Sir Motrax of Exile

Sorry, didn't mean to start an argument here! I think that on a 1st playthrough, perhaps normal difficulty is best. While it's not particularly difficult, it paces the game so that there's a good balance of story and battles. I haven't tried veteran difficulty, so maybe that's exactly the balance I'm looking for, but when time is limited, normal does feel like the right choice. I am absolutely impressed with those who play through to the end on torment. It really is torment...

Hi TriRodent, Edwyn, Randomizer, Thanks for your comments! That's quite helpful. I was doing a bit of each of those things, here or there, but not to the level of attempting perfection. Attack/retreat was the most irritating part of it. Sure I can clear dungeons 3 monsters at a time, returning to town to restore mana/resurrect dead party members, but that became too tedious. So I decided I'd just switch to normal difficulty, which I did, and now my highly non-optimized party is tearing through just about everything the game can throw at it. While I like to play games on harder difficulty, I guess my goal here is to cool off once in a while and have fun while moving the story forward at a reasonable pace. So I'll continue on with normal! - SMoE

Thank you all for responding! That quite clears things up! I've added another comment/question: how does anyone play this thing on torment? I fancy myself quite the expert at these games, but I finally gave up and went to normal. On torment, it seems like every single AoE effect kills half my party. My party's level 20 and still can't get past plenty of mid-tier dungeon bosses. It's... torment. I like a challenge, but perhaps I'm too old for this challenge.

Hi Forum! I seem to have one or two questions popping up here and there, so I figure I'll just dump my questions into a single topic so as not to spam the forum with my nonsense. 1. (Added 4/1/21) In A1, there's a book on a pedestal in the Bandit Lair that gives the following message: "maybe you could do something to make the words readable. You aren't sure what." Well... is there some way to make these words readable? 2. (Added 4/2/21) Various items have +5% damage (for example, Farsight Longbow lists "+5% missile damage"). Is the damage bonus included in the listed weapon damage, or is that 5% additional damage on top of the damage range listed for the item? For example, for the Farsight Longbow, I see 84-232 damage. Is that the actual damage range, or would it be 5% more (so ~88-244). 3. (Added 4/5/21) How does anyone play this thing on torment difficulty!? I'm about halfway through the game, in the middle of the endless series of slith dungeons, and I just can't handle it anymore. Everything kills me, and dungeon bosses seem to have infinite health. Waah waah poor old Motrax... 4. (Added 4/13/21) On to Avernum 2! Yay! Unfortunately, I killed the lizards in Motrax's cave and collected the reward from Captain Ko before I got the quest. Now I have the quest sitting in the quest log, but I can't seem to remove it. Any tips on how officially complete the quest so it's removed from the log? 5. (Added 4/13/21) Along the lines of Question 4, is there any way to remove or complete Stoppard's Potions quest? I gave him a bunch of potion ingredients, he made potions... but the quest is just sitting there. Thank you kind forum! - SMoE P.S. Might I also point out that Cynthia in Bargha explaining why items no longer need to be identified (cf. Exile 1-3) is marvelous.

Oh, hi Kelandon! After playing the Queen's Wish demo, I decided to go ahead and revisit Avernum 1-infinity. I've made it all the way to Silvar already!

Hi ADoS! It's been a while, hasn't it? You must be like 10,000 years old now! Thanks for pointing out that Avernum 4-6 were around... I probably even knew then, but just forgot. Also, hi Nikki! Did you have a different name? I think you did... but with member numbers gone, I cannot figure out who you were/are. (Ok, even if you had your member number, I probably still would not remember 😝). Regarding Queen's Wish... there still isn't a range indicator! I still have my archer try to wander halfway around the world because they were one space out of range to just attack! Ugh. This is the single most irritating thing in the entire universe. Now I have a question about the Avernum bundle. Does the one on GOG (https://www.gog.com/game/avernum_the_complete_saga) include the updated versions of 1-3? It says it includes the "original versions" so maybe that answers my question... if that's the case, is there a bundle where I can get the updated versions? And is it preferable to get it from a different source (i.e., one that pays more to Spiderweb)? Sorry for all my questions, I really am a senile reptile these days. Edit: Also, hi Chopkinsca! I guess you're new around here, so... welcome!

