Marak

While in some ways I miss being able to right-click foes and see that they have 22/138 health (or whatever), I think this move is a good one... knowing your opponent's health to the number is A) pretty immersion-breaking and gives you pretty massive advantage in virtually every battle throughout the game, since you know which of your attacks will do JUST enough damage to down your foe... instead of trying to keep track of how much damage zapped off how many pixels of the bar and taking your best guess. It also adds tension to Bosses and sort-of-boss end-of-quest monsters: Ack, I'm out of healing and this thing only has a tiny sliver of health left, will this next attack be enough to kill it before it starts picking off my wounded party members!? That's my take on it anyhow.

Same. The Flame Sword is currently my Priest/Warrior's off-hand weapon. Weight is the only facter I've seen in what limitations you have for your off-hand weapon.

There's another way to avoid "losing" the third quest: Don't turn the first two quests in! After getting hosed on the final quest in the first trio of missions from Merryhew, I started asking the commander-type for more info on all three quests right away (to get all of them in my Quest Log), and then go galavanting off and (eventually) complete all three. Once they'd all been completed, I would go back and talk to the quest giver and turn them all in during the same bout of dialogue for all three rewards. Yes, I suppose you'll lose a bit of XP overall since your characters will have gone up a level or two by completing all three quests before turning any of them in, but I'm willing to bet that you still get a lot more XP that way than if the game decides it's not going to let you do that third quest at all.

A good trick if you can manage it: Someone dies. It happens. A lot, if you're playing on Hard or Torment. Have your Mage or Priest summon 2 creatures ASAP. Move the rest of your party away. The idea is to get all three remaining characters out of line-of-sight of the foe(s) that killed you. Your 2 summoned pets should keep things occupied for a round or 3, allowing you more time to find a corner or somesuch to sneak around. Once you can no longer see any foes on-screen, End Combat. Quickly use a Return Life scroll (or the spell, if you have it). Heal the revived character to full health, Save (optional), re-enter combat and charge your enemies again. Obviously this isn't always possible. Sometimes you're surrounded by 7 wolves or chitrachs or whatever in the middle of a huge, barren outdoor area. But if you can pull it off, the dead character won't lose any XP from killing things - it just costs you a bit of mana and a Return Life scroll (which you get a TON of, you may as well use them).

The only "penalty" is slowly consuming your party's stores of food. Which is really only a penalty if you're moving through the same areas over and over, since each new area you move to has more food laying about for you to snag. Personally, I think the "you're late!" comments that all your commanders make is just a tongue-in-cheek reference to the way most people will play the game: do everything you can in an area, saving the story-advancing missions for last.

Personally I think I would have enjoyed A5 more if either A) the little "blocks" you got thrust into for each chapter had been significantly larger, or if there had been multiple tunnels between them. Imagine starting out in the Drake Pillars and then, being able to choose from getting a Bracelet and going to Tranquility or somehow "unlocking" a secret tunnel (perhaps in the Dragon's Lair under the town?) that lead instead to, say, the Anama or Vahnatai lands? Imagine roughly the same number of areas, but they're split into pairs of equally difficult areas. Now, by choosing one, the other would become mostly (or completely?) inaccessible for that play-through. There would be solid incentive for most players to go back and choose the tunnels they skipped the first time(s) around, while at the same time the cries of "omg completely linear!" would die off. This is sort of what was done in A6: the main plot is pretty much a straight line but you have huge areas at a time to explore before you're forced to advance it (the Great Cave, the Eastern Gallery, the Mage Colony tunnels, the Honeycomb), and even then, you have to complete your choice of 2 missions in different parts of Avernum. While this may not be truly non-linear (as far as CRPGs go), it creates a solid illusion of non-linearity, and offers you some variety for subsequent play-throughs. ("I think I'll try that Western Excavation quest this time...") Responsiveness would also be great to see, but the complexity and sheer amount of extra writing and scripting involved would be a nightmare for a huge developer to do - how is Jeff going to do it? Development times would extend out to Blizzard-esque proportions as Jeff pens all 35 possible scenarios and the 57 seperate endings. I'd like to see it, but you'd have to have some serious staffing to get it done (think BioWare's Mass Effect team-type numbers).

