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Bryce

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Everything posted by Bryce

  1. AP draining monsters are the single biggest problem I had beating the game with a singleton... The ones that only slightly drain can be managed simply by only letting one or two hit you and staying hasted, but the big nasty stunners (generally, those insectoid girrafe-looking species and a few others) are real pains. You basically have three options - delay them with summons, which is MP intensive since they tend to need buffing and healing to survive, which also occupy turns you could have used to damage the monster and hence drag out the process, slowing/terrorizing the monster (good when it works, bad for a group of monsters or any resistant ones), or, against monsters with no ranged attack, finding some vantage point where you can hurt them without the monster(s) attacking you back. (A "solution" to the battle.) Those fungi that have a ranged stun attack are real pains. You usually have to use an AOE spell to take them out from outside their range one at a time. Takes a lot of energy.
  2. Quote: Originally written by kkarski: they don't understand magic itself too well, they are just using certain ready-to-use procedures they were taught. This train of reasoning is faulty. Bolt of venom is no more general or customized than spray acid. The enemies use the same style of cookie cutter magic as your party does, except they read up "Teach yourself Magic in 21 Days" instead of "Magic for Dummies" so it's superficially different. Further, the analogy is not correct in another way. Those entry-level computer programming books are not that different from the textbooks we use in introductory computer science courses, honestly. A computer science class (or a good O'Reilly book) is better, but both will teach you real programming and how to use the language constructs, not just how to hack together something from other people's code. You're right that it would take work to unify the magic systems, of course. The argument is that it would save work in the long run while making the game better now and in the future.
  3. Quote: Originally written by Khoth: Balance is easier the more knobs you have.[/QB] Aye, but it's easy enough to add some sort of "casting level" parameter to change the effect quantity without effecting the quality. This is in fact far superior to a method where you have two similar spells to choose from, because with such a tweaking knob you can adjust the difficultly nearly-linearly and directly. Probably this already exists in some form. If monsters were handled exactly like PCs, you could give them levels of spellcraft or magery to make them harder if you wanted.
  4. In reply to Unhasty: Basically, yes, there isn't enough overlap. That's a slightly simplistic way of looking at it, though, perhaps a better way of phrasing it would be that there are too many instances where it fails to overlap for no apparent reason. For instance, that spell that Gladwell, Shafrir and Ruth have that shoots a little pink gear-looking thing of much magical damage at their enemies - I'm not complaining that they have this. We expect a high-level wizard with his own tower and everything to be able to do things our party can't. Ditto for mages outside the tradition of the party (e.g. savage sliths), to some extent. But when we see a human mage or priest NPC, we expect him or her to be on roughly the same footing as our mages and priests, and it's confusing when they aren't. I don't expect 100% overlap, or even want it. My complaint is that there seems to be a lot of near-overlap that is pointless, and rather usually detracts from the game. This near-overlap appears to be an artifact of some historical/technical considerations, which I think you are alluding to when you mention Geneforge. So although we don't apparently see eye to eye on the significance of this issue, at least we agree to some extent about its origin.
  5. Quote: Originally written by Unhasty: In latter-day Spiderweb games, the magic systems are identical. PCs and NPCs have access to different sets of spells, which frequently (though not always) overlap. Identical, really? Well, I'll take your word on it since you apparently have some special knowledge. If they're the same, though, why don't NPCs have even one single spell that works like Icy Rain, Fireblast or Arcane Blow in that it appears in a circle and damages everything in the circle? Is it just a remarkable omission? Why don't the players have any 'aura' type attacks that damage every enemy in a radius around the caster, whereas these are common on monsters? (Perhaps divine retribution is one, but if so it's a really large circle...) Anyway, the two 'mostly overlapping' systems are pretty pointless. It detracts from, rather than adds to, the game, at the expensive of increased balancing difficulty and inconsistency. Spray Acid is great in the early game, yet no NPC mage uses it. Instead, slightly more sophisticated mages later on use this "summons a powerful bolt of venom" thing that works similarly but is apparently somewhat more powerful and poisons the target rather than covering it with acid. And we're talking about human mages here too, it's not like this is just the traditional goblin way of doing things or somesuch, which would add something to the game, sort of. I would much rather see one extra minor sidequest than two slightly different acid spells... Quote: Originally written by Unhasty: But I think there are very few games (if any) where every PC spell is used by some monster, and every spell a monster uses can be learned by a PC. Having a unified system does not imply that, although it will tend towards that by default. It doesn't mean that there are no monsters with special abilities unavlaible to the players by any means. If you want a specific example of a game that has unified NPC and player magic systems, look at Cythera or its antecedents. Quote: Originally written by Unhasty: What I really meant, though, was that the effects are handled exactly the same way for PC and enemy casters. What do you mean by effects? The consequences on characters or the visual effects?
