Thaluikhain

ok you confused me with "(including a GIFT in the tower of Magi)". but anyways nvm that, and Ok ill talk to Arkley in the library of shayder, about what though

 

Hmmm...can't remember exactly. I don't think you have to though, they just point you in the right direction, you can explore the forests...there's a sign saying something about spiders around, and a special encounter mentioning them (also hostile spiders wandering around). That's the general area.

 

As an aside, in the place where the GIFTs live, there's a bunch of metal bars lying around, and the one that weights 18, rather than 20, is platinum rather than iron. Iron bars aren't worth the price of having a sage ID them for you.

 

and it seems that shayder did NOT restrict me from entering their city, Probably because of my Good Deeds to the south or something,

 

You need to complete the roaches and/or the slimes to get into Lorelai and Sharimik (and I think Gale), but Kriszan and Shayder aren't restricted. They couldn't be, because you need to be able to get in those to do those missions.

 

but there was nobody to tell em to talk to ther mayor or some captain, does shayder have a town hall?

 

It's don't think it's actually necessary to talk to them, IIRC, but you can get a reward from the Mayor on top of your reward from the Exile people.

When a Doomguard is hit, it takes damage and then splits. So the copies will be weaker and weaker. What you want to do is only hit it with your strongest attack, since that will minimize the number of copies you have to deal with.

 

Also, keep hitting the same one until it dies, and then attack the ones that split off last, since that will have less health and won't split off into zillions more. Also, seconding using the strongest attack, very important. Someone using a powerful single handed weapon is much better than someone using multiple weaker ones, and don't have your spellcasters try to help out in combat, that just makes things worse. Really don't use a wall of blades.

 

As an aside, you have to fight a Doomguard later on, and kill one of it, but that's much later.

 

If you place the force barrier on your party surrounding the doomguard you will still be able to attack it while keeping it from splitting. After it's killed just step out of the barrier and continue on

 

Hey? You mean the last part of the square should include your party, and this stops it splitting? Interesting.

IIRC, you don't need to talk to anyone, some people mention it to get you on the right track (including a GIFT in the tower of Magi). though.

 

Oh, the hints linked from this site says to talk to Arkley in the library of Shayder and that the spiders are near Bavner.

Also, because there's only two different types of hostile, if you don't kill the Doomguard, it counts as being on one of those two sides.

 

Anyway, you don't really need to remember that message, it's just for story purposes, you can just keep going with the plagues and stuff.

This happened in E3 not just with Fort Emergence, but later there is a big wall blocking entrance into Footracer Province, and another earlier on blocking another province (I can't remember which). I believe at least the earlier one can be avoid via portal in that wizard's house in Krizsan Province.

 

EDIT: Actually I don't think there's a town, just a special encounter, at the earlier wall. I never made it to Footracer Province so I don't know about there.

 

Footracer is via a special encounter (IIRC) yeah, and if you mean Bigail for the other one, that's because you have to go via ferry, and you don't generally flit back and forth from there anyway.

 

I don't remember if Almaria does this, but an option could be, once you've been through town once, you have the opportunity to skip straight through it with a special node: "You've come to Hippopotamus Town again. It's a lovely town, but would you like to pass through quickly?" (Yes) (No)

 

Ah, that sounds like a good idea, will consider that. Thanks!

Now, it would be very easy to make a town that you had to pass through to get from one area to another.

 

For example, in "The Fog", there is a river dividing the map, and the bridge is a town. You enter the town on the south side of the river, and exit on the north and vice versa, you have to go through the town, there's no other way to cross the bridge.

 

This is something I don't recall seeing much of, however. You have exceptions like Fort Emergence in E3, which links the surface with upper exile, and a few places where you have to fight through a dungeon to get to the next part. Which seems odd, as fortresses dominating routes and preventing people/monsters moving past them would seem to be sorta the point of having them.

 

But it's rare to have a a route you might want to follow more than once for other reasons that requires you to enter and leave a town you otherwise aren't interested in going to.

 

Is this because it's annoying? I thought it could get a bit annoying in The Fog, going into town mode and out again just added to tedious traveling, but that might have just been me. And that was a fairly straightforward route through the town, didn't have to navigate windy passageways or anything.

 

Thinking of (finally getting round to) making a scenario in which towns you had to walk through to get places would feature. But not sure if this would be a good idea, or would cause traveling back and forth to drag.

 

(Also, need another word for "Aftershock", because that'd be a great name for my scenario, only it's been taken)

I don't suppose you know what the filenames are called? Because all my scenarios are sorta lumped in together, and for example, "Domestic Evil" seems to be 4 files beginning with "de" (I'll send you that). I think I played the Crusaders so I should have that one, but don't know what the .exs file is called. Don't think I've heard of most of those though.

Well, technically it's two plagues, but since they are linked, they are counted as one, so only one reward. The captain in Lorelei doesn't change for that, or for when you've found all the stuff you can.

 

As an aside, the cave with the crystal cave is connected to the Troglos and Giant caves. So you can enter the Giant caves, go through where the barrier was into the crystal cave and then into the Troglos cave and up into the castle, which you probably wouldn't have explored otherwise.

I always assumed that this was a mistake, albeit an interesting and entertaining one so I always made sure to get it, that it should have been a book you could read, but was set up wrong. Now that I think of it, it's the only one of it's kind, though, whereas multiple copies of normal books are all over. Wonder what this one said?

Hate hate hate Ruby Skeletons, they are extremely nasty. Even the spellcasting ones, the spirits, vampire, divas and liches aren't nearly as infuriating.

 

Actually, I find the smaller monsters with one or two nasty tricks tend to be worse than the big scary ones. Nullbugs and web throwing spiders come to mind as well.

