Juan Carlo

That confused me too, but it's actually not. You can't buy the games separately, just as a bundle. So if you buy one, you get them all. But for some reason steam originally listed them individually on the store front, which was kind of confusing.

Yeah, this is awesome.

 

I was itching for more Spiderweb after playing Avadon. I actually played the demo for Geneforge 1 a few days ago and was considering getting it, so it's very good timing (especially since the package on steam is cheaper than buying "Geneforge 1" on its own from the spiderweb store).

The entire Geneforge series just appeared on steam for 15 dollars.

 

I just bought them.

 

I didn't think any of the older Spiderweb games would ever come to steam (Valve is pretty picky sometimes about rejecting low tech games), so this is awesome.

This fight is also much easier if you have the teleport scarab that you can buy from the smith in Avadon.

 

I had alot of trouble with this fight as well, but once I remembered I could teleport it was way easier.

 

Just have one character teleport to the far wheel (you can't teleport all the way there, but you can teleport past the imps, which makes things much easier), take out the 2 imps guarding the wheel, use a "regen abilities" item to restore your teleport ability (otherwise I think it's cooldown is like 14 turns), then teleport back, while your other two characters deal with the closest wheel.

 

Then just hang back and wait for the demon. He'll come to you once the door is open.

This was a pretty awful fight.

 

Personally, I think all he'd have to do is remove the wall between the two soul jar rooms, making them one room instead of two, and the fight would be way better.

 

It'd still be plenty hard, but it'd be much less tedious as you would no long have to break up your team so much.

I play every game on the hardest possible difficulty.

 

For one, I find that games tend to be too easy anyway, so usually the hardest difficulty is the only way to get any challenge. If I ever play on normal or easy or something I find that I usually have to make up self-limiting rules for myself (like never dying, or some other such thing) to keep myself interested.

 

For another, I'm just kind of OCD like that, I think. I just feel like I'm wasting my time or something if I'm not playing it on the hardest possible settings.

 

But one thing I like about "Avadon" is that I think it does the implementation of a "torment" difficulty very well. Which is rare as I often find that very few developers are able to get difficulty adjustments just right. I really really hate it, for example, when games scale difficulty just by increasing enemy hitpoints to absurdly huge levels. This is just cheap and tedious. But Avadon seemed to scale damage/enemy behavior/abilities, so while battles were very hard on torment, they also could be finished fairly quickly---so you usually don't end up in "Dragon Age 2" type situations where you find yourself whittling down hitpoints in a long and boring fashion (in fact, I hated DA2 so much that I didn't bother finishing it, but that's another thread perhaps).

 

Ideally, I think developers should think of "Torment" mode as being one that takes "realism" as it's model (or whatever equivalent "realism" would be in terms of your game world)--all the other difficulties should just be "realism" nerfed to various degrees (and, yes, I do think RPGs can do realism quite well. Just look at the roguelikes, for example) However, it seems like too many developers look at "Torment" as meaning just giving the enemies super powers and the ability to cheat in unrealistic ways, which is dumb, I think. I want a challenge, but I also want to believe that if I play in a smarter fashion then I can meet this challenge. I don't want to feel like I am just playing a slot machine where the odds have been greatly tilted in the house's favor and all I can do is pull the lever and hope for the best.

Yeah, it's on daily deal today on steam (50% off).

 

So if anyone hasn't bought it yet on steam they should. Also tell your friends! (I convinced at least one friend of mine to pick it up).

 

I really did love this game so I'm hoping it will sell well enough on steam that the re-release of Avernum will also be released on steam.

More power to him.

 

But Onlive kind of sucks as a service. It only works if you have top notch internet--I.E. the sort of internet that isn't even available in most US cities yet. And even then it can still be jittery and laggy and generally doesn't look or play very well.

 

I had a free trial for it and didn't much like it. I''d generally only recommend it as a demo service as rather than offering demos they usually let you play most games for free for the first 2 hours or so--which is kind of neat. Especially since there's nothing you have to download so you can stat playing most games instantly.

