Sade

Another great example is the Talisman of Might. Judging by its massive value of 4000 gold, you'd think that it would be one of the most powerful artifacts in the game, and yet all it does is give a 8% bonus to melee damage. Now, compare it to the Emerald Chain (worth 1500 gold), which gives 3% armor and 3 Blademaster, i.e. strictly better bonuses. (Although the Chain doesn't seem to appear in A3:RW specifically.) Or compare it to the OLD Talisman of Might, which gave you 4 Strength and thus an invaluable boost to your encumbrance limit.

To be specific, you CAN still join the Anama for real after getting rid of the fake rings, but only if you let the altar in Shayder disintegrate them (which also gives you a Dread Curse). On the other hand, if you dispose of the rings by directly talking to Ahonar, he understandably won't let you join the Anama afterwards (but you do avoid the Dread Curse). Overall, though, Ahonar is rather forgiving of it, as he is still willing to decurse you and teach you spells (at the original prices even) after catching you red-handed profaning his faith.

7. Yes. 8. According to nlambert's index, the towns are Krizsan, Lost Isle, Point Contemplation, Bengaro, Dorngas, and Moon. 9. I didn't find any use for them either. 10. Apparently so. 11. Priest spells can be useful enough even without heavy skill investment, as long you are limiting yourself to healing and blessing spells only. Trying to build a character that uses both priest spells and bows for attacking is likely a bad idea, though. 12. This is a hint for finding a secret area. 13. You can access the switch in the northwest room by first stepping on two runes, one in the southwest corner (with a big arrow pointing at it) and one in the northeast anvil room.

Shrub location: I certainly didn't spot it either on my playthrough and had to check nlambert's index.

Oh wow, I totally missed that weak wall. Rooms with unusual entrances seem to often have unpickable locks, so I didn't really search for it very hard. Moreover, Move Mountains obstacles have an unfortunate immunity to the Find Secrets ability (aka spamming the "u" key).

I also found it a bit weird that with all of the perfectly harmless level 3 spellbooks out there, Summon Aid penalizes your party in such a harsh way, costing no less than 750 total experience points if you decide to get rid of the Dread Curse. Summoning spells have some of the least impressive level 3 upgrades anyway.

I haven't done a full playthrough with a hybrid fighter/archer, but I turned one of my end-game characters into one with the character editor and tested him out. A level 34 Torment character, with all of the assignable stat points placed evenly between Strength and Dexterity, both Improved Strength and Improved Dexterity traits maxed out, and a hefty -55% total to-hit penalty from equipment, could reach the maximum 95% to-hit chance against typical end-game enemies with both dual-wielded swords and archery, albeit only barely. Against Sulfras, the to-hit chances dropped to 69% (with dual-wielded swords) and 79% (with archery). So, as long as you're not wearing the most encumbering armor possible, hitting enemies should be feasible in the end-game.

This quest appears to be bugged. I also couldn't catch the unicorns despite training my nature lore sky-high, until it suddenly became possible for some reason I couldn't identify.

I went to check and see what I had missed, and there was indeed one 2-reputation quest in Randomizer's list that I had failed to pick up. As I went through the list, I also remembered that one guy in Shayder (Grunders) who was complaining about his lost ring. His quest, which is for the Anama (or Anama impersonators) only, gives an additional point of reputation, bringing the apparent maximum up to 74.

My human-only (if that ever has any effect) party, which avoided all reputation decreases, finished the game at 71 reputation. I may have missed some obscure reputation-increasing events, however, so I can't say for certain that it is the maximum value. There seems to be only two reputation-decreasing quests, Steal Book for Ivanova and Dispose of Marish Brigands, which each decrease your reputation by 1. There are, in addition, a number of reputation-decreasing events that don't count as quests.

I finished my Torment playthrough, with pretty much everything done, in 46 days. That being said, I did try my hardest to get everything done as efficiently as possible, since I am rather obsessive about not letting anything bad (but preventable) happen to Valorim. In the end, it was honestly not worth the effort at all. Apart from the slime plague, which starts affecting cities relatively quickly, I was mostly way ahead of "schedule". On the negative side, I had to hold spacebar for over an hour just to wait long enough for the day 160 event to occur.

After level 30, you will only get to increase your skills every five levels. Since you have to place the skill points into two separate skills during any single level-up, your character would have to reach level 50 to get to TU 15. Reaching that high a level is practically impossible, for a party of four at least, so you probably cannot open the door on your current playthrough without cheating. Still, you are not missing much by having TU 10. Hit chance penalties do affect all kinds of attacks. They are, however, largely not an issue for characters who have reasonably developed their main attacking attributes (Strength for melee, Dexterity for archery, Intelligence for magic). Most importantly, a high hit chance penalty total can prevent you from using Mage Spells altogether. Priest Spells are excluded from this limitation, so priests can easily wear as much heavy armor as they want (although encumbrance can be an issue with too little Strength). Enemy-specific hit chances can be seen when you attack enemies, but other than that, the game does not show your total hit chance bonus/penalty anywhere. Curse resistance can decrease the duration of immobility. The condition can be cured with any ability that “cures hostile effects”, e.g. Curing and Focus Spirit.

