jlsgaladriel

A good loyalist would jump at the chance to kill the Wayfarer in for Redbeard! ...Still, I found this battle a little anticlimactic.

Argh. Out of curiosity, if I had cheated my way home rather than run through on casual, would I have gotten the medals?

Hmmm. I just completed Avadon (as a loyalist, on hard, shaman level 29, ultimately heart of avadon.) I received neither the Hand of Avadon medal ("complete on Normal or higher") nor the Eye of Avadon ("complete on Hard or higher.") I did once, at level four or so, when I discovered myself inappropriately in the salamander basement below the Aerie, drop the difficulty to casual until I escaped, upon which I put the difficulty level back up to high and left it there. I didn't use any cheat codes. Did this prevent my medals?

Um, yes, that window pretty much closes after you go postal on the Khemeria leadership.

Have you talked to Moritz'Kri yet, outside Oghrym Tor? Noone will give you any quests until you've been turned away from the Tor by the wizard.

Hooray, thank you!

So, I returned -- at level 28 -- to the wretch warrens, and did indeed get the right dialogue, Click to reveal.. revealing a trap door through which the woman tries to escape. But I killed the poor trio too fast, and the trap door remains locked. Noone drops a key. Reloading, I carefully let the woman live, and -- woohoo -- she unlocks the trap door while escaping. So it is indeed possible to end the quest without clearing it, but only if one is high enough level to one- or two-shot the bandits.

Ah. I'll need to play through next time as a shadowwalker. My shaman's dexterity is clearly not high enough!

Hmm, I did find three people, and I thought I'd been through the whole dialogue tree. I'll go try again once I'm done with these blastedly hard bandits. (I must say, the difficulty level ratchets up a serious notch when one is forced to solo under bandit roads. Holy mackeral, I'm burning consumables on every encounter, and Cultist Audric with bandit adds killed me twice before I got it.)

I never managed to clear the Neray quest either. I *did* catch a glimpse of her near the beginning of the game outside the Wretch Warrens, but I didn't chase her immediately. When I went back much later (having glanced at the hint book) to the spot marked "K," south of the wretch warrens fortifications, I found some people there, but not Neray. I guess the quest has some pretty touchy timing?

I'd be highly gratified if the brickmaker eventually spit out a gem or crystal, sort of a bug in its magical programming. So far, I'm simply amusing myself by dropping bricks into bad guys' treasure chests.

Meaningful edit: Battle-worn Shelter adds 5% to melee damage protection, not to melee damage itself. Random picky edit: Helm of the Wind (singular.) Thanks, Randomizer, you're awesome.

Quote: This discussion is, frankly, making it sound like the system gives a lot of choice. You can take a valued skill to level 8, giving it a big bonus, or you can use those points to go deeper into the tree and get more abilities. I think you're right, Jeff, in that there's a lot more choice than one might think at first glance. Many games with skill trees pretty much require that one "optimize" one's character by focussing on one thing, and I think you've made things more interesting by allowing viable builds which don't follow that path. Still, most of your earlier games certainly allowed even *more* customization, which made many of us happy. Thank you for another excellent game.

a) is the Tawon Empire accent is just wrong c) is the Midlands way, except for (d) d) Holklandans trying to annoy folks from Kellemderiel, or vice versa e) is an alternate Tawon Empire accent

BadYeti, I do think these skill trees allow much less customization than any previous spiderweb game. I think Jeff wanted so badly to make sure that casual gamers couldn't design unplayable characters, that he took quite a bit away from those of us who like playing with character design. I'm quite sure he did it on purpose, on the theory that folks like me will buy his games anyways, but it takes away part of the pleasure of the game for me. That said, the choice is perhaps a bit more than binary. There are 58 skill points available to spend over the course of 30 levels, and over 100 possible places to put those points. I'm only on my first playthrough, now, and I'm playing on "hard" rather than on "torment," but at more than 3/4 of the way through I'm seriously considering not investing any points at all in a top-tier ability for my shaman. I suppose the beta testers can tell me if there's some point at which I'll struggle, but so far I'm not really salivating over either salamander summoning nor earthquakes. (Admittedly, some classes might be more of a strict binary choice, as I think perhaps the top of the blademaster tree is tastier.)

Tried the hansel & gretel approach of leaving 'breadcrumbs' - dropped food -- Aha! *That's* what the brickmaking doodad is for! Creates all the brickish breadcrumbs one could want!

I finally got up the courage to go back and tackle the salamanders I'd run away from before... at level 11/12, the area's just fine.

Synergy, if that junk bag was your idea, you should be sainted. Or kissed. Or, well, ::insert happy-making thing of choice here::

Yes, this is where I got my comeupance early in the game. I was waltzing through, thinking how *easy* the "hard" setting seemed, and was forced to swallow my pride, pop the difficulty to "casual," and *still* end up running in desperation past the last set of salamanders to make the stairway and "safety." Not that what waited at the other end of the stairs was much better, at that level...

In the northwest of the Kva lands, where the passage to Zetheron's Aerie splits off west from the main north-south route, there's a barrel right near the intersection. It's a big passage, with six squares on the flat map. (It's northwest of farmer halrik, across the river and keep going west.)

Yes, don't do this quest until you're sure you can handle fire lizards.

Oh! I forgot the best of my initial impressions. Junk bag = teh awesome.

Quote: I'm having real trouble (in the sense of annoyance) with the inability to use the keyboard for the primary activities in playing the game, namely walking and attacking. I can appreciate that other people want to use the mouse for these but I don't, particularly when nearly everything more minor in the game seems to still be set up to be pretty keyboard friendly. +5, or +legion, or some such. It's not just the movement for me, it's the targeting. I very very much want to type "a a a" to make a blademaster or shadowwalker execute action a on target a, in the same way one can use "a a 2" to make the shaman heal comrade #2. (edited for accuracy... I'll get this sentence right eventually...) Otherwise, well, I'm inclined to like a Spiderweb game, and most of what I like is still here. The thing I disliked the most at first was the weapons limitations -- really, my sorceress can't wield a dagger? -- which made me feel like I'd been thrown back in time to second edition d&d, before skills and powers. Those limitations are something one gets used to quickly enough, I suppose, but initially it feels like bumping into a wall repeatedly: ARGH, the blademaster can't use a javelin, ARGH, the shadowwalker can't use a bow. The strict class limitations feel like a step backwards, but then planning character leveling is something I enjoy.

I started a shaman on normal, but even knowing Jeff had dropped the difficulty level, I was shocked how easy it was. I've bumped it up to hard, which still seems fairly easy, with one exception: I stumbled into the wrong place too early, and was battling salamander swarms at level four or so! That got me on "casual" really quickly, and even then, I burned through some consumables...

Hooray for my questions being answered before I pose them. Thanks, Randomizer. ::goes back to the aerie::