Juan Carlo

The fights that boil down to pure attrition tend to bore me as well. But I do think that, at least from the few SW games I've played, the newer ones tend to be way better than the older ones. So I think there's evidence that Vogel has gotten much better at this the more games he's made. Geneforge, for example, is a good game but I can't think of a single memorable fight in the whole thing. It seems like with that game so much time was spent setting up the world that populating it with interesting combat was a total after thought. Maybe it's just because I was playing as a solo agent, but it seemed to me like most of the enemies were just placed around the maps in haphazard masses, so any strategy just consisted of trying to lure them off from the crowd so you could eliminate them in more managable chunks. I do think Avadon has very good boss battles, though. There are a couple attrition type battles (Redbeard and the dragon, mostly), but other than those two I thought the boss battles were mostly pretty varied and well done requiring a good deal of thought being put into party placement and movement and such. And a few were even almost puzzle like. Plus most (except the two mentioned above) were fast. Beloch, for example, was hard on torment, but not necessarily because he had thousands of hit points. That fight was hard, but you could also win or lose it in like 5 minutes or less--which is how higher difficulty fights should be. I actually thought Avadon handled difficulty well as a whole mainly because, for the most part, it seemed to avoid the trap of making things hard by giving enemies tons of hit points. Although, Avadon does also have the perfect example of how not to design higher difficulty battles in the Redbeard battle. It has everything I hate: an enemy with tons of hit points (And even worse, a mechanism that limits your ability to damage him), repetitive action (you are basically only doing one or two things for most of the fight), a battle of attrition that can go on up to 30 minutes (or longer), cruel math so that sometimes depending on which random attack Redbeard decides to employ (terror or charm) you can lose a party memember at the 25 minute mark and be rendered entirely inneffective, or if you make one slip up you can get so far behind on soul jar managment that you basically have to start over. That fight sucked enough that even though I loved Avadon up to that point,it left me with a sour feeling on the game when I finally finished it.

Is there a list of potion makers, their locations, and what they make? I've looked but can't seem to find one, unless I'm just over looking something.

I am doing a torment game and decided early on not to put any points in First Aid, which I kind of regret now. You certainly can get by easily without first aid, but it does mean lots of tedious trips back to down. It's not so noticeable at first, but as your mages get the better spells they burn through manna fast. It's maybe more of a luxury than a necessity, but being self-sustaining while exploring large dungeons is definitely something that, in retrospect, I'd give up a bit of power for. Although I'm staunchly against editing. Part of the fun of role playing, I think, is learning from mistakes and, more importantly, learning to live with and adapt to them. Anyhow, my casters have reached level 17 with level 10 spellcraft so there's no reason to upgrade their base mage/priest stats anymore. I was thinking of sticking points into hardiness and resilience for the remainder of the game just to give them a little extra durability. Maybe I'll put those points in first AID instead, though, as Hardiness means that I also have to waste an extra point in melee every other time.

He's part of the crystal cave quest actually, so if you did that you might have run into him (although he might be an optional part, I don't know).

Originally Posted By: Randomizer Killing the Spectral Commander before level 20 is an accomplishment just because the to hit chance isn't that great. Yeah, I beat him level 15 and my tanks were only hitting like 1 in 3 or 4 or so. However, my mages never miss so they picked up the slack. He's not that bad if you get him trapped in the hallway and then use your tanks as meat sheilds (or better yet the Priest's summoned spectre as they are immune to eachothers attacks and thus will sit for hours punding away at eachother), while your mages blast away at him. The absolute WORST part about that fight, though, was that just when you are victorious and your poor, tired, weakened, party is leaving the dungeon you are ambushed by a specter and a bunch of ghouls. I lost my mage and a tank during the Spectral Commander fight and was just down to a tank and a severely weakened healer. I probably died more times trying to leave after winning the spectral fight than I did during it. Which reminds me: how shy should we be about using items in this game? I am always reluctant to use "energy" potions and Resurrection scrolls just because they seem most useful in long boss fights. So I will often probably make things harder on myself than they would need be if I could use those items. I'm just scared that if I use them now I won't have them when I really do need them for some uber hard boss fight later on.