I'm sort of torn; the linearity of A5 was definately a bit wearing... I know personally, by the time I got the Vahnatai lands I just wanted to hack off Dorikas' head already. But for the most part, it was exciting, fun, and challenging. The evolution of monster encounters in A1-4 (go kill hundred of goblins that can't really hurt you in order to complete these 2 quests) to what you saw in A5 (fewer kills to level, more interesting fights, mechanics involved other than 'monster runs up to you and hits the last person who attacked it') was definately a big part of that sense of challenge. Like Dikiyoba said, the amount of Health that enemies sported (particularly when get beyond the Anama Lands and/or on Hard or Torment) got a little out of hand. This is true in A6 as well, but not to the same extent: for most fights, health pools tend towards mildly obnoxious rather than eye-roll-inducingly high - at least on Hard mode (the only mode I've played A6 in thus far). Battle Disciplines are also well-executed, as Slarty said. It was a brilliant way of making Melee (and Archers) more interesting and interactive without having to resort to the old standby of "I'll mix this up by giving them Mage or Priest spells!" Lastly, tanking. Sure, my first character may not be dealing hundreds of damage per turn, but with 80% armor and a shield and parry and riposte and hardiness (and the right buffs or potions) he's nigh-untouchable. I don't think you could really pull a character like that off in the original trilogy. Yes, you could make a character that could take a hit, but not to that extent. Combined with battle disciplines it's not uncommon for my Tank to charge up to 2-4 foes, hit Adrenaline Rush, smack each one once, and keep them all occupied for rounds at a time while the rest of my party brings them down. Again, hard to do in prior games. Anyway. I'm bored and rambling again. Don't mind me. Off-topic: CRISIS on INFINITE SLARTIES is quite possibly the best forum name ever. I giggle every time I read it in an exaggerated, comic-book-announcer-guy voice.

Yeah, I was basing the final one (forget the name offhand) off my experiences with it in A5. Haven't gotten it yet in A6, my Party is a bit too magic-heavy and my two fighter-types have been juggling Mage/Priest Spells, Endurance, trying to unlock Parry and Blademaster, and getting 15+ Battle Skill (Hint: it's slow, slow going.) My initial party in any Avernum game never ends up being anywhere optimal, no matter how much I read up on Party builds in advance while waiting for the Windows version to hit. I am loving Ad Rush in A6, however. My Hasted, Ad Rushed Archer gets 3 shots (or spells) off per round with no Quick Strike or Mercurial gear. It's lots of fun. Next game I think I'm going to make a character with a focus on getting to Ad Rush and Quick Strike as soon as possible. TL;DR: Adrenaline Rush good, Stunning bad.

I've never found much use for it. As Slarty said, I'll just use Mighty Blow or Adrenaline Rush instead. Makes for a heck of a Skill Point gap between Adrenaline Rush and the next useful move (Uber Mode go!) at the end of the Battle Discipline skill "tree".

As others have said, it's not the system I hate, it's the "your guys are still giving off little puffballs so you can't move for 5 seconds" every time you get past the loading bar.

Oh good, I'm not the only one who loves Avernum 3 right up until the point that you have to start doing the Lazer Puzzles. A6 is very light on puzzles, thankfully. Uh, puzzles of the "push this, yank this lever, Zelda-wannabe" variety that is. It's the "how the hell do I survive the dude that summons 2 400 Health, 200-magic-damage-per-round dealing Uber Shades and then hits you with a 100 damage Fire Aura and then expects you to kill 4 700 Health zombies and not lose anyone" puzzles that'll really get you.

Ahh well then, no body. Unless you count the Dragons with their "we live for centuries unless killed off by bands of 4-6 Adventurers first" lifespans. I don't remember the exact timeline, but at the time of A6 Avernum has been around for (I'm sure someone will yell at me here for being a few decades off) over a century. Unless someone was exiled as a baby in the first 2-4 years of Avernum and somehow survived to a ripe old age of 125 years old in the caves, everyone from the original days of A1 is long gone and it's their grandchildren and possibly their great-grandchildren that we're dealing with in A6. Although, I guess it's possible some smart Lich or Vampire or similarly intelligent Undead has survived thru the whole series by not ever letting themselves become hostile to any of said Adventuring groups.

