Bryce

Darkside loyalist encounter at the gate at the end of the dark river - the Dervish there is referred to as Tholmen even though Tholmen is dead and other text in the encounter suggests he is a different one. (Similar to the Anama dude bug mentioned earlier.)

It is possible to do the Hraithe lord quest as a singleton on hard. Although it made short work of my lv 41 singleton in melee combat, it is possible to kill it by fairly complex process: 1. haste yourself and run into its lair. Attack it with a ranged attack and run like a hraithe lord is chasing you after the hraithe lord starts chasing you. Go up the ladder. 2. Run around to the stair down in the vahnatai volcano complex (north-west corner). In combat mode and hasted, go north so that you will be under the zone with the hraithe lord's prison. Run to the ledge that separates the hraithe lord area from the area you are in now. Since elevation change does not affect visibility, you should be able to see it standing roughly where it was before. 3. Whack the Hraithe lord with your two strongest attacks. Repeat until it runs away, which will happen in 1 to 4 or so turns. Start over from step 1 until it is weak enough that you can kill it in a straight fight without dying. 4. Kill the Hraithe lord. Repel Spirit and Arcane Blow are both effectual - didn't use anything else really. It took me ~4 cycles to get to that point, whacking it with Mighty Blow + Arcane Blow. I had to finish it off with my Slith Bloodspear because although it could not affect me with its poison/acid/lightning, it could still drain MP. The only consumable I used was an energy elixer. Using this method, you don't need the Stone of Victory. (You can't bring it out of the pit though, except perhaps with the dead guy smuggling trick used for the Fang Clan relics.)

I agree with King InuYasha with regard to statically linking for closed-source programs on Linux; I've had nothing but trouble with dynamically linked binaries on Linux that weren't from my distribution's own package system. I think a better ultimate solution, of course, would be to open-source the engine so that Jeff can focus on developing (and selling) content rather than hacking on the engine. There is no reason why an open source engine would prevent him from using his demoware model, with some minor adjustments. If you are skeptical, let me explain. The current model relies on the content (scenario) trusting the engine to tell you if it is registered or not. If the engine is open source, you can't trust it to do that, because the user might alter it to always say that it is registered. (You can't trust a closed-source engine either; in theory they can always be compromised, and often in practice they are.) So, don't trust the engine - you don't need to. Instead of sending a registration code when the user pays, send a small (~100k) but vital piece of the full scenario, so that if the unregistered user compromised the shareware protections, it would do him little good. This process could easily be streamlined to the same or similar amount of effort for the user. You could argue that the user can copy the piece of code and give it to his friends. This is true, but he can also copy his copy of Avernum and it's registered preferences file or whatever. You cannot thwart the determined illicit copier, the objective is just to make it easier to register than to copy it illegally for the great majority of people. (People aren't evil, just lazy.) Even in the case where the current system is unchanged, most users can't read C++ and you'd be fairly hard put to find a programmer who is going to steal bread from a colleague's kids by circumventing the system and then advertise and distribute it. I certainly wouldn't. But in case Jeff has any programmer enemies that hate him personally, I still think the alternate scheme above is a better deal. I think that improving Blades of Exile would be a great way to show Jeff that open-source works. If I finish my current project over winter break, I'll try to take a look at how the open-source BoE project is coming along and contribute. (I have done work with SDL before, I agree that it's the right tool for the job.) [edit] On the other hand, Blades of Avernum would be pretty much done for as a salable product with an open-source engine, but there is a partial solution that is pretty simple - sell the normal Avernum editor instead.

That would certainly be the right way to fix it in our shared opinion, but currently some quests have the bug and some don't, that is, it is handled correctly in some cases and incorrectly in others. At a minimum, this means that there is some way to fix it without changing how giving items is handled, which Jeff might choose to do. Not that I think it would be a good idea, but it's not my call.

