malkav11

Hmm. I didn't really have a horrible time pre-Geneforge with two trios of Vlishes, one trio regular, the other Terror. And a regular Drayk. Though that *was* the Shaper Crypt, not the Inner Crypt, and I'd turned off the pylons.

I have the Trilogy CD. It's on the stack. But surely you don't want me to do them out of plot order?

I'm profoundly grateful that the fact that my first Mac and first PC both came after the advent of the CD-ROM drive, thus making the vast majority of the software I ever acquired for either CD-based. Helps nostalgia ever so much. And man...smaller spell list that's minus summoning and fields (my favorite ones), less friendly handling of locked doors, awkward item-information system....I'd never quite realized what phenomenal leaps in playability Exile III (the only one I played heavily) made. I think I'm still hooked all over again.

So naturally it turns out that the very next time I enter Drayk's Vale I run right into the Crescent Shade. Cleared both areas. Not particularly hard for a post-Geneforge-use Shaper and his army of substantially enhanced Vlishes, Terror Vlishes and Ur-Glaahks. Although definitely nastier than anything else.

Thanks.

I definitely didn't miss the Crescent Thahd, as pretty much everything I killed in that zone was a variety of Clawbug. I explored the Drayk's Vale but couldn't find anything that looked like a Crescent Shade. Whereabouts in those two areas would these creatures spawn if they're present on a given visit? If it's random I am so not bothering.

My Shaper went in at level 17 and while I didn't make it into the Inner Crypt due to being completely unable to find the Crescent Stones (advice would be appreciated), a phalanx of three Terror Vlishes and three regular Vlishes along with a Drayk made the experience quite manageable. Occasional battles that involved several of the tougher Glaahk, Drayk, and Battle Alpha spawns were slightly hairy, but I explored nearly the entire zone on my first pass. (And leveled twice.)

Playing Exile 1 again I'm realizing that honestly very little changed from 1.0 to 2.0. Graphics and the introduction of AP seem to be about it...it doesn't have any of the niceties of later Exile games, 3 in particular, despite now sporting the same graphics. E.g., old-school casting dialogues, old-school randomly-enter-words-from-responses-and-hope-you-strike-it-lucky dialogue system, that sort of thing. I'm not sure how much I'm willing to put up with these things anymore. Avernum starts to look more tempting.

Quote: Originally written by Student of Trinity: Regarding the new traits available in A5, there is one word. Chitrach! I was hoping for a second word. Specifically, "muffin".

I can't say as I "still" play it, because I never really did back in the days of yore. But given that there are a heck of a lot of scenarios for it, and I would wager most of them have never been updated to the Avernum engine, it definitely has a place on my hard drive. It also means that while I don't think any of the Exile games have been entirely superseded by their Avernum counterparts, Blades is much less so than the others.

I was just poking at the CD-ROM that came with the book Tricks of the Mac Game Programming Gurus. The book is immensely, woefully out of date these days, but the CD is a veritable time portal back to early Macintosh gaming. Not only does it have the lovely, primitive Exile 1.1.3, but it also has Realmz 2.0, Mantra, and a whole bunch of other stuff I remember quite fondly from my Performa-using days. I do wish I remembered where I wound up playing with a copy of Exile II pre-overhaul. Maybe that's just what it was like when I tried it. Boy that dates me.