Triumph

Spore batons are the way to go - no other way of clearing the mines. You shouldn't have needed to use up your entire baton just clearing the bridge; if you did, it probably means you needed to get slightly closer to the mines as you used it. There are more spore batons scattered in various places throughout Sucia Island. They are color coded and affect different mines, so I have no idea which one(s) will help you in that particular zone. It's something you can make a note of and come back to check out later, though. There's nothing of great importance that you're missing out on, FWIW.

I'm sorry you have to continue facing these things. Ultimately, your mother's problem is not her lack of electronic banking services but her unhealthy mental-emotional state (a situation likely brought on multiple factors, but most notably by her abusive husband). To fix situations like this, the people involved must WANT to change, and they must correctly identify the real problem(s). Like Slarty and Randomizer said, any real improvements here would have to come from your parents voluntarily choosing to seek help. Keep encouraging your mother, keep supporting her to the extent that you can, but also keep in mind what the real problems are and don't take on undue pressure or responsibility for something you can't fix.

Spiderweb games usually offer the ability to turn off all sounds in the game settings (such as clicking on Settings on the A2:CS main menu, and clicking sound volume until it says off). I don't know of any way to remove only a few specific sounds, though.

1. Parry is amazing in G2 (like, seriously over-the-top broken). Ideally you'll raise it to 18. Since there are two items that each give +1 to Parry (one of which is the Guardian Cloak you already found), you probably want to raise your base Parry skill to 16 and let those items give the last two points. 2. Loading up on Missile skill would also be really helpful. Just keep pumping it as high as you can, basically. 3. Other stuff: IIRC, Leadership 10 and Mechanics 12 are good goals to aim for - there are times when you might want a more, but I'm pretty sure you can use items to boost you the rest of the way. Investing a little in Endurance might be helpful, just to help survive the occasional hit that will get past Super-Parry. You could also consider putting a few points into Blessing Magic and Healing Craft, just enough to give you access to spells you find in those disciplines. They can be pretty useful. Don't bother with any more Quick Action - it doesn't help if you're not fighting melee. TLDR: boost Parry and Missile a bunch. I hope that helps!

And to be clear, the status of Melanchion's "rivals" is based on how many of the dragon's quests you complete, correct?

Immediately above Refuge on the teleport menu list should be Fort Monastery.

Speaking of shifting themes and emphases... If I remember correctly, the consequences of canister use are vastly less significant in G5 than they were in G2/G3/G4, with just one or maybe two encounters in the entire game caring about your canister-count. You won't find your PC flying into canister-fueled rages like in previous games.

I've always found the grumpy-old-man persona a little silly and unnecessary, but it's never bothered me. I do think it sometimes makes his writing less clear, though - I occasionally struggle to determine how much his negativity on a topic is serious versus part of the shtick. I'm fast approaching thirty and I'm a good bit less physically capable than I used to be (and it's actually not my fault!), which has led me to feel more sympathy than I would have in the past for anyone frustrated by that process, whatever the time or reason it occurs. However, acceptance and adaptation are much more worthwhile responses than deciding to take on the mantle of Captain Grump-Grumps over it.

The Shapers USED to have two continents... #neverforget

Re: Rawal: being a "Shaper" has multiple levels of meaning. It can refer to having the magical ability to shape, or to political affiliation, or to philosophical alignment. It can even refer to one's function within an organization (i.e. Shaper as opposed to agent or guardian). Rawal may not embody the ideals of the Shapers, but he is still very much a Shaper in some of these other senses. As for endings, yes, a couple of the endgame alignments you can choose will lead to an outcome resembling what you describe.

Fair points, Slarty. I think I must concede the Shapers have better odds against the Pact than I initially gave them credit for. Goldengirl, I'll have to strongly disagree with your assessment of Vahnatai military potential. I think you've unfairly conflated "Rentar's strategy / capabilities" with "Vahnatai strategy / capabilities." Sure, Rentar has this thing with wars of attrition through magically engineered monster plagues. The Vahnatai as a whole have other potential that is worth considering, though. Most notably, the Vahnatai seem to be the greatest masters of long-distance teleportation seen in any of Jeff's worlds. Now what happens when you take a major Shaper stronghold, seal it off with magic barriers, and then teleport a Phoenix Egg inside. And wash, rinse, and repeat with as many such Shaper bases as necessary. Hey, you don't even need Phoenix Eggs - just seal off Shaper cities; even if they shape new food sources and don't starve, you completely cut off leaders and armies into convenient, bite-sized chunks. The Vahantai's magic leaves everyone else in the dust, as best I can tell, and I think that if the Olgai tribe as a whole were to go to war, they could devastate most anyone. They are awesomely powerful in A2, and that's with hardly any working infrastructure, only a small portion of their people even awake from hibernation, and off-balance from Empire's initial surprise attack. I'm pretty sure there's even a comment that Rentar is not the most powerful of all Vahnatai mages, but only happened to be the most powerful mage already awake. Who knows what they are truly capable of? I agree that Rentar's monster-plague approach is not the most effective strategy, but that by no means proves that Vahnatai would lose to the Shapers.

