Venatrix Avia

You are wonderful, thank you! I'm still working my way through A:EftP, but I imagine that once I move on to 2 I'll be very grateful for this mod. With 1, I have gone in and manually changed some of the .ogg files that I found too sharp (usually just by replacing them with copies of more acceptable sound effects from the same folder), so I suspect that we may well have very similar auditory issues. Having the environmental noises louder overall in comparison to the other sound effects is something that I've actually idly wished for on more than one occasion while playing this game. Thank you so much for putting in the work and generously sharing it here.

Parchment stacks and isn't very heavy, and by that point in the game I had a lot of money to burn, so I just loaded all four characters up with as much as they could carry to sell to her. Also, there's that weird 140-count inkwell you can find somewhere in western Krizsan, I think in one of the barracks in Delis. Between those two factors, I had a *lot* of writing materials for Alzon by the time I got around to her. I received my money, but no XP. The text box *claimed* I'd earned XP, but my character info said otherwise. I was puzzled. Then I played around with save-and-restore, dropping pieces of parchment on the floor until I figured out what the problem was. It seems that the programming can't handle a character leaping two levels up at once, so if you earn enough XP in a single discrete action that this would happen, then the game copes by just not registering any gain at all. I ended up leaving the hundreds and hundreds of excess parchment sheets that I had dropped on the floor for Alzon as a gift. I always have had a soft spot for bureaucrats. And sure, she *said* she didn't need any more, but I know how much paper *I* can burn through, even in a relatively short period of time, and even living in the computer age. I figured she'd be wanting it sooner or later. She's out of luck if she needs more inkwells, though. 'Cause those don't stack.

Very cool. Just a note, though: you can't level up more than once by selling writing supplies to Alzon. (I think that was the Spineridge jobs dispatcher's name?) If you try to sell her a sufficient quantity of parchment that it would push any of your characters over a single level gained, you wind up getting no XP at all -- although you do still get the cash. Ask me how I know. I think the same may apply to Walner, but unlike Alzon, he's an ungluttable market, so you can just keep on going back to the well to get XP from him if you want. ("Psst. Levy! Forge me smmore of them research tomes, will ya?") I could never find a way to make those augmented toadstools do anything for me either. I'm pretty sure that, like all of the augmented ropes, stone blocks and other non-equippable items, they're just flaky flavor, probably the result of some caffeine-fueled late-night coding. I've enjoyed following your saga. You have far more patience than I have, to be sure!

Thoukydides, I've duplicated your experiment and got the same results. A character with DEX 10, all other skills reduced to their default, and no special skills or traits (no Gymnastics, no Elite Warrior, no Fast on Feet, etc.) seemed to have about a 90% chance of resisting stoning. Level seems to matter as well. I first tried this with a character at level 10 (just because that's where my characters were in my first save that had them anywhere near a basilisk), and his chances were even better than your stated 90% -- on average, he was only stoned every one in fifteen gazes. Then I realized that you probably used a character at Level 1, adjusted my trials accordingly, and got the same results you did -- about 1 in 10. - VA

Structuralize THIS has it right, Trenton. I was referring to the Ancient Crypt in the tunnels southwest of Motrax's Lair.

That's dedication! Since I have a nasty cold and am not going anywhere in the foreseeable future, I'll see if I can duplicate your results. Since I never go anywhere near a basilisk without loads of crystal equipment, I've not noticed how my unprotected characters fare against them -- other than "usually, very poorly." Hence the avoidance behavior. I'll load up an old save and see if I get similar results when I pump up someone's DEX.

How odd. How do you know what your resistance percentage is? Does it appear in the text box when you resist an attempted stoning? Two odd A1 bugs that I've stumbled across are the cloth/ore and horn/scroll bugs. I find it hard to believe that these aren't well-known, but I never see them mentioned anywhere. Have I just missed all reference to them? On the off-chance that nobody's ever noticed this before (extremely unlikely, I know): Both of the special ore-buyers, the smith in Blosk and the Mayor of Bargha, are incapable of distinguishing bolts of cloth from bags of ore. They will buy all bolts of cloth, even the little cheapie 10-coin ones, for the same price as they offer for bags of ore. The same thing applies to Benth at the Castle and horns. He mistakes horns for historical scrolls and will buy them for the same price that he offers for historical scrolls (25 coins each). Since unlike the ore-buyers, Benth is an ungluttable market (he never stops shelling out for historical scrolls), and since you can buy horns from Jason at Fort Duvno for only 12 coins a pop, this means that you need never run short on coinage in A1. Not that you likely would anyway, of course. Anyway, probably everyone already knew all about the ore/cloth and horn/scroll bugs, but on the off-chance that someone didn't...

