Bryce

To do the crocolisk quest you also have to be carrying a fish, or else it won't appear. There are fish in the nearby bucket.

It practice it isn't really a problem to just carry your stuff around with you. Just sell treasures and don't pick up useless things. (Prior to avernum 5, this was a real problem; the best solution was to have a hideout somewhere.)

Quote: Originally written by Dahak: There you may fight the Unstable Mass. With one character, I don't know that it is a good idea to do so. It seems like it would be very frustrating since it divides whenever you damage it, with the new copy having the same HP as the old one when it begins its turn. With a single character, it is going to result in many high-hp unstable masses.

You can damage it only indirectly, by attacking the shades it splits into. Conserve power until it splits off the small shades, then attack them. The green one can be damaged by repel spirit, the blue one by fire attacks, and the red one by physical damage. They will keep regenerating, but eventually you will win, if they don't kill you. It's helpful to do leg sweep against the shades to make them less dangerous and summon your measly allotment of 2 creatures to soak (I recommend shades, they also do some damage to the enemy shades). It's a fairly long battle, and the lack of visible progress is a little frustrating, but hang in there. It isn't impossible. It doesn't seem to matter if you let Summer die, but he can be useful if he is smart enough to attack the red shade.

Also, funny story: When I was working on TunnelHack, people whined a lot about how hard it was. "It's not hard, you're just lame," I said, although using nicer words. Then when evidence that it was very hard became irrefutable (e.g I couldn't beat it but very rarely), I moved to the line: "It's supposed to be challenging." Then I realized that I had the test comparing the player's level to monster difficulty backwards. Opps.

Quote: Originally written by Humbelina: <religious extremism snipped> where are the RPGs you've coded .... stop acting like you know how to make a game better than somebody who has actually made a game! I think I'll call you on that . You should have read my web page. Maybe it will help you to know where I'm coming from. I'm a member of the free software community and mainly GNU/Linux user and have been so for years. This does not mean that a cheapskate who does not like to pay for software, although some of us are. What it does mean, however, is that I am part of a community that respects programmers, but does not revere them as gods. Clearly, we are different in this respect. To you, or a mere mortal to think he "knows better" than a lofty developer is "hubris." That's normally a word we associate with people who flout the strictures of the gods. You are so mired in the developer-god mindset of proprietary software that you seem to have become a sort of coder monotheist, to whom There is One True Programmer and so obviously if I am not your programmer I must not be a programmer Note well that I do not in any way claim that the RPG which I wrote, TunnelHack, is better than any of the Avernum games. I claim it is fun, but there are other things you could be doing that are more fun, and among these is playing A5. It was put together very quickly because it was a final project for a programming class. (Comparing my first RPG ever, which is also one of the first Java programs I ever wrote (which is why the interface is lame), to Avernum 5, which is the product of an experienced programmer with actual art resources, who is under the great motivation of keeping a roof over his head and nourishing his family as opposed to just getting an "A," would hardly be fair anyway. On the other side, TunnelHack is version 1.3r5 whereas A5 is version 1.0 which is also not a fair comparison, since the TH maintainer and I have had quite a bit of time to work out minor kinks.) But it does show that I have written an RPG and faced the gameplay and technical issues of consistency. Least you claim that this is a highly sophisticated scam to get you to go play my game and find all the inconsistencies and wave them in my face, which you probably don't have the patience to do anyway, I'll let you know that development has since been moved from Java to Python where another programmer has taken over the work of maintaining it, so changes/fixes are "out of my jurisdiction." I'd still be interested in knowing about them though, so that I don't do it again someday. I'll pass it on to the maintainer as well. Incidentally, though, TunnelHack does have summoning monsters, some of which are quite noisome, but they have a summoning cap which applies to both allied and enemy versions of the creatures. The need for this feature was not apparent to me until a player showed me a pathological game where there were about a lot of summoned monsters in a room. (Although the maintainer may have changed it somewhat, I seem to recall him enjoying being king of a zerg horde of summons. In any case they don't get in the way of attacks so there isn't a meatshield problem.) The bold print was just there so that someone skimming this topic would be sure to notice it. There are a lot of long posts here and it might be tiresome to read in detail. [edit] quote misattribution

