Lightning Spammer

Given the somewhat recent update to the game on the Mac end, would the remix be compatible with that at all? I'm curious to play around with this, but also don't want to break the update when this remix was designed for an older version of the base game.

Is there a list of where pylons are at? I was looking for one in Strategy Central and there didn't seem to be one. That information would be helpful, though I don't personally plan on using the pylons that much. I'm used to old school where we had to walk everywhere. =)

I bypass the dilemma entirely by role-playing my party. Although three of the four are "morally upstanding" and wouldn't have smashed the eggs, one of them is a "practical-minded" tactician who has no qualms about doing what is necessary for victory in war. As the other three were leaving them alone, he goes over and stabs them. Any objections from the other three became irrelevant once they were being assaulted by one pissed slith war-chief.

Originally Posted By: The Turtle Moves I can report that in this version, the bat cave is completely doable when you first encounter it. Right to the end, if you use a few consumables. Awesome! I was thinking about hitting that next, but erred on the side of caution given how badly it kicked my rear too early the last time.

Time to start playing this again now that the early game isn't going to be as painful. =)

I bet there is fan art out there. I drew a bunch of it when I was a kid. *laughs* However, given it is all from high school and my style is significantly improved from then, I'd be embarrassed to post any of it even if I had those sketchbooks any longer.

There used to be an armor training skill that offset encumbrance. We could either use one of those, or bump the to-hit increase from melee/pole/bows/thrown to 3% per point instead of 1% per point. But I don't know how well that would scale either. Greaves have always been somewhat awful from what I remember, so I've tended to ignore them unless they have some extra enchantment on them.

In some cases, trying something else first does work, but I agree with Fael's criticism. I was by and large handling the Eastern Gallery areas in the "correct" order. I like having to use a bit more tactics in this game than I did in the other games, but the early-game difficulty is much more brutal than I was expecting (especially since I was using a slightly augmented party). Perhaps one thing I'll do is ignore any and all armor that has to-hit penalties excepting the chest pieces and maybe shields. Those -5%'s (or greater) become brutal when a rank in melee skills only offsets it by 1%. Yet I'm not sure which is worse: soaking more damage due to poor armor or being unable to hit consistently.

Originally Posted By: Custom PDNs for all! I feel old now. I never use pylons, i'm too used to walking EVERYWHERE, like back in the good ol' days of Spiderweb. I know. Pylons being in this new game is odd to me. I don't mind it, but to me it's a convenience rather than a necessity. Though there was a sort of "back to start" spell/artifact in Exile/Avernum III wasn't there?

Originally Posted By: Randomizer A:EftP is significantly harder in the demo than A4 through 6, however now that I think about it the original Avernum trilogy (1 to 3) also suffered from fighters not being able to hit as easily as mages and priests. I think it more that we were spoiled by the dumbing down of the recent games. Now that you say that, that may be true... at least in the early part of the game. I do recall spells hit virtually all the time in the original trilogy (and also in the Exile trilogy) and melee lagged behind for quite a while. There are some other general differences that are making things tricksy for a low-level party. Mental effects are used considerably more in this remake. I actually like this, but it has lead to some minor agonies. "Daze" is like the new "slow" except I've had a few instances where it's been worse since low-level parties have poor mental resist. I'll take "haha... you can only act every other round!" to "haha... you can't act ever because I shall keep spamming daze on your party!" >_< To balance out the commentary, there were a few points where it was easier than it should have been. Notably, the Nepharim fortress north of Cotra. Apparently, the AI can no longer open doors? Are they sacred of doors? Does this have something to do with the fact that we can't close doors also? This made that area ridiculously easy (excepting the demons, which in my mind don't quite count).