Yes, serious. Although I was speaking metaphorically when I talked about the shops "closing their doors." They don't actually close their doors. In fact, you can still talk to shopkeepers on the Day of Recall, but if you try to buy anything from them, you get an "all stores are closed today" message. I know this because I just hit Radiane 14th in my replay of A2 today -- and I was in Vahnatai lands. I have therefore now discovered that even the Vahnatai shopkeepers won't sell you anything on the Day of Recall! So I suspect that the Empire shopkeepers in A3 won't either. Silly nonsensical game mechanics. As for that "Day when Fort Draco opens" comment above, though -- I have no idea what that's about, but I suspect that it's a garbled reference to the Ancient Crypt in the Motrax Maze. The Ancient Crypt opens on the first of any month, but Elizabeth the innkeeper at Cotra tells you about some soldier who told her that he saw it open on the first of Radiane. At least, that's my guess as to what that's supposed to mean. I think that's from Averman's walkthrough, which is...well, often garbled in places.

Originally Posted By: FnordCola And while many soundtracks are relatively short, so are many games. Shadow of the Colossus, which does have a soundtrack that's broadly considered noteworthy, only has about 1.5 hours worth, but the game itself is only 15-20 hours long. That's a pretty high ratio of soundtracks to play time. It is, I guess, and yet... My housemate played that game back when we only had one TV, in the one public room in the house. Eventually I told him that he had three choices. He could: (a) turn the volume off, ( figure out a way to listen only through headphones, or © accept that fact that I was going to go to prison for violently murdering him. That was a truly gorgeous game. But it had a very repetitive soundtrack. It's somehow even worse when you're the one playing. Valkyria Chronicles was a game that I really loved, but the soundtrack made me want to put a bullet in my brain. It's not that it's a bad soundtrack -- on the contrary, I quite liked it -- but you hear the same damn themes repeating over and over and over and over and over again. For hours on end. It reaches the point where you get all excited whenever you hear a new theme -- not so much because it represents having moved on to a new stage of the game as because you're finally hearing something new, something of which you are not yet sick unto death. Well. Not yet, anyway. Apparently other people somehow manage not to be driven insane by this sort of thing, but I honestly don't know how they do it. I think that they must have been born with a "tune out music" switch in their brains somewhere or something. Since I didn't get one of those, the repetition of game soundtracks drives me around the bend. Thank heavens for Avernum, where all I hear is the pitter-patter of tiny feet as my little guys wander through the caves...

Originally Posted By: Earth Empires A1.1's and A4-6's engines aren't same. Well, okay, but judging by the screenshots that have been released, the graphics look very much the same to me. And since visually decoding the graphics was what I found so problematic about A4-6, I suspect that the one might well help me to understand the other. Hope so, anyway. I found it quite encouraging that I instantly recognized the ground floor of the Nephil Fortress in one of those screenshots, which then made a lot of other things suddenly visually comprehensible to me. In this play-through, I've finally come to accept that I just don't *use* wands and scrolls. In previous games, I've always stockpiled them, but then I never wind up using them at all. So now I'm just selling them all off. I'm finding this a strangely liberating experience. I'm decluttering my cache!

Yes, seriously. The Fallout 2 theme you linked is certainly one of the nicer ones -- but it's *still* not something I want to hear over and over and over again while playing a game. For a few minutes, it is indeed lovely. But I tend to play games in long marathon sessions. No piece of music can bear that much repetition without causing me, in time, to despise it.

Originally Posted By: Valdain the King I still like the story though from the original avernums and the music is epic. Hee! Was this a joke, or do you just mean those brief musical bits you get on the "Load Game/Start New Game" screen? Joking aside, one of my favorite things about the Avernum games *is* the music -- specifically, the lack thereof. I've always detested that awful, droning, repetitive background score that most CRPGs inflict upon their players, and I love the fact that the Avernum games don't do that to me.

Yes, I'm doing the same, but am lagging a bit behind you - I'm still towards the beginning of Chapter 4 of A2 right now. I'm hoping that perhaps this remake of A1 might finally help me understand the new engine well enough to play the second trilogy games. I really *want* to play them, but I've yet to make it very far into the demos of any of them. Somehow I just can't seem to wrap my mind around the new engine. I find the graphics far too visually confusing and can never figure out what anything is supposed to be. I know A1 like the back of my hand, though, so I'm hoping that perhaps the remake will serve as a kind of 'new engine tutorial' for me...

I always imagined that the candles (and the oil that the lamps and torches used as well, for that matter) were made from some kind of rendered lizard tallow. It was the only way I could justify them being so inexpensive. In my imagination, they also smelled really, really awful. And were used to keep the time.

I'd definitely recommend trying to get your mage's Priest Spells skill up to at least a 3, so s/he can learn Repel Spirit. I honestly don't think you can have too many characters who know Repel Spirit in A1. Raising it up to a 6 would give you another character who can Unshackle Mind or Mass Heal, which can also be really useful. As for priests, I like to see them with at least a 3 in Mage Spells, so they can cast Haste (and the other mage support spells too, I guess, but I rarely use any of them except for Haste). You can have your spellcasters multitask beyond that as well, to be sure. I don't think I've ever done it myself, but it's a perfectly valid option with many advantages, and it looks like a lot of people here favor that approach.

