Sade

Luring Melanchion to the Blackchasm, going to the other side and shooting the dragon from there is an easy way to kill him, if not a bit cheatish.

I don't think that respawning is time-related in A6; just teleport to Portal Keep and back to Patrick's Tower and the shade should appear sooner or later.

Nope, you can't. Since there's no castable Unlock Doors spell in A6, the anama wouldn't even need the crystals any more than normal characters.

I don't know whether anyone has noticed this, but Originally Posted By: Synergizer list SCUTTLER WOODS - LOWER LEVEL - from PATRICK’s TOWER LOWER LEVEL via Experiment Halls: —— Forgotten Shade (kill) - Tinker’s Crystal - N that enemy respawns and drops a Tinker's Crystal each time you kill it, which means that you can gather more of them than you'd ever need rather quickly and easily.

The regular haste never seems to give "sudden bursts of speed" when using AoE spells, namely Icy Rain, Fireblast, Arcane Blow and Divine Fire. Is this intentional?

Well, Clarey in the Undead Spiral is completely surrounded by magical barriers. Haven't tried to shoot him, though.

Can you get your flawless crystals back if you first give them to the ogre, then finish the quest, and later come back to kill him?

Well, yeah, I wasn't trying to do too serious research, just proving that no other skill than Lethal Blow increases the damage enough to affect the practical gameplay. You know, 8.5% damage increase, even if it would exist, is a pretty pathetic outcome for training 40 Anatomy (or anything else).

Skills affecting Fiery Wand Damage x +y means training the skill in question y levels higher than its base level (2 for Dex and Int, 0 for everything else). Decimal number right after "x +y" means the arithmetic mean of 20 hits with a Fiery Wand. Percentage in the end means the increase (or decrease) compared to base damage. Petitioners around CFD were used as the test subjects. Base damage, human, no traits, no training: 21.7, range 17-26 Dexterity +10: 22.05, range 16-28, + 1.61%, Dexterity +20: 22.15, range 15-27, + 2.07% Intelligence +10: 21.1, range 16-28, - 2.76%, Intelligence +20: 21.85, range 14-29, + 0.69% Mage Spells +10: 21.85, range 17-26, + 0.69%, Mage Spells +20: 22.8, range 16-29, + 5.07% Priest Spells +10: 21.55, range 14-27, - 0.69%, Priest Spells +20: 21.0, range 15-28, - 3.23% Spellcraft +10: 21.55, range 17-28, - 0.69%, Spellcraft +20: 22.6, range 15-29, + 4.15% Luck +10: 22.05, range 15-28, + 1.61%, Luck +20: 22.75, range 16-30, + 4.84% Anatomy +10: 22.6, range 18-29, + 4.15%, Anatomy +20: 22.25, range 16-27, + 2.53% Lethal Blow +10: 24.1, range 16-31, + 11.06%, Lethal Blow +20: 25.3, range 19-35, + 16.59% Every above skill +40: 27.7, range 20-32, + 27.65% Every above skill except Lethal Blow +40: 23.55, range 18-30, + 8.53% Conclusions: Lethal Blow is clearly the best skill for increasing the damage done by wands(and scrolls). Mage Spells, Spellcraft, Luck and Anatomy also seem to increase the damage, although rather marginally. It's definitely not worth it to train anything only to increase wand/scroll damage. In practice, all of these percentages (expect probably Lethal Blow's) are so small that I don't think there's any reason to care about any of this stuff.

I did a little test with the Wand of the Inferno: 20 hits against a group of Mutant Lizards; 40 Lethal Blow skill; 0 Lethal Blows. It seems that (unsurprisingly) only single-targeted wands and scrolls are included. Yeah, I am using Windows.

Well, I'm not anyone else, but... Blasting Lethal Blow with a Fiery Wand Is that enough of a proof?

You can land Lethal Blows also using scrolls and wands. Not sure whether this was already covered within the "ranged weapons" or not.

Well, it isn't about whether Aoe spells are overpowered or not. There is just far too much spell energy for you to use even with the current system. In the end of my latest Avernum 5 playthrough I had ~50 unused energy potions/elixir without ever buying or making any of them. Of course, not fixing Magical Efficiency wouldn't really solve the problem. My solutions: 1) Longer dungeons, without energy basins or possibility to retreat to a town to recover your SP; Tower of Zkal FTW 2) More enemies that drain your SP; Mung Demons FTW 3) Much lower amount of base SP; A1-A3 FTW In my opinion, having basically infinite SP is probably the worst balance problem in Avernum games.

I had always thought that Magical Efficiency not working on AoE spells was an intentional game-balancing feature. To my mind, "fixing" the skill would actually make it kind of overpowered.

I just noticed that whenever a player controlled slith character dies, it won't make any voices. I haven't had any other problems with the game's sounds, and dying NPC sliths are working like they should. This isn't very significant glitch, but it's sometimes annoying.

