Davies

I played as a Pact lover / Black Fortress hater through the whole game. I helped the Pact in whatever way I could, while simultaneously harming Avadon as much as I could. (The game makes this possible so credit where credit is due.) I killed Redbeard solely because I wanted to shut down Avadon.

Did you manage to do that without help from the enemies of the Pact?

Maybe Avernites just don't like crystals? There's a perfect crystal formation with purported magical powers near Cotra in every Avernum game that takes place in the main caves.

Not in 6, I don't think, and the Empire was making an effort to do so in 2.

Since it shows up as a Special Item, I'm thinking it applies to everyone in your party. The bonuses are pretty small, but probably worth getting.

Ok. I guess the purpose of the discovery was just to demonstrate how desperate the situation in Avernum had become that people were just leaving nearly priceless treasures unclaimed.

Not necessarily. Those crystals are potentially very useful if the wizards at the Tower Colony can transport them without damaging them, and if they get appropriately enchanted without anything going wrong, which would be a lot easier if the wizards aren't focused on the little matter of the demon prince hanging out in their upstairs. And all this would take months, where the situation in Avernum 6 occurs over the course of a few weeks. (Assume that one day passes every time you visit a city or settlement, and you still won't add up to more than thirty days, I'm pretty sure.)

Very unlikely, but yeah, that would be kind of cool. Maybe we actually killed Hawthorne's robot double and now he's back and pissed?

Something I noticed from the map ... the claimed territories of the Empire do not include the region of the Freehold of Kyass.

Bless those mad bastards, they're holding them off.

3rd option won't see daylight since it'd make game more complicated and they are servants of Avadon so they should be satisfied on what they get.

... how does adding furniture to a section of Avadon make the game more complicated than adding furniture to a different section of a different map? How does making a character's loyalty changeable by answering their requests make the game more complicated than having it be changeable based on dialogue choices or missions undertaken?

And if they were satisfied with what they got, they wouldn't take so many bribes, now would they?

Things that might be fun (and fairly easily implemented) for Avadon 3 --

* Assuming that there are three adventuring areas again, the opportunity to buy a house in each of them.

* All three of those houses having adventure possibilities (like the ghost in the Disputed Regions house in Av2)

* The ability to use the buying furniture option to add to and improve your room in Avadon, or your teammates rooms (which can help to make them happy.)

For A3RW, I definitely want the return of time progression (things happen on certain days if you don't stop them from happening) and the day/night cycle.

Alcander and Yoshiria play off each other nicely a few times. He also has, hands down, the best reaction to the revelation of Xenophon's misdeeds.

Or today -- confirmed, killing Redbeard and staying loyal to the pact with a strength of 6 or better gets you the "Avadon triumphant" ending.

Also confirmed, I HAAAAATTTTTEEE that last zone of Tawon raiders ...

This is in hard code, not in script, so I can't check this easily for you. (As noted in the original post, the one thing I can't see is what affects endgame text.)

 

However, my best guess is that if you have enough points to become a Heart, you're going to get the best possible kill-Redbeard ending, too.

... okay, so be it. If I manage it, I'll confirm it here sometime tomorrow.

If you are playing on normal difficulty or with 2 tinkermages at the end, then you can probably win the fight with just 2 Hands helping you so you can save the Fort too. Otherwise it's probably better to be able to win versus Redbeard and just forget about upstairs.

That's not really what I was asking. If I have a score of 6, don't bother to save the Fort and manage to kill Redbeard, am I going to get the ending where I don't get assassinated? (I don't have two tinkermages, and even on Casual he's killing me.)

Okay, this answers the question of 'how strong do you have to be for the loyalist endings'. How strong does Avadon have to be for the best traitor endings (i.e. not getting assassinated). I'm building up my nerve for a second attempt on killing Redbeard and I'm wondering if I really need to save the fort or whether it's better to have all five Hands working that fight. (My count without saving the fort will be 6, incidentally.)

Congrats, that's a tough fight.

You ain't whistling the Wyldrym version of Dixie. I actually found the fight against Vardegras easier, though a good portion of that was having a Tinkermage with both a Healing Pylon and a Flamethrower functioning. And his left-over guards were a cakewalk by comparison.

Well, I finally managed it. Required a certain amount of gaming the system, but I'll still share the strategy I used to finally beat this critter.

1. The first phase of the plan requires you to conserve, conserve, conserve your consumables for this fight. Don't use them for other battles, you're going to need every bit of them for this one.