I did it on torment with your exact build.

 

Also, you don't actually need to kill anyone (or not to the point that they disappear or anything as Zhossa will always heal them before their health gets so low that they die)). Zhossa just keeps healing the puppets until he gets too weak to heal them any longer, then he give up and retreats. The fight does seem to go on forever, though (I didn't count, but he heals them many times), but it will end eventually.

 

How I did it:

 

Keep all your characters spread out in the lower corner of the map (they don't seem to be affected by the columns here, or mine didn't anyway). Position Nathalie by the door, far enough away to be out of range from the 3 puppets, and have her alternate between killing the skeletons that Zhossa spawns (if you have her powered up she can take them out in two hits usually) and attacking one of the puppets when there are no skeletons. Meanwhile, have your two melee characters attack just one of the enemies (the same one Nathalie is attacking). Ignore the other two entirely even if they are attacking you. For the fight to end Zhossa has to heal the puppets a certain number of times and he only does this when their health is low, so it doesn't pay to attack all of them. Just focus on one of them repeatedly. Just remember to keep yourselves healed and it will end eventually (it does seemingly go on for ever, though, and not knowing when exactly it will end is the worst part).

 

I actually think this is the hardest mandatory fight in the game. There are lots of much harder fights in the game, but they are all optional.

 

Some of the later mandatory fights are seemingly harder, but all of the other mandatory fights have an exploit that, once you figure it out, the fight becomes absurdly easy. So I think this one is the hardest mandatory fight just because, unlike the other battles, it doesn't really have a cheap exploit. You just kind of have to weather the damage and survive until it's over.

 

 

Nah. Not that I saw, at least.

 

I love this game, but probably my biggest criticism of it is that nothing you say or do seems to matter much up until, literally, the very end of the game.

 

You can give what looks like two different responses and the same outcome will occur most of the time.

 

So I say just respond in the way that feels right to you and don't worry too much about it.

Yeah, this fight sucks. Hard.

 

Boss fight design (and the general battle design in most of the game as well) is actually one of the things I love most about this game. Most of the fights are varied enough and just complicated enough to be fun without getting repetitive.

 

But this one is just hair-pullingly tedious because it takes SO LONG. It even sucks with all 5 characters.

 

I think it would have been more fun if either Redbeard spawned golems at a slightly slower rate, or if all the Golems were in one room, rather than two (so you don't have to split your team up as much). As it is, usually he'll spawn another golem within 1 turn of when you destroyed the last one. And if he terrifies/stuns just a couple of your characters, it's possible that you'll loose some turns and he'll be able to spawn 2 or 3 Golems, making you loose ground and perhaps permanently set you back.

 

Which wouldn't be so bad, but it's such a long fight that if he does this after you've been going at it for 20-30 minutes it can be a massive headache. It's really not a fun fight.

^This

The wolf usually appears in the same spot every time. So if you leave one character over there before the battle starts to kill it, then the fight is much easier.

Yeah, this is one of my major gripes with the game as well.

 

I did all the side quests and wiped every level of enemies so I reached level 30 somewhere around the time I fought Lady Antje. There's actually a good deal of game left after that point, so I'm playing the last portion of the game with no leveling at all.

 

I know leveling isn't all the fun of RPGs, but feeling a sense of progression and planning your characters' stats is a large part of it.

 

So it's kind of a let down to have to play the entire final section of the game with this element of the game taken out (especially since, as I said, this element is a huge part of what makes RPGs fun). I find myself actually skipping fights and sneaking around alot more just because without gaining experience there's no real incentive to fight anymore.

If you select "medals" from the main menu it will show you a screen of all the medals you have. At the bottom of this screen is a "show stats" button you can click on which will show you stats like how many items you've enchanted, how many enemies killed, number of codex found, etc, etc.

 

Anyhow, I guess mine says I have found 24 (not 23). So it seems like 2 of the codex aren't being counted for some reason, even though I've found them and they show up in my codex entries.

