Vicheron

Only if you've already played the game with steam online at least once. If you've only played a game in offline mode, the stats will not be recorded. Recording of achievements from offline mode is also pretty iffy and can be affected by all sorts of stuff like computer crashes/restarts and steam updates.

Offline mode.

You should definitely go to the Eastern Gallery first. My party was around level 13-14 when I got to the Tower of Magi and I tried to go west and found the enemies there a bit too tough. The enemies in the Eastern Gallery were much more manageable. Plus, Fort Dranlon has some cheap spell teachers.

Are recruitable NPC's back?

Probably some vague power with wide ranging implications like energy manipulation.

Jeff should at least pitch the idea to a comic book company.

Has Jeff ever considered trying to expand his franchises to other mediums? I think Geneforge holds the most promise. A Geneforge comic or animated series would be really great. Maybe he should try to pitch the idea to an animation studio.

g and i are already bound to picking up items in the inventory screen.

Well, it looks like the Windows version of Avadon is finally... Ava-done. YEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!!!

I remember dumbfound being quite useful against magic users. Web was great since no one can resist it. Magic map was an incredibly useful spell. I always carried a couple of sapphires with me. Mind duel lets you stockpile spell points. My favorite spell system has to be the one in Realmz where you can adjust the power of every spell you cast.

I'm guessing that owning multiple (operational) computers will be a plus.

Killing both Melanchion and Gladwell seems to be best for Avernum. I doubt the people of Upper Avernum would bow to Gladwell so the treaty with the Empire will likely dissolve. Melanchion has no treaty with the Empire so there's nothing stopping the Empire from killing him. The Empire still has that fortress Dorikas left behind from which they can spy on Avernum and launch any preemptive attacks. I found the whole idea of the Empire fearing Avernum pretty ridiculous since the only reason why Avernum managed to kill Hawthorne and beat the Empire in a war is because the Empire banished some of their most powerful mages to Avernum. Now that all those mages are gone and they didn't leave any worthy successors behind, the Empire has little to fear from Avernum.

X is my favorite wizard but Gladwell is the only true wizard in this game. Most of the wizards in the new Avernum trilogy pale in comparison to the wizards who in the original trilogy. The original five archmages banished to Avernum helped build the nation, created much of the flora and fauna, tamed the eastern gallery and the great cave, held back the Slith Hordes, fought legions of demons, and banished the demon lord Grah-Hoth. There were several wizards who could have been their successors like Linda/Aimee, Mahdavi, X, Sixus, Ostoth, Thompson, etc. However, the ones who didn't die seemed to have just disappeared, leaving Avernum in the hands of a bunch of amateurs.

Originally Posted By: Drakefyre There's about to be an explosion of breakthrough research in the field of neuroeconomics, especially with increased fMRI time available for researchers at many of the big research universities. I'm sure there will be a lot of early adopters trying to make a buck based on their findings, and then we'll get to see how applicable these studies really are! It's funny how neuroscience just reeks of legitimacy. People don't even question it when a scientist uses an fMRI to tell them something about the brain. I just wonder what will happen when a person says that he like Coke but an fMRI image of his brain says that he likes Pepsi. Are they going to believe the person or his brain?

The funny thing about the economy is that psychologists have influenced it far more than economists. Businesses rely more on BF Skinner's theories than most economic theories. Heck, Las Vegas is practically a shrine built in honor of Skinner. Any economic model is feasible if you can manipulate the population into the right mindset. Plus Benoit Mandelbrot's theories are probably going to supplant most other economic theories.

Why doesn't Jeff try to get all his games on Steam, Impulse, Direct2drive, or Gamersgate?

If you want to play a game series where your characters from one game carried over to the next, you could play Mass Effect. There's also Might and Magic 1 & 2 and Might and Magic 4 and 5.

Avernum has hundreds of thousands of citizens but only about 0.1% of them are in the game. Even if 1% of Avernum's population are adventurers, 0.1% of that is like 5, which is about the size of your party.

Originally Posted By: Silver Shadow Nothing stopping them from turning to other pursuits after they're finished being all heroic, tho'. True but that doesn't mean that their other pursuits would be useful to Avernum or that they'll be good at it. Heck, for all we know, your fighter in A3 became an architect and your mage blew himself up researching a new spell.