Highground, captain Glavine, Giant Raiders - ruby chain reward disappears with full inventory

Quote: Originally written by Adrian: Jeff, you almost jumped the shark with A4, but A5 brings the series back on track Plot wise, I'd say this comment is right on. A5 has a great, interesting plot and is pretty original. (Of course, there are some non-original things, e.g. the obligatory chitrach nest and undead-infested honeycomb, but at least they are done in different ways each time.) I think the engine needs some work, especially with consistency (e.g. the 2 summon cap), but it doesn't get in the way of the game too much.

Some general advice - Try hitting the 'u' key and seeing if a letter appears above the possible switch. If not, it isn't a switch.

The Barren Honeycomb is East of Highground. It is visible on the map as a sort of bubble to the left of the city. Go to its northernmost wall. Somewhere around the middle there are many tunnels that lead to stairs down. Go down them. You will encounter some undead in a central room. There is a passage leading north which has a stair up. Take it. You will encounter more undead in a narrow hall that has a side passage to the west that leads to Soultaker's Pit. Don't go that way. Kill the undead and go north instead. There is a secret switch that opens a passage at the north end. The passage has a stair down that takes you to Gladwell's house. Altogether it's a lot of combat and you may wish to make two trips, since the Gladwell fight is hard.

Except for leather, steel, and focusing crystals, and of course alchemy stuff (like herbs and tinctures), you are safe selling the majority of the things you mention. Certainly, you can sell most of your gold bars, emeralds, rubies and crystals. The precious gems are only used in wand making, and wands require focusing crystals as well. If you really want a huge number of wands, hold off until the next chapter then decide what you want to keep for wands. All of flawed crystals, beautiful crystals, and lovely crystals can be sold for money. You may wish to hold on to mined crystals, some people buy them for 20c a pop rather than the usual price. Generally, there is so much cool artifact stuff that I wouldn't worry too much about things for making items except for leather (maybe), fine steel and focusing crystals.

General Bugs The frozen worm's ranged attack does fire damage. I really doubt that is intentional considering there is a cold damage type that would be appropriate.

In order for him to be downstairs, you first have to talk to him. He's one of the nephils inside the common room thing - the one with a sword.