Quote: Originally written by Student of Trinity: <snip> Yeah, there are other things that could use explaining too, but because of their generally non-lethal character I didn't bother complaining. I haven't found any of the arguments for an in-game explanation convincing, because no-one has convincingly addressed the "whole is less than the sum of its parts" issue. I see this as part of a broader quality issue... as far as I'm concerned this is a problem just as surely as the fact that character's heads are sometimes rendered over the tops of doorways. (Which did not seem to happen in the A4.) Now, A5 is a huge game and it's very true that excessive attention to detail could have made it stay unfinished. But we aren't talking about the details of how some side-quest where in reality there would be more options than the game gives you, we're talking about a game mechanic that places a limit on the party, and only the party, for the entire game. I think that makes it worthy of consideration. One of the design principles I work by is that special cases are to be avoided, because of their tendency to accumulate and thwart the brain's ability to generalize (which it also detects is happening), and the 2-summon party-only cap is certainly a special case of the most arbitrary kind. Mr. Vogel, I hope I haven't hardened your resolve against implementing an improved summon nerf by my previous words. Some of them were said "in the heat of battle," and with something less than perfect tact. (I don't vainly try to take them back, I just regret not putting things in a less confrontational manner.) Still, though, I think that this really is an important issue that would be easy to correct. Thanks for your time.

Quote: Originally written by Student of Trinity: Perhaps controlling more than two summoned creatures requires years of specialized training At very least the game should say that. I mean, everyone would know it's just an arbitrary game-balance thing, but at least the game could pretend there is a reason. That could easily have been worked into the discussions of magic limitations in the Empire if there was really an in-game rationale. Again, if only high-level mages could summon spam, we wouldn't be having this discussion; your in-game argument would be reasonable. But literally every other mage in existence who can summon at all can summon better than you, and not only that, but the limit is per-party rather than per-caster so the any mage-expertise based argument becomes obviously absurd in that light. Seriously, think about it: a. A party may control at most 2 creatures b. A party consists of 1-4 characters. By b, any character can be a 1-character party. Therefore, by a, any character can, by whatever paraphysical mechanisms are invoked in summoning, control two creatures. But, somehow, the "mystic bond of party togetherness" breaks this when two characters that could each individually control two summons join up? And, more ridiculous yet, this same mechanism does not affect other nearby summoners, who, in fact, do not seem to follow any analog of (a) at all? So, not only can any another mage summon better than your party mages, any two mages in your party could effectively summon better without the other one present! I'll grant that "it's magic," but if there really were some in-game reason for it the reason should be explained. Indeed, summoning is a locus of so much party exceptionalism that explaining it could probably fill a whole side-quest. That actually might be a pretty interesting side quest. (Too late now I suppose, but it really would be mollifying to see an in-game explanation for all this.) (Oh, and I knew that mage was going to betray me, I had played the encounter before with my munchkin party and wiped the cave floor with him. But with my less optimized party, including (gasp!) humans and some non-demigods, it was harder going. Yes, I probably should have burned magic items.)

Quote: Originally written by *i: NPCs and PCs are and have always treated differently. .... How is NPCs being able to summon more than you any different from basilisks having freezing touch, Basilisks are obviously quite different from the PCs. This situation is similar to being allowed to have Basilisks as PCs, except that only one can use freezing touch per turn for no obvious reason. I certainly would not complain if, say, Gladwell could summon spam. I expect him to be quite different from my mages, for some of the reasons that were suggested by others earlier. But the fact is that Average Joe Mage in this game is qualitatively different from my mage even though, within the context of the game world, they are by all accounts rather similar. (You could say that being empire-trained makes a difference but I will argue that point if you do.) The crux isn't that the enemy can do things I can't, which is hardly a problem at all (the game would be rather boring just fighting other adventurers all the time), but rather that similar things should behave similarly, and with respect to summoning, they don't. That's a basic principle of realism, and there isn't even a token effort in-game to argue that the things involved are, contrary to appearances, dissimilar.