My suggestion for the perfect teleportation system: Whenever you use click a pylon, a pop-up screen appears with the following options. 1) Teleport to the Portal Keep; currently the only option 2) Quick teleport to other pylon; which opens opens the same screen as when you approach the Portal Keep's portal 3) Heal; this option isn't as important but it would make HP/MP restoring much less tedious in some areas It could also be possible to turn the thing off in Game Options for those that don't like it. Current teleportation system + the above pop-up screen - pointless, annoying sparkles = awesomeness.

Why is the Pathfinder skill so disliked? I mean, it has pretty low requirements; everyone using magic and/or going for Anatomy should buy 2 Intelligence anyway, and 6 Nature Lore costs no more than 12 SP either. Initial cost of training Pathfinder is mere 1 SP, so buying the first couple of points of it is nearly free. In addition, "Poisoned" is arguably the most frequent negative Magical Effect in the game (after "Stunned", perharps). The damage done by poison is usually far from insignificant, too. What changes would the skill need to make it worthwhile?

Like the title says, which Special Skills do you think are worth unlocking? Using Skill Points, not trainers etc. Any character in your party does.

Originally Posted By: Student of Trinity The result is that on Torment you should be charming not just several times, but many times in most fights. Umm, pardon my ignorance, but what is the difference between charming "several" and "many" times in most fights?

Originally Posted By: Svelte Prince Penoir Originally Posted By: Sade I recently completed Avernum 5 with an Anama party on Torment difficulty. At the end I had a total of ~500 unused skill points, ... And I'm not any kind of min-maxer at all. I know I'm grave-digging, but HOW the heck is this done? By using certain clever strategies. Spiderweb Software's games have the same problem as most of the other RPG games I've played: with basic, casual playing style, they may seem quite hard, but serious exploiting of near-cheating features makes them alot easier. With these features, I don't mean using editor, cheat codes, etc. Instead they involve doing what you are not actually supposed to do, kind of thinking outside the box. Here are some (spoiler-filled) examples from Avernum 5: ¤ Spray some Acid on a super powerful boss monster (SPBM) that would 1-hit KO you if it got the chance, run around the corner, and wait until it's dead ¤ Blast SPBM with an AOE spell like Divine Fire or Fireblast so that it doesn't see you, and it won't retaliate ¤ Block SPBM from attacking/escaping with summons, (N)PCs or certain environmental objects: you can even trap Dorikas into some of his fortress's side rooms using Dionicio ¤ Tactical withdrawals: damage Gelmax the Bandit until he summons his swarm of bats, escape to town, return, kill one bat, escape to town, return, etc.

I recently completed Avernum 5 with an Anama party on Torment difficulty. At the end I had a total of ~500 unused skill points, and I still found the game to be almost boringly easy at some points. And I'm not any kind of min-maxer at all. So, on Easy difficulty, I'd say that a normal 4-character party should be able to complete the game as long as you won't spend your skill points extremely badly (eg. putting all of them into lore skills or something). However, when I played Avernum 5 through for my first time, I also felt that the game was ridiculously hard on any difficulty. I guess it's all about experience. As the say, practice makes perfect.

Well, I'm not sure, but as there's a question mark on an island in the Eastern Gallery, there has to be some way to get there. Boats, I'd suppose.

Oh well, it's actually kinda nice thing that this gives some use for those pathetically weak scrolls I would never use otherwise.

During the battle with Dorikas, he summons 4 orbs. Each of them is vulnerable to only one kind of damage: melee, ice, fire or energy. Anama PCs can handle the first 3 of those easily, but the last one seems to be a problem. No priest spell does energy damage, and summoned Shades do only physical damage. There's no mages to charm either. You can occasionally hit about 1 point of damage with other styles, but even if you could destroy the Orb that way, it would take unreasonably long time. So, I ended up using the Lightning Spray scrolls I had been hoarding. This way I managed to eventually win, but I had to waste about 30 scrolls in the process. If I had sold those things, would the battle have been impossible? Or is there something I have missed?

Originally Posted By: Randomizer Gladwell is pretty much a waste for a singleton since the initial stat bonuses are for only a single character, the spell books require you to have arcane lore early on to read them, and the items are available elsewhere. I disagree. Click to reveal.. (Possible spoilers) While it's true that you only get +1 increasement to every main skill by accepting the geas, it still beats Melanchion's rewards. And since Gladwell doesn't need Solberg's Papers, you can give them to Melanchion either way. The reward spell books of Gladwell only require Arcane Lore of 3 and 5, respectively. This means that if you buy Shanker's AL training and wear the Magus Vest you can find in the second reward chamber, you don't need to spend any skill points even as a singleton. The items are available elsewhere, that's true, but not before much later in the game. For example, you can't find another Incantor's Ring (very nice ring for a spellcaster singleton) until the 7th chapter. To top it off, you also get some fairly nice exp from basins. Getting towns angry doesn't really matter either, since they are somewhat useless after you have done all their quests, and bought all the training and skill point increasers you want. So, in my opinion, taking Gladwell's geas is certainly worthwhile for a singleton. Of course, there are several moral dilemmas, but I can't really argue about them.