Well, i realize it isn't quite as hard as torment, but I think quite a bit of the strategies for specific battles I've developed on Hard are applicable to torment. Mainly the difference is enemy HP, right? Doing a singleton in A5 has started to make me think of the game as a game rather than a simulation of reality, and the battles more like chess problems than real-life combat. Theory of Singleton Tactics My theory is that you should not try to win battles, you should try to solve them. What is a solution to a battle? A solution is a tactical configuration (or series of configurations) in which victory is assured independent of randomness. The reason that this is important in a singleton game is that most battles last a long time, and any bad random thing that can happen, will probably happen. Examples of Solutions A concrete example: consider the Pit Crawler battle in the Drake Pillars area. There are many winning strategies for this battle, and many more losing ones. An example of a solution to the battle with the Pit Crawler itself, however, is to stand with one of the larvae between you and the pit crawler on the 1-cell wide ledge. It having no ranged attack, it can't damage you; the larva does trivial damage (trivial means that no bad luck on your part could allow it to kill you or otherwise thwart your victory, e.g. force you to spend all your AP healing every turn, unless you run totally out of energy), and you can do great damage to the pit crawler. After a few rounds, you can see that not only is this a good tactical configuration, it is indeed a solution, because your victory is inevitable. Often a solution exists amongst many successful strategies, but sometimes the only path to victory for a singleton may be through a solution, e.g. the Gladwell battle as described elsewhere. (If a singleton can win that by brute force, I'd like to see it...) Sometimes the set-up of a solution may be very difficult to achieve and require many save-reloads or very counter-intuative actions that would be silly in real life. I distinguish between "strong" and "weak" solutions. A strong solution is one that can be carried out without using consumable resources (magic points, health, items) except perhaps at the beginning / setup. A weak solution requires resource consumption, however small, and thus you have to complete it (kill the enemy) in finite time. The pit crawler solution above is a weak solution because the larva will do a trivial amount of damage to you, which you eventually have to heal, consuming healing items or energy. An example of a strong solution will be given later (the giant.) Finding Solutions These are some general tips: Look at the battlefield. Fighting a melee-only enemy especially, look for a physical position that you can get into that the enemy can't attack you from, since you almost certainly have a ranged attack at your disposal. Failing that, look for a position where as few enemies as possible can attack you in a turn, such as doorways, 1-cell wide bridges or ledges, narrow passages, and corners. Slow powerful enemies as the approach you (for instance, it the Chitrach Queen battle) and allow weaker enemies, or better yet your own summoned creatures, to occupy the squares that can attack you - many weak solutions can be found in this way; it's a powerful practical technique. In the case of a mobile adversary, do not limit your consideration of the battlefield to the immediate vicinity where you were meant to fight the battle - can you get the enemy to follow you to a position that leads to a solution for you, even if it is several rounds of travel distant? (Example, the battle with the big giant who gets upset at your intrusion into his quarters in the spire: he will chase you out to the lift platform area if you go there, you can get on a lift and go down, then peck him to death with arrows with no risk to yourself - a strong solution.) Know how to use the True Ultimate Power of the player characters: Door-fu, your arcane mastery of the lost art of door manipulation. As you are the only creature in the Avernum universe who can operate doors, these mystic barriers are one of your most powerful tactical assets. Once you can get more than 10 AP, you can open a door, fire a ranged attack at a distant enemy, then close the door. Several strong solutions can be found in this way. In addition to being unable to open doors, the AI does not understand them either. "Woah, the wall that ate the adventurer I was chasing just opened up and shot an arrow at me, then closed up again. Good thing that will never happen again. (repeat)" Know how the AI for various types of enemies works. Take advantage of it as much as you can. In the early game especially, there are many weak solutions that involve using spray acid on an enemy then hiding, possibly involving doors (Hrickis, for example, can be solved using this technique.) The effectiveness of this is reduced later on, when most enemies you want a solution against are resistant to acid for some reason. A few weak solutions, usually against single powerful enemies, can be found using Terror at a high level. There aren't that many powerful enemies that are vulnerable to it, and it rarely affects them for long, so this technique isn't very productive. Also, there is an element of randomness that prevents some practically good strategies from being proper solutions. It has its uses, though. (For instance, the monster that the trainer in the Southwest quadrant of Tranquility requires you to kill before he will train you is vulnerable to terror, although it sometimes resists, meaning that terrorizing it is not a proper solution even though it works pretty well most of the time, in combination with a couple summons.) Finally, be relentlessly exploitive of the game mechanics: fairness and realism have no place in singleton strategy.

Hard. I started on normal, but switched it to hard before leaving blackchasm outpost because normal was in fact easy.

I'm wondering what kind of progress the rest of you are making with your singletons. Mine (Slith Divinely Touched Natural Mage) is level 36, and has been as far as Vahnatai lands. He just got back to the Azure gallery after finally killing Gladwell. The fight with Gladwell was only a success through a degree of game-mechanical and AI exploitation that can only be characterized as "relentless." (Along with an assault elixer, two invulnerability potions, and several energy potions.) Has anyone killed Gladwell as a singleton before? It took me quite a while to come up with my solution, and I wonder if anyone came up with something better. Anyhow, this was my way of killing him: I used 2 invulnerability potions and an assault elixer, along with lots of fire blast, to survive his shades. Lured Gladwell into the library, where I pecked at him with Smite (the most damaging thing I had against him, interestingly) and then ran into the reading rooms and closed the door when he would summon something. Then I'd wait out the summon and rebuff as needed from the perfect safety of the closed door. It took about half an hour once I had this solution. Anyway, that was the AI-exploitive part. The mechanically exploitive part is this: when you are terrified (as the geas will do to you when you attack Gladwell), you can still move normally outside of combat mode. So, the trick is to end combat with Gladwell visible, getting the message that it will end at the end of this round. Then whack him a bit. He'll usually terrify you, but since combat has ended and it only lasts for one round, it's almost harmless. Take one step (usually away from Gladwell ), and combat will re-begin on your turn, with you not terrified and with full AP for running back into the room and healing with the door closed. (Or, if Gladwell didn't damage you much, repeat until either he does or he summons.) It is very important that if Gladwell summons, you run into the room and hide. This is because the summon will chase you, and in addition to slowing your retreat back into a book room, it may get too close to the door for you to be able to close it, in which case: reload. Gladwell himself may move closer to the door sometimes, in which case you should attack him from the east (assuming you were using the south-west book room) to draw him away from the book room doors. This didn't happen to me until he was almost dead anyway, though. The only requirements here are to be faster than Gladwell (to go before him in the round), and durable enough to survive at least one hit from his powerful ranged magic attack. Technically, this latter item isn't a requirement since he doesn't use it every turn, but it would take an agonizing amount of save-reload to do it otherwise. Use prismatic barrier and protection if you need to.

