Orifushi Mafuyu

Originally Posted By: Tennojutsu Horrific in the sense of programming that bothers me, not horrific in any kind of dangerous or scary sense. I don't think that's the case, since people have apparently advanced the day counter and then simply rested a lot to get that event to trigger. Originally Posted By: Tennojutsu —Alorael, who wonders why there are no Potions of Yesterday. As long as time is malleable the game might as well take advantage of it. This *would* be funny, although it'd screw up quests if the NPCs think they hadn't given them to you yet. I'm thinking of blundering around training to the max and then drinking enough potions to return you to the start of the game. Then you could just steamroll right over the major baddies and ignore the small fry. Imagine in A3 going to Ghikra, walking calmly up to an unsuspecting Rentar, and then stabbing the treacherous cow right in the gut. Damn statisfying.

Like the OP I enjoyed the A1-3 engine better than the later ones. I also miss the various field-effect spells of the Exile series which got taken out from Avernum.

Originally Posted By: A Presumptuous Gallivanter On that note, I would also like to see NPCs stop treating adventurers with such disdain, as if they haven't heard of the great feats performed by small mercenary bands of the past. ... Why do soldiers, high level mages, and government officials tend to treat up-and-coming heroes with disrespect? I'm with you 100%; that said, I think it's more like they don't expect your particular band of riff-raff to be the next group of legends. Then again, towards the end of each game you'd think they'd sit up and take notice. I agree, it IS annoying. Originally Posted By: A Presumptuous Gallivanter There are often wizards who won't "lower" themselves to teach spells to a group of adventurers that have already defeated more monsters than the wizard ever did. Ha! When it gets too frustrating, I save the game, then go on a rampage. Block the town exits, and then slaughter the miserable ingrates. Originally Posted By: A Presumptuous Gallivanter Even Prazac, when asked about the terms of her agreement with Anaximander, says something like "these are higher matters of state; if they were for you to know, you'd be told." I felt like saying, "Well excuuuse me, empress. I just frakkin cleared a continent of monsters. I think I've achieved VIP status by now." Absolutely. Originally Posted By: A Presumptuous Gallivanter Also, 5000 gold coins? 5000 gold coins? I paid more for Hawke's Manse! I get half a mansion for defeating Valorim's foes in Avernum 3?!? Hilarious! That was my exact reaction as well. "Aww, a pile of shiny coins! Wait, I've seen this before...". I wanted so badly to say "We don't need any more pocket change, highness... save it for your subjects."

Originally Posted By: Earth2025 jeff thought that there is always something to train or buy so no need for bank. There's *always* something to spend on; the problem is money doesn't flow in/out at equal speeds. You'll probably run against the cap while adventuring, and go broke every time it's time to go training/upgrading. Tried going the legit way (storing excess gold as items to be sold off), but that was too inconvenient, so I had to go the record-extra-gold-on-paper way and restore whenever I needed.

Hmm, so A1 does it differently eh. That's... inconvenient.

I just modded some images for A3, and A2. I imagine doing it for A1 would follow the same steps unless the filenaming convention changed drastically between A1 and A2. - By portraits, you mean those small facial images? They're all stuffed into one multi-row 5-column wide image. In A2 it was "G904.BMP", in A3 it's "904.BMP". Humans take up the first 16 cells, followed by the 4 neph faces then the 4 sliths. The last row simply has a blank cell, followed by the generic human face, another blank cell, then the generic neph and slith faces. These are used in the racial indicator image. - The full-body inventory images are 1:1 for each character, i.e. 16 humans, 4 nephs, 4 sliths = 24 images. There are the same number of sprite tileset images, each of them being a 9-row by 8-column array of sprites. The reason for 8 columns is that the first four columns are for no armor worn, while the last four are for sprites with armor on. As you can guess, there are four simply because the character may be oriented in four directions. The nine rows correspond to: 1- peaced 2- 1h sword raised 3- 1h sword hit 4- 2h sword raised 5- 2h sword hit 6- sword + shield raised 7- sword + shield hit 8- sitting 9- dying There's a tiny row after the 9th, explained below. - Naturally, it's easiest to just replace the portrait and the fullbody inventory images. Mucking with the sprites is just tedious pixelwork. It's not hard to put in your own images, simply replace the ones Jeff used. You only need to know what files the images are in. Using A3 as the example, [1] Portraits : (composite) 904.BMP [2] Inventory art: 1800.BMP - 1823.BMP [3] Sprite art : 1650.BMP - 1673.BMP [4] Horseback : (composite) 1680.BMP [5] Horseback : (composite)(world map ver) 1681.BMP You may have noticed there's no composite for world map party image. Actually, those are likely built up from the tiny sprites at the bottom of each character sprite file, open "1650.BMP" and look at the last, tiny row. I guess when it came to the horseback composite he decided it was a pain to put them into each sprite file so he just tossed everything into a composite image.

