Lord Bob

That would depend on the crisp. In my neck of the Canadian woods, any baked crisp will explicitly advertised that it's baked because it's perceived as being healthier: if it doesn't say, it's deep-fried.

So I guess the Avernum series's subtitle is now "The Kelner Chronicles".

I actually think I missed a human, in hindsight. Kelner was the apprentice who gave you directions to Solberg in A1, wasn't he?

Originally Posted By: Marak X and Solberg, who have extended their lifespans using their mastery of magic. On the downside, both are pretty much half-undead at this point, and are well on their way to becoming full-fledged Liches. I deliberately said "through", not "into". Solberg dies in the game and I'm willing to count X as dead because I'm that sort of guy.

So, I beat A6 last night and I was thinking. Which characters made it all the way through the trilogy in six parts? I can think of three, they're all dragons, and we haven't seen any of them since A3: Khoth, Athron, and Sulfras. Am I missing anybody?

Hey, Solberg loves Avernum! Loves it so much he has to kill it so it can never hurt itself!

Looking forward to it. Although Avernum 3 called, and it wants the phrase "last Avernum game" back.

1) Avernum 2: Best story and excellent gameplay. You could get in huge, raging, fights, but there was an excellent ratio of story-to-killing. And the killing was memorable; the vahnatai-aided assault on that tower whose name eludes me was a superb fight. Fun characters. Fun side quests. Enough to do that it took me a year to mostly clear it out. There simply wasn't one weak spot in the game: A2 is up there with Knights of the Old Republic and Baldur's Gate II on the list of the best RPGs I've ever played. 2) Avernum: High marks for originality. If the setting and the characters have worn somewhat with age, that's not Avernum's fault. Plus, when I played through it again fairly recently I was pleased by just how well it held up: it carried over Avernum 2's very nice ratio of story-to-killin'. 3) Avernum 3: Too long and quite dreary at points, but the best-looking game Spiderweb ever made and with some serious high points. Moreover, it was certainly the largest and richest Avernum game, and while there was more filler than I'd like (I understand why it was there, but still), there was enough substance to make up for that. 4) Avernum 5: Wander through what is essentially a long corridor and every so often somebody throws eight monsters with a thousand hit points at you. Avernum 5 was some sort of reverse sandwich: the best parts were on either end but the middle was a bunch of dry, crusty bread. Bonus points for having neat characters and the best storyline since A2. Minus points for having less freedom to move than your average Choose Your Own Adventure story. I realise that this was to a large extent by design, but I don't have to like the design. 5) Avernum 4: I wouldn't say it's a bad game, but it's the least of the Avernums. It shared with A5 the problem of having fights and puzzles that were just annoying rather than fun. It had a sublimely tired villain in Rentar-Ihrno and the Darkside Loyalists occupying a big chunk of game but ultimately seeming more like a sequel hook than a plot. But the engine was an improvement and the game was fun enough to play through once.

Quote: Originally written by Student of Trinity: There's no arguing about taste, but man, I wonder if we played the same game. Sure, there were a lot of some things — scuttlers, wolves, worms, chitrachs, revenants — in a few places. But if any number of monsters larger than three equals grinding, then it is also going to get monotonous fighting endless streams of lone bosses. Up to a point, number is just another variable for monsters, and there is more variety if all the variables get used. I'm not averse to killing stuff or even killing lots of stuff if it's done well. Dorikas's fortress involved lotsa killin' and a million nameless mooks but the battle was interesting so I had fun. By contrast, A5 seemed to have a lot of "it's the same fight as last time, only this time the bad guys are red" going on in other sections. Again, it is a question of taste: your thresholds might be higher than mine, which frankly fills me with envy. But still. From my perspective, it was irritating as all get out.

