Thoukydides

Oh, I've been using the Annotated Maps rather extensively over the last few months. Although Silver's work is great, his information is what prompted me to begin analyzing the item, trait, and stat effects back in August. I noticed his information often lacks specific details (like that the crystal items give 100% protection, so don't give one character all three) and in some cases it's completely inaccurate - such as the knowledge charm increasing XP gains, the health charm increasing HP recovery (they don't), and of course some of the problems arise because the game claims stats and items do something when they don't.

 

That said, I'm glad you linked the list you're hosting on your website since it is very useful and includes details I didn't put in my list.

Since Avernum 1 doesn’t tell you exactly what special abilities magical items have, I decided to list the effects of all magic equipment in the game. I have only included equipment that has an effect like magic rings and bracelets. If I missed anything, please let me know and tell me where to find it.

 

After the weapon name I will list in parentheses the effect given in game and below the name I will list the effects I have discovered.

 

All special weapon damage was tested against cave rats, except for Demonslayer, Ghoulbane, Smite, and the specialized arrows.

 

Note that because all weapons have the same stat modifiers, there is little difference between any of the weapons, besides the corresponding weapon skills. For example, with no stats, a steel short sword (2-16+2) should do the same damage as an iron longsword (2-20). In addition, since the + bonuses increase to-hit and thus skill damage, once weapon skills or Blademaster pass ~15, the short sword will always out-damage the longsword by a small amount. For more on this check out my stats thread.

 

Melee Weapons

 

-Alien Blade (2-28+3, drips poison)

Inflicts poison, does 12-14, avg. 13, poison damage every three turns. Enemies can resist the poison status and additional hits will increase the strength of the poison – each “level” of poison does 12-14 damage. Unsurprisingly, poison does less damage over time. The ability to stack poison damage makes this the strongest melee weapon on most enemies.

 

-Assassin’s Dagger (2-12+4, drips poison)

Like the Alien Blade, this inflicts 12-14, avg. 13, poison damage every three turns. Despite having a range of only 2-12+4, the Assassin’s Dagger poison ability and the +4 makes it better than any non-artifact melee weapon and about as good as the Diamond Dagger. The Diamond Dagger will be better (by 4-8 damage) against enemies not affected by poison.

 

-Demonslayer (2-26+3, strange ability - damages demons)

Does an extra 26-37, average 31, damage against demons. The damage type does not display, it may be magic or physical damage.

 

-Flaming Longsword (2-20+3, covered with flames)

Does an extra 4-22, avg. 14, fire damage. This is the strongest one-handed weapon against enemies not resistant to fire. For comparison, a Blessed Greatsword at base stats will average 18 damage, while against an enemy not strong to fire, the Flaming Longsword will average 29 damage.

 

-Icy Longsword (2-20+3, covered with frost)

Does 3-15, avg. 9, extra cold damage. The damage range for this weapon may be bugged, especially because cold damage in general appears bugged.

 

Pole Weapons

 

-Ghoulbane (2-20+4, damages undead)

Does 3-14, avg. 8-9, additional magic damage to undead. Ghoulbane likely uses the same damage range as the Icy Longsword.

 

-Jade Halberd (2-32+3, drips acid)

Does 0-13, avg. 6, acid damage every turn until the acid wears off. The 0 damage may be due to a resistance, or possibly armor, and the acid status can be resisted. Sadly, even though acid damage can stack like poison, in practice the acid damage doesn’t seem to be as nice as poison. Despite this, the high damage range of the Jade Halberd does make it compete with the Alien Blade.

 

-Obsidian Spear (2-20+4, no effect listed)

Occasionally slows enemies for 1 turn.

 

-Smite (2-26+4, damages giants)

Does 7-28, avg. 18, additional magic damage to giants. Smite is by far the best weapon to use against giants. It’s magic damage beats even the Flaming Longsword’s fire damage.

 

Ranged Weapons – all of the following appear to be bugged and none of them have an effect listed in their descriptions.

 

-Acid Arrows (+20 bonus to hit)

Does not inflict acid damage.

 

-Acid Bolts (+20 bonus to hit)

Does not inflict acid damage.

 

-Arrows of Light (+20 bonus to hit)

Does not deal extra damage to demons or undead.

 

-Bolts of Life (+20 bonus to hit)

Does not deal extra damage to demons or undead.

 

Body Armor

 

-Icy Chain Mail (1-12+4, 16% penalty, resist fire)

Gives ~60% fire resistance. This is equivalent to 20-25 Elemental Resistance.

 

-Mauling Leather (1-8+4, 8% penalty, increases bonuses from Strength)

Gives 2 Strength, this does not affect derived statistics, such as weapon skills.

 

-Polished Plate Mail (1-16+3, 20% penalty, protects from stoning)

Gives 100% resistance to stoning.

 

-Radiant Robe (1-4, provides protection from magic)

Blocks ~60% of magic damage. This is equivalent to 20-25 Magic Resistance.

 

-Robe of the Magi (1-6, wearer casts stronger mage spells)

Adds 4-5 levels of Bonus to Mage Spells.

 

-Rogue’s Leather Armor (1-4+3, 4% penalty, increases chance of picking locks and disarming traps)

Adds 3 levels of Tool Use for both traps and doors.

 

-Shadow Leather Armor (1-4+3)

Has no attack penalty, this allows use of high level mage spells. Note: Any attack penalties given by bulky armor prevent casting spells higher than Mage Spells 3 (Slow). Hardiness does not counteract this.

 

Shields

 

-Crystal Shield (1-6+3, 4% penalty, protects from stoning)

Gives 100% resistance to stoning.

 

-Serendipity Shield (1-6+3, 4% penalty, increases bonuses from luck)

Gives 2-5 levels of Luck.

 

Gloves

 

-Gauntlets of Might (1-2+1, increases chances of hitting and damage)

Increases chance to hit by 15%, increases damage by 6. Probably adds 3 Blademaster.

