Lilith

Yes, you'll continue to benefit from skill bonuses even above 8.

Important distinction: there are always some items that are defined in the scripts, that never actually appear in the game. So if there are any items on your list but not on Randomizer's, I would check if anyone's found them, and if not, remove them.

Of course, there can also be items that are in the game but are in very obscure locations, and the lists aren't always 100% comprehensive: the Jade Halberd's location in Avernum 2: Crystal Souls wasn't uncovered until some time after the game's release.

Unfortunately, yes, this is a sign of save corruption. Check your autosave to see if it's okay; if it isn't, and you don't have any other saves from before the error occurred, you'll have to start over. Sorry.

In other words, to simplify that slightly confusing explanation: those percentages you see are indeed hit chances.

Thanks for the help. How do you know what your hit chance is? Is there some place to look to see? I'm flying blind at the moment.

If you turn on the transcript/log window in your settings, hit chances will show up in there when you attack.

I'm doing OK so far. I am rounding level 8 now. I just rescued the prisoners and had some horrific battles with some demons in two rooms. I suspect I wasn't supposed to go after the pommel of Demonslayer yet. No bragging rights though because I added some attribute points in the character editor before starting so my characters are a little better and also better at tool use than they should be. Even so, I lost 3 of 4 characters in the battle. Used up most of my charged magic items too.

 

I'm following the advice above, but I'm a little worried because my characters are failing to hit a little bit, especially with the demons. I wonder if that is me wearing armor that reduces my to hit, or just that those enemies were more powerful? I probably need to switch to dual wield.

It's probably a bit early for you to be fighting demons, yeah. A good general rule to follow is that if you can't get a 90% hit rate against an enemy you probably want better levels or stats before fighting it, if possible. As long as you pump your main attack stat (Str for melee combatants, Dex for archers, Int for casters) you'll eventually have no problems with accuracy, even in heavy armour, but at low levels you're not quite there yet.

What the heck do all the lanterns do? There doesn't seem to be any DARK places.

They do slightly increase the brightness of your surroundings, but you can get by without them. Earlier games made them more important.

Because I have 60 year old eyes, and it impresses me that a chest is easier to see on the ground. But I'm afraid they will reset at some point.

Nothing resets, at all, ever. You can leave stuff literally anywhere in the game and come back 50 hours of play later and it will be exactly where you left it.

I'm playing Escape from the Pit on a Mac. It's going well so far. I actually tried it before and kind of lost interest when I was wiped out by the Escaped experiment, but this time I'm using a walkthrough to direct my adventure a bit so I'm doing better.

 

1. Is there a way to highlight any secret room switches, things to click on, containers, etc. around you?

Hit the U key on your keyboard.

2. Is there a list of key shortcuts (looked in the rules and couldn't find one)

I think there should be one in the Settings menu.

3. I don't *think* I found a bag of sugar in Fort Avernum. Is there a bag of sugar later in the game?

You can find a few of them in various places. This item list gives more details.

4. I reloaded, but I noticed in one of the towns, after you dispel a rune, you can open a chest and get a pair of gloves, but if you do you get a dread curse. What does that do to you? I assume it's bad. The spectres that show up with the other chest indeed zapped me quickly.

It's basically a small penalty to everything you do: 5% less chance to hit with all your attacks, a little less damage, and so on. You can get more than one dread curse, and they stack. It can be removed, but not for free.

5. I'm just rounding level 8. My fighter (Aldus) is using the Nephil Warblade and has just scored the Radiant shortblade. He's been using a shield but I guess it's time to go dual weapon. I assume I should put my second skill point into dual weapon and my perk into ambidexterity? Or should I put both skill points into dual wield? Should I switch to 2 weapons now or once I achieve some skill level?

I don't think you can put more than one skill point into a single skill per level. Anyway, dual-wielding is the way to go in the long run but might not give you a significant damage boost just yet, especially if you're still having trouble hitting things: I'd say the time to switch to dual wielding is once you can reliably get a 90% hit chance on everything you're fighting. So if you're doing that, you're good to go.

6. My "rebel" is using a Nephil war spear (good weapon but non magical) and thus no shield. He has his points in pole weapons on the theory that she can take advantage of any big pole weapons in the game. Was this wise, or should I use the character editor to move those points to swords and go dual wield for her too. Note that using the character editor doesn't bother me.

Pole weapons are worse for raw damage than dual-wielding once you're past the very early game, although they're not unusable. You can switch to a second dual-wielder if you want to optimise. (But really, if you wanted to be super-optimal, you'd be better off changing your second physical fighter into another mage anyway.)

7. The walkthrough recommends spending very little in the stores and using money to buy skills which I'm mostly doing. But I just had a horrible knock down drag out battle that consumed a lot of my stuff (it was the battle for the pommel of Demonslayer). Now I could use a group heal scroll or two and some more healing potions and some more wands. Any recommendations on the best place to get them in the first part of the game? That last fight killed 3 of 4 characters! Those demons were vicious.

Not sure about this one, honestly; I pretty much just accumulated stuff as I went and didn't have too many problems with running out of items. You could search the item list I linked above for items you're interested in.

For these and other class's passive skills that gain additional effects at higher level, does the scaling start with that level or level 1? What I mean is, for example for ward mastery, if I have it at level 7, does that give me 10% resistance to magic and elemental attacks, or 70%?

It usually starts with the level at which you get the extra effect, so 10%.

The content of the games is exactly the same no matter where you buy them. Your saved games should transfer over just fine as well.

