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I don't see the need for a mathed-out END build on Sorceror. I've played both A1 and A2 primarily as Sorceror and I don't see a need for more than a few points in END, if any. A low-endurance Sorceror presents little problem as long as you're spatially aware on the battlefield - keep a healthy stock of healing potions/healing scarab, and keep Teleport handy, and don't forget about Blade Shield -- it's a very potent ability even if you never raise it past level 1. 50% riposte + 30% damage reduction all types + Reflection is considerable, and it lasts like the Energizer Bunny.

I've played a lot of A2 so far with a party of 2 Sorcerors & 1 Tinkermage, the Sorcs totally maxed out on INT. (Tm also maxed out on left and middle side skills, and maxed out DEX, which makes him a major damage-dealer with his ranged weapon and especially with Grenade. Rare is the fight where a Turret of higher order than Razorflinger counts for more than Grenade and his Chain spells).

And I've found that maxing out the Sorceror's first three tiers gives you more bang for your buck than building in Searing Spray - Tinkermage's Grenade gives the same effect, as does the Corruption scarab. And speaking of scarabs: Icy Lance and Dark Bolt pack an excellent wallop when employed by your Sorcerors (though Icy Lance is ineffectual if any other class uses it).

Jeff also described the option to kill Redbeard in Avadon 1 as a secret that most players would never find, so I think he may just be kinda bad at judging players' ability to find things.

How does THAT work? With Silke I at least wondered if it might be someone else until the kiss. With Redbeard in A1 there's nothing else that can happen once you say that you want his job, and it makes no difference what choices you made previously, Loyalist or Rebel, you still get the convo option.

I guess enough people are into that to motivate Jeff to continue down that path, but I prefer filler to be fast and engaging - a handful of bats should not merrit a chess tournament. It's okay to just let me step on the faceless mooks and get on with life. Never getting that option really, really wears on me. Honestly, as I play Avadon 2, I find myself skipping a lot of the "optional" fights. because I get so burnt out on having to grind through wave after wave of "Super Rats" or whatever other trivial fauna that gets in my way. The problem is, however, that the trash isn't "trivial" enough not to feel like it isn't arbitrarily padding out the game and needlessly drawing things out.

 

I just don't feel that every nameless, faceless hostile NPC should bilk more of my time than is necessary. Sure, this has it's ups and downs, but more and more often I feel Avadon drifts too far into giving too much leverage for things that really shouldn't be a challenge for a "elite" warrior of Lynaeus' KGB analog.

Totally agree. That's basically why I opted for 30 and out. Though once you hit mid-game on Normal, even at 30 you're still playing chess with every gang of super rats.

Yes, but the choices are never less than obvious. He made it sound like the world's most well-hidden secret door.

Just wondering why Jeff states in the instruction manual that "most players will never find the romance option." The romance with Silke is obvious from the first moment of the game.

Keep in mind, the Jeff's been doing this since 1994 - that's almost 20 years of new cow jokes.

 

One way or another, he has earned the right to a little snark on this front.

 

... and yes, I too find the cow's amusing.

It's a cow, man. I don't care; he can do what he wants. I'm just illustrating a larger point.

And the thing is -- it's the layer of irritation that's present in the game itself that gives rise to player irritation (amply demonstrated on the previous page of this thread). For instance, there are many byplay conversations that come up within your party in which your initial response options are essentially:

1. What do you want to do about that, what do you think should be done about that, etc.

2. Shut up.

In one town, if you click on the cows, the text box tells you: "the cow says 'moo'. So, you know, no surprises there." This isn't amusing snarkiness -- it's only amusing if it comes from a character, like Alcander, so you can identify with it. If it comes from the omniscient narration, it looks like the game designer is just annoyed with something, and I wonder why he's taking it out on me.

Ultimately I feel like Jeff is spending a lot of time trying to second-guess what players want, rather than focusing on the storytelling strengths that he does have.

Oh boy, a new irritation:

It's very nice, of course, to have a Forum on which we can air all our issues with the game. It's also nice to know that Jeff will almost certainly never bother to look at them.

All I have to say is: it isn't balance if you have to put quotation marks around it.

Ok - the one with her info is in the northeast section, yes, away from the other codex, which is northwest.

As I just mentioned in the "first impressions" thread, I think this is the first Spiderweb game where my irritations with various aspects of gameplay have really bled over into feeling that I'm just not enjoying the game.

I've only found one Codex on a stone platform. The first one you look at, Khalida says "let's keep looking". I have searched that area spot by spot, carefully, and I don't find any others.

This is really annoying.

A couple things that are bugging me recently.

 

Jeff loves to give villains Cutscene Power to the Max. Either they get a magic impenetrable shield, or you're told they're "too powerful", or they taunt you from behind a barrier, or whatever, but ultimately it means that you simply aren't allowed to do X at Y time, otherwise the story would break.

 

 

The bit with Silke was especially aggravating - I said she should die for her betrayal, and I was somewhat surprised to see the game turned her hostile - only for her to immediately run away, ignore all stun and movement-affecting abilities, suddenly develop a massive HP pool that made her unkillable.

 

 

Oh Avadon, why do you constantly dangle freedom over players' heads only to snatch it away with such painfully contrived and amateurish storytelling techniques?

