TriRodent

1 per character - all four of my guys have at least some mage spell capability. Any combo of 4 mage summons, 4 priest or anything in between

If you're doing 'quests' from the job board (which is what it sounds like), you don't get a conversation response from them. There's a musical trumpet & a black box pops up saying that your delivery is complete (& your bank acct gets the direct deposit). Your quest list should have that particular job drop off then. Quests from the town's quest board (not job board) generally will initiate a line item in the usual conversation with whoever you're supposed to report to.

Oh, as you were talking about LB I assumed that you had at least one point in it & my assumption moving on that was that my DW guy had an equal amount. Thus if each hit had a 5% chance to activate LB, you would get it 1/20th of the time & I would get it somewhere around 1/10th of the time (somewhere as each hit would be 1/20 but I'm getting twice as many). As far as I know there is no chance of LB until you put some skill points towards it.

Scott was a Dom before running into the rest of Clintone's party....?

For the first part of the game you could go with https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBhBKbgzr2U ...

I used summoning a bunch with my various playthroughs, however they were there mainly to be additional meat shields/distractions for the assorted monsters to pay attention to. I really didn't expect them to do too much fighting wise (when my mage got Arcane Summon, those tended to help a bit but even then they were mainly there for distraction purposes). Frontline guys had their mage ability high enough for Minor Summon by mid game & the Mage & Priest in the back (with energy available) would do the higher level Mage/Priest summoning. They were mainly summoned though for town/dungeon fights & not outdoor encounters (especially when a boss fight was dumb enough to let you run in in combat mode, cast a spell or two, & 'then' talk to you/pick a fight)

I'm pretty sure that there's a chance for Lethal Blow with each of the Dual Wielding strikes as it's based off of a generic melee attack & not what else you're equipped with. My main fighter dual wields mainly because there are more swords with nice bonus attributes than there are shields. But you can certainly complete the game either way.

In this version it's a coin that you can pick up on the Isle of Bigal (quest reward). It'll give you a single coin every now & then (maybe 20/day? - haven't counted it). Not worthless but you won't be able to retire on the proceeds either...

Using the tomb as an example: There's the one good L3 priest spell book And then there's the one "Animating Zombies for Dummies" (or something like that...). Reading 'that' bad book is what gives you the Dark Thoughts. Save before reading books is the easy solution, but the DTs don't seem to impact you too much if you happen to collect them. Just brooding thoughts while relaxing in your 'new' mansion or sitting around a campfire...

Wait until the Xian Skull shows up... I never encountered those visions in my run throughs. Do you have any 'special items' that seem out of the ordinary/might be causing them? Could you quote what one of the visions says? (you aren't talking about the skull are you?)

#2 it should only display the first time anyone dies (same with the first time poisoned/blessed/charmed/etc). After that the fight should just go on the next time someone dies (no popup explaining things). If you're reloading to a save before the first time anyone dies (well, knocked out technically - death only arrives if everyone is below zero hp) then the popups will continue (although the 'death' may be recorded in the statistics out on the main page). /1 the world map can be seen with the "W" shortcut. Day timer is in the upper left

Krizsan - the guard captain wandering around. Quests are only given in the major cities (jobs for the most part as well, although with them you may need to report to a smaller city/person there)

In general you can find the person to report to in the city that you got the quest from... (more specific details available upon request)

L3 Icy Rain is great for nailing monsters in place (hopefully outside of their ranged attack) & then safely bombing the snot out of them. One spell that everyone in the group uses throughout the game (at least for the first couple of rounds of the fight to immobilize them).

Friendly fire is on both hard & torment. My rear line mage/priests almost exclusively use grenade (for lack of a better word) style aoe spells such as Icy Rain/Divine Fire instead of cone style spells (Lightning Spray/Fireblast). Casting them over the front line guys works well & is still a viable option when the mobs get up close & personal (with careful placement). L3 Pool of Corruption is a wonderful thing once you can get it.