 

-Nimble Gauntlets (1-1+1, increases chances of picking locks and disarming traps)

Increases Tool Use by 3 for both traps and doors.

 

Boots

 

-Boots of Speed (1-2+2, 4% penalty, makes you move faster and get more actions)

Always gives 1 Action Point. Does not appear to increase initiative.

 

-Nimble Boots (1-2+2, 4% penalty, increases bonuses from dexterity [so you're harder to hit in combat etc.])

Increases Dexterity by 2, does not affect derived statistics, like Defense. Does not increase dodging.

 

Cloaks

 

-Archer’s Cloak (1-2, makes missile weapons more accurate)

Increases Bows and Thrown Missiles by 2.

 

-Dragonskin Cloak (1-2, protects from fire)

Gives 60-70% fire resistance.

 

Bracelets

 

-Dexterity Bracelet (increases bonuses from dexterity)

Increases Dexterity by 2, does not affect derived stats like dodging.

 

-Intelligence Bracelet (increases bonuses from intelligence)

Increases Intelligence by 2.

 

-Lucky Bracelet (increases bonuses from luck)

Increases Luck by 1-2.

 

-Mage’s Bracelet (helps wearer cast stronger mage spells)

Increases Mage Spell Bonus by ~3.

 

-Monkey Bracelet (makes you feel weak, very weak)

Reduces chance to hit by 15% and damage by ~3-4.

 

-Priest’s Bracelet (helps wearer cast stronger priest spells)

Increases Priest Spell Bonus by 3.

 

-Strength Bracelet (increases bonuses from strength)

Increases Strength by 2.

 

Necklaces

 

-Basic Charm (protects from acid)

Gives 40-50% acid resistance.

 

-Chill Charm (protects from fire)

Gives ~60% fire resistance.

 

-Crystal Charm (protects from stoning)

Gives 100% resistance to stoning.

 

-Freedom Charm (protects from paralyzed or put to sleep)

Gives 40% resistance to paralysis, possibly other status effects like charm or confusion. Paralysis uses Willpower, you start with no base resistance to paralysis.

 

-Harm Charm (makes you feel weak, very weak)

reduces chance to hit by 15% and damage by ~4.

 

-Health Charm (gives protection from poison)

Probably gives ~40% poison resistance, does not increase HP recovery.

 

-Knowledge Charm (no effect listed)

Gives 3 Rune Reading, does not increase XP gain.

 

-Shielding Charm (protects from magic)

Blocks ~60% of magic damage, equivalent to ~20 Magic Resistance.

 

-Sticky Charm (no effect given)

I have no idea what this does other than take up a necklace slot and since it is cursed it can't be removed without uncursing it. It does not affect accuracy, dodge chance, damage done, or physical and elemental damage received. May decrease magic resistance or willpower (not tested).

 

Silly me for not being able to find these. If you are able to find these, please test them and let me know your results. I have tested them both in Avernum 2 instead.

-War Charm

No effect discovered, may be bugged. There was no noticeable change in damage, no change in chance to hit or dodge chance.

 

-Warmth Charm

Blocks ~60% cold damage, roughly equivalent to 20 Elemental Resistance.

 

Rings

 

-Archer’s Ring (makes missile weapons more accurate)

Adds 2 levels of Bows and Thrown Missiles.

 

-Armor Ring (no effect listed)

Blocks ~4 physical damage, may give about 4 Armor.

 

-Fletcher’s Ring (makes missile weapons more accurate)

Adds 2 levels of Bows and Thrown Missiles.

 

-Immunity Ring (protects from fire, cold, and other magical effects)

Increases Elemental and possibly Magic Resistance by ~20%.

 

-Resistance Ring (protects from fire, cold, and other magical effects)

Increases Elemental and possibly Magic Resistance by ~10-15%.

 

-Ring of Agony (makes you feel weak, very weak)

Decreases chance to hit by 15% and damage by ~5. May give -3 Blademaster.

 

-Ring of Blurred Vision (makes your missile weapons more accurate) [This is a cursed item and may be bugged]

Decreases ranged damage by 3-4. Despite the description it has no effect on accuracy.

 

-Ring of Exposure (provides protection from fire, cold, and other magical effects)

Increases Elemental and possibly Magic Resistance by ~15%.

 

-Ring of Great Health (affects rate of HP recovery)

Increases HP recovery rate by 20 times - recovers 5 HP every two turns on world map. The base recovery rate is 1 HP every 8 turns. Incidentally ten turns on a town map are equal to one turn on the overworld map. This means both this and the Ring of Health heal HP every twenty turns in a town or dungeon.

 

-Ring of Grief (makes you feel weak, very weak)

Decreases chance to hit by 15% and damage by ~5. Does not appear to reduce Strength.

 

-Ring of Health (affects rate of HP recovery)

Increases HP recovery rate by 12 times – recovers 3 HP every two turns.

 

-Ring of Illness (affects rate of HP recovery)

Decreases HP recovery rate to 0 - over ~800 turns (1 day is 600 turns) no HP was recovered naturally. Oddly enough, this only applies to movement and waiting, HP will be restored using the rest command. In addition the ring is not cursed, this is probably a bug.

 

-Ring of Skill (increases accuracy and damage)

Increases chance to hit by 8% and damage by 3-4. This also increases chance to hit for ranged weapons by 8% and damage by ~1.

 

-Ring of Vulnerability (no description)

Increases physical damage received by ~1 point, may act as a negative Shield Ring.

 

-Shield Ring (no effect listed)

Blocks ~1.5-2 physical damage. May give about 2 Armor.

 

-Warrior’s Ring (increases accuracy and damage)

Increases chance to hit by 16% (also applies to ranged and damage by 3-4 (increases ranged damage by ~1. This will be marginally better than the Ring of Skill even if your chance to hit is maxed, since it should make your weapon skills start increasing damage 2-3 levels sooner.

