Lilith

If you're playing the remake (titled Avernum 2: Crystal Souls instead of just Avernum 2), then you don't. The puzzles in that area have been reworked for the new version; any walkthroughs or guides that mention pushing crates are applicable only to the earlier release.

Those things absolutely do affect the game's balance, though. Like, a game can say that you should account for different party sizes in certain ways, but in practice many systems scale poorly if you go too far outside the expected number of characters, especially once you take into account the additional range of tactical options that larger groups allow for -- like, it's probably not such a big deal if combat in your games tends to shake out into mostly independent one-on-one or one-on-a-few fights for each character, but it becomes a big deal if characters start taking into account their relative positioning, forming defensive lines at chokepoints, trying to isolate and surround individual opponents and so on, because the viability of using those tactics at all is dependent on the number of combatants present. And if you want to look on the level of individual characters, a full-party heal or buff is more effective the larger the party is, so the power of support-focused characters is going to depend on party size; likewise, characters with access to AoE attacks will be able to hit more targets if you balance for increased party size by adding more enemies, which will increase their power relative to characters who are limited to attacking single targets. Plus, NPCs that are controlled by a single PC are effectively extensions of that PC (or to put it another way, they're both extensions of the same player), so I don't think you can call them equivalent to hired help anyway.

It's not something you can just do at any time, but there are a few special events that split up your party so that you're temporarily playing with a single character. You'll know them when you see them. The Reunite Split Party option brings back the rest of your party.

The example that comes to mind for me is that it's impossible to get the rebel ending in Geneforge 3 without killing Khyryk, and yet Khyryk is alive in Geneforge 4 despite the rest of the setup being consistent with a rebel victory in the previous game.

It's not a hidden penalty to resistances as such; that was misinformation that ended up getting spread around. On Torment all damage you take is simply multiplied. It can look like a penalty to resistances because of a glitch in the display of the "damage blocked" number on higher difficulties, but that's not how it actually works under the hood. Anyway, if you didn't find your playthrough unenjoyably difficult overall, you'll probably do okay with Avernum 2: Crystal Souls as well. A few skills have been tweaked (dual-wielding is slightly weaker, but it's still the best melee option so it mostly just makes magic look better in comparison) but it basically works the same way as Avernum: Escape from the Pit.

Well, think of it this way: it isn't really any more or less cheating than if after asking for advice on the forum you'd started over with a new build in a second playthrough. You already know you'd have been able to get through the earlier parts of the game since they're the same as they were before, so the only difference is the amount of time it took you to do it.

Was there a specific thing you read that prompted this thought? Because it seems like the kind of thought that might be prompted by reading a specific thing.

my experience was that having a bunch of creations to take hits for you was at least as good a defensive strategy as being able to take a bunch of hits on your own, not just because creations are more disposable (i usually reloaded when they died tbh) but because some of the higher-tier ones come with unreasonably good resistances right out of the box. a lot of the most dangerous things you fight in mid-to-late-game g4 and g5 use energy attacks, and a wingbolt or gazer of your own can tank energy attacks as well or better than even the tankiest servile. and you can easily get wingbolts by halfway through g4, so that's basically your endgame build sorted right there. in g5 you can get war tralls around the same point in the game instead and they're pretty dang solid too just by virtue of having way too many hp it's true that a tanky servile build can walk through some minefields that other builds can't but that's a fairly niche advantage, given that there aren't that many minefields where just walking through them is the best option for getting past also if we're saying that dependence on consumables weakens a build then i'd point out that i'm not sure the servile is all that much less consumable-dependent than the shock trooper, because they really need healing items to be able to keep themselves alive while still taking other actions ultimately, though, a tank build is certainly viable and a servile is the obvious choice for it if that's the build you're going for, so there's a clear reason to use a servile if you prefer a particular play style. meanwhile, a shocktrooper has a number of advantages over the servile in isolation if you look at the two classes side by side and it's possible to argue it's an easier class to use overall, but the existence of the lifecrafter means there's just not a lot of reason why you'd use a shocktrooper. it's an interesting situation

speaking as that weirdo who did a no-magic shock trooper run in g4 i would actually rate the shock trooper above the servile in that game tbh. the game throws enough items at you that you honestly can work around having little or no magic when you really need to (although seriously please at least invest in healing craft if you're not doing a self-imposed challenge) they're still more or less strictly worse than a lifecrafter, which is a big part of the reason they get made fun of, but "strictly worse than the best class in the game" isn't such a bad position to be in, in absolute terms edit: come to think of it i guess it depends how you define "better". the shock trooper does something that's very effective (making lots of strong creations) but doesn't do it as well as the lifecrafter, while the servile is the best at what it does (melee combat backed up by magic) but i'd argue that what it does just isn't as good

It's a good idea to avoid fighting as much as possible: if you try to kill every single enemy you definitely will get overwhelmed. That can be easier said than done, of course. Letting some characters stay back and get killed to create an opening for the others might potentially be a viable strategy as long as you have a way to revive them afterwards, but it's a last resort. Don't ignore effects like knockback, immobility and daze that can create openings for your allies to safely move past.

