. About dividing Avernum in squares, it's not possible and I already explained why, because its structure is a series of webs with large juxtapositions. And about structures, the two scale approach like in this Avernum remake totally rules for implementing open worlds, for me it's the best. To help players about difficulty management in open world, colored quests and monsters to hint their difficulty level and have it optional for hardcore players, would probably be a fairly good solution to replace separate optional squares that are a too restrictive approach of open world.

Originally Posted By: HOUSE of S Originally Posted By: Vent For those supposed "numerous" blogs complaining AETP is too hard, a series of quotes should justify it, a Google search didn't gave me much results, none in fact. I think you are misunderstanding Fael's post. Fael was referring to blog posts written by Jeff (aka Spiderweb Software) where he discussed his new goal of making games easier than he thinks they should be. Oops I apologize! I remember one or two posts I read about dumbing down target but haven't seen those specifically about lower difficulty. I made few quick tests, quick is an important word lol, to try on some tough battles switch from Hard to Normal. I hardly noticed any difference (more damages done?). Is really the game changes the difficulty on the fly? I wonder if the problem isn't specifically with the Normal difficulty. So the case if clear, jetcitywoman was responsible for testing Normal and is culprit for all the troubles. So it's clear all refund requests should be send to jetcitywoman.

It's not logical to complain about the difficulty change from game to game when all of those games allow you at any time to change the difficulty setting, and have played first a higher difficulty then switch to a lower will hardly be a penalty. For those supposed "numerous" blogs complaining AETP is too hard, a series of quotes should justify it, a Google search didn't gave me much results, none in fact. In game stats I have already 44 characters death, my party is level 6. I pickup hard yep a bit because I switch to Hard in Avadon but more because I already play the previous version of Avernum and wanted the extra challenge for a sort of distant replay. So for now Hard is quite Hard but it's a real plus once I admit it's Hard. I never felt fights in Avernum series a big fun, cool and fun enough but not great, their comparison with fights in some RealmZ scenario make them pale. But replaying Avernum through this remake and at a Hard difficulty is very fun. It push me dig more everything, exploit more the terrain, never forget use special attacks, put a lot of care in spells use, take care of placements and replacements, sometimes use maneuvering to reposition, use items when its clearly a special fight/enemy, and more. I agree that if there's a thing to fix it's the DEX tooltip error that probably lead and will lead some players to wrong choices. Myself I quoted it in those forums soon enough and can't complain, anyway my second fighter use bow quite often and his dex isn't a bad point, for now.

Originally Posted By: Micawber Originally Posted By: Spidweb Hey! Everyone who complains when I make a game linear so that people are forced to spend a while in lower level areas before they can proceed to tougher areas! READ THIS THREAD!!!!! Wow. It's almost as if there are reasons to do things the way I do them. Weird, that. This is fair, although I think it's also fair for the more experienced gamers to ask for there to be an option to switch off the 'fence' between zones. It could be turned on by default for teh newbies. The difficulty in Avernum isn't managed just by simple zone well delimited so those optional barriers are a false solution. An option to show or not quests colors showing a difficulty level could perhaps help. Also the come back of the "look at" command plus an option to show to the player a difficulty level information if it's a wandering group or an enemy.

