madrigan

Originally Posted By: Randomizer Graham is the guard captain in Formello and his office is just south of the west gate. The quest gets posted on the job board after you finish and claim reward for the rat quest, I think. It doesn't appear until after you've done most of the quests in the area. Thanks everybody. That explains it, because I don't think I've ever completed that rat quest. I can never find enough rats. All Graham says to me is, "go away until you've done something useful, grrr blah blah shade." I'm at the Tower of Magi now, but maybe I will go back and try to find some more rats. Maybe if I do the Letter From Giscard quest, there are some more rats in those locations...?

I'm playing A4 for the fourth or fifth time, and for the fourth or fifth time I have killed Hrickis, and for the fourth or fifth time I cannot find anyone who gives you a quest to kill him. I've talked to the herbalist out there, and various farmers, and they all tell me about Hrickis, but there doesn't seem to be any quest. They do thank me, though. So is there an actual quest for this?

Originally Posted By: ANIKaytar So, we know Alwan survives the end of Geneforge 4, but given his current state, it's still entirely possibly that the Rebel ending was chosen to be the starting point for the new game - he could easily have been left for dead, and then shielded himself and slipped out of Northforge. Although, if he's needing supports to keep him standing up, that's not overly likely. He could have been left for dead, regained consciousness in the darkened lab, and used the last of his essence to shape a Fyora to drag him to the nearest Shaper camp.

He had a lot of cash, so he could have scraped up some goons. Perhaps his plan would have been a frontal assault by a mob of goons, while he and Ruth snuck in to assassinate the king.

Originally Posted By: Student of Trinity But let's face it, average middle-class evil masterminds are on the way out everywhere. It takes scale to compete in today's evil marketplace, no matter where you are. The little local villains are getting bought out or plowed under by the big box overlords. An awful lot of old-fashioned Mom & Pop maniacs are working as henchmen, now, while the few guys at the evil top are losing track of just how many impregnable final strongholds they own. Tell me about it. When I visit my home town now, I barely recognize the place. Dr. Gigawatt's storefront hideout was on High St. for fifty years. Now it's a Starbucks. Megalomania Village, where I had my first apartment, was knocked down to make room for the Regal and a PetSmart. It's just not the same.

Originally Posted By: Student of Trinity But whatcha gonna do? Setting tariff barriers on death rays and clone armies is just going to ensure that competition-driven innovation happens in other countries instead of yours. So the call demanding cash under threat of quantum implosion field won't come to the president, but to the prime minister of India. And then how will you feel? I believe that evil Americans can compete with the evil population of any country -- if we have an even playing field. This is why all agreements on trade in genetically engineered sugarcane-killing fungi, expansionist alternate Earth air force teleportation technology, and the ability to control the Hulk must include strong protections for workers and the environment. Sure, so-called free trade might work fine for the Hank Scorpios and Stefano DiMeras of the world, but it can be very harmful to the average middle class evil masterminds who make this industry work.

Originally Posted By: Akavon the Dragon Lord Ugg, that stinks. Thanks though. I was waiting the entire game to visit the rest of Avernum. It was the only thing that disappointed me about A5. There's that image that shows during teleportation that shows the assault on the Darkside Fortress. Until the very end I thought that this was Dorikas attacking the Castle, and that my characters would be there to stop him. That would have been pretty awesome, actually.

Originally Posted By: Student of Trinity Clearly there's an economic niche for evil overlordship services. You sit in the comfort of your own home and, for a small monthly fee, capable professionals implement your twisted schemes with all the expertise that comes with broad experience. They'll build your impregnable stronghold they way it should be built, and they'll build it where costs are lowest. They also maintain several pre-built impregnable strongholds, for customers whose budgets can't stretch to new construction, and time sharing is an option. There's no need for you to buy any equipment, or even install any new software. The evil all runs in the cloud. All you need is a valid e-mail address, and the ability to recognize distorted letters, to get your own gEvil(BETA) account. Sign up today! I, for one, am tired of seeing our evil overlordship jobs shipped overseas. Sure, they can build satellite-based particle beam cannons more cheaply in China, but what about quality? And what about client relations? When you call the president to demand one billion dollars, or all the gold in Metropolis, and he sees the call is coming from Bangalore, what is he going to think? I think that outsourcing is doing more harm to the evil mastermindery industry than U.N.C.L.E. or Radioactive Man ever could.

