RogueGypsy47

>.> ... I can't decide how I should feel about being willing to play a version of Avernum like that...

"Welcome to Avernum, what time was it when they chucked your butt down here?" That idea makes me giggle.

Candles, I imagine. >.> Although, I don't put it past Solberg to invent a water clock.

"Help, Help, I'm being repressed! See the violence inherent in the system!" As a medium-long-time fan of Spiderweb Games (Woo Exile 3!), I'm glad to see the new splash screens in Avadon and now the new Avernum. It's a little thing, but it adds a great deal of depth to the world environment. The one image there helps to really drive home that the folks in Avernum were literally scooped up and shoved off into the darkness. I dunno, when I was a kid playing the games for the first time, it always struck me as more of a grand adventure than a punishment (just or otherwise) for the characters. ~RG, who probably got that Monty Python quote wrong, and steals signature ideas from cool people.

Ah, well then.. o.o See, this is why I come and say things here: because you people are so much more geeky than I and have calculated out such differences. Although, that seems to say even more that the xp penalty needs to be done away with in favor of humans getting some bonuses. I mean, if it's not having a substantial effect throughout the game in return for the boosts it gives. o.o Maybe I'm just one of those types who wants humans to be good at their own thing and not just the baseline that everybody else is better than.

Randomly semi-tangentially kinda-sorta not really on topic – and might I also say that it is very amusing to click onto the latest page of a thread about potential new races.. and find a discussion about batteries.. a discussion that I'm not certain I /want/ to become more enlightened upon, mind – I wouldn't mind seeing the Nephil and Slith lose their xp penalty. Sure, keep the bonuses, but give the humans something neat, too. Like, mayhaps they get bonuses to Defense instead of Pole or Bow weapons.. or to Luck or Arcane Lore. Far too late to institute /now/, of course, but just a thought. It seems like the xp penalty gets to be rather steep when factored in across the whole of a character's lifetime, when all I want is some cool lizardfolk and cat-people in my party. Then again, I much prefer D&D 3.5's Level Adjustment system to the little I've seen of 4E's Monster Class system, so maybe I don't know what I want.

Mm.. I had some issues after returning to Avadon for the last stage. Of course, I was playing with a Sorceress and the enemies loved to run up and get in my very fragile lady's face. I can see where the difficulty might be a put-off, but that's why there's variable settings. I played through on a mix of Hard and Normal the first time and plan on going Hard all the way through the second time. Even if Avadon isn't my favorite game of all time... I think after 15 games that I've thoroughly enjoyed, Jeff has earned enough brownie points to pull $30 from my wallet now and again on a new project. I want him to enjoy making games as much as I enjoy playing them and that means him getting out and doing new things. The proper response, I would think, is not "I'm going to be super hesitant from now on", but "Hey, here's what I found was difficult and these were my settings and, yannow, I shouldn't have to load and reload and reload on X difficulty." Just sayin'... squeaky wheels might get grease, but only because they can't discuss game mechanics and preferences.

Um.. odd, then, because it affected the dialogue and other pop-up text in version 1.0. I distinctly recall checking out that option when I first got Avadon and preferring the Default size. I guess if it's just a change in 1.0.3, it's a silly one, but I can live with it. : )

So, I just got around to downloading Avadon 1.0.3 today and installed it an.. the text size option appears to be borked on my 2.4 GHz MacBook (10.6.5). It doesn't seem to matter if I set it to "Default" or to "Larger", it insists on giving me the larger text size. It does this with my current game, with old saves, and with brand-new characters that have only been played on the 1.0.3 version. Soo... I'm kind of at a loss. I've downloaded 1.0.3 from a different mirror and tried that (to no avail), and I thought I'd pop in here before going to try and track down video drivers. >.>;

You seem to be missing the Fleetfoot Boots, seemingly wearable by everybody (I didn't check Blademaster), armor +7% and +1 action points. I only remember them because I spent a long while griping about having to choose between the Veneth Spear and Shock Troop Shield and still not being able to get myself to 10 AP for two attacks if I don't move.

I got about halfway through the game with Mad Jenny – my pyromanic sorceress who had an unhealthy obsession with rocks and alcoholic beverages – before an accidental misclick during retraining made me realize that I could specialize in the same thing more than once. At first I went, "Wow! This makes things so much easier!", but then I realized that no.. no it didn't. If we could only take each specialization once, as I initially and erroneously believed, the decision is only in what order do you take them. With being able to train multiple times, however... Well, Mad Jenny ran around for another quarter of the game with +2 in the right-hand column, which gave her level three arcane blessing and curse for a minimal skill point investment! I found my mind whirling for days at work trying to imagine what the most effective combination of skill points and specializations might be for my characters. For Mad Jenny, I tended to stick her with Shima and Jenell from the get-go and this prompted me to go for the 4th Tier abilities for all of the characters. Summon Drake is nice, as is Shima's Steel Tornado and Mad Jenny's Corrupting Cloud... but I think my next play-through will involve more variation with the skill choices. Maybe forgoing the T4 stuff and focussing more on pumping up the lower tier skills to higher levels. I'd like to get my specializations out of the middle column where they all ended up (all of them.. on all characters.. I like passive buffs, I think). I'm torn on if it's more useful to use specializations to make a character really awesome at doing one thing, or to prop up their weakest column. On the one hand, I really missed Shima's teleporting and Mad Jenny's de/buffs in the last chapter, but on the other... their damage outputs and survivability were amazing. I'm sure other people will have a lot more fun working out the nuts and bolts than I will, but I enjoyed being able to roll on Hard for nearly all of the game. I had to drop down to Normal for some of the boss fights and even Casual once! Mad Jenny, all by her lonesome, versus three nasty shadowalker types? Yeah... she's a fragile little thing.. her with the no points put into Endurance. Next time, Hard all the way, baby! ~RG For those interested, I ended with 444 rocks, 68 ale, and 82 wine, as well as 103 iron, 171 paper, and 214 bags of meal... ...I may have a problem, since I like to do this in all Spidweb games with a weightless inventory. >.>;; In fact, I'm sure I missed some.. Clearly a replay is in order!

Technically, the man said "close to" the 20th, which could be close on the far side of the date... Besides, I'm sure that he has slightly better things to do than wait up until midnight just to launch a new game, like.. um.. sleep. Although, in this crowd, that might be declared an overrated commodity.