TriRodent

This is supposed to be a (reasonably) family friendly board... (or were you using 'bound' in a different context?)

Whew, it's been so long since I've wandered around the GF2 lands that, while remembering the general story, I doubt if I can recall specific bosses/battles/encounters. That said, this is probably a good time to mess with this. Jeff is busy with QW2 & by the time it's ready to distribute then his thoughts are already drifting to the next project (GF2 The Revamping). Maybe by then we'll have a good sized thread for him to be inspired by/roll his eyes to...

That's what I was wondering too. Personally I don't want things auto-writing into my journal/notes. I tend to keep them free for copying notes such as 'You can't read this book yet, you need arcane lore of 7...' or other reminders to go back later. What I'd REALLY like in the remake is a journal that does the normal things but also lets 'you' put notes in there as well. Expanded/amusing/verbose kill dialogues are always welcome

First, I neglected to welcome you in your previous post ... welcome. Second, not to be a (complete) jerk by ignoring your question here, at the top of the forum (actually 'every' game forum has them) is a section called "Strategy Central". There you should be able to find answers to most every question you can come up with. Mind you, this isn't intended to discourage you from posting (lord knows it's been quiet around here), just that you can probably find your answers quicker up there, letting you continue on with your game, than it is waiting around for someone who remembers the details of a closing in on a decade old game. If you still can't find your answer then by all means scream for help.

IIRC, behind a wall that can be taken down with Move Mountains ... but... you can't read it until you've talked to Patrick (so 2/3rd of the way through the game)

I did decide to play through A4 once again. My guys just got to that area at levels 9-10ish, so take that fwiw (didn't complete everything between Ft Monastery & there but most...). For the battle in Motrax's Cave, recruit the golem in the other area 'after clearing out the drake & the turrets over by the boss' (so it doesn't get hurt). Wait around for the golem to catch up. Buff everyone. the pylons are going to continually heal the Vahnatai so taking them out first is critical (above 'stand out of range & ice spray' won't work too well it turns out). acid spray & fireballs took each out in 2-3 turns (hopefully the golem will have run into the room to be a very effective meat shield). Once they're gone, more acid on the Vahatai (to stack with the poison from the pylons) and the usual fireball/smite thumping took care of him in about 5 rounds (acid need reapplied a time or three just to keep the damage up). Overall, not 'that' bad/hard a fight (on normal) as long as the pylons get taken out first. Start the fight at full energy levels (go back to town (before waking up the golem) or energy potions.

So the 5 3 5 5 are your levels? Seriously, how did you get all the way over to the cave without gaining any experience? Again, it's been a while since I've played but I don't think they were that low before I crossed the bridge leaving the Ft Monastery area (? starting place anyway). Did you skip the Goblin Complex, Grindstone, & all the other things in that area? Between that & assorted job board quests there should be plenty of leveling opportunities. Anyway, back to party building. In addition to the priest levels I also tend to give everyone a point in mage to start with (eventually building up to ice spray to give them AoE potential) for fireball tossing purposes. Between that & Smite through Priest spells, there really is no need for an archer/archery skills as either one of them will do more damage than an arrow (generally). Everyone will have a bow & maybe 'some' skill there as there are times when your energy is low/you want to conserve it & a hail of arrows works ok until the baddie gets close enough to whack him with your sword/s. Also getting your melee/first to act character up to being able to cast Haste in Mage spells is very good to have. If he acts first & casts that immediately, there's a decent chance the others can do a couple of actions. Because character 2 doesn't need to be an archer any more, a melee/magic or priest hybrid is good. As he/she will be near the front, endurance is needed, but with Priest levels, he/she is a good one to cast buffing spells right after the first's Haste, leaving 3 & 4 to deal out the heavier damage spells. Which brings us to 3 & 4. I generally have both of them be 'both' a Mage & Priest, leveling them at roughly a 2:1 ratio (the Mage will do one point of Priest for every two of Mage - opposite for the Priest). That way, once you do get to say Motrax's Cave, both of them will be able to cast Ice Spray on the pylons (as only being able to cast it once per turn will have the pylon healing itself - at least that way you can chip away at it, & if #2 is high enough also...) Being able to dump poison/acid on a strong creature can't be considered a bad thing. It's not worth the energy points if you are otherwise killing 'x' in a turn or two, but for a boss level fight, it can eat away a lot of HP over a few turns. The good news for you is that if those are your levels, there's a LOT of experience behind you so you should be able to adjust your skills fairly soon/quickly. I may go break out A4, this trip down memory lane has inspired me... Have fun.