  6. Quote: Originally written by Unhasty: Nearly all RPGs treat the PCs differently from other characters when it comes to combat mechanics. This may not be ideal, but it's certainly standard! Um, no. Most RPGs treat the PCs similarly, although in the case of pencil and paper RPGs, the PCs have many stats that monsters don't have, because usually we don't care if the Fierce Rat is charismatic or not. But in most RPGs I know of, both the PCs and NPCs/monsters have many things that are mechanically the same, like HP, rolling for to-hit, and so forth. In the case of computer RPGs, it is more of a mixed bag, although I disagree that it's the current standard. Older games, e.g. Nethack (which also has seperate monster spells), tend to be more likely to have mechanically different players and monsters, so you might make an argument that it was standard at the time Exile was written. But it isn't really standard now... for good reason. Making them "the same thing" under the covers saves a bundle of programmer effort and makes it easier to be consistent simply because being inconsistent requires deliberate effort, rather than the consistency taking effort as with a system that treats them differently. Quote: Originally written by Unhasty: the magic systems are identical. Uh... how do you figure? Summoning aside, when was the last time you saw an NPC use Fireblast or prismatic shield? Ever seen an NPC priest Repel Spirit on your summoned shade? No. At very least, they have a different selection of magic, and there seems to be underlying mechanical differences as well. Compare to Battle disciplines, a recent addition to the engine, which seem to be symmetric between PCs and monsters: they have the same selection of them and they work in the same way.
  7. Quote: Originally written by Khoth: Be careful what you wish for. If you get group haste and unlimited summons from the bad guys, it's only fair that they get the ability to reload when they die. "Fine, goblins. Let's go best two out of three." While very clever, this isn't actually valid. Saving/Reloading is external to the mechanics of the game. At any rate, while the current two-parallel-systems of magic has its defenders, you will note that games with unified systems don't have people complaining on their forums "I wish the monsters had some spells we could never get," or "it's not fair that monsters can open doors too." (The latter, for one, is absurd because it contradicts our deep notions of how reality works, directly undermining suspension of disbelief. Might Wizard Gladwell - no match for a guy with a sword hiding in a closet, because it has a door.) Note, too, that unifying things mechanically would not preclude them having special things that the players don't have. But it would eliminate the current silly situation where there are two parallel systems with many very similar effects with very similar names but that are different mechanically. If the players are asking "where are our more than two summons," the NPCs should equally well be asking "where's our arcane blow?" or for that matter "why can't we open doors?" Indeed, the monster area attack implementation is also pointlessly different from the player's and doesn't even have nice pretty effects. So, unifying the two systems would not have a negative effect on the balance of future games, it would on the contrary make it easier and reduce the amount of work to be done in making and balancing spell effects, costs, and so forth. What I'm about to say may strike some as a bit blunt and maybe controversial. Just to be clear, Spiderweb games are generally fun and worth playing. I have little hope for the resolution of this situation... all the Spiderweb games I've ever seen seem to think that the player characters are, mechanically speaking, not simply some creatures like any others in the game world but controlled by a human instead of some scripts. Look at the Exile source... pc_record_type is not a class inheriting from monster_record_type, it's something else altogether. (I assume this got rectified in Avernum but I can't say.) I think there is a legacy of "party exceptionalism" dating back to the beginning. I don't mean to criticize Jeff here. Exile was his first or second Mac program, ever. Now, most first programs are much, much worse, and the fact that he managed to carry it through to completion is very impressive to me. I really can't emphasize that enough. In intially approaching the problem "create an RPG on the computer," it seems quite natural to have different structures for PCs and monsters because that's how they are in a tabletop game. (I certainly didn't have character sheets for every monster in any game I've GM'd.) But the thing here is that a key generalization was missed. A software engineer, especially using an OOP model of design, looks for things that have properties and behaviors in common and unifies them, to save on programming effort while elmiminating opportunities for bugs and inconsistencies. And, well, unifying monsters and players was a whopper of an opportunity that seems to have slipped past the first time. Unifying NPC and PC magic systems seems to have been missed in Avernum, and here we are. Still, don't overestimate the consequences. They're fine games in spite of their inconsistencies and mechanical oddness. And I hold out hope that Jeff's next big game, after A6, will break with the past and be more mechanically modern, resolving these various issues.
