Randomizer

July update

 

27 of 81 zones have been completed including the three main Servile towns with more quests and dialogue for the Takers. Things are going to be more interesting.

"How do I know if a type of armour doesn't encumber Edward's spells? How does the indicated percentage of each armour work for spell casters?"

 

The easiest way is to save the game, then change armor, and try in combat mode if a mage can use mage spells. This saves adding up positive and negative to hit chances and checking traits to see if you are above or below a number.

I don't remember what happens if you did it your way. Not doing the quest prevents you from buying training from him.

 

I think you can get the key needed to go into Solberg's area from a container with enough tool use, because there was a chance that the town goes hostile and you need to fight your way through it instead of peacefully.

Melee is useful, but if you are missing you may not have been adding enough to strength and/or wearing too much armor with negative to hit chances. There are some monsters that take mostly physical damage.

 

Fighters become less useful because mages and priests get area of effect spells that will take out groups. It depends upon the fight and how many targets are out there.

Avernum 4 to 6 are probably not going to be looked at until after Geneforge 1 to 3 remakes and Queen's Wish 2 and 3 depending upon how those games do.

You get a slightly different dialogue, but the result is the same.

You can always change a character's emphasis by adding more to priest skills after starting out as a more fighter character to complement and not worry about armor encumbrance. That way you don't have to start over and while not optimized, you can still get useful spells to help the party.

If you don't keep exploring new areas, then your resource generation stops temporarily. So don't spend too much time resting up in forts or inns.

 

There are merchants that have limited amounts of stone, wood, and iron that you can buy, but not enough to build more than a few shops for your forts.

 

Welcome to Spiderweb Software. Please leave your sanity at the door. It doesn't help you understand the games.  

Dual wielding has a huge penalty (-40% to hit chance), so at the start it is better not to go that route and build up to it in the middle game with strength, melee weapons, and a few levels of dual wielding skill. Fighter attacks start already with a slightly lower base to hit chance compared to some spells and too much penalty to hit chance armor can make you unable to hit.

 

The guides tell you the cheapest trainers and where to get the better stuff, but you don't need to do that. 

 

Money is tight at the beginning, but eventually gets better. So sweeping to get every last bit does go away or just get used to not buying everything you want at the start. More worthless items exist in the remake to convince you not to grab everything.

 

Spellcraft improves damage, spell effect duration, and healing. It acts like an extra level of mage or priest spells that way, but doesn't count towards the level to use a spell for casting. Since it works on all spells like Geneforge, you want to keep getting it .

An all spell casting mage/priest runs into some problems in the final Garzhad fight that I stopped at for torment difficulty since it is a scripted fight that works better with a melee fighter in the party.However I saw I had enough unfinished quest to get another 5 party levels, so someday I might go back and finish them to see how much difference that makes and better equip the party with more consumable items.

Maybe Jeff finally is recognizing the Me First faction where the player character is out to amass the most power at the expense of everyone else. One goal is to kill off everyone else.

This isn't a complete list since I haven't been able to determine what 5 of the 12 letter position are caused by in the game. I gave up after trying different dialogue options when you return to see Queen Sharyn, leaving different dragons alive, and favored nation status. I listed letters I've seen, but still don't know what they correspond to.

 

1st letter - unknown

- possible letters: a, b, c, e, f, g, k, l, o. p, q, r,  x, y

2nd letter - Queen Sharyn's dialogue

- d return to Haven

- e leisure life

- f to serve

- g to lead afterwards

3rd letter - unknown

- possible letters:h, i, j, k, l

4th letter - unknown

- possible letters: f, n

5th letter - unknown

- possible letters n, p

6th letter - unknown

- possible letters: b, d, e, f, g, i, k, l, p, u, v, y

7th letter - Dreams in Nisse Refuges

- a is no dreams bought

- b is at least one dream

8th letter - Nisse reaction and deals

- a Calimity returns

- b take deal at the tower's bottom level

- c take wish for leisure life

- d take wish to serve 

- f take wish to lead

- g take wish for a century of control

- h Total victory

9th letter - Sutter's reaction to what you tell the Queen or dialogue with him

- b serve

- g takeover as leader

- h serve

- n ?

- q takeover

10th letter - Utak faction

- r Brokk

- s Borgen

11th letter - Ahriel faction

- o Trench Town

- p Blessed

12th letter - The Vol faction

- o Mascha

- n Owen

Jeff rarely reads the forums except just after release of a new game, so posting here isn't as useful. Try support@spiderwebsoftware.com for complaints.

 

The remakes have from the main menu access to the keyboard shortcuts list and some of them are ones used in earlier games. This might help you.

 

The more recent games like Avadon show when you are in range, but you have to watch the AI for movement since they can still take you on bad paths that aren't what you want.

Fighter types boost their combat skill for the extra damage and for melee types I go for parry to avoid getting hit. Getting extra attacks are nice, but not as helpful as being able to hit and do damage since if you can kill with one hit, then you don't need that extra attack as often.

 

Mage and priest have some useful spells where if you have the money you want the levels to cast them. Getting more levels than the spell level  does give you more damage, but getting resistance to decrease damage is nice and I hold off on fighter skills until later.

 

Depending upon your game difficulty level you may want to spend skill points first to get to 10 and then use the trainers to maximize the the last 2 levels.This doesn't apply to arcane and cave/nature lore skills that you spread out through the party.

 

 

Just try downloading the demoes from here to make sure the games will run on your computer. Having all the games doesn't help if they won't run. Even if you don't like all the games now, you may change your mind or just get bored and not want to spend money later on.

Okay I tried Avernum 3 remake with a magic user firing a bow with two weapons equipped and with only one where both times I got the same to hit chance of 14%. It took me some time to find a save where I could equip the second weapon and not have a 95% to hit chance. So Jeff had it only calculate for melee attacks.

[The fight with Moseh is hard no matter which path you take as helping Shapers or Rebels.

Looking at my notes, it looks like Jeff removed the Haven's Mercy during beta testing as part of his reducing player's power to make the game more balanced.

Item descriptions are sometimes wrong in listing effects. 

After turning in the Message to the scout at the campfire, there should be a new dialogue option somewhere in the King Micah choices. This should send you to Fort Remote and a different experience there.

 

Edit - You might get the option after you leave the throne room.

There was a scout at a campfire north of Gremlin's Gold that lost the message. Give it to him and go back to see King Micah in the Castle to find out what the message does.

 

Have fun storming Hawthorne's castle.

Make sure you have a save before going there.

This is why you keep old computers and hope they will function. Eventually old games don't run on newer operating systems and there is only so many versions that will be backwards compatible so you can still play them.

 

I'm not looking forward to the next generation of Apple computers since they won't be compatible with older games. Jeff finished upgrading his iPad versions for Avernum 1 to 3 remakes and Avadon 1 to 3 for the new engine, screen sizes, and guidelines.

These are links to different endings and contain spoilers:

 

Major differences depending upon both Melachion and Gladwell being dead and/or alive.

Text dumps of different branches depending upon what you did.

June 25 and 26 at 4 to 6 PM Pacific Standard Time, Jeff will stream playing Avernum 3 and Queen's Wish. While watching him play the games, he will talk about game design and the biz.

 

Jeff's Tweet

 

Watch how Jeff thinks his games are supposed to be played.

There's always another Shaper!