If you haven't done Cotra just do that. There are hardly any slith on the main landmass where you start out. Most are across the river, so Cotra will be quite doable. I think it has a few easy "fetch" type quests you could level up with. It's a good thing to go out of your area and visit towns, even if the enemies in that area are out of your league. Enemies can be easily avoided on the overhead map, and most of the time each town will have a few quests that you can do that require no fighting. So if you just start at Cotra, then Fort Dranlon and then north to Draco, then south to the city directly under cotra (something like Marieat?--I'm terrible with remembering fictional names), then further south to the tower, then west to the castle and its surrounding towns and do all the fetch and delivery quests you should be level 13/14 by no time. Also, Slith become manageable very fast. In my experience they should be tough but doable by level 12. The Slith island West of Cotra for the "Steal plans" quest is actually pretty easy as long as you wait to do the upstairs boss until you are level 13 or 14. There are packs of Slith warriors in there, but slith warriors only hit once per turn so they are quite easy to take out if you lure them off from the group one at a time. If you have a mage with the "icy rain" spell this is incredibly easy as you can have you party stand far away and she can cast so that she just hit one or two Sliths standing in a group. 9 times out of ten just that one or two will leave the group and come looking for you. Then you can gang up on them. Rinse and repeat. I've done quite a few areas out of my level this way. Plus, you could also probably do the first 3/4th of the Spiral Pit at your level (just not the boss), although you might also want to wait. Even though you can probably handle the enemies, that level is a pain for reeasons I won't spoil.

Is there anyway to tell which level you spells are at currently? I keep forgetting which ones I still need to find the book locations for and which one's I've already done.

The game automatically stores saves in your "my documents" folder. So If you started with the non-steam version then got the steam version it should automatically recognize your old saves. The steam version has cloud too so if you play it on several different computers it will auto-download your saves so you don't have to continually move them.

Originally Posted By: AaronC Can I ask how you managed to kill the slith boss up there? Got him to half hp and just got overrun by slimes...I ensnare them with daze but they reach me eventually. At around level 12, maybe too soon. It was a pain, but basically: 1. Eliminate all of the minions surrounding him (including the Shaman) first. Start with the lesser slith, then once they are dead run from to the stairs, exit, and save (you can also return to town if anyone's dead) then come back and do the same to the Shaman. This way for the final fight you only have to kill the Boss on his own. 2. When fighting the boss just run to the lever and open the cage, have your mages on the back half as support, and stick your tanks (assuming you have two) in the doorway to block. Then just whittle down the Boss' health until he's dead (it's pretty easy. As long as you heal your tanks everytime they take damage he can't kill you through his normal attacks as he doesn't do enough damage. He does have a chance of riposte, though, which can be annoying as if you use a special melee attack on him the damage can be enough to kill you. It happened enough to me that I just quit using special attacks on him and just hit him normally). 3. The slimes suck as they take forever, but aren't too bad. The biggest worry is having your healer run out of mana, so just make sure you have some energy potions along. If you stay in that room blocking the doorway you can kill the slimes one at a time. The only ones that are really a threat to you are the last three as they have lots of hitpoints, occasionally do poison damage, and also occasionally cast spells. So you might lose a party member during that last barrage. I had to use a Resurrection scroll during that part to get through, but depending on your luck you could probably do it without. Also, there's usually a lull in the slimes' attacks before the last three attack. So anytime there are no enemies on screen you can exit combat mode and save. It's cheap sure, but helps alot as it means you don't have to keep replaying the entire, long, boss fight from the start. Anyhow, that's how I did it. It never occurred to me to have my party hole up in the stairs like Lilith suggests, but I imagine that would be even easier. The same strategy would apply, but if there is ever a lull in the combat you could probably just exit the floor entirely via the stairs and save (and also return to town if you've lost party members).

So I am playing this game on torment and loving it so far. Only problem: while the game is ostensibly "open world" this seems to be one of what I've always called "stealth linear" RPGs in that while you have the freedom to do the missions in any order, there is nonetheless a certain level of linearity dictated by the fact that certain quests are much harder than others (see also: Gothic series). So if you stumble unwittingly into super hard quests there's really no way you can advance until you are the right level, so the game ends up being "linear" in a fashion, only the linearity is determined by difficulty rather than the order in which you receive quests. Which I don't really mind, the only problem is that at the moment I have a huge list of quests in my journal and no idea how to proceed. I find that I am wasting huge amounts of times starting quests only to hit road blocks once I realize that these particular quests might be best saved until later. (sidenote: if there's ever a 4th remake of "Avernum" it might actually be a good idea to give quests difficulty ratings. Maybe that's too much babysitting and dumbing down, I don't know, but it would certainly save time). Anyhow, so what I'd like to know is if there are any walkthroughs out there for "Escape from the Pitt" (especially torment playthroughs) which might give me a rough idea of which quests to pursue in what order? If it matters, my party is level 13/14 and I just got done doing the quest where you infiltrate the Slith fortress to steal the plans and kill the Slith boss in the upstairs room who kept spawning those clam things all over (can't recall his name).

