madrigan

I have another one. We're in the Beraza Woods with Monitor Shigaz, and Shigaz says that Sevilin and Jenell have to stay behind. Sevilin says something like what the heck, I am finally redeemed and now I have to wait here? Again, this was after I refused to kill the bandit who had ambushed him prior to the game.

Originally Posted By: Master1 Jeff's system for dialogue gives certain options when different members are with you. It's quite reasonable to expect a few hiccups. I agree. But if there is a version 1.0.2 Jeff might want to fix these little things. If he doesn't it won't affect my opinion of the game.

Thanks all.

I saw something a bit off in connection with the companion quests also. When I did Sevilin's quest, I refused to kill the bandit leader. Later on, when we were expelling the titans from the Wretch Lands, he said that he was really happy because his friends had been avenged. This is perhaps a few days of in-world time after he said he would never forgive me for refusing to avenge his friends.

I suppose I should make sure I know what an SDF is. What's an SDF?

Originally Posted By: CRISIS on INFINITE SLARTIES Since making that G4 reputation guide, I twitch whenever I see a moral choice in Jeff's games. It is relieving in Avadon to see that most choices have no consequence and adjust no SDFs, but it will take a while for my twitch to stop. In the Gear Diary review Jeff recently mentioned on FB, the author says: "So it is a breath of fresh air that you truly make changes and choices in Avadon. Make no mistake, since the main quest-line is linear as I said earlier you are headed on the same path to the same final confrontation, but as you make more and more choices in one direction or the other they add up, your reputation is altered and the world before you subtly shifts." Is that just totally wrong?

Originally Posted By: UniversalWolf Here's what I'd do with the skill trees: hide the top two tiers until they're activated by spending points, and make the skills change depending on what kind of morality the player pursues. Evil flavor versus good flavor, for example. Or more than flavor, if possible. The moral choices in Avadon often come down to two or three equally imperfect options. I just finished Sevilin's find-the-bandit quest and all of the paths to resolution were wrong in some way, but also right. The game does not have an alignment system. As a representative of an amoral (at best) government agency charged with maintaining order at all costs, I'd say all the characters are morally compromised from the beginning. It would take something really extreme -- like slaughtering an entire town for personal reasons -- to make the character really evil-evil. I don't think the game offers anything -- at least not up to this point -- that would make my character really superpaladin good.

Originally Posted By: Synergy KEEP your spare PCs all best equipped they can be, including spare scarabs, because you never know when you might be using their services in your party, and even if you never plan to choose them. What is the reason for the statement I bolded? I realize this is a spoiler request -- is this because if I have completed all of their personal quests I can recruit them to help kill Redbeard at the end? I am just guessing at this because of a few things I have seen scattered around the forum. I decided early on that Jenell and Sevilin would be my permanent team, so I'm wondering if that cuts off a major plot option.

Thank you.

Thank you. And now that I have reached White Plains, which is nothing like Westchester, I have failed to note exactly where Mert says the Claw is hiding. Do you happen to remember that?

I have the quest to go look for Sevilin in the Kva. The quest list says I have a map to where he is, but I don't. Traveling to the Kva doesn't seem to activate anything. Is there an actual map somewhere?

You have to go back and talk to the warlord again.

Don't feel dumb. Well, maybe we're both dumb. But I did the same thing. Didn't confront him at the fortress, then assumed he had traveled directly to his tower. I spent half a day wandering around the woods.

I really like the item that causes stone blocks to appear in your pack -- The Reproducing Bulwark?. It took me a while to figure out what was happening.