Lol, I was thinking of this "difficulty vs open problem" when reading the thread: <Can't decide where I'm supposed to be>. That other thread turned a bit to transform a very open game into a more or less linear game. Beside bugs that can happen, fights difficulty or challenges linked to some skills level, are a major problem with highly non linear RPG. Most games end manage it through a tempered scaling system and Skyrim have done this choice, but also Baldur's Gate 2 had a complex scaling system, Dragon Age Origin too. In current PC RPG gaming population you'll get on forums a very vocal and not that small minority of players that will bash any mention to difficulty scaling. An important part of this reject of scaling is probably coming from the awful scaling system implemented in Oblivion plus the extreme popularity of Oblivion among PC players (most coming from consoles or also playing on consoles). But I think Skyrim will help tune down a lot the systematic complaint against difficulty scaling. Myself I'm a partisan of difficulty scaling, it just need to be rather more complicated than just a basic systematic linear scaling. When I played Avernum 1 some time ago (4 years, it was probably at release of Avernum 5) I have been quite fascinated by how open it was and how the quests was organized and the feeling of adventure it was building very well. I honestly didn't find back this in any Avernum. But I played most of them in part only (2&6, 5 almost finished) and I never played Avernum 3&4. Yeah, yeah Avernum 1 and Avadon are the only one I ever finished, ha well I haven't finished yet Skyrim that I consider great. In my opinion Avernum 1 is using series of difficulty webs and I feel the remake is keeping that. You don't have strict difficulty level for an area but a mix of easier and harder quests, and harder quests of this area are harder than easier quests of close area. So as soon as you take care to pick the easiest quests you have a very large open area available for exploration but there's many quest in this large area that are totally impossible to do. One hint for the player are the more or less random fights done in the scale travel, they tend be easy and pinpoint the difficulty of the easiest quests of the area protected by that encounters. Such setup will involve a lot of quests failure to let the player find the quests with the right difficulty for its current level. But is this organization can match a more large public which is more used to games that are linear or that are using a difficulty scaling system? Probably not. Some games used colors trick, blue is easy, green normal, yellow a bit hard, orange difficult, red impossible. That's fine but using such system and color quests could feel a lot too much dumbed down system. Some games just used protectors, even if area are open, reach a tougher area will require to pass though a limited number of well disguised doors where you won't be able to skip a rather tough fight that is setting up a hint for the difficulty level after this door. But the problem of very open RPG and difficulty level isn't only the too difficult fights, but it's also the too easy fights. The second problem will trigger a lot less complain but it can generate a not that good feeling. It typically happen when managing a series a very rude fights because not really for the current party level but quite higher. Then this gives a big boost to the party strength that will end in generating plenty other fights a lot too easy. To manage that without a scaling system not many games did. Gothic series used the trick of very controlled difficulty level by providing armor upgrades only on precise story events, and those armors was a huge difficulty change. EDIT: More XP through fights, so faster level up seems like a bad idea to me. Many players will exploit it to skip many stuff and make a Hardcore rush. Not sure they'll complain less if they already does with current version, they'll just face impossible barriers later. Also such setup is to push to grinding and I hate grinding.

I noticed exploration ie discovering a new place provides XP and the same amount for all members. I also noticed quests rewards work in that way. For fights I got the feeling at each kill, all conscious members got the same amount of XP. But I noticed one character get more XP and I'm not sure why. I had two characters that got unconscious once or twice. So they have a bit less XP. But for the two other, one have more XP and I don't see why. The only difference I can quote is one have some Tool points and the other none. So I was wondering what was all the XP mechanisms.

Originally Posted By: HOUSE of S They are probably removed. That was a feature of all the Nethergate engine games (including A1-3) but has not been in any of the newer engine games. Too bad, it was objectively a very minor feature but there was few points for it. First for newbies it was a nice way to low down a bit the difficulty during first parts. Still for newbies it was a cool way to see some example of characters already developed with few levels. Still not a very good mechanism because you started with a full party and had to give up one of party member to hire a companion. In Avadon 6 I quoted in first parts a companion follower, it was a modest approach but really a feature I regret and that had some other old games. A companion added to party but not part of it, a companion that join and leave for a specific duration or goal, a companion with few comments and little talks. For sure it's not the major shift of companions in Avadon but those are different companions, party companions. Party followers are quite different companions.

Originally Posted By: Masquerade ... I also had a few levels of tool use...scattered throughout the characters Tool is now the Tool sum of the party? Woo that change a lot of thing.

Hard difficulty, Barbarian, Rebel (which is an error as I'll probably switch to Bows), Mage and Priest. Lol perhaps I have not much imagination! I usually try mix more but it's certainly not easier. That said it's just first steps, level 3 or 4 I'm not sure. And I'm tempted to switch my Rebel to Bow. I feel the remake could have balance a bit throw weapons and bows, not sure how but the current balance is broken. Isn't Cave Lore allows find herbs or stuff like mushrooms? Also it could be an in game help error but I think the game mentions cave lore useful for hidden spots to dig (haven't found any yet, but some herbs and mushrooms). I'm looking to not ignore that skill for the remake. Also Arcane Lore already stop me once (too low) so I'll also won't ignore it.