I mean, you kind of answered your own question there: there are in fact ways to measure the curvature of the earth with reasonable accuracy even while travelling over relatively short distances. Around 2250 years ago, Eratosthenes calculated the earth's circumference to within about 10% accuracy by comparing the shadows cast by the sun on the same day of the year in two cities in Egypt only 1000 kilometres apart. Having access to long-distance teleportation magic would make that sort of measurement even easier to conduct.

If you're asking how they'd know what to actually put on their globes and maps outside the areas they'd explored... well, ancient mapmakers made a lot of stuff up.

Jeff Vogel, head of Spiderweb Software, has said previously that this won't happen because he thinks it'd make the Vahnatai feel less strange and alien if you could play as one. It wouldn't be the first time he's said he wouldn't do something and then done it after all, but I wouldn't bet on it.

To see your character's stats and skills, click the question mark icon beside their portrait. If you have unspent stat or skill points, this icon changes to a plus sign and you can go there to spend them.

5) Avadon 2 gives the examples of what might have caused the Corruption or they may have all been lies.

My personal theory is that the Corruption is a kind of nexus between alternate universes with different and mutually hostile physical laws; each version of the Corruption's origin story happened in one of the universes that are now connected to it.

Has anyone else noticed that the sound effects in the exile trilogy seem identical to the stock effect sounds used in that old 90's anime hunter x hunter? are the effects taken from some sort of open source arena, or are the developers closet anime nerds, or am I just crazy?

It's pretty common for media creators to use sound libraries. They're not necessarily "open source"; the general business model is that you can pay a flat fee to get a non-exclusive licence. In short, if you hear the same sounds in two different works it's probably because they bought the sounds from the same place.

Sounds like your save was corrupted, unfortunately. Open an earlier save file. (Your autosave should hopefully work, if it hasn't been saved over already.)

You have to go back the way you came, using the portal.

—Alorael, who doesn't know if Jeff can turn out character writing as strong as his general writing. He certainly doesn't, for the most part, and hasn't even tried until Avadon.

i mean, people liked erika

Would it help if you pretended there are no class names at all, just five PCs with unique skill sets who can join your party?

I mean, it sounds like the main issue they're having at the moment is that it's easier to look for and follow build advice if you know what class you're building for. It shouldn't take too long to get used to which skillsets belong to which classes, though.

G3 I can't say much about, but put me in the minority where I actually really LIKED Avernum 4. Don't really get why it's hated so much...

The main complaints are that the plot is a rehash of A3 and the entire Eastern Gallery area is a drag to play through (which leaves a bit of a bad impression when it's basically the first thing you see after finishing the demo).

yeah i don't think anyone here's seriously proposing to rebalance missiles in BoE (if nothing else, because without breaking compatibility with old scenarios there isn't really much you could do that scenario designers can't already do on their own). we're just spitballing about game design for funsies

The same should be said of scrolls and wands.

also it's only a rare few missiles that are comparable in usefulness to the better wands in the first place. exploding arrows, maybe lightning rods, maybe arrows of light/life, and that's about it

Honestly, I think consumable items/equipment that operate independently of character build are impossible to balance effectively in any game that doesn't involve permadeath. If they are about as strong as nonconsumable equipment, or weaker, then they are completely pointless; whereas if they are stronger, they devalue character builds and remove strategy. Either way, they aren't interesting.

i'd say there are at least imaginable exceptions to this, for example in games where managing sharply limited inventory space is a major part of gameplay, or where there isn't much overlap between what characters can do and what consumable items can do.

i can conceive of a potentially interesting design space for a game where, say, items are your primary source of healing, and before a dungeon expedition you have to choose between stocking up on single-target heals, group heals, and status cures depending on what you expect to need. i'm not sure it would be a game that you specifically would want to play but i don't think it's an inherently unworkable idea. many roguelikes do this to a degree and i'm not convinced that permadeath is essential for making it work (especially since some roguelikes scrap permadeath while still keeping the inventory management aspects)

you could also go in another direction and give your game a durability system harsh enough that all equipment is effectively consumable. the fire emblem series does this, as do riviera: the promised land and a couple of other sting games. different characters can use different equipment, but you don't really get a lot of choice in character builds as such so choosing what items to keep around and how to prioritize using them is one of the main strategic-level decisions you make, second only to deciding which characters to use in the first place; in a very real sense your inventory is your character build

really i think the strongest blanket statement i'm comfortable making about consumable items is "don't just throw a mechanic into a game without a specific purpose in mind for it"

really, the main problem with archery is just that keeping arrows in stock is annoying enough that archery would have to be better than other damage-dealing options to justify it, and it isn't

Ah, fair enough. I always thought it was weird that there are spells that summon specific monsters that a arty can keep between scenarios, but not items that summon the same ones.

the monsters those spells summon aren't actually hardcoded fwiw: change the monster definitions that they refer to and they'll summon different things. some scenarios took advantage of this on purpose and others did it by accident

I like to use Avidemux for basic video editing. The interface can take some getting used to, but it's free, has a reasonably solid set of features, and it works with most file types I've thrown at it.

Just a friendly reminder to everyone that this forum is not a place to go for professional advice of any kind, and some people have already posted some very questionable things. If you're concerned about the legality of your actions or planned actions you should seek a qualified lawyer in the relevant field. For the purposes of this forum, if something isn't okay by Jeff it isn't okay, and we may have to close this thread if this line of discussion continues.