Kreador

The little group of Horde soldiers blocking the other way is minor compared to the tactical annoyance waiting for you inside the shop you need to go through. ;-)

On your way out, however, if you let the one Barghan get out (I don't remember his name but he makes a run for the ladder), then he'll tell them what you did and Bargha will be very angry with you.

And maybe X's new dimension is where Jeff is building the all new game, and we'll meet up with him again there and find out what his name really is (I'm going for Lesley, personally).

Did it say that your Arcane Lore wasn't high enough? If not, you should learn (or improve) Icy Rain, if I recall. Or maybe it was Control Foe. Been a few weeks since I've played.

Try reading the book on the stand in the cell where you killed the wraith.

If you're talking about collecting the corrupted mushrooms, there are two locations in each of the major regions where you can find them. Check the Strategy List post (use your browser's search function, to save a LOT of scrolling).

This is a quest you will be working on for a long time, so don't be in a rush.

As far as actual RPG elements in SF RPGs went, I think Traveler had a much better overall game system.

It would be interesting, however, to see how Wizards of the Coast is handling all of the mutation elements and such in relaunching Gamma World as a D&D 4E expansion world. The game mechanics were a major reason why my old gaming group dropped our Gamma World campaign after only half-a-dozen sessions.

That was also about the time Champions came out, and being comic book geeks, we dove into that instead. I have a box full of character sheets and campaign notes and graph paper filled with scribbles around somewhere, though.

One other technical/tactical change that came about with the various Steve Jackson games, though, was the switch to a hex map system rather than a square map. It removes the diagonal movement range adjustment. It would be interesting to see if Jeff could implement that without great difficulty in whatever he does next.

So a parody SF game ala the classic PnP RPG Paranoia? Anyone for some hot fun?

Clearly SF themes are seeing a revival across the RPG spectrum as WotC is releasing a Gamma World world-pack for the new D&D 4E system. (For those who may not have been around in ancient days before computers could even do graphics, Gamma World was a post-apocalyptic PnP RPG where the mutant and "pure blood" societies were always at war.)

Gladwell can be killed later (and not to ruin the bit, but it won't be in Patrick's Tower that you get him). However, for interest I left him alive after completing all of his quests to see how that would affect the ending text. I was quite surprised how that turned out.

Your priest's Divine Retribution (assuming you have it at that point) will pretty much always hurt him, but to make the fight faster, follow jlsgaladriel's hint.

Hmmm. I found the Demon in Refuge pretty easy, though I died the first time because I tried what had at that point become my standard tactic of standing back and using ranged damage to kill things. It's a bit slower, but in most cases very effective and avoids issues with monsters that explode or spray poison or acid in a big radius. It doesn't work at all when you're in an ever-shrinking space, so the second time I just charged my four characters and their summons up to surround the demon and pummeled him dead in four or five rounds, then cleaned up his minions.

The lich was pretty crazy, but his constructs at the crypt at the end were the real pain.

In the room with the ogre mage and the three slimes, I did have my main fighter quaff an invulnerability elixir, charge, and blow everything up around him. It was a lot of fun to see him standing in the wreckage.

Have you received the quests to break the siege at Fort Monastery and reopen Fort Draco? At that point, the Northern Avernum pylon should become active and you can take your last boat up and touch it to have access. Then as you complete the other quests, the pylons in those places will become active for you.

If you talk to the sage at the Undead Spiral on your way out, you'll get a pretty good idea what she thinks about Gladwell's mission for you there (and you for doing it).

I was wondering with the Mercuric also exactly what "Battle Speed" does. I've never used those pieces myself because of the loss to Strength (when many of my characters are pushing their weight limits with the gear they're wearing already).

When my entire party dropped dead in an instant the first time I wandered into that shop and charged the slimes, I decided "ranged attacks are good."

Hmmm. It's possible that since I was planning to do the exploit, I didn't take the quest from the Mayor. I'll go back and check that.

Yep, went and checked and that was the problem. Thanks for pointing out to me my own goofy stupidity.

Yeah, after wandering and wandering I finally got the upstairs painting. Apparently I had to step up to the back wall from just the right direction.

Well, I've checked everything upstairs five times, and everything downstairs. It won't give me a second painting. Can somebody give me the cheat code to give it to myself, if there is one? I'm really annoyed at having this quest leftover.

What I found interesting was that I went back to Dharmon later, after doing the skribbane exploit for a while, and decided to wipe out the dealer, only to suddenly find myself arrested without a fight and sent ignominiously to the Abyss, all in a dialog window, so no actual fight.

My only problem with this is where the heck is the second painting? I've been there. Killed everyone in the place, searched every room, and I only find one place where it tells me there's a painting. When I go back to Giscard, he won't take it. What's up with that?

I also searched through the Synergizer list and saw that the second painting is supposed to be upstairs in one of the boxes, but I've searched everything up there. I've opened everything, used everything, picked up and dropped all the junk just to see. No second painting.

None of the other northern pylons are available to you, I believe, until you've finished the battle alongside Solberg and reported your success back to Levitt. (One isn't available until you do two of the other three quests after that.) Even the previously broken one does become available, though, so you do a lot less rowing.

I just think it's funny that the one pylon you can't use again to get back north is Formello. It would be so much fun to pop in, nuke some sliths, and pop back out.

You can buy the Remove Barrier spell from the slith wizard in the Tower Colony after retrieving the Portal Papers. I think there are also one or two other places where you find books to raise it, as I recall.

Also, with the Blessed Breastplate, you can have one made for you in Dharmon if you have the fine steel and mandrake roots, but they're hard to get enough of at the point in the game where you can get the breastplate by screwing Gnass.