Lucidus

Can anyone help me find the first location? There is an earlier post which describes where to find the three trigger points, but even with that information I have not been able to find them.

Thanks; that makes sense. What has me confused is that in the .txt file for this dungeon, there is an option that shows the fairy being released. However, I am not clever enough to figure out what that means.

I have the bone key, but when I try to use it I get a message to the effect that 'your arm feels like it has been stung by bees, you drop the key and it immediately disappears, you think you can hear the crones laughing, and the wolf looks even more forlorn' (paraphrased).

Is it possible for a party of Romans to free the fairy trapped by the crones in the body of a wolf? There appears to be a dialog option for this, but I can't figure out how to make it happen.

Thank you, Tyranicus. Adding that file eliminated the error message, and I was able to find the key and the necklace that I needed. Once again, the Spiderweb community has provided outstanding assistance. I do have a Mac, and I should have specified that in my initial question. Of the three versions of the Mac scenario I had downloaded, one of them also came directly from Smoo's website. I will try to message him so that he is aware of this problem.

Thanks for those suggestions. There is a file named t05Ironminesdlg.txt, but none named just t05Ironmines.txt. I downloaded two other versions of the scenario, from different websites, and neither of them contained that specific file, either. Should I try contacting the creator directly?

Sorry to need so much help, especially this many years after peak activity. I don't know the program well enough to figure these things out on my own. I am playing Backwater Calls, and have run into a problem. When I enter the Iron Mines, I get the message ERROR: Failed to load t05Ironmines. I believe I have searched the mines thoroughly, but I cannot find the Iron Key needed to open the final door. Also, for whatever it's worth, nothing happens when I attempt to read the book in the hidden area near the end of the dungeon. I don't know whether these issues are separate or related. Am I doing something wrong? Should I be looking elsewhere for the key? Any assistance greatly appreciated.

It has been several weeks now since I finished A Small Rebellion, and I had better post this before I forget. There is a special weapon, the Quickload Crossbow, which appears in the custom item list and therefore in Artifacts Hall. However, I don't believe it is actually used in the scenario. Can someone double-check this? And Kelandon, when I go back and read the reviews of Blades of Avernum scenarios, I am amazed at how misguided many of them are. There seems to have been a widespread opinion that the scenario editor should be used to make games as different as possible from Jeff Vogel's original Exile and Avernum games. I couldn't disagree more. Many of the BoA scenarios are clever and inventive, but Bahssikava is the only one which gave me something like the experience I look forward to from these games.

I am playing Blades of Avernum again, after all these years, mostly because I want to experience Bahssikava one more time (and I'm delighted to learn that there is now a sequel). I am about half way through A Small Rebellion, and I have just earned a reward for completing a task which is not given by any character in the game - a hidden quest, if you will. It is not mentioned in Jeff's walkthrough, nor has it been discussed in these forums, as far as I can tell. It doesn't seem likely that I am the only person to have found this, so for the sake of completeness I want to make sure the information is recorded somewhere. East of Liam, and north of the swamps, is a standing stone surrounded by trees. If you make your way up to the stone, you get a message which says 'First Stone.' There are three more stones, and if you touch them all in order, you get a nice reward. The second stone is all the way on the west side of the island, southeast of the mountains. The third is east of Fahl, at the end of a short passage into the mountains. The fourth is near the east coast, just south of the mountains. The reward is a Warrior's Ring, with good attack bonuses - certainly one of the nicest pieces of jewelry in the scenario.

Unfortunately, that old Bestiary applies to the earlier Avernum games. There are significant differences in the newest iteration, so that information will be incorrect and confusing for someone playing Avernum: Escape from the Pit. If you watch closely, during battles there will be numbers superimposed on your foes after you attack them, showing damage taken and (crucially) damage blocked. For example, if you attack a Fire Lizard with a fire spell, it will show 'Immune' and no damage. I don't know of a list containing all this information.

Actually, I have completed the sugar quest and have found an additional 3 bags, so there are at least 4 (I'm not quite to the end). Ordinary wine, Almarian wine, and ale are all needed to fulfill quests, but otherwise they are of no use to your party. Check the "Items to Keep" heading under Strategy Central for more detail. You don't ever need to buy these things; there is enough lying around to satisfy the quest requirements. To answer your earlier questions: 1) There are some groups of wandering monsters that you will always encounter the first time you enter a certain area of the map. These can be tough fights. Once these particular groups have been defeated, they are gone for good. In addition, there are other groups which spawn at random, so you may encounter them at any place at any time. Generally speaking, these are not as challenging. 2) You can choose to complete 1, 2, or all 3 of the 'winning' quests. 3) Coins differ in value; a stack of gold coins will be worth more than a stack of silver, which in turn will be worth more than a stack of copper. The value is shown just below the image of the coins in the 'Get Items' window.

