The_Najdorf

Btw can the demonslayer be fixed or is it irreparably cracked?

Ok just checking if people agree those are bugs

5 fights, you still got the gazers (hardest in my opinion) then another monster that was much easier for me (went down on the third turn).

When viewing the map, the position of the crossed weapons that indicate the players position is consistently off by a bit (to the bottom-left). Also magical efficiency skill does not work at all for arcane blow (bug or feature?)

One word: endurance. Endurance is the most important stat, it boosts you HP by a very nice amount. You should be giving at least 8 to all characters by level 20, more for the front warriors. Save something on the other skills to give more endurance. Defense and hardiness are not that good imo, I would only spend 2 points in hardiness but I guess that's a personal view. Nature lore and arcane lore should be spread equally among the 4. Your characters are glass cannons, they deal a lot of damage I guess but they're very frail. You will be better off with a more balanced build.

Yeah after a while you don't miss anymore but against stronger bosses that have about 25% chance of parrying and risposte it's still frustrating. So yeah, now that I found the jade halaberd and invested serious points in pole weapons my warrior is neat, throughout the game (with 1 swords) he's been a meat shield. He was so useless I gave him some prayer skill so that he could at least heal himself a bit, which was more useful than the 30 or so damage he dealt 1 time in 2. I was playing it safe investing in swords which was usually the good thing to do since you eventually got the demonslayer or some other cool sword, but looks like this time pole weapons are better (or you must go for 2 weapons). Also from the beginning I was waiting to find a 2 handed greatsword which never came

Also for me summons were stronger than my warrior for a lot of the game. Like the blue zombie, he deals consistent 70-80 damage and very often does 2 attacks... So yeah you have to play super dirty, exploiting every design unbalance ruthlessly. Like keeping your healer behind a wall so it cant get charmed and worst. Also yeah, the default party is crappy, like why would you need any melee skill for a mage or priest? If you have already 2 warriors? Also 1 warrior is more than enough. Also the ability descriptions are very deceitful and you should take them with a ton of salt. Like dexterity, it says that it increases chance to hit in melee for warriors but according to various formulas it does not, its basically just a virtually useless XP dump. And speed scrolls effectively double your fire power for 5 turns, which is something huge. So yeah you need a fair deal of tricks to survive

I might be missing something, but aren't warriors underpowered wrt mages? Warriors sometimes get lucky and deal a great hit, but on average they kind of suck, they often miss, when they hit opponent can still parry ,risposte... I mean my mages do about the same damage as a warrior, but nearly always hit, hit from a distace, can hit many people at once and are much more versatile. Ok they need mana but that's not a big issue. I dont seem to be able to make a warrior deal some serious damage consistently. ITs hard to scale them up very much, after a while strength and pole/sworld skills become too expensive... How would you build a good warrior?

The game is certainly not easy. You need to optimize carefully your build or you'll get beaten very often in the mid/endgame. I've played A1-A3 and they were much easier, you could use 4 mage-priests and blast your way through anything on torment, not here. Also magic and prayer skills do NOT raise your mana! This was a huge difference with the original trilogy (dont know about A4, A5, havent played them) Warriors suck until the end of the game where you get some super weapons (pole) that make them mean. You most consistent source of damage are mages. Also use the mage summon spells heavily. I use one warrior-meatshield-priest, 2 mages, 1 full time priest, worked fine to beat the game on medium, but it wasn't a breeze. This is playing to win reasonably fast, doing some sidequests but focusing mostly on the main ones. Also hang on to your scrolls-wands-potions! Some of these are essential for winning. Most important are energy potions and scrolls of speed (actually increase your action points unlike the haste spell). Mass madness is great in the middle game. I used scribbane 4-5 times in the hard fights (works similar to a scroll of speed), pretty useful replacement for the much rarer scrolls of speed. Don't use it more than 5 times, after just 4-5 uses its benefits are very short (hastes you for only a turn or two). Plus you risk getting the withdrawal symptoms (not very bad anyway). In group battles focus on keeping people alive. Anyway this is by far the best Avernum of all time, HUGE and very diverse, great quests, challenging, a wonderful game!