Fael

Least favorite: Crypt Wight. It has almost everything I hate in a combat -- a puzzle with a solution that isn't obvious even with several replays, scripted possessions, and enemies that respawn on death. At the same time, the enemy's major weapon -- it's AoE attack -- is essentially useless, since it's trivially easy to stand out of its range and use its own summons to keep it from getting close. So, it manages to be both too difficult AND too easy, which is actually pretty impressive. Runner up: Escape from Fromello with it's endless respawns of 1,000 hp slith. Favorite: That's much, much harder because there are so many possibilities. Probably the Blessed Atheme, just for it's three-way fight between the PCs, the Darksiders, and the tunnel monsters. But then there's the Fang Clan fortress (although it may be better for the ending to leave that be); the chitrach-taming bandits, which is just a cool hack-and-slash; and the finale, which is my favorite final battle among any of the Avernums that I've played (which is not the whole series; I came in late).

One thing we missed: As someone just pointed out in another thread, don't kill the red sentinel in Sorengard's first construct test or you won't be able to do the second test.

Excellent question. I like the final battle, but not enough to want to play it 30 times in a row to test out all the possible ending variations...

I think it may affect Mertis, as well -- if you don't do Gladwell's quest in the Undead Spiral, Mertis becomes a prosperous trading community. Does that change if you complete the quest and re-activate the spiral?

Originally Posted By: madrigan Edit: Let me phrase this another way. Is there any point in this game where I can make a non-obvious mistake that will permanently deny me access to any entire fort, town, or city? And by non-obvious, I mean as long as I don't kill everyone in the Castle or stop accepting any quests or something equally ridiculous. Not really. I think there might be one or two mutually exclusive side quests, but that's the extent of it. Screwing up Gladwell's third quest will make a town hostile before you're ready for it, but you get a pretty strong warning about that and it's possible to avoid. A couple of Malachion's quests will also make towns hostile, but again, it's obvious that that's going to happen and you should be done with those towns by that point, anyway. There are several quests that will affect the ending. Some are obvious, but in other cases, it's not clear until much later that what you did changed the ending. As for timing, while a number of individual encounters are timed in some way or another, there's no clock running on world events outside of combat mode (I suppose eventually you could eat all of the available food in Avernum and starve, but you'd have to actively try and, even then, you'd probably get bored before you could).

It's possible that, knowing what you know at the time you get the quest, you might choose not to do it (which would have an effect on the ending) -- but it's not very likely.

The downstairs level of the base is actually one of the final set of quests. Although it's possible to clean it out much earlier than that (but not when you first find it!) and I'd bet gold to lizard meat that almost everybody clears it out before getting the quest their first time through the game.

Originally Posted By: VCH QUESTION: Solberg does ~200 to 300 damage on Torment, how much damage does he do on Normal or Hard? Same, I think. On Normal, he never did less than 200 and the highest I remember was 252. Even so, the initial fight outside the gates took a long time, because those horde warriors had a zillion hit points. But they didn't do enough damage to be much of a threat, so I just let them beat on me until Solberg got around to killing them all (I think my guys got about 2, but even then they took about half their damage from Solberg's area blast). In the inner area, I did stay right around Solberg, which also helped -- I formed a square around Solberg, to make it harder for the enemies to focus on them. This meant that the Slith appeared out of my line of sight and, when the Manburner showed up, her pet demons never activated. One warrior ran up, we whittled him down to a few hit points, then the next round the Manburner ran up and my fighters finally broke formation to attack her. Between me and Solberg (I think we each accounted for about half of the damage), we got her in three rounds, with the warrior going down to incidental area of effect damage in the first of those rounds. Then I went up to the north wall and moved west, picking off the demons one at a time in 1-2 rounds each. The activation thing really seemed like a bug, although I doubt the demons would have made the fight much harder even if they'd attacked when they were supposed to.