  8. Send the giants to attack muck. Inform Highground and the Vahnatai. Kill the giant queen. Inform muck. (For optimal rewards.)
  9. Quote: Originally written by Student of Trinity: [QB]That seems a fair enough take on the summons limit. ... Jeff is not writing games for eternity, but for the six months until his next game. ... there is a limit to how much polishing pays off for him. /QB] That's quite true, and fair enough, there is a point where he should be able to say that it is done. However, I'm hoping the issue will be resolved in a more satisfactory way in A6. It will be a significant factor in my purchasing decision.
  10. You're not the only one to find it confusing. I think it's a naive reactionary solution, a quick hack to prevent a worse bug (the summon spamming) rather than dealing with the underlying causes that make unrestricted summoning exploitable (monsters can't swap positions, many boss monsters lack ranged attacks, poor monster target selection and AI stupidity in general, summons are too cheep in terms of energy, etc etc etc.) There are many possible solutions, some of them quite simple, even without treating the underlying causes, but this one was picked. It's not an open source game so you and I don't have any say in the matter however. It's not like Avernum 5 was horrible because of this one issue, though, it's just a wart.
  11. Quote: Originally written by RiotGearEpsilon: I am going to propose removing Haste, or at least dramatically lessening it's power. The difference in combat between a party of all-hasted and a party of not hasted is, well... It's like the difference between Lysstak the Singular and Lysstak the Trinity. He's a heretic! Burn him! Even newbies can see the obvious value of haste. A better solution would be to make sure they know about using it by mentioning it during the tutorial or something.
  12. "Torment, Hard, Normal, Beginner, Braindead Goblin"
  13. The people who are claiming it is too hard are very different from your beta testers. As has probably occured to you, your beta-testers are partially self-selected, not a random sampling of your users. I would venture a guess that more skilled Avernum players tend to apply to be beta testers. I think the game's difficulty was spot on, neither too easy nor too hard. It was very hard as a singleton so with a party of 4 it should have been just right. Actually, I did play up to the Anama lands with a full party and found it somewhat easy. I was using a fairly optimized but conventional fighter+archer+mage+priest party. If you want to make it a little bit easier though, I would suggest getting rid of that 2 summoned creature limit
  14. If you do kill the drake without talking to the Harkin's landing mayor, you can get the key by talking to the Exodus mayor. However, always make a beeline for the towns in a new chapter before you do any combat that isn't just a "random" monster on the road or whatnot.
  15. By reloading after we get killed by goblins. Then poisoning them and running away many times.
  16. All the other creatures die when the Black Horror is killed. Only one character really needs to survive though, so I'm not sure that using an invulnerability potion for all of them is a wise use of resources unless they are all doing a lot of damage to the horror. As an added bonus the IP will protect them from the death curse if it takes a little longer than expected to kill it.
  17. It is possible to beat Avernum 5 with a singleton on Hard. I hope that someone will follow shortly with a torment singleton. My Singleton was Ssthss the Divinely Touched Natural Mage Slith Custom, lv 45 at game's end. This was fairly difficult. Most of the serious combats had to be approached in an exploitive manner, e.g. taking advantage of flaws in the AI or physics of the game. There are only a handful of boss fights that I won in a manner that would have worked in a "real life" Avernum, right up until the fight with Dorikas which involved luring him out of the fort so that he was too far away to pathfind back to his better tactical place and just stood there trying to freeze me as his health was slowly drained by arcane blow. The game did get easier towards the end: a level 45 character is fun to play. With nearly 600 energy, and quite a bit of magical efficiency, I could do Arcane Blow and Divine Retribution a lot. I got DR near the end of the game (spending the last 8 or 9 skill points I got on a level of Priest Spells so as to be able to use it) and it was fun; I should have gotten it earlier and put less points into nature lore, which I slightly overspent for lack of patience. Arcane Lore, Nature Lore and Tool Use were not as big of a problem as I thought they would be. Nature Lore was the worst for missing content and having to come back, the full set of Nature Lore enhancing items doesn't occur until the Dark River. Arcane Lore was a problem in the early game but quickly became a non-issue, I may have slightly overspent on it because I thought there were only two +2 AL items rather than 3 of them. Tool Use was a minor hassle, but didn't require too much backtracking. I finished most of the content with TU 14, NL 14, AL 17. (With items) I mostly relied on items and quests for primary stat bonuses other than intelligence. My final stats without items were 6 STR, 7 DEX, 10 INT, 6 END. I used a lot of inventory slots on various stat, skill or resistance enhancing items, swaping them for 1 AP as the situation indicated. Since for much of the game I had >10 AP when hasted, this was not a big loss of turns and was often very helpful. However, I usually only had 9 inventory slots for loot I skipped the lake of trails, soultaker's pit, and two of the tribute quests for the dragon, although I plan to go back there with my Darkside Lands saved game and finish them. As far as I know, I did all the other content of substance. Money was not a problem in the mid-late to late game (actually ran out of useful things to spend it on), that is after Vahnatai lands or so. However it was actually pretty tight in the beginning as I had to purchase many skills and other knowledge, which led to me selling most of my crafting items and some other things I probably shouldn't have sold. However, I correctly guessed that I would have plenty of artifact items to armor/weaponize myself, so this wasn't a big loss. I missed out on Mercurial Plate though. I used all my mandrake for knowledge brews in Muck. Caveats: As per the A4 singleton rules, I occasionally used a mule when it would not affect the outcome of combats, e.g. for carrying stuff. (Despite the lack of encumberance from carried objects, a lot of valuable armor/weapon loot does not stack and consequently the number of slots is limiting for a singleton.) I started the game on Normal, but had switched to Hard before New Harston, the game being too easy on Normal. Since the game has been done on Torment up until at least chapter 3, this doesn't affect the beatability of the game on Hard/Torment.