I think I have to mostly agree with what others have said: the seamless "no outdoors" of A4-6 looks good on paper, but it makes the "new gen" Avernum feel many, many times smaller than the "old gen" Avernum. If/when Jeff redoes A1-3, it'd be great if he could find a way to keep the A6 graphics (which are amazing for a Spiderweb game) and yet, still have a "world map" that tranlates the sheer size of places like the Great Cave and the Eastern Gallery. Such a thing may not be possible, but hey, one can dream. Of course, the "no outdoors" map does have huge perks, namely having hidden passages and hidden caches that don't require hours of carpal tunnel-induding Wall Humping™ to find. I adore hidden passages, but an hours-long Avernum 2 play session just wreaks havok on my wrists for days. I admit I was skeptical about the new "hey it's like Geneforge, just click and move there!" movement "system" when A4 hit, but once I spent all of A4 and A5 clicking on things, I find that it's now very hard to go back to playing the original trilogy with the Number Pad. I do like how Jeff brought back the A-Z keyboard shortcuts for targeting spells and ranged attacks, though. Clicking on the right beastie can sometimes be a challenge when they overlap in the isometric perspective. I still have to say I like Avernum 2's plot the best. Not only are you exploring ALL of Avernum - literally, all of it - eventually, you also get to explore some of the Vahnatai lands for the first and only time. No, I don't count that little bit of the Frontier in A5. The best part about A2? You complete the first three Chapters and think, "Whew, I've been thru a lot already, all I have to do now is rescue one of the Crystal Souls and I'll win!" and then you get thrown back into Avernum, in the Tower of the Magi, and realize that you have about 65% of the World Map still uncovered and not one, but THREE expansive, multi-step, game-winning quests to complete - not to mention the 100+ side quests from every Town, City, Fort, and Random NPCs House you stumble across. The exploration, the sense of urgency, the grand scope... those all make A2 my favorite plot. The overpowered 8-points-per-Level system that allows all all 4 characters to have every Mage and Priest Spell and still have points left over for other stuff, while clearly broken when you consider what 4 Mages (who can also Heal like champs) with the high-end spells can do to just about any foe in the game, still makes for some amusingly overpowered gameplay (once you figure out that Magic Is King And Trumps Everything Else). I'm going to say that I like Avernum 6's game system the best so far. Magic is still powerful but the lack of Skill Points and the scarsity of Wisdom Crystals and Knowledge Brews (compared to A4 and A5 where they were passed out like candy) makes it so that you really have to think about what you want your characters to be. Sure, you can still make that Mage/Priest but there's absolutely no way you can give him any points in anything but Mage/Priest Skills and Spellcraft and Intellect if you expect him to be able to keep up with learning all the latest and greatest spells. Yes, you can make that dual-wielding Fighter/Priest but you better pick one aspect to focus on, because if you try to pump both you're going to have a fighter that does poor damage and yet still can't cast Mass Cure when things get tight. While I loved my overpowered, magic-monster teams from the original trilogy, the balance you find in A6 (with lessons leaned from A5 about not being able to unlock the Special Skills until long after it matters because of the sometimes ludicrous prerequisites) is far more challenging and fulfilling: you can slap together a Party of Hybrids and go kill monsters with great inefficiency, yes, but finding that balance of just how far you can push a character's second role before he becomes ineffective at both is, to me, rather addicting.

X and Solberg, who have extended their lifespans using their mastery of magic. On the downside, both are pretty much half-undead at this point, and are well on their way to becoming full-fledged Liches.