You also need (fairly high) NL for catching the northern unicorns

My usual build with the assorted Avernum games tends to be a melee fighter, archer, & two priest/mage combos with one getting the high level mage spells & the other the priest. However seeing as how so many skill points are available, everyone is a priest/mage combo to some degree or another. The fighter (as he tends to be first to act) has enough mage points to be able to cast Haste on the party right away and eventually able to cast Lightning Spray. He also gets enough priest levels to be able to cast Protection/Battle Rage if he has an extra movement point available (from say gymnastics/armor that gives extra mp). Once the bad guys get close his primary job is to whack away with his sword but before that he takes care of the blessings so that the others can toss out aoe spells. The archer, while getting the assorted archery traits also gets a bunch of p/m skill points. Initially he gets the priest skills to fill in whichever blessings the fighter may not have been able to cast. Eventually he gets the priest skills to Divine Fire levels (along with all the other Major Healing/Curing type of spells) & mage to at least Lightning Spray levels (if not higher). The main job of these two guys is to do the housekeeping type of spells, freeing up the other two to just concentrate on doing as much damage as possible to the hordes that are bearing down on them. Obviously it takes a while to get to this point, but even in the early game having your fighter able to toss a Fireball/Smite will probably do more damage than his (probable) less than optimal bow. Swordmage trait is a 'must' have at high level to get everyone into decent armor & still be able to cast whatever they want to.

VL is a 'special item' so it's a group effect rather than individual knowledge/trait Each character can only get one Sage Lore/12 total. The 15 (if I'm reading Randomizer correctly) is as a combination of AL/VL/SL that will add up to 15. AL is always counted as one. VL/SL don't always count towards some spell books iirc, but for the vast majority they do count as one each towards AL

I don't know about torment but on hard my dw fighter doesn't take damage out of proportion to the others in the party*. As long as he's in decent armor & you've put points into hardiness & parry dw is a viable option. By late game you should also have Cloak of the Arcane available along with Ward of Steel/Elements, make sure to cast them before going out & wandering around outside of town. *everyone has decent armor/ getting blasted by golems' spells for instance, everyone gets damaged more or less equally

Time passes by the number of turns/steps per day (I don't know how many there are but it's pretty generous). There is no ingame 'clock' per se, consider it a 'counter' & once it reaches 'x' a new day dawns (& another 25gp is available from Levy if you happen to be in the area). Time progresses at the same rate if you're in a town/dungeon or outside strolling around. I don't know how combat counts towards the 'day count' but I think that the whole fight is just one 'day turn' (as opposed to each round in combat counting as a 'day turn')

Actually it makes a lot of sense as to why they can't detect it. The junk bag can hold unlimited weight & unlimited items but yet you're still able to dance around with it like it weighs nothing/takes up no space. Logically then it's off in another dimension at a right angle to our own (different universe with different rules for physics...). Because it's off somewhen else, the Empire can't search it with magic, dogs, tame drakes, whatever. Science (taps forehead knowingly....) /I may be overthinking this I realize

An alternative (difficulty level dependent of course) would be to use a spear at first for the extra damage - but keep dumping points into sword use & not into pole arms and then switch over once you've built up a few levels & the damage starts to balance out/you've gotten more appropriate gear.

Some may consider it a bug... Some may consider it a feature... Kinda depends on your respect for the Empire donchaknow.... (above does not apply for the package from Shayder though...)

No horses. Ernest & the Recall Crystal will be good friends of yours...

As long as you're moving the main story line forward on a reasonably consistent basis you should be fine. Spending a few days here & there for side quests/good job board opportunities shoudn't matter in the grand scheme of things. Mashing the space bar for half a game day in order to pick up a 50 gp sword probably isn't a good use of your time though (maybe for a hunk of mandrake or a wisdom crystal..... maybe). Important NPCs do move to other towns if their original town does get destroyed/damaged though (as I discovered much to my surprise amusement when I went rolling into one town to talk to the mayor again & found a horde of troglos instead...).