Kyronea

Yes that is indeed an elegant, excellent solution. Thank you very kindly!

Originally Posted By: Randomizer The barrier was added later after it was determined that the Giants and Trogolytes were spending their time killing each other instead of the Empire. When you finally see the room where the Vahnatai were planning the plagues it becomes obvious that Rentar was using a focus group to determine what to do. Instead of picking a single plague, the focus group split and you got multiple plague types. This is what happens when you use a committee. Heh. It would certainly fit Jeff's sense of humor for that to be the case.

Then why have such telling signs in the Golem Factory or with the barrier separating the Giants and the Troglodytes? I'm thinking that the clue pointing to Erika early on (and the dragon scales in the roach factory, whilst we're on the subject of false clues) were only planted after she saw that Avernum was exploring the surface. I don't see much of a reason to do it prior to that because the Empire wasn't bothering to investigate--it was just quarantining. Which means I just answered my own question: she thought the trogs, giants, and golems were too powerful for the Avernites to deal with. Which given her prior experience with the heroes of Avernum II/Exile II seems fairly silly to me, since they dealt with Garzhad and so on. It still confuses me. Practically the only reason the towns in Krizsan had trouble dealing with the slimes, it seems to me, were simply lack of resources--had they the resources of Blackcrag Fortress, they probably could have tracked down and dealt with the slime pit very easily. The Roach factory is more doubtable but I think they could have dealt with that one too fairly easily. And lack of control doesn't seem like a good enough reason to me to not just release them on the continent anyway. It's not as if the Vahnatai can live on the surface, so why should they care if its rendered uninhabitable by the alien beasts?

So, I'm confused by the plot. By that I mean, why would Rentar-Irhno bother with the weaker plagues at all? Why not just send the Alien Beasts after everyone in Valorim? The things were powerful enough to require the outright sealing off of Footracer Province, yet all Rentar had to do to sneak the Alien Beasts past would be a small amount of teleportation magic--a cinch for her, particularly since she's obviously able to gain access to where both the Troglodytes and the Giants are to mess with them, has access to the Golem Factory if nothing else to allow her into the rest of Valorim via the Crystal Soul hanging out there, and so on and so forth...so why bother with such weaklings as the slimes in Krizsan at all? (The roaches I can understand, because disease is nasty and not easy to excise even if the roaches are removed, but the slimes were so weak that a bunch of morons from Avernum could clean them up inside of a few hours!) I mean, granted, this is all so you have a sorting algorithm of tougher and tougher plagues to deal with as adventurers, but whether it's Exile III or Avernum 3, it doesn't make sense to me to do it the way she did it. Vahnatai patience aside, sending the Alien Beasts everywhere would have just made more sense to me.

Also, please let us target invisible monsters again. Not being able to do so makes my mage/priests cry.

Originally Posted By: Limerick Oyster That's pretty much a guaranteed no. Spiderweb has moved away from large spell lists, and it seems like all games have gone to smaller party sizes. In any case, reusing the Avernum 6 engine means that the spell list is likely to be very similar to that game's and the party size will be four characters. —Alorael, who would also like all the fun spells back. Party size just doesn't bother him as much. Six was arbitrary, and four is equally arbitrary. Drat. Mostly what I was wanting back would be things like antimagic fields, mind duel, scry monster, other such stuff that really helped things feel a bit more alive.

The real question is, will it improve on the issues that Avernum originally managed to have in comparison to the original Exile? That is, for instance, will we see six party members again, a wider spell list, etc etc.

Ah. Drat. I was hoping to avoid having to go to that extra length. Ah well. Tis worth it for these games. Thank you kindly.

I've already tried running the installation programs in various compatibility modes, but they haven't worked. It just keeps telling me that "the image file is valid but for a machine type other than the current machine." I'm really wanting to play the old Exile versions over the Avernum versions, hence why I'm trying to get these working.

Ah, I didn't receive that newsletter. Thank you.