Is it just me, or is this game significantly harder than any of Jeff's games so far? I'm not sure if it is any one thing that I've noticed, but "normal" seems quite "hard" and I never had this much trouble with past Avernum games nor with Geneforge. Yes, I've been paying attention to the forums and correctly allocating STR for melee to-hit, DEX for ranged to-hit, and INT for spell to-hit. I also have given my party a little leg-up with stats/skills/spells using the editor (which I often do in Avernum games in particular). If I'm having this much trouble on "normal" with a slightly augmented party in the early areas of the game, something seems wrong about that to me. Or perhaps I went into the game with completely wrong expectations: The old Avernum normal (what I was expecting) = your PCs hit enemies most of the time; enemies will miss you fairly often; dying is a relative rarity if you're careful; buffing is helpful but not strictly necessary to win most fights. The new Avernum "normal" (what I got) = your PCs cannot hit enemies reliably; enemies will hit you very reliably; dying is commonplace even if you're careful; buffing is strictly necessary to win even basic fights. Should I just be adjusting my expectations here, or is there something wrong here with me or the game balancing? To me, I think the biggest frustration is that the contribution of melee/pole/bows/thrown to your to-hit rating is severely downgraded. It's a major shock to me to be unable to hit things reliably, even with my front-line fighter. Many standard encounters would be difficult enough, I think, without the tanked contribution from melee/pole/bows/thrown skill. Some of the early-game boss fights are just unspeakable horrors. I hear some of those are being retooled, thankfully. I've never felt the urge to give up on one of these games before, but after the horror that was Tassik-Schai, at this point I think I am going to (at least until the update comes out). Or I just need to play on "casual" for the first time ever in Jeff's games. *wince*

Glad I saw the topic on this, because I was thinking of making one. Doors/containers have always been closable, so it confused the crap out of me when I couldn't figure out how to do it in this game. If the iPad is the issue, this could've been addressed with a simple "look/interact" button you need to press to open/close/look at objects in the game world. Such a button used to exist in Jeff's games, didn't it? Such a change is probably more substantial than what we would see in a revision, though.

Originally Posted By: AethirWeb Aww, I wish we could make Spiderweb more popular so they can get the money =/ . I know graphics isn't everything but a change is nice. Heck, if I knew how to do decent animated computer graphics, I'd do it for Jeff for free. Well, free... plus a copy of the game when it's done. That's more than enough payment to me. Heh. But also, as I reconsider this, "flashiness" would potentially look very awkward with this game engine. Sometimes I grow tired of the over-the-top flashiness of things lately. Also, I like to use my imagination. It fills in the gaps.

Hrmm. I must not be to the part in the game that Shima hits harder than Sevilin. He almost does with ranged, but definitely not with melee. Even with me having him use a polearm. Could be how I decided to develop Shima down the right-hand path, though. But I did the same for Sevlin... so... *scratches head* I have no idea. Nathalie does by far the most damage out of anyone. It's ridiculous and amuses me quite a lot. *laughs*

So long as I have an option to turn it off or turn it down... I remember Realmz. That old midi-style music. Some of the tracks I disliked, but some I loved. Enough that I figured out how to extract them (sort of) and stuff them into my iTunes. Heh. I can do without it, though. I'd rather have the ambient sounds in Jeff's games done a little better before (and if) he adds in music. And those have been getting better. I still remember some of the early Geneforge ambients in the towns... "blah blah blah blah blah blah! Blah blah blah blah blah blah! Blah blah blah blah blah!" Gods, that was annoying. O_O; Kind of funny too, but annoying and something I learned to tune out whenever wandering in towns with that ambient track.

Eh, I'm in the "role player" crowd. To clarify what I mean by that, I'm more concerned about plot and story - be it programmed in or embellished by my own imagination as I play the game - than I am about game mechanics issues. One of the things I dislike most in an RPG is when I feel like I am being forced to play someone else's character. Lack of choices is the fastest way for a game to feel that way for me. The vast majority of Spiderweb's games have not made me feel like I'm playing someone else's character. It's probably why I've played and replayed Jeff's games more times than I'd care to confess. Avadon is something of a shift from that. It doesn't feel like a game I'd want to replay to death, in part because of simplification. Don't get me wrong, as far as a piece of game programming goes, many things in Avadon are an improvement on previous titles, but the things that Avadon improves is not why I play Jeff's games. If an RPG game lets me immerse and let my imagination free, I'm pretty tolerant of less accessible game engines; once I figure them out, the reward is worthwhile. Oblivion was like this for me. I thought the game mechanics were terrible, and in many respects I still do. But it lets me do more than I ever dreamed as far as actual role-playing is concerned. Consequently, I did two playthroughs in a row (that's 200+ hours people) before I realized I was horribly addicted and forced myself to do something else with my life. >_<