Originally Posted By: BrownieMix I don't usually use wands, instead saving them for when I absolutely need them. Me, too. That's why I still had all my Disruption Wands for that fight. Usually, it means I end up wasting items, finishing the game with a whole lot of unused items. Every now and then it pays off big, though. Originally Posted By: BrownieMix As for the second fight, this was easy only because I guessed right about the AI. As you know, when you activate the sentinels, there are four of them and the surround you quickly. What I did was I went into combat mode, put everyone but my fighter back in the bushes, then battle frenzied my fighter and activated the fight. In the bushes, the walking grid is only one square wide, meaning only one enemy can get through at a time. Mmm, good thought. I had my guys in a corner with a couple of summons (another tactic favored by the veterans that I don't find all that useful in most fights, but was quite helpful here) on the outside. But now that you mention it, the path obviously would have been much better. D'oh!

Originally Posted By: BrownieMix Exactly - I just confirmed this with some playtesting. This actually makes that fight insanely easy, as I have already cleared out the cult area. That's actually possible, anyway. I accidentally went the "wrong" way through the cult area and killed all the human cultists before running into the gazer. And for once BrownieMix and I agree -- the fight is really, really easy when you're fighting the gazer on its own.

Originally Posted By: VCH I found the escort Solberg suicide mission tougher than it should have been for a main plot action. I haven't tried it on Normal or Hard, but I'm thinking that something didn't scale right to torment. I think you may be right. I did it on Normal and was surprised at how easy it was -- I went through the whole thing without even having to reload. The various slith escorts had a zillion hit points, even on Normal, but you basically just sit around doing minimal amounts of damage, taking hits, and healing every now and then and wait for Solberg to finish them out. Those warm-up fights must have taken you a month on Torment. The Manburner herself, though, dropped in three rounds -- I don't believe she even lasted long enough for me to need to heal. The whole thing seemed like a bit of an anti-climax.

Originally Posted By: BrownieMix Thanks for the advice - it's my own fault for trying to use a spell that can't work based on the enemy I'm facing. I did end up winning the fight, although I realized afterwards that if I had two people capable of casting Repel Spirit, I might have been able to win using Fael's method. Actually, I only had one character who could cast Repel Spirit -- two would have made it much easier. I just used a lot of Disruption Wands (as Randomizer says, Death Wands would have been better, but I just assumed they didn't work on undead, so I didn't even try; d'oh!). And, like I said, I killed the lich with my third character on the round the south pylon would have activated, so it was a very near thing. Originally Posted By: BrownieMix The fight afterwards when you *really* kill the lich was also a pain, but there I used the narrow terrain and and the enemy AI to win - it actually was a fairly easy fight. This, on the other hand, was the only fight I've run into yet where I had to give up and come back part way through the next area before I could beat it. Obviously, however BrownieMix and I play, it's the complete opposite of each other, since each of us found one of these two encounters very easy and the other almost impossible -- but we each pick the opposite one.

Originally Posted By: BrownieMix These are three separate complaints that came out of two separate encounters. First, the lich in the Eastern Galley. Frankly, without the use of invulnerability potions, this quest seems impossible. I understand the supposed "trick" - you have to run to the other side of the platform when a pillar is about to explode. However, I feel this encounter is "cheap" because the lich has unlimited summoning abilities. Since he always stays there, he and his summons slow my party down to the point that when he has three summons all in the center area, my party cannot actually get to the other side, which causes them to all die. I tried this encounter a dozen times, and they all ended the same way - death, because there was just no real way to get to the necessary side. I agree that there's basically no way to get across the platform because of the summons (although congrats to Randomizer for managing it!). Essentially, this is a timed encounter -- you have to kill the lich before the south pillar activates. I found this to be just barely possible on Normal, but you have to be very careful to maximize your damage and not waste a single action... and it still takes a little luck. I did it in four tries. Attempt #1: Ran up the middle, engaged the lich in melee, and died when the north platform activated. Attempt #2: Ran for the south bridge, peppered the lich with missile attacks and spells, intended to run for the north bridge after the south pillar activated, but got blocked by summons and died when the south pillar activated. Attempt #3: Really hasted myself, ran for the south bridge, very careful not to waste any actions and to maximize damage, but my priest got hit with terror and, without Repel Spirit, I couldn't do enough damage to kill the lich before the south pillar activated. Attempt #4: Repeat of #3 except without the terror; lich dropped the round the south pillar would have activated (this was on Normal; on Hard or Torment, I still would have died). So, it took me two tries to figure out what to do and then another two to get it right. You just have to make everything count -- use haste and a speed item to make sure you have 13+ AP/round. Always stop moving when you're down to 11 AP so as not to waste any potential actions from Haste. Use Regen so you don't have to waste actions healing. Ignore the summons. Concentrate on damage; don't waste actions on spells that might fail (Control Foe, Daze, etc.) unless you don't mind refighting the battle over and over until they work. Disruption Wands or a second priest really help to maximize damage; but there's not much you can do if you don't have them. I may have done this later than you, too; I went around the Eastern Gallery clockwise from the northeast, so this is one of the last quests I did. Originally Posted By: BrownieMix Last, Control Foe. More then once, I have seen veterans of Avernum suggest this spell when facing an opponent that summons numerous creatures. I have read this spell works wonders. Well, maybe I'm "doing it wrong" but this spell has proven to be nothing but a waste of time. My priest has a Priest Skill of 17, an Intelligence of 8 and a Spellcraft of 17. Yet for some reason THE DAMN SPELL HARDLY EVER WORKS. Maybe it is because I'm using it in hard boss encounters, like the ones above, but not ONE TIME was I able to charm anything either the lich ever summoned or the sentinels guarding the drake. All I get is "so and so resists the charm spell" I have the Cloak of Arcane spell on just in case, but to no avail. I have yet to see for myself an encounter where this spell was in anyway useful, and it is a bit annoying. Yeah, I don't get this, either. The powergamers are always extolling the virtues of Control Foe, Slow, and Daze, but those spells never work for me when I need them. They only ever seem useful in fights that I can win without a problem, anyway. In the tough fights they always fail and I end up wishing I'd used the action on an attack spell, instead. Obviously, they're better than I think they are, because the really good players are forever saying how great they are, but I don't get it, either.

