madrigan

Is this a bug, or am I missing something? I completed the Mavlov's Lab quest a while ago. but I like to go back and see if an area has changed later. So I went back and only the two Mireling servants were there, and the text said they didn't know where the other humans had gone. So I went looking in the nearby area, and then returned to the lab. Mavlov and the others were back, and I told him again that I killed a mire boar, and the game indicated I had received 150XP. I left, came back, humans were gone. Left again, returned, they were back, and once again I was able to report to Mavlov and see the 150XP above each character's head. Am I supposed to talk to Mavlov elsewhere every other visit? Not sure what is going on here.

Bug report submitted. Kneeling to the Watchers is nothing, if you've decided that the prince is a secret anarchist and wants to undermine the kingdom.

That is one way to look at it. I think the fact that the Blessed give you everything you want in exchange for nothing serves mainly to emphasize their incompetence though. Bonus tidbit, I just discovered that every time I enter Elovo, Peadar is waiting to fight me. I have now killed him a second time. I then exited the city and went right back in, and he is standing there again.

If I try another playthru I'll try that, but why wouldn't I talk to Istara after siding with the Blessed? I talked to Brackdon Cawr after siding with the Borgen, and he's angry but he doesn't offer me a quest that angers the Borgen. I talked to the Mascha leaders after siding with the Owen, and they're unhappy but they don't ask me to attack Madraka. Neither of those interactions offered dialogue options that nullified my previous choices to any degree. Once I side with the Blessed, shouldn't Istara's dialogue requesting that I humiliate the Blessed be omitted? If the dialogue is there I assume there is some logical reason for it to be there.

I find the Geneforge games extremely difficult. There are some very difficult sections of Avadon but I would put it in the middle. Then Avernum is the easiest. I think QW is toward the easy end of the scale, once you get a handle on the resource management. Before that you are constantly losing money to run shops and can't get the gear you need.

I did report it to the General, but that part made sense so I didn't mention it.. He and his staff were appalled, but I didn't see a difference in my interaction with Istara.

I finished my fourth playthru and this time my angle was to support the Blessed in Ahriel and then tell the Queen that I wanted to take the throne, thinking that in the future I could drive the Blessed out of power completely. No idea if this will be possible in future games, but the code I got at the end this time was very different from my prior ones. Anyway, this ending was pretty dull and the impact was not integrated into the rest of the game. I talked to Istara, and Lonius, and the various Watchers, and then finally I went to High Elovo and agreed to kneel, because who cares really. Then I returned to Istara thinking I would catch hell, but the dialogue was the same as in my prior games when I supported the Trench Towns. She still asked me to humiliate the Watchers, which I did, and Peadar came out to get killed, and then the council wouldn't talk to me anymore, and Istara said she was going to Elovo. This was pretty disappointing. I supported the existing rulers in the Ukat as well, but the other clans actually reacted to this, at least in dialogue. I realize Jeff can't come up with awesome changes for every choice I make, but choosing the Blessed was pretty much exactly the same as doing the opposite. It was a letdown.

I see that, but I think Avadon and Queen's Wish are the first SW settings where you can't be the hero. Though I agree that the world of Avadon is significantly darker and more hopeless than the world of Queen's Wish.

I've been playing SW games for more than ten years, which puts me in the 10th percentile of people on this forum, maybe? I think Avernum 4 is the oldest one I've finished, but I've played every one since then. I just get them as they're released. The older ones, I just can't cope with the interface and I find them all very difficult to play. Anyway, I think the major trend in Spiderweb games over the last decade is that while the game worlds are still fanciful, the moral dynamics of those worlds are more and more realistic. In Avernum 1 - 4, you're the hero. In Avernum 5, you're a functionary of a colonialist state. In Avernum 6, you're the hero again, but the Slith and the Vahnatai have some solid arguments, don't they? In Geneforge, you can be the hero, and there's more than one way to be the hero. In Avadon, you're not the hero. You're working for the amoral establishment. Everyone hates you and anything beneficent that you do leads to something terrible elsewhere. In Queen's Wish, you are the amoral establishment. Your actions are inevitably destructive of others' culture. You can make choices that are more moral and less self-interested, but you are informed again and again that whatever you do will end in tragedy. So my advice is, choose based on what kind of character you want to play. If you want to be a hero, play an older game. If you like things grayer, play a newer game.

I already assumed the GIFTS were the masterminds behind everything!