Oh, I should find my Ex3 hintbook, I've pencilled in a few corrections and additions.

 

IIRC, there is a Church of the Divine Lucre special encounter outdoors where you can buy some rare, top level priest spells which isn't mentioned in the "buying spells list", which is really useful, but expensive.

Hmmm...some of those disadvantages look a little game breaking. I mean, getting XP bonuses for being a bad archer is a great "disadvantage" for characters that don't ever use archery, which is most of them.

 

Likewise, magic point regeneration being slower has no negative effect on people with no magic points, though high level fighters will be made into fighter-priests.

 

...

 

In regards to special items giving these sorts of effects, is there any way to have special items only affect one character?

Some items are almost never going to be worth IDing.

 

If you are fighting goblins and one drops a knife when you kill it, it's not too likely to be a magic knife.

 

I remember in Exile 3, the cost of IDing iron bars was the same as their resale value. Silver bars, though, were worth a lot more, and though they had the same graphic, their weight was a bit less, IIRC, so I knew they were worth picking up.

I think with big area effect spells like Firestorm, terrain could also shield certain squares from the effect, like if you have a wall directly between you and the centre of the template, which is nice, though I'd like to have seen the squares that are hit take more damage, but that's a bit over complicated.

 

Oh, with bigger monsters, they just took the same damage as everyone else right, no matter how many squares being affected they were in? Again, over-complicating, but it'd be cool it they took damage from every affected square, so being clipped by a fireball isn't as bag as it going off directly on top of you.

Buying spells? In E3 and BoE, everyone knows the same spell list regardless if they can actually cast them, which is most of levels 1-3, some stuff like identify, conflagration and so on still need to be bought or found.

IIRC, Boltblade was in one of the giant's caves, I think, or maybe somewhere around that area.

Nephil's Gambit. IMHO, up there at the very pinnacle of BoE scenarios, though there are a few places that can be a bit hard.

Yeah, it was very annoying to keep having to put items in and out for this, or guessing.

Well, yeah, but I meant from an in-story PoV. Quickfire would make quite a mess of the tower of shifting floors...very over-powered spell in that respect, but not really useful for gameplay.

More than that, like the Hill Giants, they are stuck in a fairly small isolated area, hemmed in by Imperial towns, presumably large numbers of soldiers who aren't too happy to see them continue to exist.

A sorta wacky idea. I've never been fussed on haste/slow spells affecting action points. I mean, it's a nice simple mechanic and all, which is a great reason for it, but not very realistic.

 

IMHO, if you are slowed, you might only lose one or two action points a round, but you'd find it much harder to hit things and it'd be much easier for the enemy to hit you. IIRC, Avernum (or at least Nethergate) has you have less chance of hitting when encumnbered, maybe haste/slow could affect that as well?

 

Possibly over complicated and I'd note like to muck everything up just for that though.

 

Also, I like how there's no "right" lot of armour. The more you wear, the more encumbrance, you are alowed down and can't cast spells.

 

Unfortunately, weapons don't work the same way. The broadsword (waveblade if you can get it) is the best single handed weapon type, end of. No reason to use anything else if you've got a broadsword of the same quality. Only reason to have bashing weapons is for when you get odd magic weapons, edged weapons are just better. For double handed weapons, pole is just better, halberd is the best (or was it slith spear?).

 

I'd like to see benefits for using less powerful weapons same as there are for lighter armour (and in reality, the rapier replaced the broadsword). Not quite sure how to do this, maybe some weapons are faster than others, or are easier to use in conjunction with another, though you'd expect this to come into play with shields as well. Maybe strenght restrictions for more powerful weapons?

I loved all the different spells in Exile3...there were a bunch I never used, but that didn't matter, had lots of stuff to play with. Scare, for example, not very useful to me. Spray fields was just wacky, and quickfire was never a good idea to actually cast, but lots of fun. Built a barrier of force walls to seal teh entrance of the first floor of the tower of shifting floors and cast quickfire behind it...unfortunately you don't get XP for golems you kill that way...still reckon that should have counted as me destroying that plague though.

 

Most of the others have their uses, though. Also good that there's underpowered, but still useful, spells for when you don't want have spell points to waste. Fireball instead of firestorm when the enemies are more tightly clustered, flame cloud is a good bet when you are in HtH and the enemy is going to sit on the same square for a while, spark and goo have their uses etc.

 

But, really, it's major haste (or blessing) mass charm and pestilence which are the really useful ones...maybe mass paralysis sometimes. Casting those first instead of going straight for the firestorms can make such a big difference.

 

Also, with the right magic items and low encumbrance armour you can get 6 AP, when ahsted that goes up to 18. Dual wielding weapons with that...not bad.

Oh, so that's nothing to do with the one in Colchis then? I thought that was more of the same.

Should have been more clear, I didn't mean just random ghosts, there are a few that seem to know all about you, your quest, and what you will end up finding, and who are opposed by something else that makes them disappear after giving you cryptic hints.

 

 

The one in Colchis that give you the helm of alertness and basic charm to fight the slimes?

 

That's one of the ones I meant, there's a secret passage in the animal pens, and I was wondering if that was the same person as the renegade thief that liked hiding things in animals pens before he was killed.

 

It also seemed to be fairly knowledgable about things, and who just happens to have thsoe two items and nothing else unless they are specifically helping you against the slimes in advance?

Shouldn't that be "shade", not "spirit"? A spirit is a much more powerful magic using undead creature.

It uses the same graphics and the shade, though, which is something I personally really don't like, especially when you are fighting a group including both.

(Similarly, I remember in The Fog or maybe Nephil's Gambit (both great scenarios), running into a bunch of things with basilisk graphics that turn out to have cave lizard stats (maybe they shot spines at you though). That was a bit of a fright, and, I believe, unintentional.)