Having just gunned through A5 for the first time, I must confess to some disappointment. Don't get me wrong. A5 was a good game. I don't regret the time or money I spent on it in the least. But it ought to have been a great game; storywise, it was the best since A2 by a walk. The engine was just miles better than A4's. But the flaws made me sad. I was looking forward to seeing Solberg again, so it was a bit a shock to see him as an insane, resentful, oblivious, half-undead recluse. I was looking forward to seeing a bit more from the Redmark family connection than a brief "Erika was bad". And the game progressed very linearly, like a Super Mario Bros. game: there was Frontier World, and Golem World, and Anama World, and Vahnatai World, and Dragon World, and then finally you caught Bowser in his meeting room and ran around a castle whacking him until he went away. Of course, you could go back for various subquests, but the main thread of the game was very much a one-way street. And the grinding. Oh lord, the grinding. Were those articles Jeff did about RPGs last year ghostwritten or something? Because whatever the record was for 'most time spent wandering around whacking stuff that's the same as the previous stuff but green and that has no connection to anything', I'm pretty sure it was broken. The "you walk across the bridge and all of a sudden chitrachs with 800 hit points arrive on every side and you get to spend the next century going through them" was cute the first fifteen times he did it, but by now it's getting a little stale. I can think of one genuinely interesting new monster, the rockhounds: they were cool because they were a novel idea rather than the old giant lizard -> fire lizard -> mutant lizard -> warped lizard -> really giant lizard -> warped lizard Royale with Cheese progression. The vahnatai lands were the worst for this: if I saw one more random group of irritating but not particularly dangerous bad guys, I was probably going to throw something. I'm harping on the bad because it bugged me. This was that close to being a genuinely brilliant game. I consider it money well-spent (Spiderweb Software is still ace as far as value for money is concerned!), time well-spent, enjoyed playing it, will play it again, will recommend it to my friends, and will still be very sad that it's a good game and not anything more than that.

Quote: Originally written by Infernal Flamming Muffin: Jeff said that Rentar and Erika are gone. Period. Did he not also say there would be no Avernum 4, period? Of course, I'm glad he went back on his sworn word in that case, but I'm just saying: when you're a game designer trying to get people to buy your stuff so you can feed your family, I'm sure nothing is impossible.

A bit of action on "Imperial Soldier" at three-to-one is looking really sweet right now, I gotta tell you. And if I were to take the two that depended on game choice, they're obviously the Anama (the really easy pick) and the Darkside Loyalists (the slightly-less-easy pick). I'd happily wager somebody else's house on the lot.

Quote: Originally written by Little Billy Sue: X, my friend, has an anvil gun. That reminds me of one point I've been wanting to make for a while: I swear right now that if Jeff ever releases an Avernum game in which the PCs can learn 'X's anvil spell, I will buy a copy no matter how bad it is.

Quote: Originally written by Kelandon: Quote: Originally written by Spidweb: This particular thing was quite intentional. Solberg was basically put on ice for a game. I intend for him to be back in a notable role in Avernum 5. That's one of the more bizarre teasers I've ever heard. Now I am rather more intrigued by A5 than I ought to be. Avernum 5: The Vahnatai Didn't Do It, It Was Solberg All Along. Also, 'X' will have a machine gun.

Noticed this on my second play-through (yes, you people who want to rate Avernum 4 a -5 out of 10, I played it twice). You know the mission to raid the Darkside Loyalists base near Fort Saffron? The one with all the regenerating pillars? Through that base, there is a exit out into the Scree Pits through two gates. If you take that exit out into the Scree Pits before getting the task to get the vahnatai box from the Scree Pits and opening up the barriers in Fort Emerald, the gate might close behind you and you might end up, barring a cheat code, trapped in the Scree Pits. But that's not all. Even if you haven't got the vahnatai box mission yet, the vahnatai box is still there. If you go get it, cheat your way out of the Scree Pits, and go to the Castle, you will be relieved in this box in the usual manner despite having not got the mission yet, and things will continue. This has a number of odd effects: 1) You can skip a large chunk of the pre-Starrus Castle quests. 2) Fort Emerald never opens, meaning the only entrance out into the Scree Pits is through the Fort Saffron Darkside base and the only way out is to cheat. 3) Depending on when you get it, there might be other things. For instance, I got the box before Almaria had been opened up, so Almaria remained closed and hostile even after I killed the shade. The vahnatai envoy was said to have died in Almaria. Very interesting stuff. It's not like, other than Demonslayer, there's anywhere worth going in the Scree Pits anyway, and Almaria can be teleported around 99% of the time. Still.

Quote: Originally written by Red_Sage: I'm making one but unfortunately, it will only be for windows users (being as I'll be using Visual C++ .NET) and I dont think I have the stamina to allow for item editing. Itll just be stats, traits and money editing. Ive figured out most of the save format info with regards to characters. "Header" stores the little image, time, date and all that. "Data" is where character info starts. Stuff like Level, for the first character, is stored at the 23968th byte, stats begin at the 24006th etc. I was bored last night. p.s. i started because i didnt pay attention to the unlock door - tool use connection. Took care of that problem. Glad to hear it. Good luck to you!