Quote: Originally written by Compound Tyr Hamsubstantiation: expect perfect consistency .... it's ruined .... everything isn't perfect. I am neither asking for nor expecting perfection. You seem to mistake a request for improvement with a request for perfection, which is confusing because you have made this mistake in spite of the presence of nice relative words such as "better" (in reference to other possible solutions, n.b. not "best") and "sub-optimal" (re the current solution) in my posts. Also, I'm complaining about one particularly notable inconsistency. I'm not complaining about the many other inconsistencies that I do not characterize as "glaring" or "blatantly obvious" because these do not impair my enjoyment of the game or suspension of disbelief. (For example, I am not complaining about how normal enemies never seem to use the scrolls and potions they carry.) Perhaps "blighted" was too strong a word. I should have said "blemished." Probably this is why the statement came off a bit odd to you. I don't think the game is ruined. Yes, my post was reactionary. I wrote it in the heat of being killed by a glaring inconsistency so there was some emotion there. But I still feel strongly that there needs to a real solution to summon spamming in general, not just to players exploiting summon spamming; and I stand by my economic statements in the previous post.

I just had a very unpleasant experiance as a result of no summon cap for enemies (perhaps it's not so irritating that your party has an arbitrary summon cap, it's that the enemies don't.) With my new party, I was fighting the harston docks road ambush battle. I killed them all except the mage, who started to run away. he prevented me from killing him by spamming summons for several turns, resulting in like 8 or 9 rats and bats. by the time i finally cut my way through to him with my strongest melee fighter, two of my characters had already died (granted those two were weak from the fight to begin with) to his summons. I killed the mage but my fighter got surrounded by his surviving summons, and was pecked to death by them. My mage was trying to get away (no energy left), but the bats caught up with her and killed her, finishing off my party. Now, this incident makes it very clear that this is not a theoretical problem or something that only affects munchkins. My party died because of a glaring inconsistency in the game mechanics that treats PCs and NPCs differently. I'm a programmer myself and I recognize a quick hack when I see it: the 2 summon limit, applied only to the party, is a typical highly reactionary and poorly thought-out nerf that is nearly as bad as the problem it fixes. I don't buy the absurd suggestion made by some people in this topic that every other mage in existence, including some random mercenary mage like Hansen who aparently doesn't even know Acid Bolt, is a elite master of summon-fu, either. I understand how time pressures could motivate a sub-optimal fix like the 2-summon limit, and I realize that you aren't just resting on your laurels now that it's released. I registered this game well before reaching the encounter mentioned above mainly because I liked A4 and because you open-sourced Blades of Exile, and I wanted to show that I appreciated that gesture. However, I am now a dissatisfied customer. I don't see myself buying any more of your games unless this problem is resolved in some way that is less inconsistent. Frankly, I don't see how it could be that hard to switch to a per-caster summon limit unless the code is an absolute mess. It sounds like an hour's work or less. I'm quite likely to buy at least one more of your ~$30 games if you fix this bug (A6 for one, if there is going to an A6), that's a sound economic reason. I honestly hope you fix the summon nerf. It's a real blight on an otherwise fine game, and the obvious inconsistency can be readily encountered well before the demo ends. Certainly I would have thought twice about registering if I had had the experience above before giving you my money. Since I already have given you my money, though, I will make the best of the situation. Since he can cheat by performing unlimited summons, I can cheat by using player knowledge to kill him as soon as I see him. That makes the encounter much easier.

One less thing to min-max? If you don't want to min-max, don't do it. I was a terrible munchkin on A4, I admit that, but I started A5 with my muchkin party and decided that I wasn't enjoying it all that much - I had wasted about 2 hours trying to figure out a way to steal the Fang clan's artifacts, get the XP from finishing their testing quest, and get the XP and loot from putting their entire ill-mannered village to the sword. ("Okay... if I move their artifacts to the area outside the gate that closes, then go upstairs and talk to their Elders...") Then I had an epiphany: clearly there were mutually exclusive loot and XP opportunities here, and I wasn't really enjoying my min-maxed party. So I made a new party, which was optimized but not to the point that it detracted from my role-playing experiance, and decided to play the game "for fun" rather than "for maximal power level attainable." It's that epiphany that ends min-maxing (well, stops it from being an end in itself) and munchkinism. No sane amount of complexity-reduction can do that. So please, don't think of the munchkins. (PS The Fae encounter in the northern isles is really cool. I forgot to mention that earlier.)