The Avernum 1 heroes were probably fighting the Empire on the surface during Avernum 2. The Avernum 2 heroes were in Avernum doing stuff for King Micah. Avernum 4 takes place 20 years after Avernum 3 so the A3 heroes are too old to go back to adventuring. Avernum 6 takes place 20 years after Avernum 4 so again, those adventurers are too old. As for why they didn't extend their lives like Rone and Solberg, it's probably because they couldn't even if they wanted to. Those adventurers may have been powerful but they were only good at one thing, fighting. Even though your fighter in A2 can beat a Dervish in combat, he couldn't train troops or command an army as well as a Dervish. Same thing with your mage, he might be better at blowing stuff up with magic than someone like Rone but he's not nearly as good at scrying, performing magical research, or creating magical constructs.

But there used to be items and spells that rendered you immune to petrification.

Joining the Anama in A3 isn't too bad. You still have Smite, Divine Fire, Wall of Blades, and Divine Retribution. It's not as good as Ice Lance, Lightning Spray, Fireblast, and Arcane Blow, but it gets the job done. The biggest losses are the level 3 versions of Haste, Unlock, Far Sight, and Dispel Barrier. I wonder why Jeff decided to replace Divine Warrior with Divine Retribution. It would have been much better to replace Control Foe with Divine Retribution. That would have made joining Anama much easier. It's also too bad that you don't get your mage skills transferred to priest skills like in Exile 3.

Originally Posted By: Dantius Originally Posted By: Slarty Yeah, the bottom line judgement I like to use is: have you actually made a game? That is a absolutely ridiculous position. Since I have never made a movie, I can't blast Avatar? Since I have never cooked a cordon bleu meal, I can't say I was gypped out of $200 dollars? If anything, the people who actually consume the gods, since it's not James Cameron or a chef or Jeff Vogel who actually consumes the product that they make. They rely on the public to do so, and thus the criticism of the public is more important, since they essentially decide the success of whatever it is we are dealing with, a movie or a meal or a game. This is why Jeff has essentially released Geneforge games for the second half of the Avernum series- 4,5, and 6. The public doesn't want to play rehashes of A2 or A3 anymore- there is no longer a market for a game that has twice as many towns as dungeons, or that requires you to perform the same quest over and over again in different towns to increase your reputation to actually advance the plot. So, Jeff has made the decision to stop making those games anymore, and move onto games that are merely obscenly immense, instead of criminally immense. He has tailored his games not to cater to the forumgoers, who represent a disproportionate segment of Jeff's actual customers, but the customers themselves, which leaves quite a few of you feeling shorted, to say the least. Ah well, Jeff does what he has to do to keep producing games, and if I had to chose between an infinite supply of new and mediocre Jeff games or his current repertoire and that's it, then I would pick the former, and so has Jeff. But the quality of a product is not correlated with its financial success. Just look at Twilight, Transformers, and just about any reality TV "star." If Jeff can make significantly more money off of games that his fans hate than games that his fans like, then he's going to make games that his fans don't like since he can't exactly live off of critical acclaim.

Originally Posted By: Thuryl yes, Vicheron, keep telling the forum admin who has betatested half of Jeff's games how Jeff needs to run his business When did I ever say what Jeff should do? At which point did I even make suggestions about future games? Unless I've somehow time traveled back to 1995, before the release of the Exile series, all I have done is explain why Jeff did what he has already done.

Originally Posted By: *i Keep getting pulled back in... Quote: Jeff definitely didn't have the time for that in Exile/Avernum 1 and 2. However, in Exile/Avernum 3, the cities get worn down by the plagues as time passes. If you happen to have known Jeff's schedule ten years ago with such certainty, you know him better than I do. But seriously, did you even understand what I wrote and what I'm suggesting? I can tell you that seeing the effect from monster plagues in A3 has nothing to do with fleshing out the characters more. All right, I'm done here. I promise. And do you understand that it's all related? As mentioned before, Spiderweb Software is a small independent game developer. There has to be a trade off between different things. Jeff has limited time and resources. He chose to put all the effects from the monster plagues in instead of adding in more quests/special encounters/dialogue to develop the characters. If Jeff had chosen to develop the characters more then he would had to put in less stuff about the effects of the monster plagues. Then people would be complaining about how the monster plagues didn't seem that bad and that the game lacked urgency.