Just beat it. On balance, enjoyed it. Worth the money. Probably still the weakest of the four. The good news: Avernumforge didn't kill my brain. As everybody else has said, combat was wonderful, even though I was getting stomped repeatedly in the early game before my brain got into the groove. I like the idea that party members aren't dead, just unconcious, don't mind returning to town to heal, and went insane from having to return to town to reenergize. Spells were better, although Arcane Blow remains the Great White Elephant of the spell set. I liked walking around all of Avernum as if it were indoors A1-3 style a lot more than I thought I would. That was really neat. Elimination of mild annoyances as mentioned above. A lot of the graphics looked really neat. The fact that there's a new Exilvernum story for the first time since I learned Spiderweb existed. That neat bit of dialogue where the Empire tourist says that nobody's sure whether there were conveyer belts or lasers. No more "omg teh vahanati did it". The bad news: omg teh vahanati did it. The end game (as in, the game actually ends when you pummel Rentar) irritated me to no end, since I had been planning to go back and deal with stuff like the Mertis undead, the Darkside guys, and a large list of other things after killing Rentar A1/A2 style. The whole Darkside name, just because it made me quote Star Wars for the entire game. Lack of elevation. Those little geographical oddities caused by moving the map over to an entirely new engine (I've played A1 and A2 about a dozen times, so I said 'hey, that's odd' so often I began to feel profoundly loserish). The fact that I could take my Shaper into a cavern full of fyoras. The fact that none of the character graphics I usually used were ported over. The end of those funny pictures for each skill and attribute on the character sheet. The Geneforge combat system, which annoyed me every time my one surviving warrior got slowed and couldn't attack anything, nicely allowing the wimpy monsters surrounding him to beat the tar out of him unimpeded. I was going to put 'lack of the classic Avernum artifacts' as a bad, but apparently somebody up there met Demonslayer and the Jade Halberd while I didn't see any, so I can only presume I missed them because I inadvertantly skipped a large fraction of the game. I think the bad list is longer than the good one, but a lot of the neat stuff about the three Avernums (the atmosphere, the just-one-more-cave value) was present here and, frankly, was too diverse to remark upon. As I said, though, I think it's still the weakest of the quadrilogy, although, surprisingly, it's not mostly the engine's fault. I vaguely liked the idea that Rentar'Ihrno could decide to go quietly (I was aggressive in our first confrontations, so she wasn't listening to my requests for peace). I'll replay it again at least once more to see what I missed. But my Avernum II CD will be getting a lot more wear than this one. 7.3 out of 10.

Quote: Originally written by Arenaqs: Perhaps I'm pessimistic, but I think "a few" is understating it. I think that the amount of really, really horrible BoA scenarios out there, even with some editing help, will never rival the volume of blindingly agonizing BoE scenarios, because even with an easier editor, there's some serious thinking to be done there. I just think the gains in utility and ease for everybody outweigh the fact that there will be more BoA scenarios and yes, quite a few of them will suck.

Frankly, I think that if these tools make it easier for all the duncecaps who think that the dragons of Avernum are Motrax, Khoth, and Trogdor, so what? There are plenty of OMG LUK AT MEE!!!!!! scenarios out there for BoE, and the classical reaction has to been either to flame to bits/wait until they go away, or if the newbie shows any promise to let them work it out. These editors make it easier for the idiots, but it also makes it easier for the people who are learning like to get their feet wet before the plunge, and for the veterans who just want a quicker, less tedious way of doing things. This, to me, justifies the possibility that we'll have to ignore a couple more hunks of dreck than we do right now.

I'd take Avernum 2 to my own personal grave, but Avernum 3 is still a darned good game, easily the largest of the three and, if you can only buy one, probably stands well enough on its own. Blades of Avernum is obviously worth a look, but it'll be quite a while before there's enough good BoA scenarios out there for you to get more gameplay in than you would with A3. And, of course, there's just something about one, big, grand epic plot like in A3. Playing a bunch of smaller scenarios just isn't the same, to me.

I'd have to sing up in favour of Castle Troglo for me! After all, troglodytes are reasonably clean and well-scholared. The castle has a very large library, full dining services, a splended garden, an excellent defensive position for when the taxman comes, luxury bedrooms, and after you kill all the warriors the regular troglos could be your servants. Plus, it has an expansive basement for all your expansive basement needs.