 

Credits: Some of the information in this post was inspired by various walkthroughs. The walkthroughs I consulted include Silver's A1, Harehunter's A2, and Rache's A3 Annotated Maps, AverMan's A1 walkthrough, Matt P's A2 FAQ/Walkthrough, and Relle's A3 FAQ/Walkthrough. In addition to these authors, I would like to thank all the forumites who contributed both directly and indirectly.

Slarty is absolutely right on how unimportant small percentages are once you have decent body armor and a shield. Compared to the negligible armor bonuses they add, the combined negative hit percentages from bulky armors will have a much larger impact on your damage output.

 

The problem with this,

is that you assume a character who maximizes armor at the cost of hit percentage will block enough damage to offset the lower chance to hit. This is only true if you have an abysmal chance to hit (or are fighting enemies who deal 500+ damage every turn). The loss of chance to hit from small armor is not worth hitting less often and roughly 8% more armor is not equal to missing 15% more (unless you use meatshields with no weapons).

 

Lets look at an example using equipment with no additional bonuses, since many of those would be worth using despite the negative to-hit, and ignoring evasion.

 

Example 1 - A character with no stats that equips iron breastplate (22% armor, -10 CTH), iron shield (18% armor, -5 CTH), ratskin helmet (5% armor), thick leather gloves (3% armor), leather pants (3%), and boots (4%) will block ~45% of damage and have -15% to-hit. Adding the armor %'s would give a total of 55%, but since armor is multiplied, not added, this setup only blocks 45% of damage.

 

Example 2 - The same character using iron breastplate (22% armor, -10 CTH), steel shield (21% armor, -10 CTH), steel helmet (7% armor, -5 CTH), iron bracers (8% armor, -10 CTH), steel greaves (8% armor, -10 CTH), and blessed boots (8% armor, -5 CTH) will block ~55% of damage and have -50% to-hit. Adding the armor values gives 74%, but you really only block 55% of physical damage. As explained by others below, as your armor increases, each new piece blocks less damage.

 

If a naked character who averaged 100 damage per turn with 95% chance to hit equipped the items under example 1, that character would average 80 damage. The same character equipping example two would average 45 damage, more than 50% less damage - this is certainly not worth 10% more damage blocked.

 

I realize these are extreme examples, but the point is that, other than body armor, you should try avoid to-hit penalties on non-magical items. Sure, you can block a few more points of damage, but it's rarely worth a 30-40% drop in your hit rate.

Thanks for your help Venatrix.

 

I don't think if level really does affect stoning. I originally used a level 17 character (he had just killed the Gap Drake and gotten various items I've been testing) and he had a 94% chance of resisting at Dex 10, 98% at Dex 30, and 92% at Dex 60. Each of my tests consisted of 50 stoning attempts, so unless you did a lot more tests than I did, I don't think 1:15 and 1:10 are enough of a difference (3.3%) to say that character level adds resistance. Plus it probably caps at 90-95%, and both your results are quite close. In addition, just tested my level 40 character with base Dex, 10 Magery and 3 Resistance and he had 38% resistance, compared to the level 17 base of 42%. I would say level does not have an impact on stoning resistance.

 

However, you did confirm that Dexterity will give significant resistance to stoning, so again, thank you. I was afraid that my copy of Avernum broke or got bugged when I upgraded to Windows 7. It makes no sense to me that Dexterity does this - unless maybe you can dodge a baslisk's glance?

Actually A1-BoA kept the "luck out". I assume it was dropped in A4 though, I don't recall it ever occurring and I don't see anything in Strategy Central about it.

I know the resistance to stoning through testing against a basilisk and counting the number of successful resists. Sadly the game does not display your resistance, it only shows whether you resisted stoning or you died.

 

I actually did not know about those bugs, of course I never carry around horns and I rarely carry bolts of cloth.

I have recently discovered an interesting bug in A1 and I was wondering if any of you could reproduce it or if you've noticed this in your own playthroughs.

 

Dexterity appears to give significant resistance to stoning, but this is not given through Defense, or any of the derived resistances, and Gymnastics does not give any resistance either. I have noticed that characters start with a base resistance of 30%-40% and 10 Dex gives ~90% resistance. In addition Luck does give resistance, however, I assume this is a result of "Lucking out" and not because of the derived stats.

 

I suppose most of you who completed the game killed all the the basilisks already. Although I suppose the bug might exist in A2 if anyone wants to check.

I planned on playing through A1 on Torment for the first time back in August. Deciding to analyze the mechanics of nearly every stat and trait kind of delayed my progress by a few months. Just last week I finally decided to begin playing the game and got sidetracked into making a damage spreadsheet and a skill point planner - and I still haven't left Fort Avernum. The good news is that I should have until Spring before the PC release of A:EftP.

I don't believe the first point actually gives an increased chance of double strike. Using my test, with an average of 6.5% and assuming a normal distribution, there is a 95% chance that 1 Quick Action gives between 3% and 10% double strike. In light of this I don't think we should conclude that the first point acts differently than the second. It's definitely possible that I saw a couple (5 for 4% per point) more double strikes than I "should" have and the actual average is lower than 6%.

Brocktree, I doubt that any randomness you're seeing is because of a reduction in Quick Action's overall effectiveness. It’s probably just a result of your sample size. As an example, after 37 tests of QA 10, I had 19% double strikes, after 200, I had 37%. While several of my tests were accurate after 30-50 tests, sometimes you do get the extremes.

 

In light of Brocktree's theory, I decided to do some tests of my own against huge rats on Normal and with base stats, except for Endurance and Quick Action, at character level 1. Killing blows and misses were not counted unless the second strike performed the kill or the miss.

 

Since I wanted to test Brocktree’s hypothesis that QA, and possibly ME and LB, have diminishing returns after level 5, or a “5-cap”, I decided to add levels 3 and 7 since they would give us a better idea of how Quick Action acts. Each skill level was tested 200 times.