This seems to be bugged for me as well.

 

I have all 26 codex yet I haven't gotten the medal/achievement.

 

Plus, under the in game "stats" (accessible from the main menu) it says I only have 23 despite the fact that 26 entries show up under my codex.

Never mind, I did it.

 

It would have been much easier, but I wasn't allowing myself to use resurrection scrolls (I haven't used them all game as I want the achievement). Had I been able to just resurrect Nathalie every time she died the fight would have been infinitely easier.

 

I did try retraining my high strength blademaster to be high dexterity, but it really didn't seem to make much of a difference. All the damage in the fight is magic based and dexterity doesn't seem to affect magic based damage much (maybe I'm wrong? It works well with dodging melee, but it really didn't seem to make a difference at all in terms of dodging Beloch's magic attacks). So once I retrained him as high dex the only difference seemed to be that his attack damage went way down (ranged weapons on a high dex Blademaster do not seem to be as powerful as melee on a high strength blademaster or ranged weapons on a high dex Shima) and he started sucking hard so I trained him back.

 

Although, my Blademaster wasn't really the problem as he can suck up tons of damage. My main problem was that while Shima can fire at the demon from out of range, Nathalie can only hit the demon from within range. So I'd have to bring her in range of the demon to fire at him, and if he decided to do a AOE spell she'd usually die pretty quickly. So since I couldn't resurrect her, if he targeted Nathalie more than once during the first round of the battle (before he damage shield went up) she'd usually die and I'd have to restart as non-magic attacks didn't seem to damage him or his summoned minions much. Without Nathalie around to deal damage my two non-magic guys would get mobbed by the acid ogres.

 

Anyhow, I eventually beat it by positioning my Blade master right up front to take damage, and Shima and Nathalie out of range. I had everyone go frenzy pre fight, then I would only move NAthlie in after the Demon's initial attacks. I'd let her attack and by the time he put up his first shield I could usually get his health down to 1/4. Then it's just a matter of babysitting/healing Nathalie until he drops his shield again (which isn't necessarily easy as if the wizard targeted her or one of the ogres used earthquake and stunned her she'd usually die). It sounds simple, but it just seemed like some random thing would always go wrong. So maybe I was doing something wrong. It worked eventually, though.

 

But I am curious. Who is the one character that can beat Beloch alone on torment?

Any advice on beating Beloch on torment?

 

I have literally gotten him down to like one hitpoint, so I've come SO close, but so far not successful.

 

The frustrating thing is that it all seems to come down to dumb, random, luck. If, for example, he decides to follow up x attack with y attack you are wiped in two seconds. But if he randomly chooses to use a different attack, you can stay alive longer.

 

All my characters are already level 30 so I don't really have the option of leaving and coming back.

 

So has anyone beat him on torment? If so, do you have any advice?

@kryft

 

It's very possible to not have all your characters be max dex on torment. I'm very close to finishing now and I still haven't respec-ed my main high strength blademaster to be a high Dex character (I just haven't seen a need to yet, although I will if I run into problems).

 

The only part of the game that gave me much problem having such low dexterity was a portion later in the game where you have to complete a mission all by yourself. My character was getting hit constantly, so this mission would probably have been way easier with higher dexterity, but I still was able to make it through OK.

I got without a scratch on torment.

 

It's not as hard as it first might seem as you only have to get to Castle Vebeaux for the first time to get the achievement. And that's just like the third main story line quest. I was thinking when I started that I would have to go the full game--which would have been very hard.

 

I didn't bother with take only what you need because I wanted to play on torment and I figured that achievement would be too hard. I still haven't used a resurrection scroll, though, so hopefully I'm still on track for the leave them where they lie achievement.

I'm almost finished with a torment game. The first sections can be hard, though, so don't feel bad about using lots of health potions. I used tons in the first portions of the game to get through some battles, but your dependence on them will lessen as the game goes on.