While I used to semi-regularly imbibe Pepsi during my misguided college days, nowadays I consider any and all carbonated drinks as junk food. The only time I drink any is when I'm forced to, like at social gatherings - and even then I just take a sip. I prefer plain water, sometimes tea (no sugar). Fruit drinks aren't all that either, I don't consider the mass produced stuff acceptable since they're heavily sugared up and packed with colouring and flavouring crap. My fruit intake comes in the shape of the actual fruits. As a bonus eating the actual fruits satisfies your hunger and deters you from considering junk food. We all have different vices. Mine don't happen to include these nasty concoctions.

I'm assuming it can't be the Empire which put the doomguard there, because then it'd be on the other side of the gate, and the Thieves Guild would certainly want more distance between their smuggling tunnel and something that dangerous. Originally Posted By: lifeguardernie still seems to be a bit of a strong overreaction to security. a. where did it come from? b. what happens after someone kills it? c. what happens to the rest of the copies after one is killed? a. I guess the Thieves Guild has enough clout to get one stationed there. b. Nothing happens when you kill it (other than that portcullis opening). It's probably just a test of strength, "you must be THIS badass to pass". It doesn't appear to be replaced, which raises a few other questions... c. It's a splitting monster, what does it matter when one clone gets destroyed? Not sure what you mean.

Erika's summoning madness? Rentar's that too, even with someone parked right beside her (melee distance) she'd rather conjure hydras etc. A couple clouds of blades takes care of the riffraff, it shreds summons as soon as they pop in, it doesn't bother the two mages, and friendlies don't complain if they get hit. I love that spell. I had some gazers out but apparently Rentar's a bottomless pit of mp. Kinda bogus, that. If I could take on 4 Crystal Souls simultaneously at Tinraya she certainly shouldn't be too hard to handle. In one iteration of the battle I summoned Crystal Souls and Vahnatai Lords and let them kill Rentar's help. I wonder why that didn't trigger a rant from Rentar, being forced to fight twisted unholy copies of vahnatai like that.

Yeah, it annoyed me that after a certain number of items on the same tile, looking at it would merely say "You see: many items" - because I generally drop my loot in related piles. Like, pile A for so-so jewelry, pile B for so-so armor, pile C for wands, etc. A filter would've been nice on the pickup screen, although I guess on a mere popup that would be a bit much. Oh well.

Originally Posted By: Marak - after all, you're penalized for carrying too much trash around, and then game penalizes you for not carrying all your trash around. Been bitten by this before, heh. Nowadays in games which let you store stuff somewhere I keep at least one of every single object in my designated caches.

Originally Posted By: The Mystic Then again, think about it: Do you really want a vengeful Erika to be resurrected, especially if the act removes her sunlight curse? She may be driven by anger but there's no evidence of her willing to involve innocents in her thirst for revenge. She might slay a bunch of high ranking Empire wizards who were on Garzahd's side, but that's about it. I don't see her flooding the Empire with monster plagues like Rentar and the vahnatai did. Click to reveal.. Especially since she's seen the backlash: towards the end of A3 it's basically open season on the vahnatai. Erika may want specific people dead but I doubt genocide and another war are on the menu. It'll just cause more trouble for her, and given her superior attitude it's more plausible she just wants revenge on those immediately responsible for her plight - anything more will be seen as unnecessary bother.