Yeah, one thing that bears mentioning is that even characters who will never use melee weapons can benefit from getting 10 points in Melee Weapons or Pole Weapons just for access to battle disciplines and Hardiness (and maybe Parry). Hardiness is that good.

At the point in the game where you are, you should be able to get close to 90%. An all-out offensive build is risky on Torment because some enemies just have too many HP to rely on killing them quickly, and frankly some of the higher-end offensive skills just aren't that good. Looking at your build, it also seems that you haven't been taking advantage of the skill trainers who can raise your skills in exchange for money. These are good for two extra skill points in a wide range of skills, so it's important to find them and use them. As long as you take the Negotiator trait on everyone and sell items that you don't need, the game practically throws money at you, so affording training shouldn't be an issue.

Yeah, my read on what happened when using the Geneforge in G5 was that the protagonist had used a Geneforge before and using it again basically reset their genes to the state they were in when they first used it, undoing all the damage that had been done since, like reimaging a hard drive.

In this case, even the demo isn't actually available for download from SW any more, so it might take some digging to do that.

A Str-based melee tinkermage is really, really good at disarming mines and things like that, since they get a massive melee damage multiplier against them. They can stand up pretty well against attacks, too, so using one as a melee tank isn't completely unreasonable. The "standard" tinkermage build is probably the Dex-based one, though. I used both a Str-based and a Dex-based tinkermage and they both pulled their weight, but I'd say the Dex-based one was slightly more versatile.

Huh. I'll take your word for it, but SW's website claims otherwise.

You can email Spiderweb Software at support@spiderwebsoftware.com to get a replacement copy if you already bought it, but apart from that it's no longer available. I suppose you could try that address anyway and see if they're willing to sell it to you, but it's been removed from the order form for a reason; it's unsupported on modern computers (it won't run at all on an Intel Mac or 64-bit Windows), and Nethergate: Resurrection is now considered the definitive version of the game.

For future reference, you can often fix a corrupted installation of a Steam game without having to redownload the whole thing if you right-click the game in your Steam library and select Properties > Local Files > Verify Integrity of Game Cache -- although it seems like it might not have helped in your case if even reinstalling from scratch didn't do anything. (I'm not actually 100% clear on what you mean when you say that reinstalling didn't help: what exactly happened after you saw the error message, in terms of what you saw in-game and what actions you took? If you saved after seeing the error message, you should probably consider that save file a writeoff since saving the game while it was in a corrupted state means your save file will likely be corrupted as well.) In general, if you see an error message like that, I'd recommend that you immediately exit the game without saving, open it up again, load your most recent save or autosave and go back to see if the same error happens again when you go to the same location; once in a blue moon a script just might not load correctly even if the file itself is fine. It might also be worth your while to download and run a hard drive monitoring utility like CrystalDiskInfo to make sure your problem isn't a failing drive.

I don't think it affects HP gains on levelup, just carrying capacity, physical damage and door bashing. I could be wrong, though.

Yeah, that's normal. Pretty much all high-level enemies will block a very high percentage of the damage you do, especially physical damage. The only thing you can really do about it is find ways to do more damage by improving your stats and equipment: there's a reason why most advice for playing on Torment recommends investing in each character's primary offensive stat as heavily as possible. In general, if you can consistently get a 95% hit rate against an enemy and survive its attacks, you're probably strong enough to beat it, it just might take a while.

To answer your question more directly: no, if you're not seen by anyone, there's no penalty of any kind. Conversely, if an area turns hostile, that means you were seen.

Yeah, Rentar won't give you the time of day until you've rescued at least one crystal soul.

Also, you can't reset a town while you're inside the town you're resetting, so make sure to go outside first.

I think tapping the active character a couple of times might work.

Wait, did it? I remember blms being specific to Vahnatai lands in E2, and specifically noted ingame as something you weren't supposed to know about.