Lilith

6 hours ago, werdegast said:

I must have played A1 and A2 on casual!!! 

It's a new feature in A3, to make the higher difficulties more distinct from the lower ones.

14 minutes ago, Painted Lady said:

 

Okay, so this is unique to Avernum 3? Does it make it impossible to be a completionist? And, does the timer run more quickly on the higher difficulties?

Yes, Avernum 3 (and its predecessor Exile 3) is the only full-length Spiderweb game with story-wide timed events.

If you played quickly and efficiently enough, it was feasible to resolve every timed event before things started getting worse than the initial state, at which point you could dawdle as much as you wanted. It might be a little tricky to do a "perfect" run like that on a first playthrough without prior knowledge of where to go and what to do. However, depending on your definition of "completionist", even an imperfect run where you let some of the timers run down a bit could still be a completionist run; it was rare for quests to be locked off entirely by timed events, so if you just care about doing every quest you could still do that without having to rush. On the other hand, if your definition of a completionist run is one where you see every single line of text in the game in a single playthrough, that's probably less realistic, since there are variations in dialogue depending on whether things have gotten Bad or are still Less Bad and some of those might be mutually exclusive.

The timers were unaffected by difficulty level in the original Avernum 3, and I'd be very surprised if they were affected by difficulty in the remake, since I don't see how having the timing of story events depend on difficulty level would be compatible with being able to change difficulty level at any time during play.

On 1/27/2018 at 6:04 PM, stepped pyramids said:

Is the problem with providing builds for later macOS versions simply due to not having access to the appropriate OS versions to build on? I was able to successfully build on 10.12. I didn't do extensive testing but it seems to run. Or is there some underlying compatibility issue I'm missing? If not, I'd be glad to provide up-to-date binaries.

whoooaaa it's you. glad you're alive. hope things are going okay.

edit: our mutual friend says hi too, she's missed you~

Resistances increase according to a formula based on enemy level, with some enemies having extra resistance to specific damage types on top of that. Physical resistance increases a bit faster with level than resistance to other types of damage. The result is that in the late game, when you're facing high-level enemies, they'll all be taking greatly reduced damage from whatever you throw at them.

Nope.

45 minutes ago, Zaego said:

 

Assuming we're going in A:EftP, ... Err, Hardiness on mage? Does that work on Torment?

Oh, for sure. It's most important on Torment, since that's where you're taking the most damage.

I'd assume that you'd skip out on Magical Efficiency entirely and then put 5 & 5 to Melee or Pole and Hardiness, which would give 7 Hardiness with training. 10 & 10 on Spellcraft and Resistance were pretty much a must.

You can get melee or pole up to 8 with skill points, train it up to 10 at a trainer, get Hardiness up to 10 with skill points, and train it up to 12. It's worth the investment. Once you have Hardiness, you can start getting Parry, too, if you feel the need for it.

Then again, keeping the damage flowing without Magical Efficiency, you'd need insane amounts of energy elixirs in boss-battles, considering that I was struggling even with Magical Efficiency. Grah-Hoth still haunts my nightmares...

Magical Efficiency is pretty much junk and not worth taking. It doesn't help that much with energy conservation in the first place, and the game gives you enough potions to get by.

10 hours ago, Ess-Eschas said:

 

Oh, wow. This really puts into perspective for me just how large this scenario could be. Not only is this large compared to Exodus, but it’s large even compared to the old Blades of Exile epics. If I remember correctly, only a handful of scenarios broke 100 towns back then (although, given the 100-town bug, for good reason). For instance, even Falling Stars only had about 90 towns.

Yeah, I could be wrong, but I think At the Gallows and Adventurer's Club 3 were the only scenarios that actually used the workaround for the 100-town bug once it was discovered.

If you purchase the Steam version it should be able to run in offline mode, but if you've already purchased the game, you shouldn't need to buy it again: email support@spiderwebsoftware.com with details of your purchase (the name and email address you originally bought it under is usually enough) and I'm sure they'll be able to help you out.

The Orb of Thralni can be reused infinitely, so there's no need to worry about that.

i made stuffing for the family christmas dinner but i went a little overboard and it turned into more of a stuffing-themed pilaf

i started with this recipe but used black rice, replaced the pears with almonds and dried berries, and adjusted some of the cooking times and ingredient proportions a little

anyway there was nothing obviously wrong with the end product and it tasted like food so i'll count that as a success

4 hours ago, VoidsX said:

I was wondering (without spoiling too much )when would I get a chance to join the Darksiders? Im currently almost finished with the Azure Gallery, and want to try the game from their perspective. also I wasn't very nice to the Darksider's cause, I killed Dervish Tholmen and told on the Darkside spy in Tranquility, would that stop me from joining?

Possibly, yeah. I don't remember exactly what the cutoff is, but there are a few key actions you can take that will make the Darkside Loyalists like you either more or less, and you need them to like you a certain amount in order to have the option to join. You can't "officially" join them until quite close to the end of the game, but there are a few opportunities to work with them before that.