Which game? (Avernum 4, 5, or 6) Is the 5 3 5 5 your current levels? (deleted) Ok, I remember it in 4 now & his cave is in the first third of the game - how did you manage to survive at such a low level going that far? Anyway, iirc (been a while) I had my magic users really stock up on energy potions, put them where you can't be seen by the Vahnatai & drop AoE spells (ice spray probably) onto him/the pylons. If he can't see you he won't attack (again, iirc) & you can chip away at him. Or ... send one guy to where he/she can be seen but out of pylon range & drop the ice spray on him (with the furthest edge of it hitting him - keep as far away as possible). That lures him away from the pylons. Lure him back into the entry chamber & then block his being able to go back. Beat upon him as usual. Or ... go to where you can drop acid on the pylon/s (staying out of his sight) to augment the ice spray (cast, take the hit & retreat to ice spray range, have someone else heal you & continue ice spraying, when the acid wears down/off, repeat. Keep the buffs up & active. Summoned monsters are good for distraction/minor damage purposes ... but if you are trying to stay out of sight, he's going to see your new friends & charge out to greet them. Perhaps only use them in the 'lure him into the chamber' option (to help block his retreat if nothing else). I try to give everyone (even the meat shield/melee guy) a point or three of priest skills for buffing & healing purposes. This works well here as they probably won't have high enough mage skills to drop the ice bombs too, but they can heal/buff those that can, leaving them free to chip away at the pylons (when you do manage to kill on it will poison the others/the Vahnatai, that may be a good time to step into view so that your ice bombs hit everyone rather than just the one or two nearest to you Or do the Leroy Jenkins method & hope for the best (save first...)

I noticed that a lot/most of SW's games are on sale over at GOG this weekend. If anyone want to fill some holes in their collection.

One of the ways I've seen this addressed (Grim Dawn springs to mind as the most recent one I've played like that) is everyone 'must' start off on the 'normal' level. After you finish the game then the next level up the difficulty ladder unlocks (veteran). After you finish 'that' level, you then get the toughest (torment) level unlocked. Each time you start over, you keep your equipment (and head out into the wilds to find advanced/enhanced versions of the same equipment - scaled to the new monster levels) and replay the same story (monsters scaled up as well). It works after a fashion, but I find I tend to get bored about .5-.66 of the way through the middle level. If all that's going on is the monsters have more hit points to make them more 'difficult'/you get easier to hit-take damage, it gets tedious. From a programming standpoint, I doubt that it would be 'that' difficult to implement such a locking level system, but I also can't see Jeff/SW implementing it. Too much of his market is used to/come to expect being able to pick your difficulty level from the start. Change makes people grumpy & when you're a tiny, tiny company, pissing off even 3% of your base might be enough to seriously jeopardize your future. Alhoon probably has the best suggestion for how to address this as a modified version of my scenario. Go through the game once, start it again on a harder level, & edit in the gear you want to go play around with. Not exactly what you're looking for, but probably the closest you're going to get (at least in the SW universe)

IIRC the map is in the 'treasure/boss room' (for lack of a better term) underneath the giant cave with four different tribes. You need to get into the room through the push button puzzle (access to which, again iirc, is after a fight on the far left of the same map/area). Once you kill the assorted baddies, the map showing the location to the entrance is in one of the chests. Back to iirc territory, the map was on a piece of paper that was in your inventory & 'not' a special item (so it wouldn't show up there). Even if you no longer have the map, you should be able to now find/see the barrier entrance (just slightly west of the Lenny & Squiggy towns over on the eastern coast.