I didn't mind the system before, but I guess I just figured out early on how to make a party that works. I've played enough of Avadon, now though, that I think I will also appreciate this new system. I can see how it is more accessible to new players. Overall, it should be an improvement. So long as I can still spam my lightning. =)

I liked the lightning from Avernum 1-3. That was nice. It made me want to spam it constantly. And I did. Hence my username. >_<

I have mixed feelings about this. Overall, I like the engine of Avernum 1-3 and Blades better than the engine used in 4-6. For a lot of reasons, I think. I actually like the older graphics far better, and the earlier games have something resembling a *real* character editor (though it is not as good as it was in Exile). Oh, and a world map. But I hear that the outdoor map will still be in the remake, so that makes me happy. Will be trying demo before deciding to buy.

Ah, rats are okay. I'm more leery about that from the screens so far, it doesn't look like you can play a female main character. I this just me being paranoid or are we going to have a choice? >.<

Originally Posted By: Tcheedchee Funny you should say that. I had serious trouble in A5, where I had to switch to easy to get through. I think I've played a far greater piece of A6 by now and can still play on normal. There are some extremely tough fights, but for me the alleviation in difficulty lies in the possibility to go to more different places, where one can gain the experience needed to survive the tougher fights This is true. Less linearity in A6 would make it easier on a second play through once you know where you should and shouldn't go at certain levels. I still remember my brazen moment of thinking I could take the ancient worm when I was in the teens. I thought I was doing really great... then it got angry and wiped out my entire party with 130+ poison damage. >.< EDIT: It's also been a while since I've played A5, so maybe I'm just forgetting some of the hard parts of that game. =)

I often find it odd when people say the A4 graphics are better; a dislike of the "improved" ones is actually one of the reasons why I prefer the old engine. I think the 3D-looking figures worked well in Geneforge, but for some reason I felt it looked very strange in Avernum. But I've generally been one to care much less about graphics in a game than gameplay. The biggest thing I think is really bizarre in the newer games is the way that spatial orientation plays out. There's no distinction between indoor and outdoor segments, so the distance between indoor areas is... well... unrealistic compared to the older games. >.<

I always found the story of A2 to be the most interesting, for some reason, though I'm not sure the gameplay is necessarily the best of those four. I do prefer the older engine in many areas over the newer one, though some of the revisions in the newer set I think are good improvements (like the first aid skill being useful).

So far I'd say the Lich + Sentinals has been nuts. I just got done with that... took me a few times to figure out how to beat the sentinals. Talk about strategic party placement making a world of difference (aka, a fight going from impossible to winnable, with patience and enough hoarded items). The aranea queen was somewhat problematic as well the first couple tries, but then I managed to pull only a few of the baddies in that area at once and buffer with some summons. This is, definitely, the hardest Avernum on normal I've encountered. I usually cheat a little bit anyway, but on this one, even with adding a few extra skill levels here and there, many areas have kicked my party's sorry rear ends. >.<

Yay! I was a bit sad about not being able to get into Fort Draco with my current (and first) play through. If I update, will it immediately be available even if the save was made on an older version? If not that's fine too... goodness knows I play each of your games at least three times. I think I've played Avernum 1-3 about 5 times each. >.< EDIT: Well, think I answered my own question. No, I still can't get into Fort Draco. Oh well. I'll stick with 1.0.1 then on my first play through, I guess.