maddz

Rather having a stack of maybe a dozen reaper thorns, and as many batons, you strip the ammo from the excess batons and add it to the ammo stack and sell the empty batons. Also would be useful in early game when you're more likely to find batons not ammo. I ran out of venom thorns at one point and had a stack of unused batons sitting in Pentil... With limited inventory, hauling around multiple batons and switching them as the ammo runs out is a pain.

Nope, these are red or blue orbs on a stand. There are several areas with them in. What I find annoying about the crystal-triggered mines is that the crystals reset after you leave the area. OK if you failed to disarm them and set them off, but a right pain if you need to return.

What would be useful is something along the lines of the Queen's Wish chests. You put an item in a chest in one area and it would be in all the chests. Gamewise, the obvious place to put the chests are in the towns, but they are concentrated along the southern edge of Sucia. Perhaps have them in major Shaper facilities? Admittedly, it was a bit of a pain to sort through the items, so perhaps having compartments within the chests (filters, basically) would be nice. What also could be useful is ammo-stripping batons - so you can keep the ammo in a stack and dispose of surplus batons. I'm sure I'm not the only person who ends up with a massive heap of batons, especially the higher level ones.

Did you ask to see Yu-La's best items? Also, I'm on the 1.01 patch.

It opened for me after I'd completed Yu-La's treasures and got the best items dialogue entry. Prior to that, it remained stubbornly shut.

What I'd like to see is an auto-generated list of locations which populates as you discover new areas which is annotable by the player. I'd been playing the iPad remakes of the Avernum and Avadon series and it's a real chore to remember which doors etc you need to revisit with more lockpicks or a different party mix down the line. On a desktop machine you can use a notepad or scribble it on a piece of paper, but on a commute with an iPad it's a real faff. Even an in-game notepad would be useful. Some kind of an aura that shows on an activatable container would be useful too, I get confused between games with the different graphics for lootable containers. Please also consider once a container or a door has been opened it should stay open unless you actually close it (and not reset when you leave the area). I've had to resort to carrying rocks and other stackable unsalable items around with me and dropping something beside the container to indicate I've emptied it. It's really annoying when you go back through an area to remember which containers have been emptied of useful items and which now only contain junk. Also, please remember your aging audience and give us the ability to scale the graphics so you can actually see hidden switches, on floor items and click character editor buttons! On an iPad mini, targetting switches and clicking buttons is really hit and miss, and I've lost count of the number of times I've run round to the other side of a wall instead of activating a switch.

The other thing about Amberites is that they regenerate... Playing a Warrior-Mage and always making sure you've enough mana for 2 or 3 teleports is also a handy thing when you've got a good level ('you nearly faint as your mind fills with visions of horrible death') and you don't want to shadow shift away from it... Also, shadow shifting restores drained XP & stats - which is incredibly useful as none of the shops ever seem to have the stat restore potion you need when you return to the surface and you can only find it for a ridiculous price at the black market.

It was XCode that the man downloaded - not sure if that is equivalent to X11 or XQuartz? Would you be kind enough to send me a walkthrough of what you did to get it working? I liked Hengband because of the quest system, the wilderness and the multiple dungeons.... Besides, as a casual player, I like playing Amberites.

I've played various variants over the years - I've won once, in an early version of Angband... That took a lot of hours and savescumming. I would say I'm a casual player - I've play for a few week at a time, then drop it for a couple of months, then pick it up where I left off. I guess my favourite variant is the sadly missed Hengband (I stopped being able to play it when I upgraded to Mountain Lion and despite all my partner tried, he couldn't get it compiled correctly). However, there's a new Hengband fork (at last look it was still only PC) called CHengband, and Hengband 2 is being developed... Otherwise, I mostly played Zangband or Sangband. Steamband is a fun variant - instead of going down, you're going up...

Originally Posted By: Thrasher Originally Posted By: maddz Items on the floor - can we have a toggle to make them sparkle? I sometimes find it very difficult to spot things (old eyes!) and making them sparkle would be extremely useful. Perhaps along the lines of a cheat code 'twinkletwinkle' or a preferences setting... Herbs on black floors are a particular bugbear of mine. The 'u' command is immensely helpful in this regard! No, I'm talking about pick-up not use. The 'u' command doesn't highlight items on the ground for pick up using the 'i' command. As I said, trying to spot things on black floors is a problem with old eyes.