How does sage lore work anyway? If you just train one person in it is that -3 for all of your magic users? Or does each magic user have to learn sage lore to benefit from it?

I rather like the lighter tone. Especially after playing Geneforge 1 and 2, which are probably the darkest of the spiderweb games I've played so far. As to the writing, I think it's fine. The characters don't have as much depth or development to them as the ones in something like Avadon, and the moral universe of the game doesn't have as many shades of grey as the Geneforge games do (in fact, Avernum doesn't seem to give much thought to morality at all, although I'm only currently level 8), but I think this is an entirely different sort of RPG than Avadon/Geneforge are. Avernum reminds me more of old school paperback fantasy/adventure choose your own adventure type writing, only with more of a sense of humor. It's a very specific sort of "gee whiz let's go on an adventure!" type pulp that is charming, I think--and kind of refreshing, actually, in an era when it seems like every RPG has to be super dark and self-serious and melodramatic. Plus, I've always liked the fact that spiderweb games are still written in the second person (which used to be the norm in video games and certain types of interactive fantasy fiction, but is now hardly ever done).

So anyone know the early, mid, and late game baseline requirements for Luck, Cave Lore, Arcane Lore, and Tools are? I don't want to waste points in those, but I also don't want to miss out on anything at any point in the game if they are too low.

If I remember correctly "Avadon" debuted on steam at 10 dollars with a 20% discount for the first week. So I'm not sure why anyone is surprised that the same happened with Avernum. As to why there is a difference in pricing between the spiderweb store and steam, Vogel has gone over that tons of times on his blog. He's usually pretty candid about why he prices things the way he does, So I doubt he's being bullied by Valve to under price. It's just the current nature of the indie game market. On steam there's tons of exposure, but also tons of competition, so you make more by charging less (in fact, you probably have to charge less or you won't make any money). Whereas I imagine the spiderweb store appeals mostly to a demographic who have never even used or heard of steam before (And also, probably, die hard fans who don't mind paying extra), so you can get away with charging more as that particular demographic will be willing to pay it. I don't really see it as ripping anyone off, though, as people are free to buy from wherever they choose.

Kind of bad timing. Legend of Grimrock also releases on steam on the 11th. Yeah they play differently, but that's two old school-ish RPGs competing with each other on the same day.

This is awesome. Humblebundle is seen by millions of people. This should at least get you some more exposure.

I really loved the ending, actually. The first 3/4 of the game is more or less the same as the previous games with all of the strengths and a few of their flaws, but the last 2 or 3 hours it's like the game switches gears entirely and becomes some bizarre, morbid, sci-film from the 1970s. I really admired the hard left turn the game took in its very last portions mostly because Bioware very much has a formula that they tend to follow with all of their games--which is something I've criticized them for in the past and which, I think, often prevents them from being really innovative in their game design/storytelling. They were innovative at one point, but mostly for the past decade they've just been repeating the same basic formulas. So it was nice to see them take some risks and break out of that formula in ways that genuinely suprised me (and I don't mean "surprise" just in terms of plot points, but everything--style, direction, tone, acting, etc, etc. This game did stuff in its last hour that video games don't normally do--which I loved). I don't really understand why some fans are so up in arms, either. Yes, some of the stuff in the last few scenes was a bit.....out of no where on the surface, but I think it was all set up well enough if you really look closely at the themes of the series up to that point. Plus, I definitely don't think anyone can claim there's no closure (as I am seeing some fans do on the forums). It seems like this game was nothing but closure for every single character who ever appeared in the series (I mean, I'm pretty sure Shepard said "Good bye" to some characters like 4 times). If anything there was too much closure. So, yeah. All in all, I thought "Mass Effect 3" is the best game in the series. By a mile. Plus, I don't hear many people talking about it, but the combat was definitely the most refined it's ever been (in past games it's often been a headache). But then again, I always find myself defending the ending to the revamped "Battlestar Galactica" to sceptical fans (which I only bring up because I actually see alot of season 4 BSG in "ME3"--i.e. with the sudden turn towards mysticism to explain some things and some plot threads left open to interpretation, etc, etc).

Avadon was patched on steam yesterday, but I still haven't seen any patch notes. So I was just curious if anyone knows what the patch did.

A steam registry key for for something "Avernum" was added recently (not sure if its "Escape from the Pitt" or the old Avernums). This is usually a sign that it will be releasing soon (keys for upcoming games usually appear in the registry weeks/months/days before they appear on the store). Plus, my steam copy of "Avadon" just got auto-patched to version 1.02s. I thought Jeff said he wasn't going to bother patching Avadon further until "EFTP" was done, so maybe the Windows version is now done? I hope so. I'm really looking forward to playing this.