Quote: Originally written by Spidweb: Reasonable people can disagree about the best way to nerf summoning, but, all things people equal, I prefer to go for the simple, direct solution. I think you're right about the rouge summoning idea. But simply going to a per-caster or even per-PC limit would make things much less blatantly arbitrary. Surely making the summon cap some function of the party's total intelligence would be easy enough, something along the lines of <b>max_summons = party_total_intelligence/k + 1</b>? (replacing k by some constant, say 6 for example.) Besides being quite simple and direct, this would also provide a mechanical incentive for buying some intelligence for fighters, and makes sense on some level. Perhaps perfect consistency is too much work here, but the simple proposal above would be much better than the current system for not much effort. Also, in the future (not now for A5, too much work) maybe the problem of summon spamming could be addressed partially though allowing large creatures to force small ones out of the way (similar to how PCs can swap positions, but between nonallied characters.) This really makes a lot of sense: if you are a 10' tall great and terrible monster, what are you going to do if there is a rat between you and the irritating adventurers who are wailing on you? Step over it and attack them! It would be a hoot to be able to get pushed off a cliff, too

It's not realism so much as consistency. Players don't crave realism, they want consistency. That is, players are quite tolerant of unrealism, so long as it is consistent. That is why the two-per-party versus unlimited summons for the party and NPCs respectively hits so hard. Inconsistency threatens suspension of disbelief, and thus the player's enjoyment of the game. So yes, it's worth it. Besides, Avernum 5 is a huge game, the proportional amount of effort to implement this is tiny in comparison. If the effort really is a big deal, just change to a per-caster limit on summons based on int/skill or whatever and that's 90% of the solution, forget the whole feral mechanic (which was just to make things more interesting/realistic). The big request here is for consistency, not a particular solution so much.

Hi. I'm a fairly new fan of the Avernum series, registered user of 4 and 5. Mr. Vogel, I think we both agree that summons were too powerful in A4. They were easy to exploit, especially shade summons. (But other kinds as well, because anything can draw fire and be a meat shield.) So, I agree with your decision to nerf summons in A5. However, I think there is a better way than limiting the whole party to two summoned creatures, which seems both unrealistic and inconsistent, since NPC mages are able to summon large numbers of creatures without any apparent limit apart from their ability to stay alive. My Idea is this: On a per-caster basis (all characters, not just PCs), track the number of summons currently in the battle. (E.g. Bob the Mage uses Call Beast 3 times, then one of the rats dies, so his summon_count is 2; Mindy the Cleric uses Summon Shade 1 time so her summon_count is 1). Now, each turn, for every summon of that caster, use some number derived from the summon_count (and including midigating factors such as skills, luck or intelligence) to evaluate a chance of the summon "going feral" and attacking it's master's side. The formula should have a "safe" area where the probability is zero, probably 1 summon per 5 levels of intelligence or so, and a rapidly ascending probability of going feral once outside of the safe zone (although not so much that summoning more creatures than your limit would always be a bad idea.) Gameplay effects: You would still be able to spam summons, but they would likely start fighting each other (and you!) unproductively, thus not whittling away at a boss monster so much (although they would still be useful as meat shields, but less so.) If you want to intensify the effect, give the newly-feral summons agro against their summoner rather than whatever happened to attack them last. Realism argument: Presumably the caster has to control the summon mentally, so making it more difficult as the number of summons goes up makes sense. Also, this would provide consistency in applying the system to individual NPC/Monster casters. This is the most serious problem with the current system, which is on a per-party basis and doesn't affect NPCs at all. Exempt summons: Logically, some summons (e.g. a giant spider calling more giant spiders, blobs that spawn more blobs, and whatnot) would be exempt, since these creatures are naturally allied. Similarly, if there was some NPC with unusual empathy to the summoned species, s/he might also be exempt, particularly if they are called through mundane means rather than actually summoned per se. Thanks for your consideration.