The holidays existed in all of the first three Avernum games. I remember finding it particularly surreal in A3, when I was wandering around somewhere in sunny daylight Valorim and suddenly that pink writing appeared in my text box, informing me that all of the shops would be closed for the Day of Recall, "the day all Avernites remember what they lost when they were banished from the surface." I always meant to stop in a surface city on Radiane 14, just to see if the Empire shops would really have all closed their doors for the day, but then I think I wound up just forgetting about it.

Ming, I'm sure you can do fine with a human party. I'm just partial to nephil characters because I like using ranged attacks and moving quickly and Trying Not To Get Hit . That's always my preferred strategy, because I am a card-carrying coward. So I find the gymnastics and dex and missile bonuses you get with the nephil really hard to resist. They're basically tailor-made for what's always been my favored tactical approach, is what it comes down to.

Randomizer, I could have sworn that I tried ESC, and that it did something completely different (sent me to the main menu, perhaps?), but when I tried it again just now, it worked! Boy, do I feel foolish now. Thank you very much! Dikiyoba, thanks for the tip. I'm sure I will get used to it in time. As I hope you can tell, I really do want to find this game more fun than frustrating, since I've enjoyed the others in the series so very much. There's definitely good will for the franchise built up in my mind, which is the reason I'm willing to put in the effort. Had it been the first I'd tried, I suspect I would have written it off as "not for me" early on, but I'm now sufficiently invested in (addicted to?) the world that I really do want to play this game. I'm glad to hear there will be more character graphics introduced in the next one, especially since I favor all-nephil parties. Right now I basically have a party of clones in different colored loin-cloths wandering through the caves (the other nephil sprite I find too dark to be easily distinguishable from the background, so I'm left with only one option). It works, sure, but it's a little unsatisfying on the gut emotional level. ETA: Okay, I just tried the workaround for fudging the character graphics mentioned here again. This is another thing I'd tried before, but hadn't been able to make work. Well, today is my lucky day, I guess, because it worked fine for me this time. Yay! (I must have been totally out to lunch the day I tried all these things before or something, I dunno.) Anyway, thought I'd add that, both to forestall the advice, and also to direct any new readers to that trick.

Hmm. I think that I don't mind having to move the cursor around to find hidden doors or containers so much. It's really just a kind of equivalent to all of that head-banging required to find the secret doors in A1-3, isn't it? The impossibility of finding objects bothers me far more, as one can't even play "hunt the pixel" with the mouse in an attempt to find them. In fact, now that I think of it, the engine would be much improved for me if objects worked like doors and containers -- if they became highlit when you ran the mouse over them. That would solve much of my frustration with the engine right there. As things stand, though, the only brute force method of finding objects I can think of would be to put your lead guy in each square, and then repeatedly press "g." That's too much bother, especially since (as far as I can tell) there's no easy way to close the inventory window once it has opened. You have to use the mouse each time, which is very slow and inconvenient. Really, I think that my annoyance with the engine would be reduced a great deal if only it were possible to just hit 'enter' or something to close the inventory window, rather than having to direct the cursor to that check mark each and every time.

I'm having a lot of gameplay issues with A4 so far. Some of these issues are probably just a matter of my having to get used to the new engine, but some of them seem rather more serious than that to me. For example: I find it really hard to distinguish the stuff lying on the ground that you can (and might want to) pick up from the stuff that isn't "really" there but is instead just kind of painted on. In the older engine, you could use the right mouse button or the keyboard to see what items were in a room and available for manipulation. In this engine, you're just somehow supposed to intuit -- presumably through some mystical sense which I, sadly, was born lacking -- which of these random blobs of pixels represent actual manipulable objects, and which are just there for atmosphere or color or what have you. I have no idea how one is supposed to make this distinction. They all look the same to me, and the situation is not helped by the fact that you need to be standing quite close to something for it to show up as an option when you type 'g.' I'm still struggling my way though the demo, and I have to say that so far, much of my gameplay seems to consist of trying to pick up items that don't really exist (even though they sure look like items!), or finding out on a replay that I'd previously missed an item that was only one square out of my reach when I'd tried to "get" in that location before, etc., etc. It's really not fun.

Brilliant. Thank you so much!

Hi, all. I'm dreadfully sorry if this question has already been asked and answered ad nauseum. I tried using the search function on the archives over at ermarian.net, but didn't have much luck with it. I'm playing the A4 demo on Windows right now, and I'm wondering if there's any way to manipulate only 1 of a stack of items. I hope that's clear? If, for example, one of my characters has 3 stacked potions in his inventory, and I want him to give only one of those potions to another character, how do I do that? In A2-3, holding down the Ctrl key when dropping or picking up a stack of stackables prompted the game to give you the option to specify how many of said stackable you wanted to manipulate. If there's a way to do that in A4, though, I can't seem to figure out what it is, and it's sort of driving me crazy. (I have a penchant for maintaining obsessive little caches of neatly stacked stackables in these games, you see...) Any advice? I'm sure it's something painfully obvious, but the answer...it eludes me. - VA