Excellent news. Looking forward to enjoying A6 soon... just as soon as the PC version is done

Re: Steelytan I don't push archery at all, at least in A5. At most, I'll put 2 points in Bows and 2 points in Thrown simply because that adds +2 to my Weapon Skill and gets me 2 "points" closer to Battle Frenzy for "only" 8 Skill Points. My front-line Fighter/Meat Shield/Tankie-person usually ends up with a Bow equipped because I hate leaving equipment slots empty, not because he ever actually shoots the stupid thing. However, having said all that, I have to say that those Bows near the end of the game that shoot Lightning/Submission arrows or that add to Quick Action are sort of worth it as Stat Sticks, or for a quick ranged debuffing of whatever monster you're going to charge up and melee next round. It's too bad really, I enjoy having an Archer/Thief in my Party but in A5 that character is near-worthless as a damage dealer and serves only 2 purposes: with high Dex and Sharpshooter and Gymnastics, they pretty much always go first, so their role is to shoot something with Shieldbreaker or Leg Sweep in order to soften it up for the real damage dealers: the Mages and (to a lesser extent) the Melee fighter. Oh, and they unlock things. Wheeee.

Ornks defeat both Shapers and Rebels and usher in an age of bovine paradise.

Fine, change "Once every 3 turns (or so," to "Once every 4 turns (or so,"

While not strictly necessary, I still find it fun to throw in a Cryora or a Vlish into my mix of face-stabbing Clawbugs with their Battle Alpha spokesperson. Variety is the spice of life and all that. Re: Master1 Yes, excellent advice. If you blow your entire Essence pool on creations and don't have any left over for Healing and Curing spells, Recovery Aura, Haste, War Blessing, and/or Protection when the going gets tough, you can find yourself in a lot of trouble.

I agree. With the exception of a few specific monster types that have 99.9999% resistance to all forms of magic (Doomguards, Unstable Masses, the Altered Giant in Melanchion's Keep), having both Mage and Priest spells will allow you to attack a foe's least-resistant Element, no matter what it is, as you've got Fire, Ice, Acid, and Disruption damage all covered. Plus, as was said, spells completely trump melee in terms of pure damage in about 95% of all the fights in the game - especially when it comes to blasting down groups of foes, which is something you just cannot do with a melee character, even one with a Polearm and Battle Disciplines and Haste and Elite Warrior. Most of my Parties have a Mage/Priest in them and while I haven't ever tried either Singleton or Torment, they're enough of a powerhouse on Hard or Normal that I imagine they have to be pretty scary when you give them all the best equipment and all the Wisdom Crystals/Knowledge Brews in the game and the extra levels you get by flying solo.

Good point. Can still hope, right?

Not to mention that Archers in general are pretty lackluster in A5. Even with Sharpshooter and Dexterity and Bows all pumped up to stupid-high levels their damage always comes out to a little less than what a sword & board fighter is doing (read: not much). Also, FoF is pretty meh for A5 as well. Once every 3 turns (or so, it's random), you'll get 2 bonus AP. Therefore, on said "FoF Rounds", you can move 2 whole squares and still shoot twice (if Hasted), or stand still and fire twice (if not hasted). All in all, it'n not really comparable to the bonuses from other Traits: Natural Mage - wear any armor, still cast anything; free Mage Spell levels; Magical Efficiency Elite Warrior - bonus Encumbrance (can wear more gear without AP Penalties than a character without Elite Warrior); free levels of Parry and Blademaster Pure Spirit - free Priest Spell levels; Magical Efficiency

Palette swaps are easier on Jeff's wallet but I agree it's a little disappointing sometimes.

To leapfrog on Thuryl's post, it's better to get your Intellect (and thus, your Essence pool) up as high as you can, as soon as you can. You also want a fair number of points in your chosen Shaping School and a couple points in the other Schools regardless of which one is your "main" School. The reason is that, as Thuryl said, having 7 Creations with no stat boosts and 2 Intellect will still be far more dangerous and deadly than 2 or 3 Creations with massively boosted stats (trust me, I tried the "2-3 boosted Creations" route, and it's nothing special). Putting a few points in every school allows you to make virtually any Creation to keep your army as diverse as possible: you want to be supplementing your main attack type with stuff like Poison and Acid and Ice Damage and Curses and Stunning Attacks. Also recommended: make your Shaper/Lifecrafter the last person in your Party and make sure your Formation puts him/her as far back as possible. If you do it right, your PC will rarely (if ever) take hits from anything, which minimizes (or eliminates) the need to put points in things like Endurance and the wearing of heavy armor (which then requires Strength).

Considering the September update was posted on 9/18, hopefully we'll see something soon. I'm anxious to hear what Jeff's been up to.