Serene Tempest

Ward of elements makes the damage much more bearable. If you're having trouble with lightning damage, I'd try to work up to that spell if you haven't already.

Adrenaline rush on spellcasters is awesome - I ran two dedicated spellcasters and a priest/tank hybrid, and nine area-of-effect spells will outright kill many groups of enemies in one round, and put a serious dent almost all others. As far as mazimizing spellcasting power, once you get to diminishing returns on investment in mage/priest spells, spellcraft, and magic efficiency, it's worth it to return to investing in melee skills to unlock battle frenzy. There are some fights where the enemies are too tough to wipe out in a single round with adreneline rush, so two spells per round for eight out of every twelve is better than two extra spells every eight rounds. Also, getting Cloak of the Arcane makes a big difference if you're going this route.

 

This is mostly about your endgame though. Early on, you want to get lightning spray and mass healing as soon as possible while using trainers to work your melee skills up to adrenaline rush (you can get 9 points from trainers, leaving you the necessity of only training another 6), and then start building up spellcraft to unlock magic efficiency.

There are many examples of spellcasters who have access to spells you as the player don't, which I presume is primarily for balance reasons. Kind of like why most enemies that aren't pushovers have anywhere from 5-10 times the hp you do; it's necessary to compensate for the fact that you're a person fighting a computer. As far as in-game reasoning, I have nothing on the hp, but the spells could be considered jealously-guarded secrets that were invented by that particular wizard (a well-established aspect of the world). Or it could be that you're more of a battle mage than a wizard, who trades some of the over-the-top magical power for the ability to not be blow over by a stiff breeze. I actually think that fight would have been more realistic and interesting if Solberg required significantly more protection. As it was, he had enough hp so letting a couple of the horde heroes tear at him for 2-3 rounds wouldn't do him in, which is not what I would have been led to believe by the dialogue.

In A1-3, if you destroyed the wrong evil altar, pissed off a powerful enough character, went somewhere you weren't supposed to go, etc. your whole party could be cursed. Not like the combat curse that fades after a few rounds, but a Dread Curse that stayed with you until you had a powerful healer remove it. I'm not sure what the mechanics behind it were, but I think it did something like lower every stat by one. I only ever found one healer in each game that could get rid of it, but I could have missed some.

I actually find the basins to be fairly predictable. If they're just sitting right out in the open, especially in a place where you'd predictably be fighting their owners, there's a good chance they're poison. If they were behind a locked door or a hidden passage, they're probably going to be helpful.

I found the G5 interface to be really nice, to the point where going back to earlier games I actually got frustrated with them (which I hadn't been before). I'm looking forward to the eventual interface/engine updates of the older geneforge games, even though I'm sure it'll be awhile before we see any of them.

I always liked Drayks. They made for some interesting minor plot elements. As far as creations you can't shape, I think the Podlings fit G5's atmosphere very well by being so alien and surprisingly dangerous. Coyras and Servant Minds were cool too.

I sometimes like to think about how the series would have unfolded with the Awakened G2 ending. From what I remember, the ending stated that the Barrier of the Winds withstood repeated shaper assaults, but holding out indefinitely against an entire continent of shapers seems problematic. Not to mention all the unrest that would be stirred up among serviles and outsiders still under Shaper control. Also, while the ending made it sound like the Drakons were under control for the time being, presumably they were more or less the same beasts as the cannon Drakons, making you wonder just how long the Awakened could keep that control.

Or, enter combat mode, sneak around corner and dodge back behind it if necessary, and the proceed with the buffing.

It's probably a relic from the older Avernum games, where you could train in a Bartering skill to increase the fraction of an item's value merchants would give you.

Sorry to dredge this up from so long ago, but I was wondering if anyone has any idea what the graph in the link was originally for? I've had no luck figuring it out by poking around on the website.

Nope. Avernum was in serious danger of being overrun and the vast majority of it's people slaughtered, but the war wasn't quite a foregone conclusion. That means the best way I could protect myself and those I cared about in the long run would be doing everything I could to avert that fate. I could do that on the front much better than in a basement.

G1

G5

G4

G2

 

I skipped G3, so can't comment.

The real tease was the icon for Essence Lances had three symbols on it, leading me to think it was essence orbs and not just a stronger version of lightning aura.