2. I was at level 30 on all characters, using a right-column Blademaster as my main character (for Call of Frenzy), along with a Drake-Summoning Jenelle and a Cloud-of-Corruption casting Nathalie; I gave the latter the scarab that lets her cast a second Acid Cone. Other characters, other builds, might have made this easier or harder. I have no intention of ever doing this again, so I'm not going to bother to find out.

3. Give your Shards of the Phoenix and Speed Burst scrolls to the character with the highest Dex. Give recuperation crystals to the next fastest one.

4. Go into battle frenzy before talking to the dragon and announcing that you're going to kill her for justice and profit. This is critical, even if you'll lose a round of the effect or so during the conversation.

5. POUND her. Launch your biggest attacks immediately, do not anything back. I was INCREDIBLY lucky in that I managed to get my Stunning Blow to actually Stun Zephyrine, buying me a few rounds in which she wasn't able to activate those damned sentinels of hers. Even though I repeated that Stunning Blow every round that followed, she wasn't ever stunned again, so you can't count on that. Jennell's Vulnerability Curse was also critical, enhancing the damage that everyone was doing.

6. At the start of every round, have your character with the Shards of the Phoenix use them as their first action, so that you can continue to use your most damaging attacks. Don't get excited and forget this! It doesn't matter if you have two attacks if both of them are low damage moves! Pay attention to your Battle Frenzy counter, too, and don't neglect to use those Speed Burst scrolls.

7. When Zephyrine dies, RUN. There is absolutely nothing to be gained by fighting those sentinels! They will still heal themselves every other round, even if they aren't healing Zephyrine, and have dangerous attacks. Get at least one of your characters out of the zone, and come back. The sentinels will have resumed their vigil and not fight you, allowing you to rob Zephyrine's treasury. The real treasure, of course, is the tooth that you get immediately after she dies, which you can use to end the quest and possibly save thousands of Wyldrym lives. (I felt no satisfaction killing Zephyrine, but finally ending that quest, and seeing the results? Yeah, that feels really good.)

There's also a VDT reference in A6, in the Ogre Waste Disposal Facility.

I'm wondering if Miranda ever explicitly states if her husband was executed (I sorta skimmed through conversations with her through both games).

She does not. However:

"You flip through the records. They date from about forty years ago. Moisture and mold have left most of the writing illegible. One entry, halfway through, catches your attention."

 

"It concerns a Hand who attempted to assassinate Redbeard. He tried to stab the Keeper, but the result was a minor wound. Once the Hand's mind was stripped of all knowledge, he was executed."

 

"Oddly, it notes that he was married to one of the Eyes. Her mind was also searched extensively, but nothing was found that implicated her. She was allowed to return to her work. A widow, but one of unquestioned loyalty.";

 

"Her name was Miranda. And the cursory description given of her in the records matches very closely with the appearance of the Heart who has been giving you orders. Interesting.";

if there's any person in this game that deserves to die, its probably her.

Yes, heaven forbid that a group of psychopaths under the command of a senile megalomaniac should be held at least financially accountable for their actions by those who provide their funding.

Interesting. I think I'm going to try this on my next runthrough, after I finish my first "traitor" run. (I suspect that I'm probably going to get killed by the Fort Foresight zone fights in the endgame, though ...)

One complaint that I've seen voiced here is that one reaches the level cap fairly quickly if one does all the sidequests. I'm curious, though -- how soon do you reach it if you don't do any of the sidequests? If you just do the bare minimum necessary to advance the main plot, and don't even bother to try and keep your party loyal? Has anyone examined this?

 

I'm really amazed at just how much the Pact states seem to resent each other. They've gone through a polar shift - they willingly joined the Pact to ward off the invasions of the Farland peoples,

I question how much of that "willingly" may actually be the case. Consider that Hanvar's Council is named for the individual who was Overlord of Holklanda at the time, and then consider the possibility that the Pact might not so much have been willingly entered into as presented as a "do this or else".

On the other hand, it's entirely possible that nobody really pays much attention to inconvenient history. Av2 has a Dharamite talking about how utterly removed Avadon is from the Dharamite way of things ... when it was the brainchild of another Dharamite.

My current headcanon is that the PC from your last game tried to kill Redbeard, but only got to the point where he offers to allow you to live if you'll sacrifice all your companions and go into exile, before the player got fed up with the fight and said okay. He or she's now one of the nameless guards in Monitor Base C. (There's at least one shaman there, several sorceresses and plenty of warriors who might be shadowalkers or blademasters.)

On the other hand, you can use magical attacks at point blank range, something that you can't do with missile ones.

South-east corner of the Base D map, the arena-like area that you might have examined on your previous visit. Have ranged attacks ready.