Originally Posted By: Tcheedchee My party stepped into the crypt and there were all these ghouls coming after them from the back. But they were coming one after another, almost as if cueing up for a beating, so my party just finished them off, one after the other. It's actually a reality portal -- for a moment you are transported from Swords & Sorcery Avernum to B-Grade Martial Arts Movie Avernum.

I should add that I never tested whether you can survive the pylon activation after drinking an Invulnerability Elixer. If so, you could use a couple of those to make the fight really easy, since you could keep your fighters on the main platform fighting the lich hand-to-hand.

Originally Posted By: VCH 2. What method will work to kill the arenae queen? My brain protection spell doesn't stop my fighters from becoming charmed. If you're very careful about position, it's possible to use missile weapons to lure most of her escorts out into the hall without activating the queen, allowing you to dispose of them first, then heal up for the big fight. Then use all your buffs, a battle crystal, and a speed scroll or wand, and charge in, ignoring the rest of the escorts and going straight for the queen until she drops. Even then, you may have to repeat a couple times until you get lucky with the charm (make sure to save before going in the final time, so you don't have to re-do the escort sniping every time). Originally Posted By: VCH 5. What method will work to kill the Lich in the Eastern Gallery (under the bone shards keep)? Is the fight more difficult than Nicodius the necromancer? On normal, this fight isn't too bad once you figure out the trick. The insta-death ice blast that's your main enemy in this fight doesn't extend past the main platform. You can fight the lich pretty much forever as long as you stay out of range of those ice blasts Fully buff (use Ward of Elements as your ward and Cloak of the Arcane as your cloak, if you have it) and use a speed item (wand or scroll) and a regen item (Scroll of Regeneration or Battle Crystal). The north pylon activates first, so move your party into a square just on the south bridge. You'll be perfectly safe when the north pylon activates in a couple of rounds. Theoretically, at that point, you could rush over to the north bridge and to escape the south pylon's ice blast. The problem is, by that point your likely to be pinned by summons and spawns, making it impossible to move across the platform. Thus, the challenge of the fight is that you have to kill the lich before the south pylon activates, using only ranged attacks (since you can't get caught on the main platform when the north pylon activates). This is just barely possible on Normal, although I'm not sure how you'd do it on Hard or Torment. Basically, ignore the summons and spawns and throw everything you have against the lich. Someone should do a Shield Breaker as soon as possible. The priest should be using Repel Spirit and the mage casting Fire Bolts or Lightning Sprays, depending on whether there are nearby summons you want to damage. The fighters probably can't do enough damage with bows, so they should use Disruption Wands until they run out (I hadn't used my Disruption Wands at all until this point and then blew through the entire game's supply in five rounds at three charges per round per fighter). Again, you may have to repeat once or twice if you get unlucky with Terrors. Then you go upstairs and fight the Lich's Sentinels, which are much, much, much harder...