Hi Forum! I'm back. I saw this Queen's Wish thing and downloaded it and lost a few hours of my life! Yay! What else is new around these parts? I see Geneforge is back (that's a remake of the original, yes?). I don't recall Avernum 4/5/6 being here when I last visited. How are they? Why do I even ask... I should just purchase and play. Uhh... I guess that's all I have to say. That, and... hello! - SMoE EDIT: Yay! I still have my custom title! EDIT 2: Also I added a beautiful MS Paint portrait. Now everyone will recognize me around here.

Well! Not that anyone asked, but my overall assessment is that this game is quite good, does a great job maintaining (and even improving upon) the atmosphere of the original, while being made with a combat system that is at times much better and at times horrendously painful. Since I like to gripe, I'll gripe first. 1. The targeting thing is just a disaster. I am often in situations where I'm one space too far, so my mage tries to run around the other side of the building to get into range, which means that he's just way out of place and gets himself clubbed to death by the pair of ogres standing there waiting for some dumb human to round the corner. 2. The lack of summed information regarding character stats. Resistances and such are listed, but it would be supremely helpful to have some kind of indicator of hit chances, damage, and a few other stats that are certainly operational under the hood but are not communicated directly to the player. 3. In the same vein, the lack of (quantitative) transparency about what some abilities do is quite frustrating when selecting upgrades. I really didn't want to use the internet to figure out how Swordmage works (or does not work), but the tooltip is not helpful in making informed decisions regarding upgrades. Sadly, I had to resort to the character editor to respec a few decisions I made early on that were not in fact helpful. Ditto with arcane lore/tool use/cave lore - I think these should be maxed out, or in the very least there should be some information the player can use to figure out how many points to put into these (I guess that without the internet, one could use the character editor on the fly to respec when necessary, but that's not a particularly elegant solution. That said: playing on hard without looking up strategy, is, well, hard, but not impossible. I've definitely had to resort to some shady tricks (for example, in the Spiral Crypt, killing off the Cryptmaster's (or whatever his name is) minions before the special encounter is triggered, and I've found the transition from nephils to sliths horribly difficult (I can easily take the nephar fort in one go, but 3 slith warriors + 3 slith flingers can still kill most or all of my party in outdoors encounters). That said, the difficulty is forcing me to come up with better strategies and be more deliberate with skills and itemization, which I think is a very good thing as far as gameplay is concerned. Getting enough gold is pretty horrendous as I tend to be a "completist," and the idea of not having a fully upgraded Call Beast by the end of the game is highly upsetting to me. However, given how difficult it is to get enough gold to buy skills/spells, again, I'm forced to make hard decisions about how I spend my money, and in the end, I think this is a good thing. All things considered, I've enjoyed playing and will continue to do so until reality rears its ugly head once more. Thanks Randomizer and ADoS for the tips.

Thanks all for the replies and tips. So I'm definitely getting more used to the environment. I'm definitely nostalgic for the old-school everything-could-be-a-secret-door, I miss the "look" button and the free-form conversation interface, I miss the useless spells, but this is definitely more... functional. I have two gripes: I still hate the targeting system. One misclick where I think I'm clicking on the enemy but instead click the tile above said enemy will send my mage charging bravely into the middle of a team of nephil warriors. That is highly irritating. Along similar lines is the issue with not knowing whether your archer needs to move in order to shoot, and not knowing whether your blessing spell will actually target your warrior who's sort-of-but-possibly-not around a corner. The second gripe is a lack of being able to place a marker on the map. For example, I'll find a cache for which my cave lore is not high enough, but I want to mark the spot so that next week when my cave lore IS high enough, I'll able to return and get the 200 gold or rusty broadsword or whatever's hidden away there. Do any of you have strategies to deal with this issue? I know it's not something you've ever been able to do in the Exile games (and I should mention here also that I do much appreciate the quest log), but it'd still be nice to have. My Notepad file I have open while I play is a poor substitute for a picture on a map. Now, a question about strategy: I'm playing on hard, and I find that lowly minions of bosses are pretty easy to dispatch, but bosses are damn-near impossible. For example, I had a hell of a time with the Nephil chief, and that ogre mage (it's an ogre mage, yes?) on the 1st floor of the nephil fort basically evaporates my party in one round, but I'm flying through the non-"boss" encounters. So I'm in this odd position where I feel like I can complete MOST of a dungeon, but would need about 5-10 more levels/thousands more gold in training in order to complete said dungeon. Any thoughts on this? Edit: Also, I meant to ask: what's the deal with theft and murder? It seems that I can steal stuff right in front of guards from barraks and they don't become hostile. I even killed the mayor of Formello just to see what would happen, and the guards in the room didn't become hostile. This confuses me greatly. Not that I WANT to go around murdering townsfolk, but are there consequences to crime? Does your reputation take a hit? (On that note, can you check your reputation somewhere?) Edit 2: Also, what's the deal with food? Is it just a crappy healing potion, or can your party get hungry as in the old days?