A breakdancing Rot moonwalking across your screen to come spit acid on you...

That's really cool (he says while not knowing much more Spanish than being able to count to 10 & order a beer...). You may want to run your idea/offer past Jeff/SW (support@spiderwebsoftware.com). He might be able to give you access to the actual font files/the text files/can let you know if changing any of them will screw things up/etc. And depending on what you plan on doing with this once it's done, you should probably check with him first anyway. 'You' couldn't sell the game, but if it turns out good, he may put it on the site as an option (& give you a small cut of the sales). Who knows, if it turns out well/is relatively easy, you could perhaps do the other games in the SW universes. There's probably a decent sized untapped market. Another idea would be to find a similar font that 'does' have all the assorted characters you need. Regardless, good luck with the project. I hope that it turns out & isn't too hard to get it functional.

Well crap, so much for me feeling smart... alas

How about your thread from 7.5 years ago 😄 I opened up Avadon 2's Strategy Central & just put "Vardegras" into the search bar up top & 'this forum only' & up popped several threads on it It's been years since I've played it so I personally don't remember but hope that this helped.

I tend to generally run with a hybrid all mage/priest party. The first character starts off more as a melee/meat shield (but with at least one point in both mage/priest for fireball/healing purposes) but over time gets enough mage points to cast ice spray & eventually lightning & priest to at least to the basic buffing spells). Having the first guy be able to cast Haste (especially once you get it to L3) can be a nice tactical edge if the first thing cast in combat is that & chances are that at least one of the remaining three get an extra movement/enough points to cast two spells. 2nd character is, like the 3rd &4th, both magic/priest but also has some extra endurance as they tend to be near the front of battle 3rd & 4th are both magic/priest users. One specializes in magic, one in priest in the early game but eventually both get the higher level spells of both m/p. Friendly fire isn't 'that' bad as combat isn't in real time so you can plan/move your characters to a point where that is avoided/minimized. That said, I much prefer my guys to use a grenade (for lack of a better word) type of spell (ice spray iirc, or firestrike (priest spell, been a while so names may be off a bit) rather than cone types of aoe spells (lightning). That way you can toss the spells over the heads of your front line guys & not worry about friendly fire at all. By the mid game or so, the first character isn't doing much melee fighting at all but is busy buffing/healing (if needed) the party (maybe summoning some other distractions for the baddies to focus on) & when not doing other things, tossing out some of the lower level aoe spells. Magic points for him tend to eventually top out at him being able to cast lightning. Priest generally (eventually) gets to firestrike as I want to get him up to being able to mass heal/cure (having the first to act being able to strip off poison/acid/lightning that was just cast on everyone at the end of the previous turn before it gets to impact the others is nice) & it's only another point or two to get to the firestrike level. 2nd guy tends to top out in magic at whatever the acid pool spell level is. Priest at firestrike. He/she also gets all the extra tool use/cave lore/arcane lore points beyond training that are needed (with random ones scattered around the party if needed). 3rd, all the way with magic to arcane blow. Priest level... at least firestrike but maybe to return life (as a backup for #4). 4th, priest focused & all the way with those spells (although the top three are rarely cast, maybe divine host pre combat if I'm trying to create lots of distractions). Magic up to acid pool & perhaps to arcane blow by the end game. 2-4 should also put 5 points into the Elemental Damage trait as that will kick the damage from what they're usually casting up by 15% Keep your eye out for weapons/gear that raise critical hit chances or magical damage (or preferably both). Give it (initially, later it can be scattered around as better items show up) to your most powerful magic user (#3) as they will let him/her hit 'hard' with every spell. There's no penalty to go down both spell casting trees rather than specializing & there are enough skill points available to do so (at the expense of maybe not maxing out Resistance or others - Spellcraft should certainly by the end game be at 10). Having most everyone available to cast heavy damage/big healing spells tend to make all but the most high level/boss fights over in a hurry (before the lack of resistance becomes a big factor)

