Sharpie

Aye, Dorikas escaping seems to be part of the story, I think it's part of a set-up for Avernum 5.

You can't really disable them, your options are either smash them (which you should be strong enough to do at this point as they're set up so you only have to fight them by ones or twos) or run past. If you need to run past them, I'd say going along the west wall is probably your best bet, the pylons there don't reinforce each other very well and you should only have to worry about taking fire from one at a time. Remember that divine restoration can unfreeze a character.

He's tricky. I missed him the first time too and killed just about everything else down there before I finally found him. When you think of a demon lord, the first thing thing that comes to mind is an extremely agressive, overconfident baddy with a huge chip on it's shoulder. However Bhorralon is passive when you first meet him and since he dosn't jump right out and engage you in combat, it's easy to cruise right on past without noticing he's there. Remember the stairs in Patrick's tower that were blocked off at the bottom? He just a few feet south of that.

Patience young grasshopper.

Quote: Originally written by Delicious Vlish: Petrie in Blackcrag might have a spellbook that you can read to learn Quickfire, but it doesn't mean that he knows how to cast it. Ahh, but you didn't pay him to read a spellbook, you paid him an ungodly sum of money to walk you through the incantation so you could cast it yourself. I don't pay my math professor to tell me which textbook I need and to "figure it out", I pay him for examples and demonstrations so I know what i'm doing. Petrie definately knew how to cast the spell. Also, there's the matter of all those mages west of Fort Remote in Avernum 2 who were experimenting with barriers which dissolved on contact with Quickfire. Would you really waste your time on such an experiment if there was noone at your lab capable of creating the stuff to test it out?

Quote: Originally written by Meeshka: Don't make Erika a lich, PLEASE!!!! PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE!!!! Erika's reanimation as a lich is an interesting idea but seems unlikely to me as her body was completely immoliated when Rentar triggered her curse. No corpse, no lich.

Quote: Originally written by Reve: Eugh I hated the timed events in Avernum. I want to be able to take as long as I want to explore everywhere. When I played Avernum 3 (well Exile 3 is what I played) I set the clock back to day 1 on a regular basis I never really had a problem with the ticking clock in Exile 3. In fact, once I sensed I was coming to the end of the game, I had to set the clock ahead in order to expierience the chaos in the tower of magi. Quote: Originally written by Air: Erika cannot be a two bit mage because, according to Encyclopedia Emarian, she was possibly the only person ever to create quickfire. In A3, in her tower, there is a quickfire trap guarding some drakeskin gloves which pretty much proves it. I highly doubt this. What about the Pheonix eggs? Purgatos managed to make one as I remember it and the giants somehow came by one too as the trap in their temple indicated. Also there's the matter of that guy in Blackcrag fortress who was willing to outright teach you the spell for summoning Quickfire in Exile 3.. Petrie I think it was. Erika may have been the only mage in Avernum capable of making quickfire but certianly not the only one in the world.

There is a path that weaves through the pylons which is probably the quickest way to go as blasting through them all will take quite a while. It's a very thin and narrow path, just try to keep out of sight as much as possible and dart quickly across open spaces in combat mode. Don't let any vanhati guards lure you into range of the pylons and you'll do just fine.