Not a problem usually, unless you contract the Dread Curse. In which case you're probably screwed, since the only cure is in Anama hands.

That's another gripe I had with the engine change after the original trilogy. Removal of the outdoor areas meant that keeping everything in scale would result in epic treks through the wilderness. But instead of that, we got the mass abuse of teleportation - suddenly every Mycroft, Hrmrr, and Sskath had access to it. Meh. [geezer] Ach, I remember those treks to tha' goblin fort. We did it through miles of snow, fighting off jackals ev'ry step o' the way, we did. *shakes cane* [/geezer]

Ya know, I never really understood the obsession with teleportation in the series. I mean, fine, you can use it to go places... big whoop, walk long enough in the appropriate direction and you'll get there too. It's just a shortcut, even if a mightily convenient one. On the other hand, it's strange nobody seems to be interested in taking Soul Capture and Simulacrum apart. Together with Return Life, we're looking at possible immortality right there. Hell, even being stuck inside a crystal is better than nothing, and the vahnatai have that already. Sure there's the undead, but I'd rather not lose my humanity kthx, plus all of the more intelligent undead I've seen appear to be universally unredeemable asshats. What is it about being dead and evil? Of the more powerful mages we have, X wastes his life researching a spell to drop anvils on people. Linda keeps mucking around with demonology despite a 100% screwup rate. Brilliant. They make a great case for joining the Anama.

Ah, didn't realize that about Dread Curses, namely because on the rare occasions I contracted it, I either reloaded or managed to get cured without dying along the way.

Originally Posted By: Marak I just sort of assume that my Avernum Party has a reasonably charismatic spokesperson that does most of the speaking for the Party, and the NPCs are typically talking to him or her. Not really much different from Geneforge when you think about it... when you waltz into town with 7 Creations in tow and strike up a conversation, you assume that the NPC is talking to your Shaper PC and not one of his various minions. Exactly. This is the reason I've never had any problems playing between single person or party games. "You" is still you, no matter whether singular or plural, and the vast majority of games treat the party as a singular entity anyway (story-wise). The only game I remember vaguely having individual party members stand out was Wizardry 8 and the Star Ocean games. But even then most of the interaction when in a party vs outsider NPCs was still them versus "you". I can't recall off the top of my head any game which regularly made it a point to converse with specific party members and having the others react with individual reactions. Originally Posted By: Marak Avernum 3 is right out. You spend a good 95% of your time on the surface world continent of Valorim. I can attest to this, having just finished A3. I've read about people comparing it size-wise to A2, but A3 always felt smaller to me. Maybe because it was easier to get around, since on the surface there are far fewer obstacles (like cave walls) to navigate. And since I played the entire trilogy, A1-A2 feels more true to the series, however weird that sounds. The surface was just "the surface" in the first two games, and frankly when I first explored E3 I was disappointed to see no sign of the Empire's troop movements into Avernum. I guess they teleported them from the Empire heartland, bypassing the Valorim wilds, and straight into Avernum. I'm torn between doing A1 or A2 now. I'm leaning towards A2, the only thing holding me back is wondering how many areas are significantly changed / closed off, and whether it's worth doing A1 just to visit them, or should I just skip to the nice war story and do A2.

Originally Posted By: Truth as a Matter of Persistence Rentar is gone. What particular form of gone she is doesn't really matter, does it? It's a matter of correctness. Thanks for the quote though Dikiyoba, that piece of dialogue really clears it up. Click to reveal.. I didn't know vahnatai could transform themselves into a Crystal Soul - or perhaps the story meant that other vahnatai helped her do so. I did try to take a look at Avernum 4, but god help me, I can't stand the interface, even though the basics are the same as A1-A3. Still, consider that the life restoration spell at level 3 can essentially bring back even dusted characters. Now why didn't that work for Erika? We RPG veterans know dying cures you of all other status ailments (classic example: poison), so the nasty curses responsible for killing her would've gone away after they served their purpose. After that it's just a simple matter of breaking out a dustpan and then casting that spell.

