Ceiling Durkheim

Except when you're a loyalist Shaper in G1 & G2. Nothing is more loyal than a guy with a bunch of heads in his freezer.

Well, they're pretty much all disloyal heads. 's what comes of exploring abandoned islands full of rogue creations and isolated valleys controlled by fallen Shapers and more of said rogue creations.

The time between the release of Avadon and A:EftP was actually closer to a half year than a year (end of February 2011 and early-mid December 2011, so 7.5 months). It takes Jeff substantially less time to remake Avernum games than to make new Avadons, since he's already got the writing and area maps (albeit the latter generally see a bit of tweaking).

Vlish are perfectly serviceable through the endgame in G3. Kind of overpowered, if anything. They'll be pretty fragile by the time you get to the last couple of islands, but if you can keep them out of melee and AoE range their damage compares well to tier 3 and 4 creations, their attacks inflict useful debuffs, and they're dirt cheap, so you can hold onto a small pack of them and still have essence to spend on other creations and spells.

This is harder to do in G4 and 5 because of the higher character levels and more balanced creation list. You can get high level creations surprisingly early in some cases, especially if you rush to the Storm Plains in G5, but if you specifically want to keep a low tier creation through the endgame you're going to have a pretty hard time. I'd probably recommend a cryoa, as you can keep them out of the way of nastier attacks if you're careful, and they do respectable damage for their essence cost.

We can never agree on character builds.

What I'm picturing here is general build advice, rather than specific character builds. For the original Avadon: things like the primacy of dexterity as an attribute (but some points in endurance are worthwhile as well), the various skills that aren't worth taking (*cough*nearly everything in the SO, SW, and debatably BM utility trees*endcough*), the approximate level one is likely to reach by game's end, and so on. These things appear in a lot of other posts, but it seems like it would be worthwhile for Av2 to collect some of the more universally agreed-upon points into a sticky within Strategy Central. If nothing else, this would obviate the problem that a couple people have discussed on here, of combing through threads for build optimization tips and encountering spoilers along the way.

The Class Analysis has a lot of information on build optimization. It takes a bit of digging, but you can get a good sense for the strengths and weaknesses of each class, good approximate attribute distribution, the number of skill points you'll have to work with by the endgame, and which skills just aren't worth taking.

That said, if you think that an FAQ more specifically oriented toward character builds would be valuable, maybe I or somebody else on this forum can do that for Avadon 2 when it comes out.

I agree that this forum has too many spoilers. I always come here because I want to learn about viable builds before starting to play as well as figuring out what items to keep for quests and then I usually end up knowing the whole game before I even played it...

 

Which is a bummer because the games are more interesting if you don't know anything about them except for how to build your character.

Huh. I generally find that if one sticks to Strategy Central one can avoid spoilers pretty easily. I mean, provided one doesn't look to the bottom of the Synergy/Randomizer item lists, and that shouldn't be necessary for getting build optimization notes. I managed to avoid pretty much all spoilers my first time around, albeit I did play pretty early on.

I'm really hoping the dude on Leviathyn is correct about the release date, as I'm champing at the bit for Avadon 2. Both because I'm curious to see how the story continues, and because the original Avadon had a lot of gameplay ideas that I very much liked. It had a lot of flaws too, but it sounds like Jeff has worked hard to fix many of them. A game that was like Avadon but without the low level cap, unbalanced/bottom-heavy skill tree, single-gender classes, and dissatisfying final boss fight would be a strong contender for my favorite Spiderweb game of all time.

So, for some reason this never made it onto the Spiderweb news page. It's been mentioned in a couple of other threads, but mostly buried in topics that don't obviously relate to it, so I figured it deserved a post of its own. It's got a lot of meat to it compared to most previews. It includes about an hour of gameplay with the new tinkermage class; if you look closely, you can see in-game listings for almost all of said class's skills.

http://indierpgs.com/2013/09/indierpgs-com-checks-out-avadon-2/

Does it make sense to put 1-2 points into STR to be able to equip better (and more) equips earlier? I'm thinking of getting 1-2 points in STR and then go 2:1 DEX/END after that.

It is worth it, especially for blademasters. The best BM armor tends to be very heavy, especially if you're going for sword and board over two handed weapons (and this is generally the more optimal build, since your primary damage source will be the bow if you go for a dex build, plus in the later game you'll get two sets of item bonuses instead of one if you equip a shield), so even with all the strength points you get by the end of the game, you'll still need a few more to equip the phattest loot. This is less important for the other classes, since the SW-specific gear tends to be chain rather than plate, and sorceresses and shamans can only equip cloth/leather and cloth/leather/chain respectively. For them you're better off putting a few points into strength early on for equipment, and then retraining midway through the game.

Isn't it a problem without any melee fighter? Ranged classes can't attack when next to an enemy after all. From what I understand a mix of Str and Dex is a bad idea, right? So I need to decide for one.

 

So it's either getting all skills to 6 (middle+left or middle+right) or skip out on the top tier skill and get all to 8?