Hello everybody, Exile 3 was one of the first RPGs I fell in love with, played my way through many spiderweb games since. Just finished Avernum 4 a few weeks ago and I thought I'd post my two cents since it was asked for. I liked the way the Geneforge engine had been adapted to make a seemless world. One thing that always annoyed me occasionally in Avernum and Exile was accidently wandering out of town, getting kicked to the outdoors and then having to walk back in. The seemless world was pretty slick. The movement system was a bit disorientating at first, but I warmed up eventually and I actually think that it's the most efficiant out of all the other systems deployed in Spiderweb RPGs. The movement range limit was bothersome at first, but totally understandable from a technical standpoint. The range eventually became intuitive and didn't really bother me after that. The pylon system was very nice. I like to play an RPG to spend time exploring, not walking through an area i've allready explored and despoiled twenty times just because it's between two important towns. I LOVE the return of area spells, however they still arn't as satisfying as watching a fireball arc towards a hapless group of goblins and the insuing impact crater.... a little variety in the effect areas of the spells would be a nice touch next time- icing on the cake kind of thing. The crafting system is nicely done and there was a very decent variety of items that could be made. Infinite bow ammo was convient and made bows much more useable for me at least. The specialty bow effects were nice, but too few in number- I miss my arrows of light and life. I like how the world was layerd, it felt the most three dimensional of all the games. For example how lots of people living in homes burrowed into the cave wall had a spare room burrowed out above them because, hey, they can! The architecture was very underworld-ish. The Bad: - Frankly, the plot felt a little skeletal. The intrigue, multi-tiered sidequests and artifact quests just wern't present to the same extent as they were in the previous games. Avernum 4 felt like it had only two game-spanning quests- Hunting down Rentar and dealing with the Loyalists. I even felt that the loyalists were a bit shaky as I had only gone through two dungeons before I was fighting their leader. They provided plenty of plot intrigue, but they just didn't have a strong dungeon presence in the game. In Avernum 3, the slimes, roaches, giants/troglos and golems each felt as massive as these two quests and probably made up only 2/3-3/4 of the game's main plotlines. Same goes with Avernum 2 with the Crystal Soul quests, the portal quest and the quest to assassinate Garzahad. - I miss alchemy. I thought it was a lot of fun, as collecting recepies provided great incentives, rewards and just plain story fodder for quests. I especially miss the Heroic Brew, popping one open and chugging it down before a fight felt just like opening up a can. - I also miss the character actions such as being able to heal yourself or restore spell points once a day. The berserk ability really added to the character of the berserker class. Sanctify was especially missed, it was a lot of fun to run back into old dungeons and bust up the evil altars as a final gesture to your enemies. Sanctify also provided very interesting plot material time and time again in each game it was used in. - I personally loved hidden passages, bumping into all the walls was just too annyoing for me so I never wasted the time to do it. The far sight spell was put in the game for a reason and so I used it. Plus, it was fun revisiting old dungeons to map them out and finding say, a secret passage blocked off with a magic barrier in a level 5 dungeon that held level 25 loot for whoever remembered to come back and check. Undiscovered passages also added immensely to the replay value. I know there are some hidden passages in Avarnum 4 that were supposed to fill this role, but they just wern't numerous or random enough to provide the same thrill of discovery. - The game world felt small. Sure, it was huge and expansive even and some things about the tunnel layouts had been changed I really didn't feel like much had been subtracted. It FELT small and cramped because everything was packed close together. I know this was done to save space, cut down on wasted space and keep everything compact and I totally understand. But paging over and noticing that Rentar-Inhro's keep appeared to be about twenty game feet away from the commander's office in Fort Saffron completely shattered my conception of a huge world. Hard to take a soldier pining about a failed assult on a remote fortress when it appears that all they have to do is burrow a short ways from a main fort of the Avernite army to bypass any defences. - Finally, no dragons, orb of thranali or blessed athme? Man, they just added so much to the character and atmosphere. Sulfras and the gang were some of the most intersting characters in the game and fighting them for their loot always felt epic if you chose to do it. The orb could have been used so well in the plot especially since all the boats were out. I was itching to revisit the waterfall warrens which could have been especially interesting since that's where Thranali lost his life using the orb there in the first place. Wow, I had no intention of writing something this beefy or in depth and I pity and admire anyone who had the patience to make it through. I realize that it's probably a little heavy on the criticizm, so I would just like to end this post by saying that on the whole I thought Avernum 4 was an impressive and worthwhile addition that took the series in a promising new direction. With all this new potential, I can't wait to see what comes next!