madrigan

I wanted the _A Christmas Story_ ending -- "all was right with the world." And then "FOR NOW..." tacked on to leave the door open for Avernum 7. The actual ending wasn't disappointing, because it was the kind of in-world realistic, ambivalent ending that helps make Spiderweb games great. But it was sad, to me anyway, and I had hoped there would be some way to really defeat the horde, cure the Blight, and restore Avernum to its former greatness before retiring wealthy and admired.

Thanks all. I actually have been putting points into Leadership and Mechanics, but I forgot to say so. I am thinking I will get both of them to about 10 and leave them there. My first attempt at this build was cut short when I got to the Stoneworks with only 6 points in Leadership and didn't want to use 10 living tools to open that one door. With no good way to level up at that point, I started over and overloaded those two skills at the beginning.

Question 1: I am attempting G5 again after two prior attempts which produced terrible characters who got beat up in any of the tougher battles towards the end of the game. This time I am a Lifecrafter, and I am trying to approach skill point distribution based on the character class description, that is, I am letting my creations do almost all of the fighting while I stay back and use buffs and healing spells. So far I have been putting most of my points into Intelligence, Battle and Magic Shaping, Healing Craft, and Blessing Magic. Is it possible to succeed this way? Do I need to find or train in the higher level Battle and Mental Magic spells, or can I reserve those points to make more and better creations? Am I going to need, at some point, to blow away enemies on my own? Question 2: In the past I have avoided using any canisters at all. Now I am using some of them, maybe 2/3 of them. Is this going to impede me in a significant way? Will it keep me from completing any important quests? Thanks all.

I admit I haven't read the entire thread, but I don't want the games to be hard. I want them to be fun. I don't play games for the challenge, I play them because they are diverting. If they require too much research or min-maxing to beat, that's not fun or diverting. That's work. These are RPGs. Let me succeed with a character or characters that I like playing.

The question is, do the characters know that they don't need to buy anything because they will just find stuff lying around? I play with the assumption that if the characters need something, they will purchase it, since they don't know the future, and hoping to find it in a random barrel is too great a risk.

Originally Posted By: Student of Trinity There's also an art to giving drill commands. A bad command can make crack troops look like idiots. I immediately thought of Alec Baldwin on SNL screaming "TAKE THE SHAWWWWWWWWT!!!" at a couple of sniper trainees.

Buffalo, NY is the second largest city in the state and has 270,000 people in it.

Originally Posted By: Monroe Originally Posted By: madrigan Originally Posted By: Spidweb In other words, there will be an outdoors distinct from the towns. Nuts. I'm much less excited now. Well, I'l see if I like the demo. Note that this was in reference to a remade Avernum 1-3. Changing the layout would be difficult and would alter the game. Yeah, I realize that. Well, actually I have no idea what the coding and design challenges would be if Jeff decided to covert A1-3 to the seamless world, but if he says it would be a huge bear then I assume that's true. Nonetheless I think this will make the games less enjoyable for me. But the indoors/outdoors was not one of the top 2-3 reasons why I could never get through much of the original A1-3, so maybe it won't turn out to be too annoying.

Originally Posted By: Lilith Avernum 6's promotional campaign literally promised "the end of Avernum" i'm sort of baffled that people are disappointed that that's what they got I took that to mean that the entire country would, or might, be destroyed, like total cave in, fire, mass demonic invasion. I thought maybe the characters would have a chance to prevent that. Instead the ending was in the middle. I appreciate that Jeff's games do not always offer crystal clear outcomes, and that makes the games more sophisticated and realistic. On the other hand, this is fantasy, and I wanted a chance to fix the portal, drive out the horde, cure the blight, and leave Avernum intact for eternity. The saga of the PCs in the Avernum games has usually been of a "wrong place, right time" nature -- like, I don't know, Han Solo or Kyle Rayner. In A6, it was more of a Raiders of the Lost Ark thing where it seems that, had the PCs never existed, things would have ended up pretty much the same way. As for the ending text, I didn't like the idea that the PCs never got to return home. But I very much liked the idea of Avernum as an actual existing shadow version of the Empire, serving a mythological, metaphysical, and practical purpose in its continued continued functioning.