 

Plus, I think maxing out dex is slightly overrated, as especially in the first portion of the game you can't do a whole lot of damage with a max dex character. I don't think Shima, for example, gets very good at offense until later in the game. My main character is a max strength blademaster and I took a more balanced approach between strength and dex for Sevilin and I used Nathalie, my main blademaster, and Sevelin for the first portion of the game (up through the beast hunt, in fact--after which I tend to use, Shima and Nathalie).

 

I'm a newb and I don't know exact stats like some others might, so I could be wrong, but in my experience it seemed like the high strength melee fighters do way more damage in the early portions of the game (especially with their special abilities) compared to high dex characters. All of your starting abilities for both Blademaster and Shadow guy (can't remember the name of the class) are melee abilities anyway, so it makes sense to me to have high strength until you start to unlock other abilities. So I'd actually recommend maxing out strength on your fighters up until you get to the mid-game trainer--at which point you can retrain them to be high dexterity if you want.

 

Plus, I kind of think warcry sucks. I guess I haven't seen much use for it yet.

I've beat avengine on torment and I've never seen her do more than 4. Same with the apprentice lady. And also the dude in the basement of Nathalie's quest.

 

However, sometimes it's hard to tell how many turns they are tacking if the rest of your party is dead and you are stunned. So it might seem like they are going 6 times in a row just because you're missing a turn without realizing it.

 

I don't like this idea. I think they just need to better balance the positives and negatives of each stat (and also make what each stat does very clear to the player at the outset to ensure that players can play how they want). So if you decide to put all of your points in strength, your attacks should be super powerful (powerful enough that this would be a viable way of playing the game), but you should also be pretty fragile.

Deciding for yourself whether you want super powered offense or more longevity is one of the things that makes RPGs fun--as it ensures that you can play however you want. So I don't think SW should consider making it automated as it would make it less fun to play. Especially since, the only real problem with dexterity is that it is almost all positives with almost no negatives at all, whereas investing in any other stat will come with definite downsides. So it's just a poorly balanced stat.

The only way that automating stats would be ok, in my opinion, is if SW also GREATLY expanded the number of skills and possible skill paths for each character along with it. That would at least ensure that there was still some customization to the game.

That's another thing I thought of: split Dexterity into dexterity and agility and have agility govern dodging and dexterity govern ranged weapons.

Although, personally, I always like it when stats govern more than one thing. So I think just adding benefits to the other stats would be a more fun/interesting solution.

Or at least add another benefit to strength, anyway. I think Intelligence is powerful enough in later stages that it really doesn't need another added benefit (Nathalie, for example, can really dish out damage if you do nothing but put points in Int--which, in my view, makes up for the fact that she's also incredibly fragile). In fact, if they added another benefit to Intelligence I think it would become the uber-powered stat instead of Dexterity, so they should probably leave it as is.

No.

 

You can easily pass saves around on steam and get the achievements (basically everyone was doing it during the summer sale achievement competition they had).

 

However, I'm pretty sure that steam achievements requires some added programing that the non-steam version of the game lacks (I'm not an expert, but I think it adds extra flags to the save game files to tell steam whether or not the achievements should be awarded). So I doubt that non-steam versions of save games will award you the achievements in the same way that steam version saves will.

 

I could be wrong, though, so you could just try it and see.

I have a maxed out strength blademaster and he does way more damage melee than my maxed out dexterity Shima's range attacks. Although, Shima dodges so insanely well that he basically makes up for his lesser damage with longevity. So I agree that Dexterity is kind of imbalanced in this game. They should maybe have considered giving some extra bonuses with strength in some way to make melee more worth playing--e.g. maybe every ten points you have in strength you get a significant boost in total health. That would make up somewhat for what a damage magnet the melee fighters tend to be.

 

That said, though, it does seem like you can make up for the lack of dexterity somewhat with magic items. I don't know exact stats or anything, so this is anecdotal, but I enchanted a bunch of my high strength blademaster's armor with "hard to hit" gems and he doesn't seem to get hit nearly as much as he used to.