Originally Posted By: Introns in my boots Maybe they require some kind of magical access so that the fleeing VIP isn't immediately hunted down by secret passage-savvy adventurers. —Alorael, who also thinks that maybe worries about people coming in the secret passages trump fears of not being able to escape without them. Why not take the Almarian approach, and disguise the secret passage as a sewer?

Inconceivable!

I like it when an Avernum city or building looks the way such a place might actually look. I like how Formello in A4, for example, has the municipal government offices overlooking a city center (even though the town center has been destroyed). I also like how Cotra in A4 has the bazaar right next to the entrance to the city, with the merchant offices right there. Convenient! I am a fan of the Pit of Abominations and Gladwell's Tower, because they both seem designed to be easy to defend, with plenty of places to trap attackers. Gladwell's Tower also has the master's quarters logically placed next to the library, where he presumably spends much of his time. The Darkside Fortress in A5 is cool, because you can't enter it without exposing yourself to archer fire, and it appears to be self-sufficient, with portals, training area, lab, kitchen, and servant's quarters all on site. What I don't like about the Darkside Fortress, and the Castle in A4, is that there is only one passage in and out. It seems to me that high security installations like these would have several secret escape routes. In the Castle, the king's suite is pretty inaccessible, but if you could get in there, you could trap him. It would be hard to get back out, though. Does anyone else have maps they think are especially realistic, or illogical, etc.? Maybe there is a civil engineer or architect on the forum somewhere.

To return to the original question, you wouldn't make all your party members sliths because you had an idea for a non-slith character that you wanted to try. "Why wouldn't I make all my party members sliths if I was min-maxing?" is a different question.

Originally Posted By: Toby-Linn Yeah one of my characters always seems to lag as well....in my Avernum 3 party it's my slith, he's level 25 or so, and everyone else is around level 27. Do Nephils have any race traits that could effect how well they hit? Not that I know of. Actually this character's level is ok, he just sucks compared to his level. And all other levels. Now he's level 12 and I have his Melee Weapons up to 7. I think he is becoming more competent now.

Originally Posted By: Metagenetic linkage I don't think gear carried ever affects miss chance, just AP. In any case, it shouldn't have any effect below the losing AP cutoff. —Alorael, who suspects you've got a uniquely defective party member. Has he maybe been hitting the bottle a little hard? Enjoying some skribbane between adventures? Eating mushrooms that weren't the same as the usual Avernite diet? "Wait a minute -- this isn't catnip!!!" In every party I end up with one character who seems to lag behind the others. I keep dumping skill point enhancers on them until they catch up.

Hello all, thanks. He is carrying a lot of gear. Does that reduce the chance to hit even when the character is not over their weight limit? He has Fast On Feet and Strong Will. So I don't think it's that. Maybe he's so quick and stubborn that he's ahead of himself and won't get out of his own way!

Why would my melee guy miss so much? He's a nephil, 6 strength, 3 dexterity, 7 melee weapons. I have a slith with a spear, similar pole weapons skill but lower strength and dexterity, never misses. Once the nephil missed literally four or five times in a row, it must have looked pretty funny inside the game world. I haven't skipped ahead, so they're fighting level-appropriate enemies. I'm up to the Fort Duvno area now and he keeps missing a lot as I increase his strength and melee weapons. It an up-to-date version of the game, I re-downloaded it like two weeks ago. Am I missing something? Is he a spy for Rentar?