 

QA 1 = 13 double strikes out of 200 attacks, or 6.5% (6.5%/skill level).

Standard Deviation – 3.49

 

QA 3 = 15% double strikes, or 5%/skill level.

Std. Dev. – 5.05

 

QA 5 = 20% double strikes, or 4%/skill level.

Std. Dev. – 5.66

 

QA 7 = 28% double strikes, or 4%/level.

Std. Dev. – 6.35

 

QA 9 = 35% double strikes, or 3.9%/level.

Std. Dev. – 6.75

 

QA 10 = 37% double strikes, or 3.7%/level.

Std. Dev. – 6.83

 

QA 15 = 39% double strikes, 2.8%/level.

Std. Dev. – 6.9

 

QA 20 = 46% double strikes, 2.3%/level.

Std. Dev. – 7.05

 

QA 26 = 54% double strikes, or 2%/level

Std. Dev. – 7.05

 

QA 30 = 57% double strikes, or 1.9%/level

Std. Dev. – 7

 

QA 36 = 65% double strikes, or 1.8%/level

Std. Dev. – 6.75

 

QA 40 = 70% double strikes, 1.75%/level.

Std. Dev. – 6.48

 

My results do not suggest that Quick Action's effectiveness seems to decrease after level 5. I also never saw a significant drop in the % occurrence like Brocktree did in his first QA 10 test, so I'm more inclined to think it’s just a reduction in the effectiveness of each new point rather than a total drop in effectiveness. Brocktree is correct in at least one respect – Quick Action does not appear to work according to the traditional explanation of the 10 cap. While levels 1-10 do give ~4-5% per level, after level 10 the percent of expected double strikes does not fit the assumptions of the 10-cap.

 

For example, the following describes how Defense increases dodging -

At levels 1-10, Defense adds 3% dodging every level.

At levels 11-20, dodging increases by 3% at levels 12, 14, 16, 18, and 20.

At levels 21-30, dodging increases by 3% at levels 23, 26, and 29.

At levels 31-40, dodging increases by 3% at levels 32, 36, and 40.

 

If Quick Action followed this and increased the chance of a double strike by 4% per level, then QA should give 40% chance of a double strike at level 10, 48% at levels 14-15, 60% at levels 20-22, 72% at levels 29-31, and 84% at level 40. Sadly, after level 10, the 4% per level and 10-cap explanation does not even fit within 2 Standard Deviations of my observed values.

 

Alternatively, I considered the possibility that QA gives 3% per level with a 10-cap. Although this does not describe my results perfectly, it is more accurate than 4%. 3% per level of QA does not fit at levels 3, 7, and 9, but does fit within 2 Std. Devs. of every other observed value.

 

Since the 10-cap may not explain the behavior of Quick Action, one possible explanation could be, as Brocktree said, that beginning at level 6 the effect of adding more QA is halved, so instead of adding 4-5%, each new level adds 2-2.5%. However, my data suggests that it is unlikely that levels 11-40 give further reductions, and instead add a flat 2-2.5% every 2, 3, or 4 levels. Even though an initial 5% from levels 1-5, and 2.5% from 6-40 fit my data better than the previous explanations, this seems unlikely to me. Reducing the effectiveness of QA at level 5, but not at any subsequent levels makes little sense.

 

As Slarty mentioned it’s possible, though unlikely, that QA uses a lookup table. Since I did not test every level of QA I won’t venture a guess for how such a table might work and whether it fits with my findings.

I suppose this -

 

is possible, and it might explain the discrepancy between my observed values and those we expect to see with the 10-cap. Unfortunately I’m not too sure about the actual implementation of this. Would 10 Quick Action give a 0-50% chance to double strike? One turn you would have a 10% chance and the next you might have 40%? Or would it be calculated like weapon skill damage?

Here is a list of the bonuses and disadvantages given by the traits in Avernum 1. It is possible that I have missed some of the effects given, and at times I will mention possible effects that I did not test – note: they are just ideas or things listed in the trait description, they may not be actual effects.

 

I have also updated my A1 stat thread with the defensive skills like Hardiness and Luck, so you may want to check those since they will share some of the same effects as these traits.

 

Great Renown

May give an immediate boost of 1 to Reputation, and adds 1 more every few (8?) levels.

Great Renown may be bugged. A character with 12 Rep. and level 9 Renown could not recruit Andrew (supposedly requires 14), but could get Cave Lore from Carlos (requires 14) and enter into Almaria with no fee. With a natural 14 Reputation a different character could recruit Andrew.

 

Nimble Fingers

Gives a 15% bonus to success when unlocking doors. This is equivalent to 2 points of TU.

Does not appear to apply when disarming traps.

Does not increase with level.

 

Note: Tool Use adds 7% per point when unlocking doors and 8% when disarming traps. Fine lockpicks give 15% and Magic lockpicks give 35% bonus over normal picks.

 

Beastmaster

Gives the ability - Summon Beast.

The Summon Beast ability appears to use the same monster list as the Call Beast spell.

At Level 1, both summon zombies and skeletons, nephilim, goblins, bats, rats, and serpents. At Spell Level 2 and around Level 20 for the ability, they nephil warriors, nephar, lava and rabid bats, giant spiders and lizards, sliths, and asps. At Level 40 and Spell Level 3, you get ghasts, slith warriors, ogres, gremlins, fire lizards, and nephar warriors. (Since a level 2 mage spell gives you the same creatures without the exp. penalty, you should pass this up.)

 

Strong Will

Increases Willpower by ~30%, this may increase with level. Resistance tested against confusion, this may vary for other mental status effects like sleep or charming (unlikely since the trait probably just gives a hidden bonus to Willpower).

 

Good Education

Gives an initial bonus of +4 to Rune Reading and Item Lore. At Level 9 it gives a +6 bonus, +14 at Level 40 (the level cap), so it probably adds +2 every 8 levels.

