Randomizer

Before you go over the first falls, be sure to do all the encounters with monsters that you can and train your party. It will be a long time before you have another chance. It will also help to have several saved versions since you may want to go back and redo areas. You will find that you don't need to take that much with you beyond arrows and potions.

Your going to get a major debate on a powerful party. A single character nephilim mage/priest will do great if you are careful. No having to share if you don't mind a lot of trips back to town with the loot. It even works on torment. Try using the search function for party formation topics and singletons. There are several advice ones out there from last year in March. Here's one and another and a singleton.

Also by the middle of the game you start having access to items that will improve your melee attacks and quick action.

I mentioned the exit zone reuniting party to Jeff during beta testing. It's really helpful when you are underground. I've seen some zones appear when you shouldn't get them. It seems to be a glitch. Just enjoy not having to wander through a zone again to get one more exit.

There are cakes in Southforge Citadel, Turabi Gate, Rivergate Keep, Monarch's Realm, and Western Rise sells them. You shouldn't have much trouble getting one when you need it.

When fighting golems it's better to rely on spine shield and let the golem suicide on your spines. This may inflict more damage than you can do yourself.

It helps to have some dexterity for increased damage with crystals, missles, and wands plus going first in combat. Drayk canisters have one that can be bought and two that are found. Drayks don't run out of spell energy the way cryodrayks do in long fights. A mix of both will work and there are plenty of fire shaping items so you never need to raise fire shaping if you are waiting that long.

Keeping canister usage low means you can choose your fights in a few places. You still want them, but you want a chance to buff yourself.

Welcome back Synergy. Next time create a new account when you feel the sudden urge to change you name.

I suppose you could make the pacifist a pure healer, blesser, alchemist, and thief. But it still wouldn't make up for the loss in attacks that would prevent damage.

However Jeff keeps working on updating his older games to run natively on Macs with Intel chips and handling Vista complaints. Hopefully the wait will soon be over if there aren't too many more problems.

Have you tried using a space either before or after your name? It would be nice to see Synergy back.

The Rebels do give you a consolation prize after they calm down.

It really helps to have mental magic for daze, strong daze, charm, and mass madness. Just because Thuryl played the game with no magic doesn't mean it's easy for most people. You can pretty much skip canisters except that you need at least one for drayks. The really good stat raising ones are almost all in the expert area below Monarch's Realm so you don't get them until the end.

There is one control panel that required higher tool use than anything else in the game (need 16). If you have 2 panels shut down it should be possible to get past the remaining golems. The Vahnatai Lord can't parry area effect spells.

A PDN is the publicly displayed name shown for the person making the post. Alorael changes his almost daily and the UBB does funny things when you try to change back to an old PDN.

The only legitimate way to avoid stat draining is to go see Alwan and get his Repair Moseh quest. You can still kill Moseh after a big fight, but no more draining. In order to get the quest you do have to help the Shapers to get a pro-Shaper Reputation. If you have Thur with you when you face Moseh as a Rebel you can limit the draining to only one time if you encourage Thur to escape.

Try the other mage (not Genevieve) in the area north of the mayor. She can't translate so you go on to the Tower Colony and talk to their librarian. You get sent to Patrick's Tower and they can't help. Finally you reach Khoth's Cave and find what you need. Then go back to Lark's rooms where you found the scrolls. I think you need to do every step in order to set the flags along the quest route. If you want you can check back in with Lark each time for new messages, but you don't need to in order to finish.

Quote: Originally written by Drakey is a talentless hack.: What Mac doesn't have a mouse? In any case, you can hit numlock and use the I key and the eight surrounding keys as a keypad equivalent so that 8 is up, 9 is diagonally up and right, O is right, and so on. —Alorael, who is completely incapable of navigating with a slanted keypad that's slanted opposite the isometric layout of Avernum. You can get used to it, but I never really have and just use the four arrow keys to avoid going diagonally. (Quoted to keep the PDN)

The trick to get around no automap was to use the cursor to shift the screen around. I like the mapping in Wizardry. In the original Might and Magic game I made dozens of colored maps for the outdoor areas and dungeons. Those were much worse than anything in Spiderweb Games.

You can talk to General Crowley at the Forsaken Lands Shaper Camp. Otherwise everyone else there will attack you.

It depends how you define peaceful. SPOILER There are a lot of Shaper endings where peace is obtained by killing off "all" opposition. Shapers don't really want to give serviles any rights, but there are a few endings where they give some sects rights because they need them for something more than cannonfodder in GF1.

The other problem with the old elevation system was that sometimes adjacent enemies couldn't be selected. You could key in one target to be added and have one that was already selected become removed. This seemed only to happen when both were on a slope.

Upper Avernum wouldn't work that well either. However a series of caves where we don't have pre-existing expectations about scale would be fine for a seamless world. I know most of you hated them, but I liked the multi-level Honeycomb. That would be quite believable for a new area type.

I've played games where I've used every living tool that can be found, bought, and stolen. It helps to raise mechanics to eventually 12 and use items to maximize to 17 (the highest needed for traps). Sneaking in combat mode with haste is a great way to loot the gate before you are strong enough to slaughter everything. There are a few topics where this is discussed in more detail, Use the search function at the top of the page to look for "Turabi Gate."