Solo is super easy on torment as long as you play an Agent and spend all your points on offensive magic, with terror/charm spells as your secondary, and enough in blessing to use speed. Don't put any points at all into melee/ranged/shaping (it's a total waste as they never match you spells in terms of dealing damage, and you're not shaping so you will rarely, if ever, run out of essence. Thus you can pretty much just use spells as your primary/only attack) and very few into anything else (i.e. 1 point at the start in str for carry weight, maybe a couple through the game in Int, none in endurance as you will die in 2 hits most of the time anyway so it doesn't matter. The goal is to kill everything before it has the chance to reach you). I just played through as a solo Agent on torment without crafting a single creation. By mid game it becomes absurdly easy as you can one hit kill most monsters, and the ones you can't you can just stun/charm to disable them, then hack away at with your spells. Orr just use speed to give yourself more than one attack per turn. After the challenge that was Avadon on torment, I has a bit disappointed in how easy Geneforge was, actually. Example: I found the dragon in Genforge fairly late in the game, and remembering how difficult the dragon fight in Avadon was, I rather excitedly buffed up with my spells, and prepared myself for a long fight. So you can imagine my disappointment when I used terror on him to stun him, then killed him in like 3 or 4 hits while he just stood there. The hardest fight in the game was the ghost chick that drops the stat belt (can't recall her name), but even she was just a matter of luring off each of her minions one by one, then whacking away at her (if you do any damage she heals herself every time, so you can virtually disable her as long as your attack damge is even slightly higher than the amount she is able to heal herself). But, yeah. I actually would say that as far as "torment" goes, Avadon is WAY harder than Geneforge. There are a few hair pullingly difficult fights in Avadon on torment, but none really that I recall in Geneforge.

You should only need two play throughs to get all the achievements: 1st playthrough--torment, leave them where they lie, without a scratch. Beloch is manageable on torment, but if you can't beat Zephyrine or Redbeard, then just make a save game for each of them and return and beat them both on "normal" once you've completed the game on torment (just make sure you never continue playing on a save that you dropped the difficulty on as it will ruin your chances for the final "torment" achievement). This way, after just one play through, you should only have the following achievements remaining: Don't bug me with your issues Take only what you need You should be able to get both of these in one more "normal" playthrough. Also, "well read" is broken, so don't freak out if you don't get it. Anyhow, I only recommend doing it this way because the game becomes MUCH longer on torment--thus, I'm not sure you'd have the stamina to finish a torment game if you already completed the game three times. Plus, while it's a good game, it's pretty linear. You can pretty much exhaust all the possibilities and see everything there is to see after just 2 play throughs. So I'm not sure why anyone would want to play it more than that.

Does luck have anything to do with it? I visited after buying 30 luck from Dig and I had two Thahds spawn and each drop a crescent stone while I was clearing out the map. Seems strange that two would spawn without even exiting and re-entering the map, yet they don't seem to spawn at all for others. So I wonder if your luck score might affect how often they spawn.

I'd really like to see a single character beating Beloch on torment. Please, someone make a video of it. I've heard people say that it's possible to do on torment with just one character, but I am really curious how it would play out (I.E. I don't see how just one character could not be overwhelmed once the imps/wizards start spawning). Anyhow, I did this fight on torment with my main character (a blademaster), Shima, and Nathalie. The key really is positioning. I stuck my Blademaster up front as a meat sheild to take damage, stuck Shima out of range, and had Nathalie just in range. The thing that sucks is that Nathalie has to be in range in order to hit him, which is bad as Beloch will sometimes kill her within the first three attacks if you aren't careful. Make sure everyone's on speed because you have to do as much damage as possible before he throws up his sheild. You can usually get his health down to 1/2 or less before he throws up his shields. Then just move everybody back out of range and concentrate on attacking the imps that are spawned. Ignore the Wizard once he spawns, then move back in and eliminate Beloch once he drops his shields again. It's not that hard of a battle, but it relies quite abit on random chance as if Beloch does two attacks of a certain type in a row he can kill Nathalie outright and you can't win without Nathalie. If you are using resurrection scrolls it shouldn't be too bad as you can just revive her, but when I did it I was going for the no resurrection achievement which made the fight much harder as I couldn't revive anyone if they fell.

If they won't refund you, there are windows emulators you can use to run windows games on a Mac. I've never used it, but I hear Wine is the most popular. Plus, it's free: http://www.winehq.org/

Oh wait, that's the PC path^ Not sure about where they are on a Mac.