Originally Posted By: FnordCola I think that's an interesting story in itself, but it loses sight of the problem that was the raison d'etre of the "ethnic minority/member of non-dominant culture" thing in the first place. That is, the fact that characters who appear to be from Holklanda/the Wyldrylm are not recognized as such, and receive instruction on those cultures as if they were foreigners. A person who has received several years of training as a shadowwalker, from native Holklandan shadowwalkers, would presumably have substantial knowledge of Holklandan culture, and might well have adopted various mannerisms typical of Holklandans in order to fit in with his instructors. I did think of that, or part of it. I assume that the PC moves straight from the isolation of a remote ethnic enclave straight to the isolation of intense daily training. During these many years of training the PC interacts with members of the dominant culture, but only with members of the dominant culture who have to some degree abandoned the common day-to-day cultural trappings of their previous lives in order to focus on an older, more "pure" way of expressing the culture. For example if I had, as a child, or young adult, moved from New York to Japan to live in a remote Zen monastery, I would know many Japanese people but much of contemporary Japanese culture would be completely unknown to me. Given that the Pact nations do not have electronic media, and that many areas are very hard to travel to, an member of a minor ethnicity living in a remote enclave within Holklanda might know less about Holklandan culture than I actually know about Japanese culture in RL even though I've never been there and speak no Japanese. In my game I am playing a shadowwalker. So the way it would work in-world is something like: "I was born within the borders of Holklanda in a remote area where the roads don't go. I am not Holklandan, but many of the older practices of my people resemble some of the older Holklandan practices, so it is possible that we were one people long ago. When I was child, a Holklandan woman from Avadon visited my village. As I was the son of a village elder, I was noticed by this woman when she came to meet with the local council. She explained that I had great potential as a "shadowwalker" and my parents decided it was best that I attend the Institute for Shadowwalking and Ninja Awesomeness. The next day I began the long journey to the ISNA. The training was hard and often painful. Though I was never treated badly, I did not quite fit in with my fellow students, who sometimes ridiculed my odd pronunciation of "sibboleth." Nonetheless we were all following an ancient path that was largely forgotten outside of the ISNA. Most Holklandans will never know how much of their well-being and security is owed to the efforts of the shadowwalkers. After many years, I became a shadowwalker and was assigned to Avadon. The world still seems strange to me, sometimes, but I am devoted to Avadon's mission of law, order, and peace. I have never been able to return to my village; perhaps I will never see it again. "

I'm on the Beraza Woods quest now. I have been using the blademaster and the shaman as my companions almost exclusively. A couple of quests ago we ran into the mangled-hand guy who ambushed the blademaster. I really wish I could remember peoples' names. Anyway, we did not kill mangled-hand guy. All I want to know is, are we going to get another shot at him? It is starting make me sad, the poor guy is so troubled by what happened.

Originally Posted By: FnordCola Just as long as it's not clearly an argumentum ex culo. @Madrigan: I think that idea has some merit, but it works a lot better for some classes than others. A blademaster could presumably be from any ethnicity that has that approximate skin tone and isn't broadly averse to the use of heavy metal armor. The sorceress has the standard Kellem look, but presumably Dharam and a few other places have substantial numbers of people with pale skin and blond hair. The shaman and shadowwalker are a bit more problematic, though. The former practices a style of magic that seems exclusively native to the Wyldrylm and Khemeria. The latter wears garb that is heavily bound up in Holklandan tradition; there are even a few points in the game where the narrator comments that a character's shadowwalker garb looks inauthentic. These are all good points. With the shaman, it's not at all unlikely that there would be a minor ethnicity which had religious and cultural practices similar enough to those of the Wyldrylm to be invisible in game terms, but which was also culturally distinct enough that its members would be interacted with in the manner I described. A member of this minor ethnicity might be genetically related to members of the dominant culture going back to some remote past when a cultural branching took place, which would explain the similar physical appearance. I think the same conception works with the shadowwalker. As well, we don't know for sure that a member of a minor ethnicity would be absolutely excluded from the training of a shaman or a shadowwalker. I think it's adequately plausible to assume that a shadowwalker PC was raised in a remote ethnic enclave of Holklanda, but was able to receive the training as an adult, or that a shaman PC was raised in a similar circumstance in the Wyldrylm and adopted the dominant religious practices later. The backstory might include episodes in which the character chose to leave his or her community and adopt some of the practices of the dominant culture, or in which the character's potential was noticed by a high ranking Eye or Hand from that dominant culture. Thus the character is a completely legitimate shaman or shadowwalker in terms of garb and abilities, and appears the same physically from our perspective, but is nonetheless treated differently from more "normal" members of those professions as their in world physical traits or speaking accent are a bit "off."