May give an invisible bonus to Arcane Lore.

 

Toughness

Gives an initial 1-3? armor, appears to increase by 1-2? every 8 Levels. At Level 40 it resisted 8 average damage. If Toughness works like armor or Hardiness, then it may have a 50% chance to resist damage.

Gives 10% Elemental Resistance and Magic Resistance, which may increase with level. Probably works like hardiness and has a chance to resist.

May give an invisible bonus to Hardiness.

Does not appear to increase disease resistance, but it may reduce damage taken from poison.

Doubles hit point recovery (gives 2 HP per 8 turns on world map rather than 1).

 

Fast on Feet

Has a 30% chance to increase AP by 1, does not increase with level.

Increases initiative by 3, this is equal to 3 Dexterity.

 

Natural Mage

Can cast spells while encumbered.

Gives an initial +4 to Spell Bonus, adds to both Mage and Priest Spells, increases by 1 every seven levels, beginning at level 7. So It gives +4 at 1, +5 at 7, +6 at 14 and so on. Adds +9 to Spell Bonus at level 40.

May increase Magery.

 

Elite Warrior

Adds an initial +2 to damage and 10% chance to hit, adds +1 damage and 5% to-hit every 8 levels, beginning at level 8. Adds+7 damage and 35% chance to hit at level 40.

If chance to hit is 95%, the skill adds an initial +4 to damage and adds +2 every 8 levels, giving +14 damage at level 40.

Probably increases Blademaster.

Gives the ability - Go Bezerk.

 

Divinely Touched

Does not affect damage or to-hit, does not give armor, does not increase Spell Bonus, and does not increase AP.

Gives 20-30% confusion resistance, gives 20-30% magic and elemental resistance.

May affect other status effects (stoning, curse, paralyze) or non-combat stats.

Gives Call Spirit, Lay on Hands, and Natural Curing abilities.

 

Cursed at Birth

Decreases chance to hit by 10%, does not appear to decrease damage (but the -10% to-hit will result in 2 less damage given by weapon skills and blademaster since their damage depends on to-hit).

Does not increase damage taken.

Reduces confusion resistance by ~30%.

May penalize other status effects.

 

Sickness Prone

Reduces disease resistance by 10-20%, this likely applies to poison as well.

May increase damage taken from poison.

Reduces hit point recovery by 4 times (1 HP per 32 turns on world map).

 

Sluggish

Always decreases AP by 1.

Reduces initiative by 4 (equal to 4 Dexterity.

 

Brittle Bones

Increases physical damage taken by 50%.

Does not increase elemental or magic damage received.

 

Completely Inept

Does not affect to-hit, damage, or dodging.

Does not appear to reduce disease or confusion resistance, may affect other resistances not tested.

Does not appear to reduce AP. Possible effects on initiative not tested.

Increases all forms of damage taken by 50%. This stacks with Brittle Bones and the two increase physical damage by 100%.

 

 

Notes:

Traits that give abilities will still give them if added by the editor after character creation.

All traits were tested by adding them from the editor, so I don’t know if any traits will only give bonuses if selected during creation.

Nimble boots do not add dodging, they are either bugged, or they only add 1 Dexterity and no Defense.

Monsters can exceed the damage cap with normal attacks, however the numbers displayed on screen become bugged and the game will show symbols like @2 (162) and =9 (139). Have fun seeing those if you choose Brittle Bones and Completely Inept as traits (kudos to anyone who completes the game with these, 2x normal damage is not my idea of fun).

 

 

Some of these effects are pretty surprising, considering what the game claims the traits do. What's more surprising is what the traits don't do. For example, Cursed at Birth isn't really that bad, nor is Sickness Prone. Conversely, some of the positive traits are definitely not worth taking. I'm not sure how many of the traits are bugged, or broken since several of them don't do things they should according to the in-game descriptions.

 

Credits: Some of the information in this post was inspired by various walkthroughs. The walkthroughs I consulted include Silver's A1, Harehunter's A2, and Rache's A3 Annotated Maps, AverMan's A1 walkthrough, Matt P's A2 FAQ/Walkthrough, and Relle's A3 FAQ/Walkthrough. In addition to these authors, I would like to thank all the forumites who contributed both directly and indirectly.

I would just give them Priest spells, even though First Aid was improved between A2 and A3, you can only use it once per day and it although can heal quite a few hit points spells are generally much better.

 

Also were you playing on Easy? On my A1 character with no skills trained, goblins have a pretty low chance to hit. Higher difficulty levels give monsters more hp, damage, hit chance, and possibly dodging. So if you have too much trouble, changing difficulty might help.

 

Like you I much preferred A3's mechanics over the previous games. In A3 the damage formulas are much nicer for the player, so that's one reason why you are finding it easier.

 

What is your fourth character, a melee warrior, or mage? Like Alorael said, if you are playing without Priest spells, that's another reason you were having trouble, a no-priest party is more like a challenge game. Sadly the game sort of punishes you for playing without priests, potions and First Aid just can't compete with healing spells (or bless, or damage spells).

 

Death Knight is right about First Aid being able to heal a lot. So if you really don't want to use spells, you still have a semi-viable healing skill. However, you can cast Healing and Mass Healing as many times as you want as long as you have mana.

A2 actually gains two spells so none were replaced between that and A1. Priests get Cloud of Blades and Move Mountains and mages of course get Capture Soul and Simulacrum. A3 is where the spells get switched - Bind Foe for Spray Acid, Beast Ceremony for Forcecage, Protection for Terror (which was an awesome change since it got combined with War Blessing - and partly because I am having the hardest time figuring out the Protection equations), Sanctuary for Radiant Shield, and Divine Warrior for Divine Restoration.

 

Does Spray Acid work on a rakshasa? Not that I've ever got much use out of it, but if you've got nothing else to do with your mage, why not?

