Mivayan

It could be either way, but if it is the displayed armor% - 30%, then that makes armor pretty bad. You just get closer and closer to 70% instead of 100% like you think. And I don't think it's quite that bad.

Originally Posted By: Brocktree Originally Posted By: Lilith You're looking at it from the wrong perspective. Reducing the damage you take per hit from 200 to 100 and reducing it from 2 to 1 both double the number of hits you can survive, which is the thing that matters most of the time. I sort of understand what you are getting at, in theory. So why doesn't this work out in practice? I think you might be applying the torment penalty as a straight -30%, so that going from 80% to 90% armor reduces 100 incoming damage from 50 to 40. I'm pretty sure the torment penalty is multiplicative like armor pieces. Like a separate armor piece with (-25) or something armor, or a 1.25 total damage multiplier (that doesn't increase damage above the base value in case of little/no armor). Also, unsure of exact value. If exactly 30 armor is needed to overcome it, the value would be 1/(1-0.3)=1.43. Using 1.43, 100 damage would be ... 100 damage without armor. Or 1.43 * (100-90) = 14.3 with 90% armor value. 28.6 with 80% armor.

You are not alone, A4 works badly on my win xp machine. Similar symptoms, sluggish especially in combat. Also the esc-menu takes several seconds to appear (ctrl-O for load menu is instant). G4 and A5 works great. A4 worked well on the same machine four years ago. I've reinstalled windows a few times since, run lots of crap in the background, but my best guess is some incompatibility with the current ATI card. Had an nvidia card I had at the time.

Crystals are nice and became even better with G4s action point system. Ice crystals do ice damage to one target. Spray crystals do magic damage to three targets. Swarm crystals do magic damage to five targets. Torrent gems does fire damage to.... everyone (range you your character).

Crap damage but the acid adds up over time. And well, some foes hurt to attack in melee.

A bit late I know - but the small summoned worms were fairly easy to kill with the swarm(?) crystals that hit 5 foes.

I find parry invaluable on torment in A4 for a singleton. I used both elite warrior for the parry bonus and put 6 points in manually by lvl 10 (then nothing more). Half the attacks miss and the rest do way less (half? even less?) damage. This works well with long fights where you use the acid spell/bow on all the foes... repeatedly... till they die. Not much help against mages though. elite warrior / divinely touched / nephil dont really need points in melee or missiles to hit the foes. If I remember right, haven't played in a while.

My singleton notes says each point of vahnatai lore is worth one point of rune reading as well. also: this thread

Quote: Originally written by Demonike: Thanks for the link! The freakin pylons will regenerate if you're far away, and there's no point unless you can do really heavy damage from the distance. I remember it being quite a nuisance even for the four of "us" I know that they can mostly be navigated around to get the goal, but then again, much of the game can be left untouched to get the goal... My torment singleton got to the abyss before bad computer trouble stopped me. The fort remote pylons felt designed to be sneaked around, since you never actually have to step in range of one, and if you do you can fast back out. Also boring to fight, so my singleton skipped most of them... though destroyed some on the way back due to overpowering powergaming urges. What I did: nephil, Elite warrior trait and probably divinely touched. I put 6 in defence and 6 in dex to unlock parry, and put 5-6 points in that before end of demo area. Together with parry bonus from EW, melee didn't hurt... but archers were lethal, which lead to the somewhat strange gameplay of trying to melee every foe at once. I decided to mostly ignore nature lore, the herbs you get are nice at the craftmaster's shrine but by then you dont need more power. Annoying to not find enough glowing basalt for quest though. Need 5 arcane lore for dispell barrier - very nice to have. Early on, endurance give almost no hp, and once you have augmentation, the hp it gives doesn't matter much.

You can't learn potion making in avernum 4. There are a bunch of NPCs that can turn your herbs into potions for you though.

Quote: Originally written by Randomizer: My idea of exploiting parry to avoid damage got quashed when Jeff reduced parry from 5% to 3% so I couldn't rely on over 50% parry by chapter 2. A pure priest spell character has troubles with splitters and boss fights where slow helps. In Avernum 4, 10-12 points of parry (half from elite warrior) made my torment singleton feel immune to melee damage. A hit from an archer did 10x the damage a melee hit did. Is this part of parry changed? I'll try the singleton after a full party... after the windows version arrives.

Do you have windows vista? Vista thinks savegames in the installation directory are unsanitary, so it smoothly puts the files somewhere else. I dunno where. Haven't tried vista myself. Doesn't apply if you used a different install directory.

Quote: Originally written by Wojiz: The only FAQ I can find says that, if I've been following the walkthrough, I should have the option to try to disrupt the spell on him. Problem is, I have absolutely no idea how to do that. Can anyone please help me find out how exactly I trigger the conversation option letting me set him free of the spell? Lord Rahul sent me to(..) (try to inspect the general) (try to disrupt the essense) I had got lord Rauls quest, talked to the general, been back to lord R to get a quest to cure him, before the above. This probably doesn't matter.

slightly more sploilering: Quote: Originally written by ginger8445: Tower of Magi- around day 160 the tower of Magi is taken over by demons. If you don't stop this the tower will be destroyed but Solberg and X will be in Fort Emergence. Also it's Game Over if you take too long to finish it. The only way to not do the quest is to win the game before the game over part. Or before day 160.

There are two 'anama only' shops that each sell 8 knowledge brews (a 1200). If you for some reason can afford it before you leave again. Joining and leaving might not be worth it. My singleton stayed there happily though.