Thanks!

Can I just install this without losing my saved games?

I don't know anything about this Bioware-Obsidian-Bethesda issue, but if I think that my character is missing a backstory, I just make one up. There are probably many people living in the Pact nations who do not share any of the five dominant ethnicities. The game doesn't mention them because it's not important to the main story, but there are probably equivalents to, say, the Jews, the Roma, or the Parsi. I assume my character is from an enclave of an ethnic group of this sort. The peoples of the pact seem rather ethnocentric, which helps explain why no one ever refers to my culture or background -- they don't consider it worth acknowledging. It also helps to explain why I don't seem to have a connection to any place I travel -- my people are few, and none of my missions happen to take place where they live. If my people tend to live and work inside their own communities, that would explain why I don't know anything about the major cultures of the Pact. I think think this is much more useful, in terms of determining my character's standpoint and explaining the details of the game, than assuming that he is an orphan or has amnesia. I often make things up like this and simply assume it as I go through the game. I sometimes did the same with some of my Avernum games. I find it enriches my game experience and it doesn't make any more work for Jeff.

I was looking in the wrong place entirely. The trapdoor was where I first thought the entrance would be, but I was looking for secret door buttons and missed the obvious trapdoor, and decided to look in another area. I think I was standing right next to it without noticing it.

Originally Posted By: Randomizer You have 58 skill points to add to skills in a game. It takes 2 skill points to get a new skill and 1 skill point to increase an existing skill. It takes 101 skill points to get every skill to the maximum level. This passage is unclear to me. It takes 101 skill points to get every skill to maximum level, but you have 58 skill points to add to skills in a game? Do you mean that you have 43 skill points to initially add skills, and 58 skill points to improve those skills once acquired, assuming you reach level 30?

Thanks! I'll try it out tonight.

I feel like a dope for getting stuck this early in the game, but I can't figure out how to get into the main part of the Wretch Warrens. I'm pretty sure I have been through the whole map, and I have discovered a number of secret passages towards the NW which I assume are the back entrance that I was told about. However, there is a locked door at the end of the secret passages that seems to lead into the Warrens, and the game says that it is locked and can't be picked. Where the heck is the key to this door? Just to be clear, I have found a lightly guarded area which appears to be at a mine entrance, but I can't seem to get in that way, and then quite close to the scout camp there are several secret passages connected to each other which end up at this door. I even tried a frontal assault on the main entrance, which wasn't very hard since I'm playing on Casual, but I don't think I can actually get in that way.

Things I like: 1) Graphics are great, much improved over G5 and A6. 2) Legal philosophy banter so early in the game. 3) "NPCs" are competent and advance with my character. 4) Some of the special abilities are cool. 5) Between auto-heal and return-to-town I lean 60% towards auto-heal. RTT feels more realistic; AH is much less annoying. Things I don't like: 1) Less control over character building than in the Avernum games. 2) Geneforge-style zones instead of Avernum-style contiguous map. In RL if I want to go two towns over I have to pass through the intervening municipalities. I find the jumping around a bit jarring. 3) Background sounds seem incongruous in some locations. Also, and this isn't really negative or positive: I like that I'm not really sure if I am a good guy or a bad guy within the context of the game world. I appreciate the moral ambiguity, which is Geneforgey. On the other hand, overall I like the more clearly heroic path provided by the Avernum games. So I am only a few zones in but I hope that there is at least one ending where I have stabbed Evil to death and am totally awesome. And yeah, the text is small.