Instead of moving onto Avernum 2, I have begun testing the defensive stats and traits of Avernum and come up with more questions.

 

1. Does anyone actually know what Completely Inept does in any of the Avernum games, besides decrease fire resistance? I've been referring to the Nethergate trait effects, but I don't think they all work exactly the same way in Avernum. Despite what the guides say, it does not give a little of each negative trait.

 

2. On that same note, the only effect for Cursed at Birth that I noticed was a lower chance to hit. Do any of you have an idea of what else it might do?

 

3. What about Divinely Touched, does it actually do anything A2 or A3? I know it has different effects in the first games than in A4-6. Like Inept, it does not add a little of every trait.

 

4. Should I test Luck on anything besides resistances and preventing death?

1. Anatomy does apply to fists at an average of 1 damage per level.

 

2. I have no idea how anatomy or any other stat works in Blades of Avernum, it's been a long time since I played that game.

 

Your idea of a monk character will be very difficult. Since Strength only adds .5 damage you need a lot of it to make fists equal to a weapon. In my tests fists did about 1-8 damage. In addition, upon further testing of Blademaster, fists only get 1 damage per level and 5% to-hit from it (meaning you can ignore Dexterity's to-hit bonus). So although you can ignore weapon skills, Strength and Blademaster will become very expensive before you can equal weapon damage.

 

However, as long as you don't do an anti-magic monk squad or singleton, you could probably finish the game without using weapons.

 

 

 

Update: I have added defensive skills to my original post. Changes include adding armor and resistance effects to Hardiness, adding Barter, First Aid, Luck, Gymnastics, Pathfinder, Resistance, including Magery's other effects, and a section on Armor.

I attempted to test Hardiness's armor effects although my data on it has disappeared. All I remember is that it will reduce some amount of damage and that it doesn't always take effect. I believe it has a 30%-60% chance of reducing damage but don't quote me on that.

 

I did not have extensive data on dodging, but after doing some quick tests, I will edit it in above. I did notice that the monster's chance to hit decreased by 4% every four levels of Dexterity. Since Defense is Dex/4, and increases dodging by 4% I concluded that Dexterity does not increase dodging.

With the upcoming release of Avernum: Escape from the Pit, I decided to replay Avernum 1. However, I grew curious about the different effects of stats in Avernum 1, since they aren’t clearly explained. After searching for threads on how stats affect damage, I discovered that few people here really understand, or remember, how damage mechanics work in the first two games. I found that most of the assumptions are based on Avernum 3 or BoA. Therefore, I began the rather time-consuming undertaking of analyzing damage in the first game and discovered some rather surprising things.

 

I initially planned to do Avernum 2 as well, but I may not get around to doing it since this ended up being far more time consuming than I intended.

 

For those of you who don’t care about my data, I will begin with a short summary of my findings.

 

Weapons share a common damage multiplier, so a stick should receive the same stat bonus from Melee Weapons as Demonslayer.

 

Weapons that have a + or – damage modifier, like Demonslayer, which has a +3, or a stone dagger, which has a -1, appear to increase or decrease both damage and chance to hit in increments of 5% - this in turn affects skill damage. I am unsure if this applies to arrows and bolts, or if they only alter hit chance.

 

Avernum 1 has a max damage cap of 99 - melee weapon damage will not go any higher, although fist damage, ranged weapons and spells can. Furthermore the game has a base damage cap of 89, even with max stats any melee weapon will do a range of 89-99 damage, regardless of the weapon's original range.

 

Character Level

Increases Hit Points

Increases skill points by 8 per level. A custom level 40 character gets 377 skill points.

Increases chance to Unlock Doors (spell) by 2% per level.

 

Strength

Adds .5 damage per level on its own; this does not include the increased weapon skills from leveling Strength.

Strength has no effect on ranged damage or chance to hit.

Strength adds hit chance and damage for fists, at the same damage per level as weapons, fist damage can exceed the damage cap.

Adds 30 lbs. to carrying capacity per level, begins at 110 and caps at 350 lbs. or 10 Strength.

 

Dexterity

Only adds damage and chance to hit through increasing weapon skills.

Only adds dodging through increasing the Defense skill.

Interestingly, Dexterity adds 5% chance to hit for fists per level, and this can exceed 95% (537% to-hit is just absurd). On that note, fists are not affected by Melee or Pole skills.

Dexterity adds 1 initiative. Gymnastics, Fast on Feet and Sluggish will be considered relative to Dexterity.

Dexterity adds ~5% stoning resistance per level, base resistance is ~30%-40%.

Adds ~.4-.5% parry when defending. This is then multiplied by the amount of action points remaining (this value includes the effect of Defense, on its own Dex. gives ~1/3 per point).

 

Intelligence

Increases spell damage by .5 per level . This is also dependent on the spell’s damage modifier. I will cover Intelligence and the other magic skills in depth in another post on spells.

Determines item lore and rune reading.

 

Endurance

Increases Hit Points

Increases Poison Resistance by 1 per level.

 

Melee/Pole Weapons

Increases to-hit by 5% per level, as advertised.

Increases damage by 1 per level when base to-hit is at 95%. (To-hit maxes and begins increasing damage at about skill level 13 against most early monsters. This is affected by enemy dodging. Enemies with a higher dodge chance will require a higher skill level to begin increasing damage. This is the reason you get such low damage against hard monsters, it's not just armor reduction.)

Does not add damage for fists.

Weapon bonuses increase base to-hit, and reduce the skill level required to do more damage.

May add ~.2 damage per level before level 12.

 

Bows/Thrown

Works like the melee weapon skills - increases to-hit by 5% per level.

Increases damage by 1 per level when base to-hit is at 95% (Ranged weapons get 10% higher base to-hit than melee).

Ranged weapon quality also affects chance to hit, and thus when weapon skills begin to increase damage.