Is there any news about when it will be released? The newspost suggested it would be released within just a few months of the newspost, which was back in March. I'm very interested in seeing this renewed update. I've been wanting an excuse to replay the Avernum games for a bit but didn't want to just completely retread everything. A new form to play it in would help refresh the experience.

Originally Posted By: The Not-So-Great Potato That's not really true, at least not here. A3 is frequently bashed in the same breath as E3 is praised, so it's not about the plot. The most cited issue is atmosphere and presentation. I'm not sure exactly how that differs between Avernum III and Exile III, unless you're talking about something like mountains versus sheer cliff walls.

That's generally because A3 is bashed due to its plot mainly, and not the gameplay. As a game A3 is fantastic with allowing wonderful amounts of freedom without causing ease of gameplay as A1 could. As a plot, it doesn't have as much as it could. There are loads of ways it could have been refined.

It will lower your reputation, as any attacking of non-hostile beings will. Other than that, as far as I am aware, no ill effects, so long as you make sure to get them to tell you where the Friendly Roaches are first.

Actually, the only church in the Avernum series I could potentially see being equivalent to Scientology is the Church of the Divine Lucre, since both require lots of wealth. Except that the Church of the Divine Lucre is all about gaining wealth for yourself, whereas Scientology extracts and uses its members for all their worth(since it's basically nothing more than one gigantic money extraction scheme to cheat its members) so I suppose they're not really similar. The Anama Church are really more like Luddites, up to and including much Luddite hypocrisy, such as using certain elements of magic and Priest spells that can act like similar Mage spells and so on and so forth.

Oh, I reported to Anaximander before heading down to the Tower of Magi. Though checking with Solberg later after I solved the roach quest let me get both spells. It seems as though I hit some odd snag, but whatever it was, as I said, it fixed itself.

Well, I went back to Mayor Arbuckle, and all of a sudden he gave me the quest, and I got the reward...I'm still confused, but I'm guessing whatever the bug was, it fixed itself.

Now that's truly weird. I'm going to go to him again when I get out of the Tower of Magi, and see if he gives me the quest or not. If not, I think I'll just look up the reward and add it to my party via the character editor, because if it's some sort of bug, I'm not about to go restarting my game over it. EDIT: Solberg won't teach me the spell, either. Bloody hell...

I did everything I could in Upper Avernum first. My reputation is 26. Luckily that should increase with no real difficulties. The required amount is probably 28 or so, given how early you can get the quest, and given how simple it is.

Oh. Drat. So, essentially, there's nothing I can do to get the reward now? Or will I retroactively get it when my reputation is high enough? (That is, I can wait till I reach the required reputation, then see if he gives the quest dialogue?)

I spoke to Mayor Arbuckle and went through all the options available when I first got to Krizan, and none of the options were about the slime quest. (One was about trying to pretend we weren't from Avernum, though I don't see why that would keep him from telling me to go on the slime quest.) And yes, I know I've solved the slime quest because I killed the Alien Slime.

So, this is odd...I couldn't get Mayor Arbuckle to give me the quest to get rid of the slimes, and now that I've gotten rid of them, he won't reward me. Did I do something wrong somehow?

I haven't been able to find that thread, but if what you saw is true, then there shouldn't be any problems with a quest suddenly not being accessible, which is mainly what I'm worried about.

Kay, so, here I am with another question. (Actually, I'd also like to know when exactly you can get the Jewel of Return...it's after you solve the slime plague, right?) Anyway, I'm wondering exactly what happens over time in terms of Valorim's destruction. I know some towns are damaged and then destroyed, but what towns? Where? Are there any useful sidequests I may miss by accident if I spend too much time on anything? Mainly I'm asking because I want to make sure I get the most out of playing the game this time around. (And I'm trying a bit of a different tactic, going at it with a party of four mage/priests.) Thank you in advance for your answer.

E3 was actually my first introduction to Spiderweb Software games, so A3 ends up holding a good place in my heart. I really enjoy the other two as well. All three Avernum games are fantastic. I...haven't exactly played IV or V.