We probably should have a singleton strategy thread.

I don't think so, but it takes focus crystal, some other herbs - either energetic or spiritual, and of course mandrake.

Make no potions except for knowledge brews if they require mandrake - save all your mandrake for knowledge brews (and possibly very powerful crafted items). An alchemist in Chapter 6 (Muck in the Azure Gallery) makes knowledge brew. Save minded crystals to sell to the Vahnatai. You may wish to save focusing crystals for crafted items.

I did the sequence I mentioned above and got rewards from all 3 towns... duplicity for the win! In a nice touch, some nephils from Highground attacked me on my way back. They might actually have killed me, but I ran back a few screens to the area that has patrollers from Muck, together we defeated them without serious trouble. I am yet to see Muck be attacked by giants, although I've only been back to it maybe three times. There is a source of knowledge crystals in the Vahnatai city, but they require focusing crystals and mandrake to make, and I have sold most of the focusing crystals I found, knowing that as a singleton I would have more awesome artifact armor and weapons than I knew what to do with anyway. (Which was true.)

An assault crystal helps, and some nature lore is required. Summoning wyrmkins or revenants is also very helpful... with two buffed and hasted revenants, that battle is pathetically short.

NY Mandrake roots, knowledge crystals, brews, exlixers... and anything that can't be seen, unless you're into role-playing

Vahnatai lands: I got the geas warning when leaving Vahnatai lands, but I made it to Ruth's ambush without getting the geas curse. Does it only take effect after that? Edit: yes, it does. So this is only a minor problem. Again, the state I'm in is: having taken the radiant prism, but not given it to Gladwell.

This is cheap, but virtually risk-free: fight the larva things. Be sure at least one is left when the pit crawler itself becomes active. When it does, run to the part of the lair between the exit and the main cavern that is alongside the big hole. Standing on that 1-block wide ledge, only one thing at a time can attack, and even then it can attack only one character at a time. So stick your toughest tank in front and put all your other characters in safety. Now, this is the key part - MAKE SURE that a larva gets between you and the pit crawler, occupying the only space that can attack your party. Since the pit crawler is melee only, it has no way to get to you to attack. Slow the one larva that can attack you for good measure, DON'T KILL IT. Whack on the pit crawler (and the larvae not "protecting" you) at your leisure with ranged attacks. None of them can do anything to you. Of course, this exposes a serious flaw in the realism of the game, but the rules allow it and fair is fair.

Yeah, I already lost Morbo (funny encounter!) but it's just as well because I'm a singleton and don't have any additional feet to put them on. Anyhow, yes, I meant the Slith alchemist. So as I'm understanding it, this is the sequence: Send the giants to attack Muck. Report this to the Vahnatai and Highground. Kill the giant queen. Report this to Muck. Right? (For optimal rewards.)

Will sending the giants to attack muck threaten my knowledge brew supply?

Area: Vahnatai city / lands Bug: The crystal soul has the "I need a chip off you" dialog item before you get the geas message related to it. It is possible to encounter this by heading south from Muck through the barrier after stealing the radiant prism but before returning it to Gladwell. Bug: leaving Vahnatai lands, when ruth attacks you, if you run back to the Vahnatai they are hostile. If this is intentional there should be a message, but it really doesn't make any sense.