 

Hardiness

Reduces armor penalty by 4% per level.

Armor penalty will reduce your base chance to hit; this will affect the level of weapon skill necessary to begin increasing damage. Every 5% of armor penalty will reduce chance to hit by 5% and will require an additional level of weapon skill to cap your chance to hit. Armor penalty will also decrease 1 action point every 16% armor penalty, so at 32% armor penalty you have -2 AP.

Each level of Hardiness will block an average of .5 damage. This likely means a point of Hardiness has a ~50% chance to block 1 point of damage.

Hardiness does reduce elemental damage at an average of ~.3 damage per point. This probably works by increasing Resist Elements, meaning every two levels of Hardiness may have a 5% chance of blocking 1 point of fire and ice damage. The same may apply to the chance of resisting poison and disease.

 

Defense

Adds 4% chance to dodge, as advertised.

Does not reduce armor penalty.

Gives .5% parry bonus per level, this is then multiplied by the amount of action points remaining when you defend. This should only apply in combat.

 

Assassination

Doubles the damage range, so an iron spear, which does 2-20, will do either 2 or 4-40 with assassination. I am unsure if it applies to the base damage, though it probably does; see my data for an explanation.

Each level adds 5% chance to assassinate. Character level increases the chance of assassination. The equation for assassination may be [(Level + Char. Level) - Monster Level]*5%.

Assassination will cap at 100% and additional points will do nothing, damage from assassination cannot exceed the damage cap, and it does not apply to ranged damage or fists.

 

Mage/Priest Spells

Adds 1 damage per level; like Intelligence, this is dependent on the spell’s modifier.

Affects item lore (Mage) and rune reading (Priest).

 

Arcane Lore

Used to identify items and read spellbooks.

Helps determine item lore and rune reading. Both of these use the entire group's value.

The highest rune reading needed is 30 for Spell Level 3 of Smite and Return Life.

Steel Plate Mail requires 277 item lore to be identified, I did not check any magic items or Blessed Plate Mail so I don't know if 277 is the highest needed.

 

Potion Making

Adds 8% success chance to potions per level.

Each potion begins at 50% chance at its minimum level.

Potions can reach 100% success and all potions will have this at level 19. Although by level 12, every potion below the haste elixir has 100% success.

Descriptions of the potion effects will be in a post below.

 

Tool Use

Adds 7% chance to unlock doors, and 8% chance to disarming traps.

 

Cave Lore

Needed to avoid wandering monsters and identify/find some herbs. Uses the entire group's value.

The highest requirement is 17 for a one-time mandrake and graymold find. Some wandering monsters may require more to avoid. The highest herb patch needs 12 Cave Lore.

 

First Aid

Each point of First Aid adds 5% chance of successfully healing hit points. Failures either heal no hit points, or cause damage.

The chance of success likely caps at 95%, 50 First Aid still resulted in failures.

The amount of damage healed averaged -.25-.75 hit points per level. At low levels you will cause more damage than you heal.

 

Luck

Each level adds one level of Poison Resistance, Magic Resistance, Willpower, and Resist Elements. Each of these probably give a 5% chance per level of resisting one point of damage, or entirely resisting the effect, like poison or sleep.

Each level also gives a 50% chance to block 1 point of damage like Hardiness.

Each point of Luck gives a 5% chance to “Luck Out” or not die when your health is at zero. This appears to cap at 95%, or 19 Luck. You can still die even with 100 Luck.

 

Barter

Adds 1.1-2.1% of an item's value to its sellback per level (base sellback is 1.33% per point). Barter caps at level 20 for all but one shop, so don't sell anything to Cliff in Spire.

Barter caps the sellback at 59.99% of an item's value (rounded to whole numbers).

Items below 5 value do not ever sell for more than 1 coin.

Does not affect purchase price of items.

At zero barter, the sellback begins at one of the following – 28%, 33% (base sellback), 39%, 44%, 49%, or 55% of an item's value - depending on the shop. Different shops will have different sellback values, but this is determined by a hidden modifier and not the displayed one, expensive, exorbitant, etc. I have listed most if not all the shop sellbacks and buy prices below.

Unnecessary math below:

 

 

 

Blademaster

Adds 5% to-hit per level.

Like weapon skills, damage is dependent on chance to hit, Blademaster adds 1 damage per level when chance to hit is less than 95%.

Adds 2 damage per level chance to-hit is 95%.

Blademaster does not apply to ranged weapons but does apply to fists at 1 damage and 5% chance to hit per level. Fists do not receive the 2 damage per level, probably because they do not cap at 95% to-hit.

 

Anatomy

Adds 1 damage per level against humanoids. I did not test what constitutes a humanoid.

This boost fully applies to both melee and ranged weapons (though now that I think about it, I only tested it using javelins, bows may receive half damage. Feel free to test it yourself; I’m not going through the Grim Cavern for a third time).

 

Gymnastics

Adds 5% dodging per level.

Adds 1.2 initiative relative to Dexterity. So 5 Gymnastics is equivalent to 6 Dexterity.

May add stoning resistance, if it does, it caps at level ~5 (though my results were unclear).

 

Pathfinder

Does not add to Poison Resistance on character sheet, no idea if it increases resistance or does something else.

 

Magery

May add 1 damage per level, also likely dependent on spell modifier. Magery was difficult to test since it can’t be raised through the editor.

Adds 1 to Rune Reading per level.

Increases Magic Resistance and Willpower by 1 per level.

 

Resistance

Adds 2 points to Magic Resistance and Resist Elements per level.

Adds 1 point to Poison Resistance per level.

 

Dread Curse

Decreases resistance to elemental damage, magic, and physical damage (possibly by about 6-15% per level). May decrease status effect resistance and/or Willpower and Poison Resistance. Appears to negate or reduce the effects of Luck. Dread Curse may simply be a negative Luck stat.

