Fael

Originally Posted By: madrigan Isn't Giscard the guy that was really rude to you in A4? He was like, this is my land, you're stupid? This is pretty good character progression for such a minor character. Yup. He even sort of apologizes for being such a jerk in the earlier game. Pretty cool.

For one round. On round two it evens out, and on round three you end up having done more damage with Battle Frenzy. Adrenaline Rush only makes sense if either you can win the fight in one round or if you have enough fatigue reduction to use it every other round.

Originally Posted By: Randomizer The Dharmon priest will sell 3 combat blessings so you can buy 9 levels of combat disciplines. 8.5, actually. You get 1 point toward unlocking battle disciplines for each level of Melee or Pole Weapons, and 1/2 point for each level of Bows or Thrown Weapons. I don't remember the exact levels for everything, but Battle Frenzy (which is the last one to be unlocked) requires 20 total points. The consensus among the power gamers seem to be that Adrenaline Rush (3 attacks in one round) is the best of the battle disciplines. Personally, I prefer Battle Frenzy (2 attacks per round for multiple rounds), since I'm not good enough to end most fights in one round. The blessings in Dharmon increase your level of a skill by one for each member of your party. The four blessings increase Melee, Pole Weapons, Thrown Weapons, and Spellcraft. Each blessing can be given only once. Since each blessing costs 3,000 gold, that's the equivalent of 750 gold per point of increase, which is better than almost any other trainer (and, considering the usefulness of the skills given, is indeed the best deal in the game).

And Gladwell epitomizes "not cool".

See this thread for a more detailed discussion of the Lich fight: http://www.ironycentral.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=191609#Post191609

Originally Posted By: Randomizer Originally Posted By: Lightning Spammer EDIT: It's also been a while since I've played A5, so maybe I'm just forgetting some of the hard parts of that game. =) A5 Fang Clan Testing Area the first time you can do it, most of Lark's quests the first time you get to them especially Moref the Shade, Melanchion's Keep, the Haakai in Melanchion's Realm, ... Slith Horror! Actually, the difference was that in A5, every fight was hard. In A5, you're wandering down a road and see a couple slimes in the distance, you'd better at haste, bless, and shield or you're dead. In A6, you can actually handle the trivial encounters without extensive preparation.

Originally Posted By: Tcheedchee I think I found the Slith trainer you mentioned – Yassho of the spear. He waits in an arena southeast of Formello, close to the slavers. He took my whole party down with two breathtaking strokes of his spear. It was quite a laugh. Same thing second time around… For the other baddy there you don't happen to mean High Mage Dassra and his servitor orbs? He also defends his life with much aplomb. Yup, Yassho of the Spear sounds like who I'm talking about. That pretty much describes what he did to me. I did kill him eventually, but I think it was the second-to-last fight I did before going ahead with the final battle. High Mage Dassra isn't who I meant for the other one, though. I just realized that I could look up the name on Synergizer's list (duh!) -- General Tregart. He was the last fight I did before the final battle. For general difficulty, I agree with Tcheedchee -- I found A5 much, much harder than A6.

Originally Posted By: Tcheedchee Thanks for the warning. I'm really not looking forward to that fight. Seems so complicated to do all the running an counting. I skipped the whole running and counting part. Just concentrated on doing lots of damage very fast to end things before I had to worry about the south crystal. That works okay on Normal, but probably not on Hard or Torment, though.

That's the Lich I was talking about. There's a whole other thread somewhere on strategy for that battle. Anyway, when you get done with him, there are a bunch of sentinels guarding his treasure. I found them MUCH harder than the Lich himself (partly because I figured out the strategy for the Lich on the second try, but I didn't figure out the strategy for the sentinels until someone explained it to me in words of one syllable... which was after I'd already finished the fight the hard way).