Attribute distribution depends on the chosen difficulty level and character “class”. Playing on Torment, I usually give my characters 1 point of Endurance for every 3 or 4 points of Strength/Dexterity/Intelligence. On lower difficulty levels, your accuracy is less of an issue, so you can afford to build your characters with more defensive attributes. Also, mages and priests who usually stay out of the front lines can probably make do with less Endurance than warriors (and archers). There is no need to hold on to any usable food items in A2:CS. In the very early game, their health restoration may be semi-useful, but other than that, you can just sell them.

Yeah, the battle against Mister Reverse Placeholder is surprisingly tough and interesting, given how reaching it requires you to do the final quests in an order no one would unintentionally attempt.

Do you mean this one: NW Hordling Pit - hidden switch - level 3 move mountains - metal chest - Stability Girdle (6% armor, -5% to hit chance, +4% to evade)? It is not located inside the Hordling Pit, per se, but rather slightly to the north:

Not really. While fire is certainly an important damage type to have high resistance against in many situations, the 10% bonus that sliths get is rather negligible. Human characters might not be able to attain quite as high a resistance boost as sliths do against fire, specifically, with their 8 extra trait points; however, with 5 Improved Endurance traits and the 25 extra Health they provide, you can gain what is effectively a (one-time) 5+% boost to all damage resistances, while also slightly increasing your evasion rate and acid/poison resistances. In addition, you would still have 3 trait points remaining, with which you could increase your defenses even further. Or not. After all, the flexibility (and great number) of the additional traits is what makes the human race superior in practically every situation. What is more, it is not unfeasible to reach 90% fire resistance with skills and equipment alone, especially if you switch your gear according to the circumstances.

Huh. I thought it was intentional that you could get the anti-infernal bonus (including ward-breaking) with any kinds of attacks, as long as you were holding Demonslayer. I could not get this to work anymore now that rechecked it, so I guess this is the exploit mentioned in the version 1.0.1 fix list. Sigh. And here I was trying to avoid cheating on my first playthroughs.

Yeah, it feels a bit funny how your groups of adventurers in Avernum games are little more than mindless drones, walking everywhere in perfect unison and never having disagreements over the most controversial of acts. It is not easy to recognize your characters’ identities in the spirit of roleplaying, when they even themselves fail to do that: the dialog-speaker of your party (whoever he or she is supposed to be) always talks of, say, the slith(s) present in third person, even when everyone in the group belongs to the corresponding race. The above, in addition to the facts that 1) other people refer to your party collectively as ‘humans’, regardless of its actual composition (which is understandable in the case of the ignorant vahnatai, but as for others, not so much) 2) your characters always seem to be better-acquainted with human lore and customs than with their own, possibly differing ones 3) they never show signs of non-human mannerisms (e.g. the slith-esque sibilant voice) 4) PC nephilim and slithzerikai are basically strictly weaker than humans, in A2:CS at least, barring a minor resistance boost makes me think that the player-controlled “non-human races” are really just human cosplayers. With clunky and not-highly-convincing costumes.

Just in case, here are the locations of the statues in pictorial form: (Incidentally, I wonder why the name of the cave is the only one with an “‘s” in it. I assume it has the word ‘giant’ in it only due to its inhabitants, not because of its actual size or decor. In which case, it really ought to be renamed Aldous’ Cave after I was done killing everyone inside.)

And even though you can get the egg from Pyrog’s Lair without talking to Enla, doing so is still necessary to actually use it in Angierach.

Yeah, a previously killed Garzahd will be replaced with Peltalis during the rooftop battle, although neither mage is present during the earlier fight in Guardian Plains. I must say, while the Empire might “never be able to find the equal of the brilliant, awesomely powerful, extremely dead Garzahd”, they were awfully quick at generating a successor with very similar wall-exploding, flying and damage-sponging abilities.

So, I tested out turning in the Angierach Soul first, and sure enough, now I have my medal. Hmm.

The medal seems to be bugged in some way. Multiple people, including myself, have not been able to get it, while clearly meeting the purported requirements. It might be dependent on the chosen difficulty level, as I could only get the other medal I had missed (Royal Clearance) on my third, casual playthrough after two torment ones. This, of course, may be a coincidence, with the actual trigger being something else. And, if the medal cares about what specific Crystal Soul you rescue first, I can say that the ones in Ornotha Ziggurat and Pyrog’s Lair should not be applicable. Now that I am curious, has anyone actually managed to gain the medal?

After plenty of playing around with the editor, I found out that the book is actually not bugged. What you need to make it readable is 4 Cave Lore. However much sense that makes.

Yeah, you cannot access the same cellar area in CS as you could in EftP. Actually, the area where Demonslayer can be found is located upstairs. Of course, if you consider a cellar purely as a ‘room below the level of the ground’, then every room in Avernum is technically one.