jlsgaladriel

Not sure where to let Jeff know about game typos: in Refuge, one of the dialogue options for Quessik-Draysa has an extra "o" : "I would prefer not too."

Quote: There is a secret switch in the giant's lair, near the chief's throne room. I don't think you're talking about the same barrier, VCH -- this one isn't in the giants' lair, but rather accessible through a trapdoor in one of the houses outside the caves.

Quote: I never could dispel the barrier under the locked building in Grindstone. I couldn't either: mage spells 18, spellcraft 10, dispel 7 = 35. If we knew the necessary dispel levels, it would be sweet to add the info to the "totals needed" list (arcane lore 15, nature lore 16, spellcraft 18 (for dispel barrier 44)...) edit: I tried to check the grindstone zone script for this, but I don't see it. Does Jeff handle barrier reqs in the scripts? edit bis: okay, I did this the hard way: trekked a party back here and increased stats one-by-one with the editor. The barrier finally fell at mage spells 18, spellcraft 18, dispel 8 (max), for a total of 44. I'm almost afraid to see what it's hiding, because there's no way I can justify popping spellcraft up that high without having spent the points.

Quote: I really liked the end of Solberg part. Definitely the most touching moment. I'm glad Jeff gave us a chance to fight beside him.

I haven't quite finished yet, but I'm pretty solid on my Most Hated quest: Lark's quest to kill the hraithe under Tenevra to get to the crystal shards. The fourth time -- despite the protection of ward of thoughts -- one of my characters got terrorized into running out of the effective area, ending the assault and forcing a retry, I decided I really really wasn't having any fun. Combining a limited-area-but-not-enclosed quest with fear-casting monsters is just evil! I hate cheating in a battle, but owmybrains has never felt so good. I've got lots of favourites so far, but the quest I was most surprised to have enjoyed was the Fort Draco quest. Perhaps I'm just conditioned by WOW to groan when faced with an escort quest, but this was well-scripted and varied and surprising. It definitely wins the Surpassing All Expectations award.

Quote: Avernum 1 to 3 use a completely different game engine and world mapping system from Avernum 4 to 6. Yep! I was never bothered by the scale changes between wild areas and towns/dungeons in the initial iteration, but I believe some folks were. IIRC for me by far the most annoying problems with the earlier versions involved inventory management, but I could be conflating the early Avernums with the Exiles. The way in which action point counting has also changed, but it's not hard to adapt to whichever system is being used. And the battle disciplines in the later versions is a nice addition.

Quote: 1. I could never find where the Spire Hidden Brigands lair/lair entrance was. Let me tell you, it was from no lack of searching god knows. The only thing I can think of that I didn't try was that trapdoor in the room whose entrance is blocked by the Ogre in Spire. I'm pretty sure that's the one between the two fingers of river directly west of Spire. If you stand between those two fingers and look very hard for a little secret trigger, you'll find the bandits.

Originally Posted By: brock I find single target or 3 close together target spells are what I use most often. With the prevalence of fire-resistant sliths in A6, I've found myself using the single-target acid spell and the three-target lightning spell very heavily. Originally Posted By: brock Maybe Geneforge spoiled me Ah, but isn't it G5 that has the lovely multiple-target acid spell, much like A6's corrupting baton?

There's an interface question as well as a narrative question. It's been ages since I've gone back to play the earlier iterations of Exile/Avernum, but I remember being annoyed by the interface in a way that I never was the first time through. Once you're used to certain features, it's hard to lose them. It might be more fun to start with Avernum 1, and then appreciate the new interface features of A5 and A6, rather than to start at the end.

Hmm, I took the moral stance (nationalist stance?) to do whatever would make the strongest Avernum. I did recover the shards of the orb, but didn't kill the fang clan chief, because I figured the fang clan was part of a strong Avernum. I killed the mayor of Spire for gladwell, because I figured the Abyss as dragon-slave wasn't a picture of what Avernum should be. Likewise, I got the meat for Gnass, because in my mind, a strong free ally slith community was good for Avernum. So I guess the morally better choice is the one which meshes with your characters' mind-sets.

I'm using a 20" monitor, and I tend to play in a window, so I'm actually choosing to use *less* real estate for the game, in return for easy access to other windows I've got open. Then again, my first mac was a 128k beastie with a screen not much bigger than my iphone, so modern monitors still seem like luxuries to me. This to say that not everyone's annoyed by the same things. edit: Is it the roster and map which are annoying you, or is it the controls on the bottom? The roster and map can be minimized. It's that bottom interface which is completely redundant with keyboard shortcuts, and yet it isn't minimizable. I wonder how difficult a programming task it would be to convert that bottom bar so that it, too, could be minimized?

Oof, yeah, it's okay to kill the other golems -- they drop emeralds, and killing them in the first test doesn't preclude the second -- but I can see how killing the red one would be unfortunate. The good news is that the second construct test isn't a prerequisite for anything else. Missing it might be annoying from a completionist standpoint, but it won't mess up your game.

Quote: I think this game is too big for my brain. Yeah, the open world aspect of it can be overwhelming sometimes. I find it more satisfying to clean up a region as much as possible before moving on: before embarking on whatever the next main quest (or triad of main quest items) is, I open my quest logbook and do all of the secondary quests for the area. I find thinking regionally can help keep me sane.