Originally Posted By: ISO Uniqueness Others believe that this is cheating, as grinding is an integral part of the gameplay. I can't disagree, but I can and will cheat anyway. I wouldn't say an integral part of gameplay, so much as an integral part of game balance. As in, Jeff thinks, "Okay, I really want to put this re-spawning monster there. But somebody could go kill it 500 times and get some extra levels. Aw, it'll be fine -- even the most insane powergamer isn't going to spend the time to come back and kill it 500 times." But, hey, nothing wrong with a little cheating. That's what the editor's there for, after all. Heck, in some games reloading from a saved game is considered cheating, but I've never heard of anyone even trying that with one of the Avernum games.

I'm going to go against the powergamers and dispute #4. Unlike every other Avernum game, A6 actually gives you more money than you can use. Eventually, you're going to have maxed out what you can buy from the trainers. At that point, there's no reason not to spend your funds increasing spells, particularly healing and attack spells. Knowing that that point will eventually come, it's probably worth spending to increase the really cheap low-level attack and healing spells early. And if there's a spell you want that you haven't found a book for yet, there's no real harm to buying it.

He seems to only teleport when you move a character next to him. Could that have been the issue?

Originally Posted By: Thuryl Even I think that people who use singletons are crazy. I think A5 was easier with a singleton than with a full party. Given the changes to the monster AI, though, I doubt that's the case in this version.

Originally Posted By: Randomizer Death is a great way to tell that you shouldn't be there. True enough. The real problem, actually, isn't trying to take on the harder quests too early, it's taking the easier quests too late. Especially where the mainline splits into three quests of approximately equal difficulty -- what ever order you do them in, the third one you do isn't going to be much of a challenge.

Originally Posted By: Locmaar There's actually 3 Brew/Elixir types (Armor, Invulnerability and Speed) I tend to keep for the really tough endfights - and then forget about them. Wands and crystals I usually keep and don't use either. Next time through I shall dare to sell them all. Yeah, I pretty much did that in A5. And then Chapter 9 turned out to be way easier than Chapter 8. Oops. Fortunately, I learned from that experience and am now... doing the same thing in A6. We'll see how it works for me this time.

Originally Posted By: Thuryl Apart from having two humans in your party and not picking any traits, your build choices aren't really that bad. Okay, I want to ask about this. I use a very similar party makeup to fnl's, in terms of classes: FIghter Dual Wield Fighter Polearm (+Tool Use) Priest/Archer Mage Having a Slith for Polearm Guy and a Nephil for the Archer are no-brainers, but why shouldn't Mage and Melee Guy be Humans? Neither of them are likely to have much use for the racial skills and the extra skill points from the lower experience penalty, even if they're less in absolute value than the free racial skills, can be spent on skills that actually are useful. I mean, sure, the Mage could get a bunch of free Bows and Gymnastics skill by being a Nephil. But wouldn't he be better off having another two or three levels to spend points on Spellcraft, Magical Efficiencey, Intelligence, or Endurance? (Judging by the uniformity of the anti-Human bias among the powergamers, I'm guessing he wouldn't, but I don't quite follow the logic.) I'm not saying you're wrong -- you guys have crunched the numbers way more than I have. But I need the logic explained to me. Originally Posted By: Thuryl Well, I wouldn't say that. You may have noticed by now, but all the compulsive optimisers on these forums have their own idiosyncrasies. You have to make sure that your strategic choices in party building support the tactics you prefer to use in combat. Yeah, but you guys all play at Torment. I play at Normal. 'Nuff said.