Does not appear to affect damage, to-hit, dodge chance, magic skills, weapon skills, assassination, tool use, or barter.

May affect other stats not mentioned (not tested).

 

Armor

Armor does not appear to always block damage. Each piece may have a 50% chance, or it may work like it does in BoA, with each type having a different chance to block damage.

Armor does not appear to block elemental damage.

 

 

Now I will present my data for those of you who have more patience, seriously, there’s a lot of it! I realize I have a large amount of text, so I have tried to bold the information I feel is important

 

All melee skills were tested against the bats in Bat Cave. This was done because I felt the bats had lower armor than the goblins near Fort Avernum and it meant I didn’t need to reload very often. This is also why I did not do any tests against townspeople, it was far too tedious to go through all the dialog boxes needed to kill them. Ranged weapons and spells were tested against the rats in the Southeast corner of Fort Avernum.

 

In most cases, I will refer only to average damage, or the range of observed damage. This is because I am not certain how stats that add less than 1 per level work. For example, I have concluded that Strength adds an average of .5 damage per level, but I don’t know if it adds a flat .5 every level or 1 every 2 levels. However, I am 99% certain that stats do not add "dice" as they do in later games.

 

In Avernum 1-3 spell damage is calculated with a random base damage, and stats add a flat bonus damage. I suspect that weapons work the same way, and stats only add a flat amount of damage.

 

As many of you know, in Avernum 3 and later games, weapons add a 1dx die with every stat increase, and the size of the die is usually equal to random/base damage. However, as my data below shows, weapons do not have a multiplier dependent on their base range. While I realize it is unlikely to see the full range of damage, a flat stat bonus makes more sense.

 

Unfortunately, in several instances I could not explain the differences in my observed ranges through armor because the observed maximum exceeded the expected maximum. For example with the iron dagger, I had a damage range of 2-14 on 4, 5, and 10 Melee skill, but if Strength and Melee work by adding a flat amount (a total of 1 damage at those levels), then I should have seen a maximum of 13 damage. This means that either weapon skills add less than .5 damage per level before level 12, or skills do add damage through dice. I cannot tell which of these is the case (possibly both).

 

Damage Skills

 

Damage multiplier:

 

 

 

Melee Weapon skills:

 

 

 

Strength:

 

 

 

Blademaster:

 

 

 

Assassination:

 

 

 

Anatomy:

 

 

 

Hardiness:

 

 

 

Ranged Weapon skills:

 

 

 

Dexterity:

 

 

 

Defensive Skills

 

Defense:

 

 

 

Hardiness Pt. 2:

 

 

 

First Aid:

 

 

 

Luck:

 

 

 

Shop Sellback Ratios:

 

 

 

Dread Curse:

 

 

 

Armor:

 

 

 

The stats affecting magic damage are now in a post below.

 

Credits: Some of the information in this post was inspired by various walkthroughs. The walkthroughs I consulted include Silver's A1, Harehunter's A2, and Rache's A3 Annotated Maps, AverMan's A1 walkthrough, Matt P's A2 FAQ/Walkthrough, and Relle's A3 FAQ/Walkthrough. In addition to these authors, I would like to thank all the forumites who contributed both directly and indirectly.

The problem with ranged weapons in the first trilogy is that they require heavy and expendable ammunition. In terms of dealing damage based on weapon skill alone, they are equal to non-ranged weaponry.

 

However, in A1 at least, and possibly A2, Dexterity does not directly add damage to ranged weapons like Strength does. In addition, melee weapons get Assassination and Blademaster, while Sharpshooter doesn't appear until A4 (or BoA?), so unless you ignore all of these abilities, melee weapons will out damage ranged ones in a typical game, even with equal amounts of weapon skill.

 

The same thing sort of applies in A5 and A6 because of Quick Action, Dual Wielding and the high multipliers for pole weapons.

Over the past month I have been testing various stats in Avernum 1 to see how they affect damage. I will probably post what I have learned in the next few days, but before I do, I have a few questions.

 

1. Does anyone know if armor reduces spell damage in Avernum 1? While I was testing spells I noticed some odd damage ranges; if armor does block magic or elemental damage it would certainly make sense of my numbers.

 

2. On a related note, do spells in Avernums 1-3 receive a flat bonus from stats, or is it based on a multiplier like in the later games? For example, the help file says Bolt of Fire does 3-12+Bonus/2 in Avernum 1, but in Avernum 5 its 10+1d3*Bonus. I'm assuming Avernum 1 spells get a flat bonus, but I suppose it's possible that Jeff left the multiplier out of the help file.

 

Important note: if you have a newer version of Windows and can't open the help files for Avernum 1 and 2, you can download an update from Microsoft to make it compatible (just search for WinHlp32.exe). I wasted a week testing the spell damage ranges because I didn't know that.

 

3. When I post my findings, would you like me to include my data or just my conclusions, and if so, how much of it? Is there anything specific you would like me to include, like statistical tests? I should warn you that it's pretty extensive since I've covered all the melee and ranged damage skills, defense, hardiness, and the magic skills.

I have been using Harehunter's wonderful site, as well as the walkthroughs on Gamefaqs. I assumed that anatomy did not apply to ranged and so I didn't test it, but I suppose I should do that and assassination just to verify. I assumed assassination does apply to ranged damage, so I didn't bother.

 

As a side note, I really like that Jeff made special skills trainable in later games. Getting the learning crystals is such a pain, though it's easier than reaching Khoth or killing Grah-Hoth.

Funny you should say that Death Knight, I'm currently in the process of studying stat effects in A1 and I will be making a thread when I've finished. A3 shows weapon multipliers as well, but A1 and A2 don't.

 

Also, Valdain, I've noticed that assassination, at least in A1 caps at level 15, A2 and 3 may be different. I don't think increasing it higher than that does anything. In addition, the skill doubles your damage, so it should be a viable skill for a fighter as long as you don't ignore weapon skill and blademaster.