Originally Posted By: Spidweb In other words, there will be an outdoors distinct from the towns. Nuts. I'm much less excited now. Well, I'l see if I like the demo.

I don't like the indoors/outdoors shift and I don't like zones. In A3 your characters approach what is supposed to be a huge city and it looks like a little postage stamp on the screen. Then you have to wait for the city to load. I like having to actually pass through the city gates as if I was passing through the city gates. I also like having to actually transit, whether on foot or magically, between parts of the map. It makes the game world seem more real. Having to go from pylon to portal to pylon, for example, enforces the idea that actual distance exists. The zones make it feel like the areas are all disconnected from each other.

If you read the descriptions of most games, they sound cliched and/or dull. It depends on the execution. My primary concern is whether the game will be enjoyable for people who suck at games. I suck at games. I love Avernums 4-6 because, among other reasons, I can create whatever characters I want, ignore min-maxing techniques, and still have fun and complete the game. It's hard to create a completely useless party in those games. I find Geneforges 4-5 much more difficult, and they seem to require stricter adherence to particular point and item allocations. Jeff wrote on his blog recently about making games easier. I hope he succeeds in this regard when he is working on Avadon.

Originally Posted By: Dantius Wait, what? Since when are there unstable creations in A6? Click to reveal.. The slimes in the old goblin fort/alchemy lab near Fort Monastery, for one.

Presumably there are many Vahnatai who were alive long before A1 and will be alive a long time after A6. But perhaps you meant characters that the PCs actually see. I thought Athron was dead and was communicating from the other side.

Originally Posted By: Fael Actually, if you look carefully, the path is marked... Click to reveal.. ...by paintings of dragons on the walls. I never noticed that.

Make note of the route back to the gates, instead of doing what I did, which is run around the Honeycomb for half an hour or more trying to remember how to get back there.

Maybe Jeff could license Steve Jackson's Munchkin and make a parody RPG out of that. That would cost a lot of money, though. Although I'm thinking that if he wants to do a serious S-F game, it is going to cost a lot anyway because he will need to buy a lot of new graphics.

I also vote for Divine Restoration.

I'd rather see an Avernum 7 taking place perhaps a hundred years after Avernum 6, with the option of playing as Avernite adventurers, horde troops, or followers of Melanchion. But I realize Jeff really doesn't want to continue the story forward.

I have checked on all three claims, and killed all the monsters therein. When I return to her, she says she will pay me when I'm done. Is there a code to check off the quest, or do I just need to reinstall?

I probably did this quest a little early, but I was able to complete it once I realized that I didn't have to destroy the two sentinels. It's a smash and grab, not a search and destroy.

I do the same thing every time through the game: Kill the giant queen, tell the mayor of Highground about it just to rub it in their collective face, refuse the Vahnatai's Muck quest, and then just before I leave the Vahnatai lands go back and steal Highground's entire secret treasury. The last time I also went back through the giants' fort and killed every living thing in it as well as every giant along the road from Highground to Muck. From a role-playing perspective, I assume that my characters are young and still a bit idealistic, and when left on their own they decide to take sides in the most insistent way possible. I think that's quite plausible. A lot of real people, if they had the power to intervene effectively in a situation like that, would do so.

The DL quest comes from Levitt, the creepy spymaster at the Castle.

Mage spell power in A4 is based on mage spells skill + magery + spellcraft + spell level, so unless your mage has a very low mage spells skill for some reason, you should be able to lower that barrier. But as I recall, you walk over that rune -- the one I think you are referring to, out in the hall, not the ones that cause you problems when you're fighting the lich -- a dialog box should say that you notice a secret door, then there's a little room behind the wall. If you're walking over that rune and nothing is happening, maybe something broke. Perhaps one of the programmy members of the forum know what to type to make it work. Or maybe you should reinstall the app, which should not affect your saved games, although every time I reinstall I move my save games anyway just out of paranoia.

I'm working from memory here, but I'm pretty sure that "hit" in this context means "walk over." If you're walking over all the runes in the place and nothing is happening, then I'm not sure why.