Originally Posted By: almuric Can someone tell me the ramifications, in general terms, of each way? I don't want Gladwell not to give me more quests as from reading the boards it seems there are several things he gives out that I would want. If I don't do it, is the game still 'winnable'? Since I've been ostensibly playing as a 'good' group of people (not stealing, killing bad guys but attempting to not kill the good guys), it just seems like doing what he asks is completely evil. The game is very winnable without doing the Gladwell quests. You are correct that you won't get any more Gladwell quests if you don't do it. However, you don't need to do those quests to win -- or to become powerful enough to win. I won my first game without doing the Undead Spiral quest or any of the ones that come after it. As for missing part of the game, there are three Gladwell quests after the Undead Spiral. The first two can be done without combat, and the third is a single battle. The big combat that you're missing is the Undead Spiral quest itself. If you want to not miss out on part of the game, but don't want to be evil, you can do what I did the first time. Go down to the bottom of the Undead Spiral. Save your game. Break the seal and fight your way out of the Spiral. When you're done, revert to your save, and leave again without breaking the seal. Finish the game. When you're done, revert to your last pre-victory save, go back and do the Undead Spiral quest again (it'll be trivially easy at this point). Then report your success to Gladwell and continue with his quests. The next two don't require combat, and the third is an end-game quest, anyway, so you'll still be at the "right" level for it. You don't get any of the rewards that way, but you still get to experience the entire game and your non-evil party members can sleep at night.

Originally Posted By: Tcheedchee I haven't passed any of the mean monsters you or Randomizer mentioned yet (naturally), but I think it won't take me long to get to know the Slith Trainer and the Slith General as I'm close to Formello now. I've combed through all the breeding tunnels… I suppose the Horde Protectors can't be too far either. The Slith Trainers I met up to now (even though some of them had their own names) were rather "nice" fights. The two I'm talking about have their own names, as well. I just don't remember them...

For me the hardest fight on my first game was the Lich's sentinels (although having the proper strategy explained to me by other posters made that much easier the second time 'round). After that, the Slith Trainer, and the Slith General outside of Formello. Just down a notch in difficulty from them I'd put the Aranea Queen. The trick with the Aranea Queen is that, through careful maneuvering, it should be possible to lure the Death Widows and the Sentinels out one or two at a time and kill them all before going in and fighting the Queen. She's a lot easier to deal with on her own.

Originally Posted By: BillBixby Earlier in the game, I tried attacking and peeling off two or so Horde Protectors at a time, but this got monotonous fast as I couldn't figure out how many were left. After reaching near the end of the game, I made a frontal assault from the southeastern bridge. Through a series of charms, buffs, battle crystals, and invulnerability draughts, I managed to kill the first large group of fifteen (?) Horde Protectors. However, after killing these, I was still being pestered by one or two newly arrived Sliths. So rather than waste more resources on them, I decided to retreat. Maybe I'll try again after the next to last task. Yeah, I tried that, too (minus the crystals and potions). I fought my way all the way up to the moat, but it became obvious that most of what I was fighting at that point was spawns and it didn't seem like there was anything interesting up ahead, so I gave up. I could have continued the fight for a while longer before having to retreat, but it just wasn't any fun.

Originally Posted By: almuric Also, reading through some of the advice I see that should be spending my money on trainers and not buying spells? I finally found one of those guys near the Great Portal. But if I give my fighters a level each in Priest/Mage, I'm not sure I can remember where I found all the spells at. Is it really a waste of money if I buy spells from people? Certainly not the ones you're looking at with just one level in the skill. I'm pretty sure you can get all the intro spells at the Castle, and they're dirt cheap.

