TriRodent

There should be a circle with a line through it somewhere on the build screen, click on that.

Just a very weak topical joke following the rather thin line of logic that you apparently double posted something (using up forum resources) & that by removing one you got some back (or were trying to zero out one type like what happened in your game)...

Go 'into' the shop/building. From there click on the build icon down on the bottom of the screen & follow above directions. (little square of terrain' footprint of the shop that you placed a while ago)

Doors don't close, something about the magnetic field underground attaches them to the nearest wall (something like an electromagnet) & they can't get unstuck until after you leave the city & come back (they'll reset while you're gone) For thieving purposes I assume? I stick my party in an unobserved room/alley, go into fight mode, have one guy (or potentially gal, no need to be sexist after all) go do the ... er ... income redistribution, & the others stay put out of sight. After your pockets are filled (it may take a turn or three to get to where you want, open chests, etc) then leave fight mode & stroll away whistling innocently. Open up the character screen & the hp/mana info is listed up near their picture

Are you sure it was an accident, he may have been trying to see if he could zero out his forum resources after all...

You can also tear down buildings that you have already built (without having to pay the initial building costs all over again if you want them again). If you do have a large amount of money saved up then you could probably disable the distiller/baker & miller (in that order as you can't have the first two without the other) to free up those resources. Not sure how much iron that would free up but stone should improve. Also in each of the 2nd forts who will trade one of that area's resource for one of each of the others. 'Not' a good use of your resources but in an absolute pinch (this won't work for you right now as you don't have any of two different resources)

Jeff/Spiderweb makes it so that you have to pretty much deliberately screw up your party to not be able to finish/survive while on easy or normal settings. Having a traditional melee meat shield in your party is pretty far from deliberately screwing up. /although I'd give him at least one level of priest skill so that he can heal/cure if the assorted others' time could better be used dropping serious spells on the monsters that need thumping

I saved mine in a text file with a (basic) description of who I supported, what I did (as I had multiple games with testing) & then saved the text file into the QW folder so that I can find it/them again in a couple of years. Too late for you this time around I realize, but for anyone who wanders into the thread before their endgame...

Yeah, $2.50 for an extra 1500 hours of gaming is probably the best return on investment your're ever going to get (figured at 100 hours (easy math) for each of the 16 extra games abovbeyond the basic three (ok, not 'perfect' math...))

Yes. Another multi chapter series is Geneforge (5 chapters), however for that one the first chapter is being updated for modern machines & due out early next year so you may as well wait on that. Spiderweb (link at the top of every page here I think) will let you play the first 1/4-1/3 of any of their games in demo mode (fully functional, you just can't finish the game for free) so you can get a really good feel for what you may enjoy. Both games have deep RPG roots but QW involves a lot of strategic goal pondering in addition to good old fashioned monster thumping Anyway, enjoy the journey. I wish I was seeing Avernum (a place that I have spend hundreds & hundreds of hours over the decades) for the first time again. And welcome to the forums. If you look over there -----> you'll see a box, please leave your sanity in there if you happen to stick around.

I'm not completely sure & someone who plays with the stats will probably be along soon with an accurate answer. That said... I think armor bonuses (good & bad) are always factored in no matter what your actions. Similarly you get bonuses (good & bad) from all weapons no matter the type of attack (melee or ranged). Generally any dual wielding guy that I have doesn't have a lot of skill points in archery to begin with so I've never noticed them missing more because of the dw to hit penalty (or just wrote the miss off as being a lousy shot to begin with). Then too I try to give everyone a point or two in both mage & priest skills so they could toss a fireball/minor heal. So he'd probably be using a spell rather than his bow anyway (& I think magic has a different to hit calculation so the dw may not even come into it). So it pretty much boils down to ... I dunno {shrug}. Interesting question though.

In GF I tend to play as a creationless Agent (with the 'very' occasional meat shield to distract foes for a turn or two). In Avernum (& GF for the Agent), names tend to be the assorted main characters of a book I'm reading/movie or tv show I"m watching at the time I start the game. Meaningless throw away names essentially Although I do tend to play the assorted games as 'me' being the 1st listed character (regardless of the name) for whatever that's worth

Glad that you got it figured out. One thing that I try (try, sigh) to do religiously is save in a new slot as soon as I enter a new area. You've got 20 save slots, might as well use them. If a situation like yours comes up again then you're only out 10-20 min rather than an hour.

Jeff has said for years that "Any idiot can play my games..." I think tonight was the proof of concept... 😄

The butler did it. Oh crap, sorry. I didn't read the title first .... huh ... ? .... I've been locked out of the edit feature .... aaaauuuughhh.... {runs from the room (after gathering one last whiff of that new paint smell...) screaming & hiding face in shame....} /good idea btw

F5... What E-E said is mainly for outdoor encounters. If you're in a dungeon somewhere then you pretty much have to finish the fight (iirc). If you're in a dungeon & near some stairs you might be able to gather everyone around the bottom/top, end combat (if the 'monsters' aren't too close), & change levels allowing a breather, but (again iirc) that also lets the assorted monsters heal as well. And let me, for whatever it's worth, toss my 'welcome' out there as well.