Originally Posted By: Thuryl I'm already at the point where disruption wands don't do very much damage compared to my attacks. I used up a few charges each on the Crypt Wight and the Cackling Demon, and am basically selling the rest. We'll see how that goes for me. Um... yeah. I don't think I used any charges on either of those and I was just at the point of thinking I was a chump for hanging on to them so long and that I should just sell them to free up inventory space. And then I hit the undead battle where my fighters were utterly useless and I probably would have died without those wands... Yeah, for the cheap early spells that you're going to keep using throughout the game, it's not so bad to invest in them if you've got a few hundred coins burning a hole in your pocket. I'd rather go for skills first, though. Originally Posted By: Thuryl I can always temporarily stick the Samaritan Sandals on my fighters if I want to use them as heal batteries between fights. I haven't really needed to do so up to now, although since I'm kinda running low on energy potions it's probably not the worst idea to start doing it. The Samaritan Sandals thing is a good point for optimizing, although I find switching gear like that all the time too annoying to bother with. Besides, those Minor Heals (and Cure Poisons) can be very useful in the early game before you get the Samaritan Sandals. Of course, I'm also terrible for hoarding energy potions for "emergencies" that never actually come. I think I have about 22 right now, and who knows how many energy elixers (I haven't used any of those and won't until I run out of energy potions). I think I probably finished A5 without about a 12-18 unused energy potions and elixers in my inventory. Generally, not an optimal solution. Although, as mentioned above, I ended up really glad I'd been so stingy with the Disruption Wands. Originally Posted By: Blue Wizard Shot a Potion So I spent 6041 gold on upgrading spell levels by the time my characters were level 14. That would have covered the cost of training my fighters with Taddeo. Thuryl, how did you earn the 12000 gold needed to buy all the Dharmon blessings? You know, I'm not exactly sure, but money seems to be a lot easier to come by in this version than in A4 or A5. I had no trouble affording the Dharmon blessings before completing the Great Cave, and I never steal anything but Knowledge Brews. Do all the quests and sell everything you're not actively using. Originally Posted By: fnl However, I guess, my party sucks - I did about everything wrong you are writing about, having only one priest, spell-casters with strength and DEX at 3 and 4, etc. etc. (I gave them STR 3 so they could wear more armor, they were often quite badly hurt by range attacks, and the mage draws aggro like nothing with ice rains...). Well, I kinda disagree with Thuryl on both of these points. I, too, have only one priest. I agree that a second would be really nice, but I don't really find a convenient slot for one in the party. I don't like the dual mage/priest character because I don't find that my mage has the spare mana for casting priest spells, anyway. And even my mage has Str 5, Dex 5 (and my priest has Str 7, Dex 6 -- but he's also my archer, which is why the high Dex). I agree with you, fnl, on the need for higher strengths so that the spellcasters can wear decent armor. This isn't as important in A6 as it was in the last couple versions, especially A5 where the monsters always completely ignored the fighters and went straight for the priest, no matter what I did (in A5, I actually found that a singleton was easier than a full party, because that way every battle didn't end up with the *#&@ priest getting killed). In A6, they will actually attack my fighters much of the time. But not so much I don't want to give heavy armor to the casters. EDIT: Of course, anyone who takes my advice over Thuryl's is an idiot.

Originally Posted By: Thuryl Oh, and don't be afraid to use wands, potions or crystals in tough battles. They're handy, and they won't do you any good if you hold on to them forever. I would suggest stockpiling your disruption wands, though. There was one specific battle where I burned through the entire game's worth of disruption wands in about four rounds. I won't spoiler where it is... you'll know it when you see it. Originally Posted By: Blue Wizard Shot a Potion From an earlier post of Thuryl's, I understand now that buying multiple levels of a spell was a waste. I'm a little resentful now that Jeff even offers that as money bait. I could have spent it on the trainers I can no longer afford. I keep reading this and I mostly live by it, but I have to wonder... don't multiple levels increase the damage from combat spells? Even if it's only a little, some of the early spells are dirt cheap -- you can max out Bolt of Fire for just a couple of hundred gold? Wouldn't that, Repel Spirit, and maybe Smite and/or Icy Rain be worth it? They're so cheap, even if the damage increase is minor, it's hard to argue against it. And I do have one question about Thuryl's party. Although it's much better optimized than mine in almost every respect, why don't the two fighters each have a level of priest? I always give my fighters a single level of priest right at the start so that they can use Minor Heal to get the party's hit points back up to full strength between combats without wasting spell points from the real casters, healing potions, food, etc. Even with minimum Intelligence, they still represent a significant reservoir of spell points that would otherwise be wasted. Even with that, my priest's spell points are usually the weak link for when I have to go back to town and rest up.