I had the same idea (although I was thinking more about mind control than acid or poison, which are rarely lethal): making my priest Sluggish would ensure that he was always last to act, and also offset some of the XP penalty from Pure Spirit. Well, the theory may have made some sense, but in practice it just sucked - I mean, it really sucked. I found the movement limitation extremely aggravating, even when it was not causing specific tactical problems, which it frequently did. Worse, because he lagged so far behind, and because in Avernum 5 Unshackle Mind only affects nearby party members, he was almost never close enough to help when characters did become charmed (or terrified, or whatever). It was bad right from the beginning, but I stuck with that party through the demo area and a ways into the Northern Isles before deciding it was worth it to start over. I did keep my Nephil priest/archer in the fourth slot, and I didn't ever buy him any Quick Strike or Gymnastics, so while he was certainly never slow, at least in major fights he generally acted after the bosses. He was a little less useful as an archer, but overall more effective as a priest. For what it's worth, my second party consisted of a Slith polearm warrior (just because I like them) and three Nephillim - melee fighter (with tool use), mage, and priest - in that order. It was a little bit tricky getting the Slith to where he consistently had precedence in battle, but once I had given him several levels of Gymnastics (which I found more effective than Quick Action or Quick Strike for that purpose), he started first and stayed in front, and did a gratifying amount of damage. With all the changes in the game mechanics between the five installments of the Avernum series, I know it's not really meaningful to make comparisons. Nevertheless, this was clearly the best party I have ever saved Avernum with.

Although I don't understand your specific problem, Stuffit seems to have been causing headaches for a lot of people recently. Try a program called The Unarchiver instead. It's free, it handles all types of files, and it has worked great for me. (Sorry I don't have the link, but it should be easy to find - I know it's available from Apple's website, for one.)

You are absolutely correct about the enfeeblement, and I feel foolish for not having recognized it. However, my Strength was not being gradually restored, as it should have been with enfeeblement, so there was still something seriously wrong. I looked to see if a more recent version was available, and couldn't find one, although it's hard to be certain. (Does anyone else think it would be a Very Good Thing if there were some standard way of indicating the version of a scenario? Even something as simple as including the version number in the name of the parent folder would suffice, if everybody did it.) So I downloaded the scenario again, just in case, and got an error message when I tried to expand the .sit archive. This had also happened a few of times while I was gathering scenarios last week, and I thought I had discarded the ones that might have had problems, but maybe I missed some. The latest version of Stuffit Expander still did the same thing, but The Unarchiver (when I finally found a copy - the main site has been down) worked just fine. I know Stuffit is becoming a problem (a shame, really); perhaps The Unarchiver should be mentioned in the forum header or the FAQ, to help others avoid this problem. I'll suggest this to Spiderweb as well, for their scenario download page. Anyway - with the new copy, things seem to be working as they should, so your suggestion definitely helped me figure it out. Thanks.

A couple of really strange things happened to me Beneath the Citadel in Magus of Cattalon, and I'm hoping someone can help me figure them out. First, there is an arena to the southwest where you are supposed to be able to train. If I entered the room through the western doors, the 'Info' button would switch to 'Train' for just an eyeblink, but then immediately reset to 'Info.' If I stepped back onto one of the four special encounter squares from inside the room, it would change to 'Train' and stay that way for a while, but as I moved around in the room - away from either set of doors - it would sometimes revert. This was erratic but it occurred several times. If my party moved from south to north right next to the doors, it would consistently revert to 'Info' when my leader was on the second encounter square and my second character on the first. I thought that was weird, and looking at the scripts I couldn't see any reason for it, but things soon got much worse. As I walked through the long room with the Naga statues, I was cursed and slowed. OK, I can deal with that, but it kept on happening every few turns as I moved into other areas. I was not doing much damage at all in combat, and I thought it must just be a really bad curse - until I tried to pick something up and discovered that my weight limit had dropped to 66 lbs! My strength was down to O (from 18-20 for my fighters, 7 or 8 for my spellcasters). This freaked me out, and frankly made me pretty angry, and I immediately quit the game. A little later, feeling calmer, I tried to understand what had happened. As far as I can tell, the curse was only supposed to affect statuses 1 and 3, and furthermore should have stopped when I stepped out of the room with the statues, but it didn't. My characters' Strength dropped by 8 points each time I was cursed, until it hit 0, but according to the Editor docs, it's not supposed to be possible for Strength to go below 1. Finally, going back to the arena and reading the training book restored the missing skill points, which makes me think this was all intentional - but I can't find anything in the scripts to account for it. I should emphasize that until now I knew NOTHING about scripting, so it's very possible there is more going on than I am getting. I am actually pleased this happened, because for the first time I can look at a script and make some sense of it - not much so far, but some. A couple of times since Blades was released, I had wanted to learn how to build my own scenarios. Unfortunately I have no coding experience and everything I read was just gibberish to me, so I didn't get very far. Coming at it backwards, as it were, has somehow enabled me to cross that threshold, and I have started reading the manuals and playing with the Editor. Who knows how far it will go? But if someone can help me understand this, it will encourage me to keep learning.