  18. You get AP bonus from mercurial leather or plate from Quicksilver Sandals from Quicksilver Bulwark from Haste from Battle Frenzy That's +10, which is enough I think... It's really absurdly hard to get this configuration and it is outright impossible until very late in the game, when the bulwark is obtained.
  19. Darkside lands - I'm not sure how exactly this was triggered, but the loyalists are fighting amongst themselves. Some of the warriors that spawned on approaching the castle attacked (unsuccessfully) the camp with the cultist near the lancing fungi. The friendly loyalists think I am on their side and tell me to go see Dorikas, but I'm pretty sure I never told them I wanted to join, and even if I did they shouldn't be fighting each other. Also I killed Dorikas and the game didn't end. Maybe I missed something? I went back to Blackchasm outpost and General Redmark wasn't there to report to either, if that was what I was supposed to do. I killed him somewhat unconventionally, by luring him outside the fort and then repeatedly whacking him with arcane blow (burnt a lot of energy elixirs, but this is what I was saving them for) - apparently he couldn't pathfind his way back and he just stood there attempting to freeze me. (Which usually was not successful.) Anyhow he died and I left via the pylon. Nothing has happened yet... what did I miss? Edit: walking into the fort triggered the ending. Heh.
  20. Lich Vesna: lich vesna will pursue the player to attack in melee and can end up occupying the doorway to one of the side rooms of her lair. If you then beat her down while she is standing there, she becomes peaceful of course. However, since she doesn't move after becoming peaceful, you can end up trapped in there with no recourse but to use backtostart or else kill her, forfeiting your quest reward. Perhaps she should go back to her throne/chair after becoming peaceful?
  21. A side effect of popping an invulnerability potion seems to have been surviving the death curse as well: Ssthss Falls victim to the death curse. Ssthss takes 38 magical damage (562 resisted) So yeah that was anti-climatic. (Had pretty much all buffs including arcane shield and battle rage running too.) Report of the Great Battle: The Black Horror was defeated, at length. Supplies used: 3 invulnerability potions, 1 invulnerability elixir, 4 assault crystals (for the regeneration, maybe could have done without), 2 energy elixers, 1 madness scroll (didn't work on the shades, not a big surprise), about 3 healing elixirs (probably not needed.) Overall strategy employed by my singleton: Hiding in the Corner, with lesser enemies occupying all squares attacking me. Number of save-reloads for this battle - about 6. Trivial Stage - Fully buffed and using Battle Rage whenever possible, I rung the gong and used repel spirit three times and slow once on the horror. This caused it to go to the next stage. I put on my ruby chain at this point also. First Stage (Fire) Performed this casting sequence: RS (repel spirit), RS, RS, Slow, Heal, RS, repeat. When you are about to go to the next stage, pop an invulnerability potion (for more flexability about your actions), switch to jade chain, and above all Slow the horror. Alternative to slowing the horror: use Arcane Summon. However, provided you keep this stage short, it should be more MP-effective to slow the horror. Summons will require healing every turn if the horror is not slowed, and may die even if they are as buffed as you are (augmentation, arcane shield, the works). Between the buffing, healing, increased battle length and the cost of Arcane Summon itself, slowing is cheaper. Second Stage (poison) When the statues spawn, this is the moment of truth. Since the horror is slowed, it will loose every other turn. You need to end your turn in a corner (i used the southeast) on a turn that the horror loose, so that three statues will end up occupying all three squares that can attack you in the corner. You don't have to worry about slowing the horror now. Just whack on it with repel spirit and heal/rebuff yourself for the rest of the stage. DO NOT ATTACK THE STATUES AT ALL. On torment, paradoxically, the battle should be easier from here on out since you don't have to worry about them dying and exposing you because they took riposte or spine damage. But on hard they just didn't have enough HP (more on that later). Third Stage (Ice) Switch to your opal chain. Whack on the horror with repel spirit. When it is almost dead, you might want to drop out of combat and save the game in case you mess up. The horror is not a problem in this stage assuming you keep up your arcane/prismatic shield to prevent freezing. But the statues that protect you may be close to killing