You know, I'm really feeling nostalgic for the old 2D format of the original Exile games. Visually, I think there was a lot more contrast between objects on the ground and the tiles they were on. In Avernum, I keep missing stuff that's on the ground because it all looks like a brown line on a gray background. Also, is there a way to figure out your range to a target during battles (i.e., a range indicator)? For example, if I want to fire an arrow at a target, I never know whether my character will have to move first before firing. This has at times resulted in my character attempting to circle around stupidly long distances due to other characters being in the way (a situation where, had I known the archer was out of range, I could've moved them forward to switch places with the mage, for example). Does my question make sense? Am I making sense? Does any of this make sense? Secondly, are there secret walls as in the old Exile games where you just walk through it by walking through it, or do all of the "secret" walls require pushing bricks by clicking on them? I'm just not getting used to this game's environment.

Hi ADoS! Hi... 2577... even my (decidedly poor) internet stalking skills could not figure out who you are. Aran, I think I posted 3 or 4 years ago... I'm surprised that didn't turn up. Right now I'm sitting in purgatory for 2 weeks or so after which I will either be numbing my misery with a lot of (updated) Avernum or working like a madman and thus vanished once again from this cozy corner of the internet. Browsing the archives... it's very interesting to read what I was like eleven years ago. I mean, it's surprisingly not quite as embarrassing as I expected it would be looking eleven years back. Or rather, it's in the very least fairly consistent with who I am. But seriously I don't understand like 80% of my jokes. I guess that's consistent with who I am today as well. Is there going to be a Blades of Avernum remake with the new system... or something...? On that note, how is BoA?

Hi Kelandon! Yes, I cretainly remember you, despite my senility. My apologies for setting the member number too low. It is now set to 5000, until the next oldbie proves that I am indeed senile. What is new on your end of the internet? Member #2001... Arancaytar? Alorael, your seal of approval is uncalled for. Kelandon's astute observation was correct, going to show that even I cannot imitate the great Alorael, lord of signatures, snipers, and... that hallucinatory stuff he's holding whose proper name I cannot at the moment recall. Thank you everyone for your information. I shall try to use the Avernum rewrite to keep me warm through these cold and desolate winter months.

...the Avernum rewrites? Are they vastly different than the originals? What's changed? What's new? What's old? What's on Netflix? What's on the other side of the moon? Also, hello everybody! Welcome new members (member number > 4000, which gives you an idea when I last visited), and hello old members! — SMoE, who, due to visiting once every three years or so, will take this very rare opportunity to appropriate Alorael's signature signature, all the way down to using the correct dash at the beginning (admittedly, by copying and pasting it from one of his posts).

Dr. Motrax (yay!) indulges in musical pursuits, wants to be but is not currently active in martial arts (it IS expensive! But if you find a good school, it's well worth it!), is devoting time to reading books (both technical and otherwise), going on long walks, and posting on this forum once every other year or so. If you've got nothing to do, you may also want to become an expert cook (which I am not). This is a skill that can be useful in many an unexpected situation.

Sully!!!! Hihihihihihihihiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!!! ...I clearly haven't aged one bit in the last 11 years. Yeah, the days of Misc. were a special time. I feel like a newbie thinking about it, though, since I came relatively late to it all in my mind. Why's there a Misc. board here? It looks rather ultra-dead? I'll have to say goodbye for the moment. I might stop in sometime in September. But I've got a busy summer ahead. But it was nice to hear from everyone if only briefly! Hope you're all well! - Motty