Replying to my own post . . . That switch opens the small secret area behind the Crystal Soul. I thought that room was already open the first time I tried the switch; just easily confused, I guess.

Late in the game there are a lot of red herrings, little details in the maps that suggest secret areas where none in fact exist. They drive me crazy sometimes, but at the same time they are a part of the personality of these games which I have really come to enjoy. To make things worse, it was rumoured in another post that there might in rare cases be pillars or other objects which function as switches . . . and I found myself back under Thalants, wall-bumping like the good old days. (Presumably, though, any switch - even fiendishly disguised, if there were such a thing - would still show up when I hit the 'U' key, wouldn't it?) Anyway, now I seem to have run into essentially the opposite situation: in Thalants, just a couple of spaces west of the stairway to the lower level, there is a switch. It appears to be active (it gets highlighted, and you hear the grinding sound when you press it), but as far as I can tell it didn't open up anyplace I hadn't already visited. It isn't mentioned in Synergy's near-exhaustive (and greatly appreciated) list. Can anyone tell me what it is supposed to do?

While trying to decide how to spend my precious tinctures and eyestalks, I noticed a couple of trivial errors in the information shown for Brennan in Muck. You have the price of a couple of his crafted items at 500 coins, where he charges a straight 300 across the board; also, the materials needed for the Armor Ring are not listed. Is this the best way to let you know about these things, or would a private message be more appropriate? For that matter, do you even want to hear this stuff? Playing Jeff's games really brings out the 'obsessive-compulsive' in me; I'm just assuming they affect other people the same way. (After I originally posted this, I came across another oddity. Brennan's dialog states that the Warmaster Helm requires 4 Focusing Crystals, as your list shows, but he actually only takes 2. I brought him the exact quantities of ingredients he had asked for, and when I opened my inventory afterwards, I was pleasantly surprised to see 2 of the Focusing Crystals still there, next to the helmet.)

There is another small hidden area on the upper level, directly behind the Unstable Prototype's pen. There are a couple of fake switches on the corridor wall nearby, but I haven't been able to locate the real one. Does anyone know where it is?

Thanks - I guess I was a little impatient. And my apologies to the Head Spider, for assuming it was a bug.

Another tease (I think) is a cache at the top of a cliff, on the north bank about halfway through the Northern Rapids. It is clearly visible, but as far as I can see from the maps, there is no way to get up there.

I just received the third infestatiion quest from Tiacoura in Solberg's Tower. I think I have already killed the worms in question (at least I killed some worms at lurking at the south wall just west of the barrier), but I can't get her to recognize that. Am I just out of luck for completing the quest requirements before actually being given the quest, or are there more worms somewhere (maybe on the dangerous side of the barrier)? I know there have been other questions about unfinishable quests. Many of them seem to have work-arounds, but some apparently don't. I'm surprised to see this in a Spiderweb game.

I downloaded Avernum 5 v1.0.1, which is supposed to run in Millions of Colors at 1024 x 768, but when I launch the game I am still getting prompted to switch to Thousands of Colors. I have a 2 GHz dual processor Mac G5, running OSX 10.3.9. This doesn't affect gameplay, but it is puzzling.

Oops - I think my fingers must have typed that while my mind was doing something else. His name is Skarp, but again, while he is the only named character in that group, he is not actually the one who drops the ring. Since you are given the option of letting his friends run away before you kill him, people might like to know what that choice will cost them.

I'm not sure whether you want to include this kind of detail in your list, but when I attacked Sparks outside Exodus, I let his friends run away and he didn't drop anything. You have to fight all of them (still an easy battle), and then one of his buddies drops the Rat Tail Band, along with some armor and a bow. I didn't catch this until a few hours had passed - it's a decent item at this level but not worth repeating so much of the game.