Yes to the sea monster fight, since that would require boats. No to the indoors/outdoors maps, though I think I'm the only person in the world who likes the A4-6 maps. Also in A5 there was a direct reference to the constant chitrach attacks from A4 that everyone hated.

A4 was the first Spiderweb game I played, so the plot was all new to me. There was sufficient exposition in the game for me to understand the significance of Rentar and Erica without having played A1-3 at that time. Jeff could change the emphasis in A4 to the Darkside Loyalists, but then it might be too similar to A5, which presents the same problem in reverse. I think A5 is my favorite of the dozen or so SW games I've played to the end -- or near the end, because I was never able to finish G5, even using every cheat and mod I could find. I think the only thing I would like changed in a new A4 is the long-distance travel. The pylons are fine but you don't get access to them for quite a while. The QW approach is much less annoying. Well, the long-distance travel, the Honeycomb, the Spiral, and the Western Wastes which just take forever and ever to get through. What really sets the newer SW games -- meaning the Avadon trilogy and QW -- apart from the others is that you are really not the hero in Avadon or QW. You can go several ways in Geneforge, but in Av and QW you're inevitably just a brutal conqueror representing an authoritarian state. Everything good that you do leads to something bad. I happen to like this grittier approach, but I do wonder how A4 would come out if Jeff wrote the plot now.

Welp, I've played through QW three times and I'm not sure I want to try a fourth. I think SW used to do one game a year, alternating all-new with remakes. Is this still going to be the case? And if so, what's up for next year? Geneforge 1? Avernum IV (that would be my vote)? Or are releases on a longer cycle now? Maybe I will play A4 again. I don't really want to do the Honeycomb or the Mertis Spiral again though. I probably finished A4 a half a dozen times and I got lost in the Honeycomb every time.

I thought there would be more responses to this. I am glad you're getting so much out of this game. It's doesn't feel analogous to my life, though. The only things in it that I relate to are the basic conflict between parents and children, which is nearly universal; and the last line of the endgame, when it says that despite your activities and efforts, an eternal machinery grinds on all around you, beyond your control. The latter is much closer to how I experience life than your description of a spiritual journey. I'm not saying that you haven't been on a spiritual journey, I'm saying that kind of life isn't universal. We're all wired differently and we come from different kinds of cultures, different kinds of families, and different times. Recently I saw one of those "if you could live life over again, what would you change" discussions, and I realized I had no idea what I would change or not change, because I have no idea what really led to what or what would have happened if I had done anything differently, or everything differently. Everything I ever wanted has turned out to be unimportant, and everything I didn't plan for has become crucial. I'm almost fifty years old, and my life is not what I thought it would be, at all. But me at fifty doesn't even want what me at twenty wanted. I believe that randomness is the most powerful force in the universe. Having a life that seems like Queen's Wish sounds pretty good though -- for some people. 😐

What I mean is, I'd like the option of having all my skill points available at the start of a game, so I can play around with the combinations immediately instead of gradually. Sometimes it is fun to play that way. In A5, if I recall, the character editor lets you do anything to any ability but does not let you increase your actual character level or add gear. But as you know, in QW most of the best gear is purchased in your own forts.

I've finished the game twice. My problem is the opposite of Kelandon's. I don't want to end the game. It's so open-ended that I don't really want to start over. For at least a week in RW-time I have been walking around the map re-visiting places I've already been to see if the mine or the prison has been restaffed or repopulated, or finding things I didn't kill the first time and killing them. My resources are all maxed. I keep watching the endgame and then reloading to just before I enter the portal, and walking around again some more. I built a library in Fort Haven. I suppose this is an odd problem. Two years until QW2 seems like a really long time. I think what I'd like right now is a character editor like in A5, so I can play around with different ability combinations and see how they work out.

OH MY GOD I didn't realize I could remove shops. That worked. There were a ton of resources in the Smoky Peaks I had never found, also. I built the portal, returned to Sacramentum, and now I am jumping from Ahriel to the Vol back and forth until I can upgrade all the forts. Thanks all.

I'm on my second playthru and this time I wanted to get all the best gear early, so I really emphasized building shops. Now I have re-vassalized all three nations, killed the Nisse, and completed almost every quest in the game but I don't have the resources to build the portal home. I also want to upgrade all the forts, but I don't have enough materials to do that either. I am a couple of resources short every month. I have plenty of cash, but I am perpetually low on iron and/or stone even though I have the Ukat and the Vol working at full capacity. Is it actually possible to mismanage resources so badly that the endgame becomes impossible?