Quote: As your skills with a weapon increase, a d11 sword will easily do three times the damage of a d3 sword. Oh! I never imagined the multiplier damage was d11 -- that's just silly. I just wasn't equating the base damage with the multiplier damage. I was thinking melee weapons worked more like spells, for which the skill-multiplied levels are unrelated to the initial damage: ie lightning spray 15 + (ss)d4 or fireblast 14 + (ss)d5 So I was thinking the 11-33 sword was basically 3d11 + (melee stats)d3. I think that's just the knee-jerk reaction of an old table-top gamer -- it's so much easier to roll 4d20 than to roll 20d4, that you just never see things set up the opposite way. Of course, with a computer doing the random number generation, the number of "rolls" is virtually irrelevant.

Oh! I'd always read 11-33 as 3d11, not 11d3. Since the average of 3d11 is 18, and the average of 11d3 is 22, I have no complaints at all at having been wrong.

Quote: Look around for a key in the traitor's quarters. Hmmm, IIRC, one finds an incriminating letter in a blue chest (I think?) in the back room of the traitors' quarters; one then needs to confront Wetzel about the letter, and Wetzel gives you the key. This particular batch of darkside loyalists is separate from the enclave in the abyss: it's a different group of loyalists nearby in the southeast part of the eastern gallery.

Originally Posted By: alorael he doesn't care about who plays on what difficulties. Well, I suspect he cares that the games be well-enough calibrated to users' preferences that they love the games enough to want to buy more of them, and to spread the word about their general awesomeness. It seems to me that Jeff has spent some pretty serious time since -- oh, what was the awful one, Avernum 4? -- considering what makes for enjoyable game play. Most notably, he's mostly gotten rid of mobs/grinding, which is a pretty major accomplishment in games the size of G5 or A6. I suspect he's also spent some time tweaking just what *kind* of difficulties the game presents.

Originally Posted By: blackwight Another level below 'Casual' might also be nice. Hmmm, difficulty must be one of the hardest things for Jeff to judge, given that the beta testers seem for the most part to be hard-core gamers. Heck, I've been playing these games since... well, I clearly remember trying to figure out what the heck the wine-crazy gremlins wanted up near Silvar in the original Exile, on my Mac LC III, back before there was a web to check such things on easily. Despite having played forever, I still generally play on normal, and occasionally on hard. So there's only one step below where I normally play, and I'm not exactly new to gaming. I wonder if he's got stats as to what percentage of his users prefer each difficulty level?

Aren't rubies part of a wand crafting recipie in the Tower colony, in Djokov's shop? wood + crystal + ruby + mandrake root = null wand I'm not convinced that's the best use for the mandrake and crystal, but technically one can use a ruby in crafting.

Originally Posted By: alorael Others believe that this is cheating, as grinding is an integral part of the gameplay. I can't disagree, but I can and will cheat anyway. Bah, since it's not competitive gaming, only what you enjoy is integral to the gameplay. I use similar reasoning, just not with spawns. I never use cheats when actually in a battle or trapped in a dungeon, but if I'm in a position where I *could* walk back to the nearest town to heal and gain energy, I have no qualms about cheating to restore them. It doesn't take away from the challenge of the thing, instead, it lets me spend *more* time on the fun challenging parts!

Quote: Many quests, such as the second sentinel testing, required many attempts I'm with randomizer on this one: an invulnerability potion seems essential here. I'm not sure what level most people are when they complete this -- my first attempt I believe I was in single digits, and they slaughtered me. It's entirely doable on "normal" at level 11, as long as you position your team carefully -- your tank, with invulnerability potion, should be closest to the center golem when you interact. Remember that damaging the golems isn't the point here -- although they do drop nice emeralds -- so while your tank might as well fight to keep their attention, your squishier characters should stay on the sidelines healing, summoning more meatshields, and most importantly not aggravating the golems.

Thanks slarty, this is wonderful.

If it were done, I could put it up on Calamity or somesuch, except again there I don't have html posting rights. So, yeah, anyone want to give me shell access on a unix/linux/gnu box? The problem in the interim is that I'm still making almost daily changes -- little ones, but daily -- and I'll get into versioning problems.

Hmm, right now it's in four separate html files. I'm still making regular changes to it as folks find errors and answers to my (?)s, so I don't really want other, soon-to-be older versions floating around that I'd have to find and update... I do intend to convert it to xml and put it on my own web site once it's settled down, but that's too far in the future to be useful to your playthrough, because I have real-life projects that come first. Bah. So... I'm not quite sure what to do. The answer might be if you need an area now, to mail it to you, but that doesn't fix the folks-in-China-can't-see-it problem. I'd be willing to post a version of it *here*, but I don't have html posting access: I'm not ubb-encoding the darned thing. Plus, that puts me back into the need to update two separate copies of the thing as it changes, and I don't wanna. Suggestions welcome. I'll think on it.

You're right, there don't seem to be any craftable throwable weapons. The gemstone+eye/fang/scale/tentacle recipes do exist, but they make stat boosters like runed amethysts and ivory skulls. (Check strategy central for the list.) You can still craft wands and batons. My favourite is Click to reveal.. stick + gemstone + wiry moss + glaahk eye = wand of slow time.