Dunno about needless backtracking, the feel I have from A4 & A5 is been there, done that, why do I need to go back again now I've ticked the box? A1-A3 at least you had a bigger map and more choices about what to do next giving the feel of truly exploring a world and seeing what it has to offer. It's not the plot that seems linear; it's the game play in the smaller map. At least make some quests in earlier areas unlock once you're high enough level - or you need to have done something further on to get access to it. As things stand, it's a disconnect to go back to Blackchasm Outpost every so often because there's nothing more to do there except talk to General Manfred. If each time you go back there's something extra to do in the area besides getting another of Lark's quests, then that would open up the game play a bit more. Something along the lines of General Manfred gives you the key to a store room in Inner Blackchasm Outpost the each time you return to talk to him and there's, say, an Officer of the Day in there who also gives a side quest each time. It's really to add more interest when you go back to earlier areas. Do you see what I'm getting at? As it is, I can go through A5 in under 30 hours of game play. A3 took me 60+ hours, and that's the sort of thing I'd like back.

Getting back on topic, I found A4 & A5 to be somewhat linear, and they felt somewhat on the short side. I guess it's because the map seems a lot smaller with the no inside/outside thing. Perhaps Jeff can combine the A4 & A5 maps and add new areas? I'd also like to see a game where you're switching between Avernum and the surface. Spells I'd like to see back from Exile are the afore-mentioned Mass Haste, and the priest Move Mountains(?) spell. That was fun - see a bit of crumbling wall, and cast Move Mountains to see if there was anything interesting behind it. Probably make it higher level though - it used to be fun to scavenge through cleaned up lower level dungeons to see what had been missed. The other spell I miss is the Map spell - have I missed any secret rooms/areas? Reintroducing those spells would, I think, help with the linearity problem - there's an area of the dungeon that can't be visited until you have Move Mountains - at the moment, it's clean out a dungeon and never go back unless you need to make a trip back to finish porting out the loot. With re-visiting dungeons, there's the option for a new set of bad guys to have moved into the area (bit like the portal shades quests). I agree - bring back Demonslayer, and what ever happened to the Orb of Thralni? Memories of going round the coastline on the surface seeing if there were any islands I could reach before I drowned... Reaching pillars in chasms for otherwise inaccessible items. Loot - I'm happy with not selling every last potted plant for 1 gold, but I'd like to see more being done with low value/worthless items. Vera's quest in A5 is a good start - perhaps more jobs along the lines of 'The mayor of X is redecorating - bring her 3 sets of tools, 10 rolls of cloth and 5 pot plants & 5 vases' or 'The innkeeper of Y needs more crockery & cutlery'. Storage - I'd like there to be a better way of storing loot - at the moment it's being piled up in the transporter chamber (and I swear there's a limit to how much you can stash - when I get to Melanchion's fortress, stuff seems to disappear, especially my crystals). Perhaps 3 or 4 rooms dotted about with empty crates - one for armour, one for weapons etc? Jobs - I'd like to see more branches on the job boards - i.e. do one job, another appears. There's a start being made, but at the moment it seems you walk into town, and what's on the board is all. I did like the courier office idea in A3 - that involved some decisions - I need to go to X, are there any good courier jobs going that way or do I do the high-paying job in the opposite direction? Transporters - please make selecting the transporter destinations keyboardable! It's annoying to have to switch to mouse from keyboard and back again! Items on the floor - can we have a toggle to make them sparkle? I sometimes find it very difficult to spot things (old eyes!) and making them sparkle would be extremely useful. Perhaps along the lines of a cheat code 'twinkletwinkle' or a preferences setting... Herbs on black floors are a particular bugbear of mine.

Yes, it's in the NW of the Vahnatai lands. It's the way to one of the side dungeons - the creator of the rockhounds.

Thank you! That worked, and yes, there are rooms there - you just can't get into them and as they're empty... I'll also check the gremlins cave area - there's some blocked rooms there.

I've read through that thread several times now, and can't find the wall walkthrough you mention (unless it's one of the one's in connection with the Circle of Life priestess...) Would you be kind enough to repost it here?