Yeah, but Queen Sharyn is pretty badass.

Two comments on relatively peripheral matters. One, whoever drew the spiders should get the Spider Drawing Award. They are realistic enough to be recognized as spiders, but stylized enough to seem like tabletop miniatures. Scary but not gross. That was a great job. Two, once I was done with everything else I wanted to do I started playing around with the furniture and decorations. It was pretty fun. I built a beer garden near one of my distilleries and then put a bookshelf and a plant in the barracks, you know, because one's living quarters should be as pleasant as possible. I made a little park next to the water with chairs and trees. I tried decorating my room in Fort Haven but there's wasn't much I could do. I realize it has no effect on gameplay but I'm glad it's in there. Also one last thing, I'd like it if buildings I create had a sign on the outside saying what they are. I often had to go from building to building trying to find the smithy or whatever. Ok I think that's it.

This is a supplement to my earlier post on this thread now that I've actually finished the game. I always play on Casual. I don't like min-maxing and I don't have the patience anyway. I found the last stage of the game -- the battle with the nisse -- very frustrating. I tried to get into their tower and was slaughtered. I went back to Fort Haven, spent a bunch of money upgrading gear, and got slaughtered again. I looked up the cheat codes and started using "mothersblessing" and still lost party members. Ultimately, in order to get into the tower and win the final battle, I just used that code every round whether I had taken damage or not, because in some cases the nisse can kill a character in one round. This is how I was able to see the end of the game with the nisse mission complete. I realize that there are people who are great at games and have beaten the nisse on Torment with no codes. This is fine but I am not one of those people. I've never actually seen the end of Geneforge 5, because even with every cheat code and editor I could find I couldn't even get into the fortress for the final showdown. Yes, I could go back and finish all the sidequests and level up higher, but I don't think that would have made a difference. A few years ago Jeff wrote a blog post saying that designers should make their games as easy as they possibly can, and then go back and make them even easier than that. I don't know if I would rather have a level below Casual (I suggest "Incompetent" as the level name) or an always-on cheat code that just keeps your health and energy at maximum at all times. I do know that I would like to see the whole story without typing in the same code thirty times. I'm impressed by people who are great at games, but they're like people who can do a backflip or that understand calculus -- my body will never do those things. Nonetheless I'd like to finish Spiderweb games without being so aggravated. So, short version, I'd like this game to be even easier so that even I can enjoy the whole thing.

You mean the sage upstairs in the main building, right? He keeps telling me he has no more information. I have spoken to Ragala and to the Watcher in the Ahriel woods.. Do I have to visit all the survey points to activate the necessary dialogue?

I just finished the game -- I think. I was wandering around for hours trying to stop the Calamity, and then it seemed like this could not be done, so I went to the endgame. My reactions in no order: I still want races, character classes, ability scores, and skills. But, it's true that you can simulate multiple character classes just by distributing the skill points in different ways. I liked the skills setup better than the one in Avadon. I was sure there was a sneakier way to open the Thabhlen Gates, but all I could come up with was brute force. I thought there would be more than one way to do it. But I always enjoy Jeff's "set this bomb and run oh no there's someone blocking us" scenes. The choice to support the Owen seemed required morally, this was much less gray than most of Spiderweb's ethical dilemmas. It also seems relevant to our time out here in the RW. I thought the characterization of the Mascha got too close to some real-world ethnic stereotypes. I'm sure this was unintentional, but I kept noticing it. The butler character is hilarious. I like that I can start working on a territory, then leave and go do something else. I liked solving personnel and legal problems for Miranda. I don't understand how potions work -- I never seemed to have enough flasks. It was very difficult to buy better equipment. Either I didn't have enough skill in Combat, or I didn't have enough skill in Magic. I'm not sure I should need Magic skill to use a magical spear. I am not sure how the code I got at the end will affect QW2, but I swear I will not lose the code for two years. My ending was very depressing. Since Avernum VI or so the endings have become less fantasy-fiction and more gritty. Your character does some great stuff, but ultimately it makes no difference, and heroes are barely different from anyone else, and the world falls into chaos. It's very fatalistic. I like the endings of Avernum 2-4. But that's a different kind of game. I will probably play through again, but I was satisfied with all my major choices so I'm not sure what I will do differently. There's no way I'm supporting the Mascha, or the Blessed.

Yes I would like larger text as an option also. I believe this was added to another recent game within one of the updates.