themselves from your riposte damage or damage from spines if you're using assault crystals/elixirs or arcane shield. When they look to be nearly dead (watch their HP, and remember that since riposte is random it is not the same for all of them) slow the horror so it doesn't run into the gap after the statue dies. Fill the gap with a summon or let one of the shades in if the statue dies during the last stage. Final Stage (Death Curse) The Death Curse issued by the Black Horror does a ton of magical damage, around 600. If you are invulnerable and fully buffed, you will take like 40 damage. So keep healed (an assault crystal is helpful) as you whack on the black horror with repel spirit. (On a second experimental attempt at beating it, I discovered that you only really need one invulnerability potion - one to survive the death curse.) Make sure the three squares adjacent to you stay full with ANYTHING other than the black horror, which with two AP-stealing attacks per turn will almost always kill you if it gets a melee attack on you. Keep whacking on the horror with repel spirit until it is almost dead. For an artful finish, end the battle with two arcane blows to get the shades and the horror. I've been putting a lot of effort into getting high int early on, and I must say it has paid off. At level 44, My mode of operation is pretty much arcane blow or fireblast to kill any group of more than one creature, unless I anticipate a long battle in which case I sometimes use my pointy stick or lesser powers. Battle Frenzy was totally worth the 12 skill points or so I had to spend on useless melee/thrown weapons skills, though.
  22. Quote: Originally written by Thuryl: One problem you're going to encounter as a singleton is that the final stage's first action is to put a death curse on you, so you're working under a time limit. I don't really know if it's an achievable one for a singleton or not, since I didn't run out of time with a party of four. I hope that I can pop some invulnerability and assault potions to avoid having to heal for that stage and then just wail on it with repel spirit until it dies. I hope.
  23. Quote: Originally written by Thuryl: For my money, the hardest fight for its point in the game was the one in Solberg's secret lab, with four pumped-up hellhounds. Hide in one of the two side rooms with a doorway. Usually you can fight one at a time that way by standing off to the edge. Once in a while two will attack if you leave room. Of course this might only work with a singleton or duo - I don't know if you can hide a full party in one. I had to come back to that one too, though; even fighting them one at a time I could only take out the weakest one (i forget which), they others would eventually kill me.
  24. Thanks for your advice. Thankfully, my singleton can dish out a lot of damage to the Black Horror with battle rage (which I can maintain almost constantly, with a 1 full turn break at most) and much repel spirit, and if I keep it slowed the stunning isn't so much of a problem but it is still the biggest difficulty since if it stuns below 1 ap I am dead once the statues are there. They just kinda push things over the edge in the Horror's favor. The battlefield really doesn't have anywhere to hide, the best thing being a corner. I'm going to try holding the horror off with augmented/arcane shielded arcane summons, e.g. terror wolves, for the fire stage, then try to hide behind three statues, which I will slow, and wail on the horror from behind them. If I have to kill them to get to the next stage, it won't work, but I suspect I don't since the stages seem to be triggered by the horror's health. This way, I'll only have to deal with the melee attacks of the three statues (not very damaging, plus I parry/riposte it sometimes), and the terror's elemental ranged attack. With arcane shield and my full set of elemental necklaces (being a singleton, I get all the loot ), it's ranged attacks hopefully won't be too bad. (If the fire and acid are any indication.) If anyone has a better idea or more tactical information they would like to share, let me know. I've got about 7 invulnerability potions and I could get several more from Melanchion and other places, if one of the stages is unexpectedly horrible. (No pun intended.) Also I have some assult crystals/elixers for regeneration. So I'm basically hopeful but this does seem like a hard fight. Thanks for telling me about the relative difficulty of it, that will make me more willing to use items, since the game is apparently winding down (no new quests in a while).
  25. How do I get to the Black Horror? Is it that arena? if so, what do i have to do to fight it?
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