Originally Posted By: almuric Obviously I can just load my save and move on, but I'm just wondering if there's any way to tell ahead of time if I'm about to attack the wrong guy. Not really. You won't have seen this yet where you are in the game, but sometimes, a particularly hard quest will warn you either when you get it or when you enter the area to fulfill it that things look "very dangerous". Lots of times, though, your first warning that you're in the wrong place is death. Same thing happened to me on my first play through in both those quests. You should be able to finish both by the time you've completed the other Great Cave quests. But, yeah, if you do 'em when you get 'em, you'll die. And, no, there's really no way to know that ahead of time. Originally Posted By: almuric Btw, I took the default party when I started. I see now that that was probably sub-optimal. I may start over again but that's a lot of lost hours. Can I use the character editor to remake the default group into a better party? Yup. You can change anything but character race, I believe. And, although there is a generally agreed upon optimal distribution of races among the party, you can do just fine in the game without it. Originally Posted By: almuric Is it a good idea to get everyone at least a level or two of priest spells so that anyone can heal? I think so. One level is sufficient. I then use Minor Heals from my non-spellcasters to heal between combats. Others think it's a good idea to get a second priest up to the level where they can cast at least Unshackle Mind and probably also Mass Healing, although I don't like "wasting" that many skill points on duplicate abilities. Originally Posted By: almuric And if only the highest Tool Use is counted, how can you get that to a decent level? Seems like you'd spend all your skill points for one character on just that. Yeah, you need to get a single character to a TU or 13 or 14 and you need to do it pretty early. That means, basically for the first 10 levels or so, you're spending all that character's skill points on TU (and it's also a good place to throw a bunch of Knowledge Brews and Wisdom Crystals). If you have a Slith polefighter, he's a great character to devote to it, since he'll be getting a bunch of weapon skills from the Slith racial abilities, anyway. Or, if you're going to use the editor, this isn't a bad thing to use it on.

Through the Darkside Loyalist fortress. There's a door in the basement that leads across the river. But you won't be strong enough to take them out until well after you arrive there the first time.

Originally Posted By: Soul of Wit Interesting. I noticed the trapdoor outside of Spire right off but did NOT notice the switch that allows access under the big ogre upstairs. I guess it pays to read all of the threads. I had a lot of problems noticing switches in this game (not sure if it was an issue with the graphics this time around, or just because I'm playing at 1920x1440), so I pretty much made a habit of hitting the 'u' key in any area that seemed like the sort of place Jeff might put a switch just to see if anything showed up.

Originally Posted By: VCH I guess Jeff wanted to give the player a feeling that based on what quests they did the world would be effected accordingly. But really who didn't do all of the quests the first play through? I think that's a basically accurate description. The thing is, people have been whining incessantly on the forums for years about how A4 and A5 were too linear and they wanted more freedom of action. So, Jeff finally caved and (I suspect) put his design sensibilities aside to give his customers what they were clamoring for. Like you, I don't consider it an improvement, and for much the same reason. The non-linearity is largely illusory for exactly the reason you state -- everybody does all the quests, anyway. The only actual effect is to make the game somewhat less good, since Jeff wasn't able to scale encounter difficulty to character level as well as he could in the more linear games. But it's hard to fault him for listening to his customers. If everybody who buys his games spends years telling him, "your games stink because of X," then addressing X is a sound business decision. And, indeed, the forums have been giving A6 praise for being more non-linear than its predecessors. So, I agree that A6 would be a better game if it was more linear. But I think the blame lies with the forum, rather than with Jeff. Alas for me and VCH, judging by the overall response to the non-linearity of A6, this is clearly a minority opinion, so we can probably expect more of the same in future Spiderweb games.

Wow. I played through that area twice and I never noticed that trap door was there until just now. Glad you asked!

Try the 'u' key. While you can click your mouse on the switches, they're pretty small targets; the keyboard command is easier (also handy for spotting hard to see switches).

Shift click on the item you want to split.

He's in the section of the Honeycomb accessible from near the Great Portal.

I think the solution was to leave, let him restore himself to full health, and try again, being more careful of the damage thresholds next time. Don't know if that works, but if their theory of what's happening is correct, it should.

You've probably encountered a bug. See http://www.ironycentral.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=191154#Post191154

Originally Posted By: Thuryl You do eventually get access to a supply of Tinker's Crystals in A5 if you join the Anama, and there are no high-level locks that you have to unlock in order to beat the game, but it still sucks. Yeah, I know you can finish without the spell, but I ended up leaving so much stuff behind/unopened that it just didn't seem worth playing. I think when I quit was when I realized I wasn't going to be able to get into the upper level of Khora Vyss (or however you spell it... it's been a while). I didn't know about the Tinker's Crystal supply from joining the Anama, though.