Steamplay? What's that marvelous feature if it's not just dual support Windows and Mac? (In steam Steamplay means only that but players could have put some other features in this tag)

Dual wielding back? From Exile? The door thing isn't cool but well it's a detail if you don't want steal or more exactly abuse stealing because NPC don't open doors (if I remember well).

Isn't armoring also changed? I remember I could focus on Strength for fighter characters and rush to better armoring. Now I feel the rush on better armoring is more rude because there's a heavy to hit penalties. For now I'm playing hard and feel the game has just a good difficulty. I just had multiple time to give up continue a quest started and find some more easy to come back when stronger/better equipped. But I don't feel it different than in old Avernum. One point bother me, it's I remember you could hire some NPC to replace some companions in you party and that was a good way to tune down the difficulty for first parts. But I haven't find any of those companions yet. Is that was in another game? Or they have been removed? Of they are still here but I just haven't find some yet?

I didn't felt the series had that point of view a bit basic. That case is more a morale dilemma managed in an old school way. Will your greed will be stronger than your morale? This is the old school dilemma. Myself I doubt I smashed the eggs but I don't remember it. That sort of dilemma doesn't work that well because it's just a game, and greed is one of the most strong mechanism of those type of games. So most player will just take some distance will some morale point of view after all it's just a game and sprites and series of 0 and 1. But doing that will break a little bit the world setup illusion. That's why more modern games are trying to avoid such dilemma, because it doesn't work well. The more modern approach is to build choices where there's a real dilemma with no clear disbalance on any points (morale, greed, story, amount of quests, and more) for any choices, it's not a challenge but a dilemma game and a way to offer choices to players. Another trick is to build consequences much later in the game and highlight it with explanations.

I don't remember well so I'm not sure but I don't think NPC could open doors during adventure mode of Avernum. And during fight mode I don't remember a PC could open doors, for NPC I think they could sometimes. Well I didn't check anything despite all games are installed on my computer, well all Avernum but not Exile. About stealing, first I feel it like cheating, second I don't feel I'm ok to accept the consequences. It's not balanced consequences and there's logic to that, but the point is it's not balanced. So it ends in my point of view to always succeed steal and never been caught, so reload if I get caught. About killing neutral or friendly NPC, it's complicated. I feel it weird. Consequences should be a lot more extreme and often it's not. The player make all the quests related to the town, check a walkthrough to know it, then mass murder the town quite easily. I would be a game designer (lol) in no way I would accept design a game allowing that, just a matter of principle. About the door if it's really the ipad the cause, then the solution is rude. In Avadon you can manage it anyway, and if it's really a problem some other solutions would work. Double tap to close doors, or multi touch two fingers to open and close doors, one finger touch is kept for moving.

I haven't played it since a long time, I mean Avadon. But if I remember well there's no real best path, just choose your path in term of curiosity and then you'll see if you met some too rude encounters you'll change your target. It's not secret but in game description there's three main quests and you can do them all or only one or two. You can progress them in parallel or make them more sequentially. You can focus more on one then switch elsewhere, and so on. Other than that it's fully your choice tempered by difficulty.

My first thoughts, in fact my very first thoughts, it can't be more first because I just finished download it. Avernum is my favorite of all I played, and it's thrilling to anticipate discover how it feels in this remake. Good start. EDIT: OMG there's two scales! I didn't expected it even if it was hard to imagine how it could be ported with a one scale system. Very good, now I suppose there will be only two scales and not three, but two scales is already a quite different approach. I quote the larger scale is quite more closer but the closer scale is also a closer view. EDIT2: A slight disappointment is that there's only one class, and only specialization in skills will build a class. But also that means that overall there's less choice. If I remember well Avadon had 4 classes even if some skills was shared between different classes. That said it's just a slight disappointment, original Avernum had also only one class, and stuff like special attacks are a good change to compensate less skills. And if like Avadon many skills provide special capacities at different levels that's also for me a good replacement of some other stuff.