Totally agree that in the event of a full-scale Shaper assault on the Pact in general or Avadon in particular, the Shapers would win. If there's a way the Pact can come out ahead, the outcome would turn on Redbeard acting cunningly and decisively to weaken the Shapers. Hmm...now I'm trying to think like Redbeard and figure out how to defeat the Shapers. Do you think there's any chance Redbeard would find a way to stir up rebellion among the serviles? I suspect actually fomenting enough unrest to substantially undermine the Shaper war effort would take far too long; the Pact would be defeated before such plots would make a difference. Perhaps a more fruitful path would involve sowing dissension among the Shapers? Finding a way to bribe some Shapers for aid, or manipulate others to withhold support for the war, or even seek to engineer some kind of Shaper civil war? I still think assassination is the way to go (in terms of Redbeard's strategy). Think how many prominent Shapers (Lord Rahul? Councilors Taygen and Astoria and Alwan and Rawal?) the Geneforge PCs are able to assassinate. The PC does typically have some advantage in being a Shaper, but is also typically a relatively inexperienced figure with no special background in assassinations. If Redbeard has experienced, skilled assassins available, I think he would have a fair chance of at least knocking out a fair number of Shaper leaders. That leads to confusion and chaos, and the more confusion and chaos reign, the more opportunities for Avadon to manipulate the situation.

I would have to vote EMPIRE in each case where it's an option. The sheer size and military might (and corresponding economic resources needed to sustain that might) seem to dwarf anything the Shapers or the Pact could offer (especially once the Shapers misplace an entire continent ). Besides talking about raw quantity, The Empire displays an ability to efficiently deploy resources into war that neither other empire has shown. And then there's magic. My impression is that the magical wonders and powerful spells of the Empire's mages easily outstrip those of the Shapers and the Pact. This is especially true if we go back before the Avernum remakes to when mages were allowed to summon more than two creatures ( ). For the sake of the discussion, I'll specify the Garzahd-led Avernum 2-era Empire as the basis for my impression of the Empire. Garzahd's leadership is also critical; he comes across as much more effective than either Hanvar's Council or the Shaper Council. The more interesting question is that of the Pact versus the Shapers. I'd guess that in a fight, a Shaper could defeat multiple Pact soldiers. And the Pact is governed by the not-terribly-decisive-or-efficient Hanvar's Council; at least most of the members of Shaper Council are powerful mages. But the Shapers are notoriously slow about recognizing and understanding threats, and regularly ineffective at neutralizing such threats. Whereas the Pact has Avadon. For all its deficiencies seen in the games, I can easily see Redbeard identifying the Shapers as an existential threat to the Pact and launching a highly effective campaign to assassinate Shapers before the Shapers finish deciding what do. Avadon's access to teleportation magic might be key to this campaign. By the end, the Shapers' empire might be essentially intact, but so many Shapers would be dead that it would end up breaking down. The remaining Shapers would be too few in number / too intimidated to seriously consider continuing to invade the Pact.

Remember that at the start of Ava2, the PC is NOT a Hand; you're just a lowly scout-in-training. It's extremely doubtful that the rebels could have predicted that the PC was going to get conscripted by Avadon and then prearranged the defection of scout in order to later recruit the PC. LOL. The way the scout talks about how the rebels saved him / her from the titan really strengthens my tendency to read the Stockholm angle into the defection.

I feel like every single one of my encounters with the Wyldrylm so far in the game seems to involve the Wyldrylm person / people do whatever the stupidest possible thing is in that particular situation. How have they survived as long as they have? Were they this dumb in Avadon 1? "Hey, everybody, I'm Dedrik and I'm a noob like Garzhad. I got banished for supporting the Pact, but now to get unbanished I'm gonna go slaughter some Pact soldiers! La la la! Oh, maybe I shouldn't do that, nah, it's cool, let's keep it up! Oops, somehow I didn't realize killing a bunch of Pact soldiers actually meant...killing a bunch of Pact soldiers. LOL. Oh, and I'm not actually unbanished either. Well, anyway, thanks a bunch for standing by me in my time of need, pal." The scout's behavior also seems rather unreasonable at times. "Oh, I was fighting in one army, and then suddenly realized the people in the other army were totes def my BFFs and I couldn't fight them, but then I got punched by a giant, and then I decided to change sides to the army whose giant punched me. Maybe I've got Stockholm Syndrome or something. Whatevs. Hey, so, I know we spent a little while hiking woodland trails while I taught you nature lore, but it was totally the happiest time of my life and I'm in love with you now. Kthxbai." And then there are various times when Wyldrylm forces attack me when it makes little sense. "Look, those heavily armed people wearing the emblem of Avadon just buried a rock by a bunch of obelisks that don't even belong to me! I better attack them! It's three on one (well, I guess I've got my pets), but I can totally take them! I mean, just standing here totally concealed and then using my trained animals to dig up and remove the magic crystal later is too unsubtle. Gotta make a statement!" I'm wishing for a scene where a bunch of Wyldrylm get together and starting "Tradition" from Fiddler on the Roof. I don't always like the Kva or Kellems or Dharamites I've met (speak of which, the Dharamites would sing "If I Were A Rich Man"), but they don't seem as over-the-top irrational as the Wyldrylm do. Currently withholding judgment on Holklanda. Random gameplay question: if I report to Calan about my companions (after doing their quests), does it have any effect on the game?