Not so much for creating thousands & thousands of years of mind numbing history (filled with impossible to remember names) for his own universe, but rather the (three/four different) massive universes for us to explore. I was having a conversation with a friend earlier in the day about Avernum and the incredibly comprehensive/fleshed out universe that Jeff created/populated with 'real' characters & events. She wasn't getting it until the phrase Tolkeinesque came to mind. Now granted, pretty much 'any' RPG has to create a universe for us to go play in, but Jeff seems to do a deeper dive into creating unique stories/situations than most. And then continues those stories onto six chapters (Avernum, 5 for GF, 3 Avadon, ? for QW) keeping the continuity more or less intact/growing. Now granted Tolkein is pretty much 'the' standard upon who's shoulders most all fantasy world building (no matter the medium - books, games, tv, movies, music, etc) has been based upon for closing in on 100 years. Does Jeff deserve consideration to sit at the feet of the master? (things have been quiet around here, time to kick over a rock & see what comes up...)

Like I said right up front, I wasn't trying to insult your intelligence. There have however been far more times in my life than I can count (even if I drop my pants & take off my shoes) where I can't do something, someone asks what should be a blindingly obvious question....and after a flash of insight, my reply could not be broadcast over the airwaves. There's a reason why that calls to tech support about a machine not working, the questions start off with 'is it plugged in & turned on...?'. You hadn't had any luck otherwise so it was time to go back to the basics/start and make sure. But .... {redacted to avoid a TOS problem} ... good luck

I'm really not trying to insult your intelligence here... Are you positive it can run on an XP? I mean that OS was probably my favorite over the years. I'm always very late moving platforms & my Win7 machine is well over a decade old (now doing backup duty as I was dragged kicking & screaming to W10 back in Jan....sigh) You did get a fresh download from Spiderweb & not just try to reinstall with the files on your computer? And if you did to that, you downloaded a Windows version & not an Apple? Otherwise, I'm out of ideas. Good luck

And, no offense to E-E for not pointing out...but it may not be obvious, the same applies to javelins & razordisks. Just equip them & you have all the consumable ammo that you need. And let me add my welcome also - please leave your sanity at the door.

If/when you do find the Door(s) to Break on Through to the Other Side, once you do get out there, use the natural advantage that you have to work in reduced light to your benefit. In other words, do your prowling around/monster thumping at night. You'll be nigh on invincible if you confine your rampaging around to those hours where most beings are naturally asleep. Besides, if you run around in the daytime, being exposed to the sun for the first time in 'x' generations ... it's going to burn the shiat out of you & in all my exploring around out there, I don't think I've found any aloe plants to ease your pain.

For what it's worth, I'm sort of slowly replaying A3RW again (been away from it for a few days & had an hour or two to goof around this morning) & just ran across a reasonably high level spell book. Everyone gained the knowledge from it, even my fighters with mage level way below what's needed. So, while he can't buy the two other levels of the spell yet, once he reaches that level he won't need to backtrack to get the third level. We now return you to your regularly scheduled monster bashing...

To add/expand on what Randomizer & E-E said: For each spell there are three levels. It's probably easiest to think of them as three equally powerful levels that can stack on each other in any order (increasing the overall power). You have to pay for two of them & you get one 'free' one (reward/book). It generally doesn't matter in what order the 'free' one arrives (buy the first level, read the book, go buy the third level ... or ... buy the first two levels & read the book for the third - you're going to buy two levels one way or another) You 'can' get one level of a spell as a reward before your characters are high enough level to cast it. You will still have to buy the other two levels at a trainer to be able to cast it above the first (rewarded) level once they're able/skill high enough (if you got the spell as a reward before buying from a trainer, just think of it as then buying levels 2 & 3 to keep the timeline somewhat coherent). When rewarded a spell, everyone in the party gets access to that 1 level of the spell even if they can't cast it right then. If you run across a spell in a spell book, (iirc) you have to have the minimum skill level available to be able to cast that spell to be able to understand/get that spell (ie, say 'spray acid' is a L6 spell but your mage only had a skill level of 5, he/she wouldn't get the spell level right then. If he/she was L6 then he/she would get one level in that spell (leaving the other two to be bought from one of the assorted trainers (it's been a while since I've played, your mage 'might' have to have at least one level of 'spray acid' to understand the book))). What's different than being rewarded that spell though is, say you decided later on that you wanted your fighters to have mage abilities, once they (the fighters) reached L6 they would 'not' have the book level of the spell learned. You would need to go back to where you found the book & let them (fighters) learn it (your mage would just stand around twiddling his/her thumbs and not get another level). I don't believe that you have to do things in a certain order to get the knowledge, but if you read a book (like in the above example) before having the ability to cast it then you'll have to backtrack to look at the book again to get that third level.

If it's like other Spiderweb games, the 'u' key needs to become your best friend. (it's been a while so I can't remember if it's set up in A2 but clicking 'u' on a regular basis while walking around will show anything clickable on the screen)

That's what F4 is for.... (or saving the game at the start of any "dungeon" - yeah you may have to kill everyone all over again, but if what you missed was worth it...). (assuming that you're right near that point in the game when you realized that you goofed. 20-30 hours later, realizing that you missed something....it would have to be REALLY important to replay all that)