Keep in mind that even a dexterity-focused BM or SW can still tank and hit stuff in melee. They won't do as much damage as a strength-focused character, but they'll actually be better tanks: they'll gain massive physical evasion from dexterity, while strength doesn't have any real defensive bonuses beyond the few points necessary to wear the heaviest armor. It also helps that the SW's area attack, Blade Whirlwind, gets increased damage from dex rather than strength.

Jeff underestimated Dex, hehe.

 

If you spend every point in it, you can dodge 75% of the attacks and the other 25% won't do much thanks to the high armor.

As for skills I max the razordisks first, it does more damage than any melee weapon you could find.

If you spend every point in dexterity you'll get massacred by enemies with poison, acid, and cold attacks (evasion for these attack types is based on endurance, not dexterity, and it's not like you'll have the HP to take them head on without endurance). Dex is the most important stat overall, but you really do need some points in endurance, especially on higher difficulties.

To clarify what Triumph said,

Geneforge 5 opening theme 4 lyfe. A5 deserves an honorable mention. The recent ones have been pretty generic epic movie trailer music; they're fun in their own way, but they're not as distinctive as some of their predecessors.

Synergy was able to loot all of Gorash-Kel without fighting except for a chest in the center of the northwest room that has a patrolling Unbound. It takes a lot of patience to do this and you need a few trips so you don't lose action points due to weight.

...lose action points due to weight? I think you may be thinking of a different game.

I found the A:EFTP demo quite depressingly small. I hope the whole thing isn't as small.

I never really played the demo, but "small" is not a word I would use to describe the A:EFTP main game. It's of comparable length to the original Exile/Avernum, but with a bit of extra content.

Man, if you think that's bad, you should play the Geneforge series, and note how everyone in the world knows you've expressed an opinion in favor of the Shapers or Rebels/Takers the moment you express it.

Redbeard is almost a god when you meet him in the beginning, that doesn't change in the later parts of the game. He even tells the player at one point early on, "To get to be keeper, you have to defeat me-And I PROMISE you, you can't". The guys 100 years old and still running around like a madman.

 

If anything he should be coaching Sarevok and Irenicus on how to be god-like. I defeated Sarevok with a 2 man party of my swashbuckler and a blackguard. If I tried that in Avadon with a 4 person party on torment-Nice knowing ya.

The problem isn't that Redbeard is hard, though. (Well, it kind of is, since for every instance of the game telling you that Redbeard is godly and invincible there are two that sucker you into thinking that rebelling is just as viable a plot path as staying loyal.) The problem is that Redbeard is a boring fight. It would be one thing if Redbeard could wipe the floor with you in a couple turns unless you had prepared just right; at least that would be over quickly. Instead, if you haven't made exactly the right preparations, the battle bogs down and can take literal hours on each attempt. Even if you do get everything right, chances are the fight will take more than half an hour, and not a very exciting or suspenseful half hour at that. You're basically repeating the same actions over and over, killing numerous soul jars, gradually chipping away at his health and hoping he runs out before you run out of items. It's a terrible example of final boss design, which is a shame given that otherwise Avadon had some of the most fun boss fights in a Spiderweb game to date.

Yeah, Penta in 5 is about the closest thing to an Awakened enclave in the latter three games. There are individual serviles (and the occasional human or drayk) who espouse Awakened-esque philosophies in 3 and 4, but it's hard to support a plan for equality between humans and creations when one is engulfed in a continent-spanning war that will result in the extermination of most sentient creations if one side wins.

From a strictly munchkin perspective, you're better off with the Loyalists. It's less of a clear choice with Tholmen dead, since you have to give up a special item, and I think you get less access to training later on. (Can someone confirm that? I know he's a trainer later if you let him live, and my recollection is that you can't get that training from anyone else if you elected to kill him, but I wouldn't swear to that.) Even if you can't get that training, though (which would be a shame, as it's very cheap and teaches you a lot of skills, including a few you can't train anywhere else, like Riposte), you can still get very cheap training in high-level spells from Ruth, and loot their base freely before you head for the final dungeon. You'll wind up with about as much experience as if you chose Redmark's side, but with more treasure and training opportunities.

Land of whatever it is isn't that big that we wouldn't visit some places which we visited in Avadon 1 in Avadon 2 too but I think only familiar char will be Redbeard and that 1st dragon.

I disagree. There are 11 named areas on the map (not counting Avadon itself). The player in Avadon 1 visited 4 of them (kind of 5, since a couple of the missions around the Beraza woods seemed to be closer to Holklanda than Kellemderiel). The PCs in Avadon 2 could spend their time in Dharam, the Wyldrylm, the Corruption, and the Tawon Empire, for instance.

Possibly to help deal with escape attempts?

Well, count me pleased in pretty much all respects.

@SapientCrow: You mean the character editor? The strength of your enemies should remain identical to what it is on any given difficulty; only your characters' attributes change when you use the editor.

And yeah, grinding has never been all that helpful in Jeff's games, except inasmuch as you consider sidequests to be a form of grinding. In many recent games, you literally can't grind past a certain point, because there are a finite number of enemies. Even in games with infinite spawns (like AEftP or the early Averna), you get major reductions in experience rewards for fighting lower level enemies, and eventually all enemies are lower level than you.