I more or less did the servile version, and it worked pretty well. It wasn't until somewhere in the Dera reaches that I could reliably get off two attacks every turn (Stability Suit + Assassin's Boots), but the character was fairly potent even before then. I kept two creations, and went from Coyras to Vlish and ended on Drayks that I let level for the rest of the game. This also freed up essence to cast essence blade on myself and both of them before big fights. By the endgame I was actually playing more like an infiltrator - ie. I had my hands full dazing and charming monsters, but the extra HP and the good melee attack made the mid-game much less frustrating. I focused on mental magic and melee weapons, only raising battle magic enough to cast acid shower by the endgame and blessing magic enough to cast essence blade. I only used battle magic to apply acid and lightning auras to crowds and tough monsters, and otherwise used mental magic to sow confusion and then charged in with the Drayks providing supporting fire.

 

If you want to mainly focus on magic though, the Infiltrator might be a better choice. Especially if you go with battle shaping to have a few tough creations to take blows for you.

Pyroroamers already do this, though the results of the explosion are not that much more than you can achieve with spells. You can make them with three levels of create roamer.

I second what Alorael said, though I got on board with A2 so I can't really comment on prior games.

 

I think A3 was my favorite, mostly because of the plot. It wasn't as detailed and fleshed out as the A5/A6, but I liked the basic idea the best. I'd go A3, A2, A6, A5, A4.

I think most towns have a tolerance level of the number of times you can get caught stealing before they become hostile to you. It makes some sense - in the real world you aren't going to try and kill someone on sight for theft. I suppose you could think of it as him giving you a special discount on account of your intimidating manner .

Realistically, I would expect a crawbug or alpha/beta would be much more efficient in terms of martial prowess for the essence investment and skill requirements. Which would render serviles not worth the essence to craft them, at least as combat creations. It might be interesting if they served more as utility creations, ie. the servile technicians that can temporairly join you in G4 to enhance your mechanics skill. But that would probably complicate game balancing and punish the weak-shaping classes by driving up the difficulty of all the mines, doors and traps in the game.

 

Edit: ...and I overlooked the last two pages of this discussion. Pardon the topic change.

I just snuck in the back, put myself between the brigands and the refugees and took the brigands out one by one. I don't remember how many spaces wide the passage back to the refugees is, but narrow enough so my fighters could easily block it off.

Wow. I feel really silly now. I think that's exactly what's happening, because I remember the character became encumbered and thinking I'd need to spend a few levels bumping his strength up. And he still had 8 ap per turn.

Does anyone know how this works?

 

I had expected that +1 battle speed would translate to one additional action point per turn, so was working on building a mage/priest forgoing battle disciplines past shield breaker but with very high magical efficiency and equipped with 2 battle speed items to be able to get off two magical attacks per turn. But when I had the guy outside of Patrick's tower craft me some mercuric leather, it didn't work like I expected it to. In fact, I didn't find it to have any effect I could notice from some brief experimentation.

This is actually one of my criticisms of Avernum, that you have a much narrower subset of viable builds than other games (especially compared to Geneforge, which had a number of very different but very viable builds).

 

From what I've gathered, the all-spellcasters build works well enough. I tried one for a bit in A5 and didn't run into big problems early on, but I didn't take it very far into the game either.

 

I've managed to create a (so far) viable jack-of-all-trades character in my current party (Slith Elite Warrior/Natural Mage) with the major focus of training in priest spells (the idea is that the racial and trait bonuses will largely take care of fighting and magic capabilities). So far, she's a decent (if not spectacular) priest and a competent mage, and can still handle the occasional enemy that slips past the fighters or get a solid jab in with them when it makes sense without getting decimated the next turn. The two traits allow her to wear decently heavy armor despite low strength without being encumbered or having her mage spells disrupted, and the Slith hp bonus also helps her be more durable without as much investment in Endurance.

Given how good dual-wielding is, is it worth having a non-Slith pole fighter? Also, how does the trade-off between dual wielding and swords/shields work out? Presumably it's an offense vs. defense trade-off, but how much offense do you give up for how much defense? Assuming that for a dual wielder you plan on training 4-5 levels of dual wielding (I know you can buy the skill, but I'm usually spending most of my money on spells or skills that unlock battle disciplines in my mages) and that those points would be put into other offense skills (Strength, Melee Weapons, Quick Action, Blademaster, or Anatomy as makes sense) for a sword/shield fighter.

Or overthrow the shapers and simply take up their thrones themselves, depending on which part of the rebellion you're referring to.