Originally Posted By: Student of Trinity Well, there's a fair chance for anything to be influenced at least a bit by anything that came before it. Which way an influence goes, however, can be very hard to pin down. I'd be quite surprised if we had any really ancient Zoroastrian manuscripts. A quick look online turns up claims that the oldest ones available are several centuries after Christianity had spread all over the Roman empire. Maybe that's wrong, but I'd be surprised, because there aren't so many really ancient documents of any kind. In other words, it seems quite possible that what really happened is that late Zoroastrianism imported some stuff from Christianity and Judaism. It's a tough call, given the scanty evidence for anything way back then. True, it could have gone in either direction, although I've never heard it that way. My personal opinion is that it's to be expected that similar ideas would appear in multiple religions simply because they are all invented by human brains, all of which are wired similarly, and in human societies, all of which have similar needs for social cohesion, ways of thinking about nature, etc.

Originally Posted By: Student of Trinity What is this evidence? I'm curious. From what I remember reading about Zoroastrianism, it is dualistic, with one good and one evil power locked in eternal conflict. (Or rather it was, since I believe the religion survives now only in the small and shrinking Pharsee community in India.) Monotheism is a hard concept to pin down, because monotheistic religions aren't all monotheistic in the same way. Christianity is not strictly monotheistic in the same way that Judaism and Islam are, because of the Trinity. In Zoroastrianism, there is an evil power, but it is a creation of the one supreme god, presumably in the same way that Satan is a creation of God in Judaism and Christianity. In Zoroastrianism there is a concept of beings who are emanations -- "sparks" -- from the supreme god, which is found in altered form in Judaism, especially in Kabbalistic practice. There are also similar scriptural narratives in Zoroastrianism, Judaism, and Christianity, with a savior, a virgin birth, and a final judgment. The adherents of a religion might maintain that their religion is revealed by a divine power, but to my way of thinking all religions are influenced by earlier religions. Sikhism, for example, is a synthesis of Islam (monotheism) and Hinduism (rebirth), with distinct features that originated with the founder of the religion (gender equality).

Originally Posted By: CATGUTpuAG There are really only a handful of religions that have big-G God, and all of them trace their descent back to Judaism. Hinduism is monotheistic, sometimes and sort of, but it's really not the same. I'm unfamiliar with Sikhism, but I get the sense that it stands somewhere between Hinduism and the Abrahamic religions on the issue. This omnipotent God is in the distinct minority. Even if you count each pantheon as one, there are still far more polytheistic setups out there than monotheistic ones. —Alorael, who should also point out that these polytheistic religions are not the only ones in which God can die. There's a fairly major religion you're probably quite familiar with in which God dies. There's some evidence that Judaism, and therefore all Abrahamic religions, trace their ancestry back to Zoroastrianism. But that's not certain. Sikhism is strictly monotheistic.

Doesn't he go from New Harston to Solberg's Tower? He's walking around in the middle of the first level looking inconspicuous.

How about a 1966 Batman movie type plot? Hawthorne, Garzahd, Grah-Hoth, Dorikas and Rentar are back from the dead -- and they've teamed up to destroy Avernum! You? No, it can't be you! You're dead! I saw the body! Holy Legion of Doom!

Originally Posted By: Earth2025 Only time tells what next plot will be but I hope A6 isn't bigger than A5's since A5's Avernum was big place to explore (trip around Avernum nearly). I hope the game is even bigger. The one thing I missed in A5 was the opportunity to revisit the older areas of Avernum. I kept thinking that eventually the characters would have to go to the Castle, Formello, and so on. I loved A5 but I was disappointed that those areas were not included.

Originally Posted By: Randomizer Only if you let Tholmen live or go back and kill Solberg (which isn't as hard as it should be). I've tried fighting Solberg of couple of times as an experiment, and he seemed pretty tough. But, more importantly, how easy is it to get out of his tower once you've killed him? That seems like it would be fairly difficult -- getting past Cheeseball II and the sentinel guards, then past Tiacoura and whatever assorted other residents come after you, and then clearing enough space to get out of combat mode and use the pylon. Or, does the tower not turn hostile when you kill Solberg?

Well, how do you know that the range of fungi attacks hasn't increased while spellcasters' range stayed the same? Sorry. I have no idea, actually.

Originally Posted By: Earth2025 True that but if money burns in pockets then those can be bought at higher price elsewhere but then again spellcasters aren't that effective in battles so tough decision. In what way are spellcasters not effective in battles?