So, multiple endings eh. How are they explained in A5 then? Is she simply taken out of the picture, no longer mentioned? Edit: Click to reveal.. Then again, if we don't take Erika's amulets in A3, we don't see her death at Rentar's hands either, and from what I've read on the forums Erika simply isn't mentioned anymore in A4-A5.

Naa, I don't raze the towns. I'm from the goody-goody two shoes school of adventuring I just finished A3 btw. Click to reveal.. It was sad, how Erika finally died. Having played E1-E3 and A1-A3, I always felt she was a benevolent figure, albeit driven by anger. As I stormed Rentar's Keep I had Lufia 2's "The Savior of those on Earth" playing, but for the final battle I switched to this rendition of Lufia 2's "Fortress of Doom" ( ). It felt appropriate. Rentar's projection in Empress Prazac's throne room was pretty ballsy. I'd have thought the Empire mages would be able to track her down if she did that though, given that they manage to remote-teleport our party out of a deathtrap. I really, really want Rentar dead. Does she ever get her just desserts? (I never played A4-A5, but I don't mind spoilers).

Spoiler warning blah blah, etc. This place was mildly amusing. Pursuant to the Adventurers' Code (specifically, the section which says thou shalt slayeth anything that hath a hp bar) I took a swing at Jeff. Oops, surprisingly fragile Reloading, I grabbed something marked 'NY' to provoke hostilities. Then I soul copied Jeff (lol) and ran out the portal back to Rentar's Keep. Unfortunately summoning Jeff does nothing to distract Rentar. I think I'll omit how summoning Jeff does nothing to dissuade the other vahnatai either, and they seem to take a sadistic pleasure in skewering him with their wavy blades or poking holes in him with their throwing discs. Then I noticed that my simulacra were regular townspeople (albeit looking like Jeff). Agent Smith scene flashbacks notwithstanding, I suppose that - like Chuck Norris - Jeff's essence is too awesome to be contained in a mere soul crystal. Sigh.

Ah, there we go, thanks. The only place left I haven't visited is Rentar's keep, so I'm guessing from your comment that it's there somewhere. You're right, putting something in the final area is pretty unhelpful, oh well. Click to reveal.. And damn me for resting at Bon-Ihrno's house, the bastards murdered him. I was thinking of waiting for the Tower of Magi disaster but I've lost my appetite for senseless death. I'm gonna head out to Rentar's Keep and raze it to the ground. Rentar better be prepared to break out the scones and tea, I'm about to pay her a visit.

Shame on me, since I played all 3 Exiles, but I can't recall off the top of my head what all 5 major artifacts are. I don't seem to have Demonslayer though, hmm. My party's outfitted with the Mithril Blade/Polished Plate Mail, Black Halberd/Icy Chain Mail, Thirsting Blade/Mithril Chain Mail, and the Flaming Sword/Mithril Woven Robe. I avoided courier jobs out of time concerns but in retrospect that was silly, since I now find myself with several dozen days to waste if I want to see the Tower of Magi disaster. Oh snap, I forgot about Pachtar's Plate. I see the notation I made when I learned about it in Gale's library, but I never got around to going there. Alright, next stop Bigail.

So here I am bum-rushing the Vahnatai at the Great Walls when I noticed one of the last few Vahnatai opposing me is named. "Sheena-Bok", I don't think I've seen her before. That "-Bok" title means leader or mayor or something right? Too bad she won't talk, I'm a sucker for conversation. Soul Capturing her shows that I just summon generic Vahnatai Lords. They seem more useful than regular casters as they don't appear to be obsessed with summoning help; instead they have a tendency to use control foes, which seems pretty good. They hit hard too.

It's possible I missed the odd quest here and there, but generally when I enter an area (town/dungeon) I make a list of who (or what) I can chat with and try to map the whole place. Quite sure I've hit pretty much the majority of quests available. Sitting tight with 80 rep at this point, heh. Currently I'm doing the vahnatai crypt place, that's about the only area I think I haven't finished, excluding the area after Tinraya. Btw when I returned to Tinraya the hostile Crystal Souls are no longer there - looks like the showdown at the O.K. Corral got postponed.