3 hours ago, Wendy said:

• I will.  I can only add URL, not jpg? 

Yeah, I believe the forums still don't allow file uploads for regular users, so if you still need help you'll have to upload the image somewhere like imgur and then link to it here.

2 hours ago, Randomizer said:

Traits are every 5 levels after 30.

I thought skill points were every 5 levels and you stopped getting traits entirely. But yeah, it's kind of a moot point, since level 35 is about the highest you're likely to reach in the course of an ordinary playthrough.

7 hours ago, BloomingLilac said:

I have my melee characters wearing regular pants instead of the leather greaves, etc., but one of them has the Assassin's Shield, which has +2 to Lethal Blow, 3% to melee damage, and 12% chance to parry. I'm wondering if I'd be better off having everyone dual wielding except for my slith warrior. That shield has -15% to hit chance. My priest and mage are using the Stout Hardwood Shield (+2 to Hardiness, +8% chance to Parry) and the Shield of Succor (+8% chance to Parry, +10% to Healing). Both shields have -10% to hit chance. They both have the Sure Hand trait, and my mage has the Swordmage trait. They're starting to hit more often now that I've added points to their strength.

 

I normally increase my melee characters' strength every other level and increase their endurance so that it's about equal to strength since they take so much damage in combat.

Dual wielding is almost always stronger than using a shield for a character who's going to be attacking in melee. Think about it this way: would you rather take a little bit less damage, or inflict nearly twice as much? However, keep in mind that dual wielding also carries a hit penalty, so you'll still need ways to mitigate that (Dual Wielding skill helps).

That strength:endurance ratio sounds a bit low to me, too. I usually added 3 points of strength for every 1 point of endurance. Hardiness and Parry are generally more effective at keeping you alive than Endurance. If you've maxed both of those out already, the other way to reduce the damage you take is to reduce the number of enemies as quickly as possible.

I believe Strong Back only improves your weight limit, not your hit rate. The best way to improve your hit rate for melee fighters is just to invest more points into Strength, and think carefully about what armour is really worth wearing in the early game. Eventually you can get to a point where you can just wear everything and still hit almost all the time, but until then, sacrificing 5% hit rate to take 2% less damage often isn't a good tradeoff.

It's been a while, but I don't think there's actually a way for you to get into that room.

I don't know what the response will be, but if you want to ask, the best way to contact Jeff Vogel is to email support@spiderwebsoftware.com

If nobody here has an answer for you, there are websites like WhatTheFont that can identify fonts from an uploaded image. If it doesn't get exactly the one that was used, it'll probably at least be close.

i have a job where i can set my own hours, but i generally end up doing most of my work in the evening, so i guess i've answered the question for myself already

Nope. Every Geneforge game has a new main character and doesn't take into account your own choices from previous games. Given how divergent the different endings are in each game, it wouldn't have been possible to account for every possible player choice over the course of a five-game series.

7 hours ago, Lintwyrm said:

It‘s really amazing to see the fan base creating such awesome content. Especially when considering the age of BoA. 

 

I‘m not ready to play fan made scenarios yet, but I‘m really looking forward to it!

 

However, I would still have a question.. you mentioned what will happen to the party (of the first two scenarios of your series) so will all the process achieved with it be deleted?

 

And another general question.. if I‘m playing scenarios and gain experience and items, will I be able to use them in the official game also?

From a gameplay perspective BoA doesn't really have a strong distinction between the "official game" and everything else. The Spiderweb-made scenarios work exactly the same way as third-party ones, and you can move from one to another freely.

1 hour ago, Kelandon said:

Strengthens my point even more, I suppose.

 

Uh, how do the bonus values actually work?

The exact same way as the base protection does, so a "1-15 + 20" shield actually blocks 1-15 + 1-20 if it takes effect.

1 hour ago, TJ Hedgescout said:

A:EFTP did. I bought a disk to go with the game.
I suppose i could try, but maybe it would be better to buy it through steam so i wouldnt need a disk?

You shouldn't need a disc no matter what. Everything has moved over to digital downloads now.

5 hours ago, TJ Hedgescout said:

I have to rebuy the game, my installation disk was stolen

I'd like to try this remix out.

Email support@spiderwebsoftware.com and give them the original details (name, address) you originally ordered under. If you ordered directly from Spiderweb, you should be able to get a link to redownload it without paying for it again.

support@spiderwebsoftware.com is the email address to contact Spiderweb Software regarding registration issues. They're generally pretty good about responding quickly if they receive your email on a weekday.

Yes, levelling your basic fire attack to 6 gives you an ice-based ability that works like any other ability with a vitality cost and cooldown, if that's what you're asking. Personally I wouldn't really recommend investing in Dexterity just for the sake of bow attacks, though: as a Sorceress your physical damage output is always gonna be unimpressive, so it's not worth having weaker attacks in 90% of fights just so you can make a marginally better contribution in the other 10%.