 

I'm not saying Avadon 2 should let me do anything at any time, but if you are going to do any sort of storytelling that has a veneer of interactivity, don't constantly deny the player obvious courses of actions or provide magic plot protection to characters the player could otherwise easily defeat - if you can't figure out a way to advance the plot without having the bad guy cackle like a lunatic in the player's face and then teleport away, you probably need to rethink your story.

 

Anothere thing that is really leaving me annoyed is the way that the game doesn't let you complete quests until you are X level or until you have fulfilled some arbitrary requirements. At first I thought Avadon 2 would be better than the original this way, but it seems I was mistaken. There are very few quests you can complete before accepting them officially (a few "kill the baddie" quests are the only exception) and often the game lets you spend a half-hour completing a section only for it to block you with some barrier - now go accept the quest and hike all the way back, and now you're allowed to proceed.

 

This is rarely if ever justified, and borders on the absurd when you get stuff like paths in levels magically opening up out of nowhere and that sort of thing. I fully understand that supporting players completing quests before they're done requires slightly more work, but seriously, most of the time absolutely no attempt is made to justify this.

I'm not sure if it's that there's many more things about Avadon 2 that I really dislike when compared to previous Spiderweb games, or if I'm just more critical these days.

So, I've found nothing in the dungeons that prompts her to say anything - the only records I've found are on the main floor, and they all say there's nothing relevant to you in them, just as they did before you got her quest.

I've been down to the Keeper's Tombs to fight Chabon and back up; no hints as to Khalida's quest. What am I missing?

Having played through I guess half the game so far, my biggest pet peeve is DEFINITELY that:

Equipping your party feels random, not earned. Earlier in this thread I discussed the lameness of the Tinkermage having to use the Shadowalker's ranged weapon - classes mean little from a storytelling perspective if equipment is interchangeable from one class to the next, and when you've got a six-character party to equip and swap items out between whatever 3 characters you feel like taking on upcoming missions, it begins to feel far more like it's just a matter of making a tidy power-gaming spreadsheet than like you're on a quest where the choices you make have any relevance. (Even if, as promised in the cut-screens, "there are many different endings" - that's great, but the action of prepping for each journey is always the same, and it's unfortunately really boring.)

I realize that this is the first Spiderweb game written with a party this large, but the endless number-crunching really adds to the downtime and detracts from the fun of being in the Avadon world. It's good that the class skill-trees have been nicely adjusted from Avadon 1 to make skill-acquisition feel distinct, but item selection is near-meaningless beyond the basic "mages can't wear heavy armor" rule that dates from the first Dungeons and Dragons system 40 years ago; there's no evolution to it beyond that.

He's the hostile warrior who wanders randomly around the area, right? It's not easy to find him -- do I just have to continue looking around until I happen across him again, or is there any sort of trail to follow?

When I went back to the base camp after several more quests, the gate to his room was open this time. Weird.

I'm at level 30 - the gate isn't open. I fought through all the other creatures outside his gate, but the gate itself was never open.

What's the deal?

Is there any way to open the gate into his room, after the wind-battle with Miranda? Or is this just something I'm supposed to come back to later?

He figured that with the option to enter areas from any direction there's less need for it. I don't miss it.

I just re-read the Lone Wolf books. They were my original introduction to fantasy literature at about age 5, and they're now free online at Project Aon . Freakin' awesome.

Have you ever read Legends of Lone Wolf? if you haven't you must find them. They're novelisations of the first five books - beginning before Flight from the Dark, with Vonotar deciding to go rogue, through the slaughter of the Kai, and on through Lone Wolf's trip to Kalte to bring Vonotar back. Mostly they're told through 3 character POVs - Lone Wolf, Banedon and a goddess named Alyss, who's a fragment of Ishir. Alyss was so popular that they added her to the gameplay series near the end of the Grand Master series.

Legends of Lone Wolf has been out of print for years, but might be possible to find with some research. Though I have to say, if I could get copies of them again I'd never part with them; they're all fantastic novels, some of the most memorable fantasy writing I've ever encountered.

I've been listening to alot of Philip Glass' Opera "Akhnaten,"

Good call on that - listening to it now as I play and it really inhabits the world of Avadon in a great way.

If anyone wants more, here's a playlist with the entire opera: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfFMdllASbM&list=RD026Ql8TidvZto

Whether you call it the writing or the gameplay, it's the same package. Everyone will have different preferences -- Jeff's maxim is "people will forgive you for having a good story as long as you can ignore it." I'd prefer a game with a good story that's integral, which is why I like Spiderweb games but rarely love them.

No Avadon 1 Hands are mentioned, but you meet some NPCs from the first game.

Well, that's a bummer. Then why the full screen artwork showing a mage who's obviously Nathalie?

Tower of Trials is extremely difficult. I shot all my characters up to level 30 right off the bat, and I STILL couldn't take all the simulcrums out before they called time.

Meh. For me, the whole point of having distinct class types is to encourage different styles of play. The more you allow the classes to intermix abilities, the less reason to have "classes" at all.

So why force a new class to use the weapons of another class? Same point: it looks like a Shadowalker, so there's less reason to care.