I'm imagining a door-closing skill that increases the more one uses it, leading the PC to spend hours obsessively opening and closing the same door, while nearby NPCs just shake their heads. But then, when the PC's legendary door-closing skill enables them to save the keep from the ogre attack, they'll be more appreciative. You don't just shut doors - you shut them authoritatively! "I used to be an adventurer. Then I took a lesson in how to shut doors." Your PC might even go on to become the NPC that goes around shutting all the doors in a zone after you leave, such that they are all shut whenever you return again even though none of the normal NPCs ever seem to know how to do it. It's sort of an apotheosis into a deity of door-closing. There could also be an Anama-esque cult that believes the power to shut doors is too dark and dangerous for anyone to use. If you join, you lose the skill and can't regain it unless you leave the cult. And they would give you quests to go around opening all the doors in a zone! I am completely on board with this obviously awesome innovation.

If a thread hasn't been posted in for years and years, please DO start a new topic. There may be rare exceptions, but if a thread hasn't seen use in years, it's almost always the better choice to just start a new one. You can always include a link to the old thread if you think there's something there everyone needs to see, but it's easier for everyone else on the forum to see a nice, neat, clean new thread with your latest thoughts or questions than to have to sift through years-old posts trying to figure how your comment relates. It's not "clutter" to start a new thread because the old ones are typically buried many pages deep in the forum where no one sees them, and in terms of accessing your particular post, the effect is to make the forum LESS cluttered, because other people don't have to mess with a dozen ancient posts surrounding yours in the thread. Thanks!

Prior to Avadon, the closest Jeff came to PC-NPCs, characters that were in your party but had some kind of independent personality / existence and weren't just player creations, were Greta and Alwan in G3. Before Avadon 1, they were his only big experiment in party members that were people (well, I guess the temporarily joined NPC party members in Nethergate would count, but they didn't have anywhere near the role Alwan and Greta did). And Jeff had no problem incorporating your former party members from G3 into the continuing Geneforge storyline of G4 and G5. So I see no reason why he would get hung up on reusing the NPC party members of the Avadon games now. Plus, the Generforge games always pretty clearly had strong implications about path the protagonist of the previous story had taken, based simply on who was still alive in the next game and who had died off. Now, in some cases the path the canon protagonists took didn't match any path actually open to us players, but that doesn't negate the fact that a "canon" story outcome came about.

Sad that Jeff had to cut a dungeon of riddles. That would have been awesome. Re: Halls of Chaos, though, would it help if there were more of a direct hint that everything you need is lying around there in the zone? I mean, in a game with puzzle-solving like the Legend of Zelda series, typically, everything you need to get through a dungeon's puzzles is found in the dungeon. People know the conventions of the series / genre and trust the designers that when they see an obstacle, they have or will soon find the means to surmount it. I wonder if the issue is that RPG designers haven't engendered that same kind of trust (or done anything to earn it?), leaving players with the sense that they're facing ridiculously difficult demands. If you trusted Jeff to not treat you that way, instead of worrying when you see need X, you'd just think "Okay, I guess I'll around in here for X."

The places you want to go are named Underground Fort, Swamp Temple, and Crypt of Drath.

I guess this isn't technically a gameplay / interface request, but I would really really really love some closure as to the fates of the Hands that accompanied the PC in the first two games.

The problem is there are lots of remakes - I (wrongly) thought you were playing the remake of A1, rather than the remake of A2. The Barrier Tower is something you can only reach via the portal at the Tower of Magi. You had to visit there earlier in order to get portal lessons, IIRC.

Yeah, I think you and Slarty are right, Mechalibur. I blame Randomizer for leading me astray. The spellbook for Dispel Barrier, needed to get it to the third level, is in the Barrier Tower.

Somewhere in Blosk, you might find some burnt paper. When you do, you'll know who to call for help.

I would do this...except that I don't want to divide my attention and get sidetracked from trying to play Avadon 2. But I am glad to hear this is happening!