Also, once the areas around, say Pentil are also cleared/green, you can choose how you enter the village/map zone by clicking on the green dot representing where you want to go. The little arrow that shows how you're going to enter there should cycle through your choices with each click (such as you wanting to dump some loot on the merchants right by the east gate but you're coming in from the west. A couple of clicks should have you entering by the east, saving you the walk across the map. Once you have a continuous green path from say Point A to Point D, once you leave Point D, you can jump straight back to A without having to walk through B & C again (assuming that they are green/cleared)

Up in the Strategy Central area (top of the subforum page where you posted this question) there are a few threads. Some/many are filled with spoilers. But there are some general hints/tips threads (such as this one) that are filled with good ideas (& perhaps very mild spoilers - such as 'when you get to 'x', you may want to look at 'y'...'). I didn't look at it but there's a hint thread on doing a torment solo run, there are probably some good ideas for how you want to go about things in there. Reading them now, so early in the game, will probably help out a bit & any spoilers you do run across, you'll probably forget about them by the time you reach that point in the game. If things get really hard for you, back the difficulty level down one notch. Torment is/can be great fun ... after you've played your way through once. You'll still be demolished on a regular basis, but you will at least know that "If I'm in 'x' zone then I need to quickly get to 'y' and do 'z' (flip a switch/kill a mini-boss. etc) to help mitigate the level of suck that you're going through. Geneforge, like Avernum, is heavily story driven so you'll be doing lots of reading along the way. You may be able to absorb the information better if you aren't constantly being snaked upon by the local version of a grue. Torment really is for someone who knows what they're doing & where to min/max things or doing 'x' perfectly. I don't want to discourage you from attempting your game that way, but I 'really' wouldn't advise someone on their first exposure to the Geneforge universe to handicap themselves by setting the difficulty level there to start with. If you 'can' make it through on Torment, bravo (really). You get points every time you level up. Especially on Torment, you'll want to put most towards your specialty (shaping in your case), but leadership & mechanics can/will make life easier at various points. Hope that helped a bit. Have fun (which after all 'is' the main point of investing time into the game) & good luck.

I have no idea, it's been a couple of decades since I've had to install anything Exile related. I just remember seeing a bunch of old computer games/booklets 'somewhere' within the past year or two & remember that there was a pile of SW related stuff in there. (I'd assume that the "unauthorized solicitation of other products" is more to ban without warning the "click here to find out how to make $42/hr from home..." idiots/spammers. Trading/selling SW related stuff might(?) be technically against the absolute interpretation of the rules, but as it's directly related to SW/their history ... it will probably be officially ignored if not outright given the ok - & if I'm wrong, I'm sure a mod will be along soon enough to clarify)

And if you can't work things out with ADoS, I'm fairly sure that 'somewhere' around here (narrator: "It's in one of the many boxes of crap down in the basement...") I have that disk/hint book/etc. It wouldn't be anytime soon (summer project is to sit in the cool of the basement with lots of trash bags/empty boxes for filling with stuff for goodwill/very few empty boxes for stuff I actually want to keep), but I can keep my eye out if needed.

Hmmm, interesting question. Maybe, maybe, maybe at a very, very subconscious level. Jeff more or less came of age in the 80s (he's roughly the same age as me so going off of my memories of Japanese influence here), so there certainly was the "Hey, look at the way Japan is doing 'x'..." going on in the background of everyday life. That was also around the time that business really got serious about cost cutting/efficiency, something that the Japanese were doing very well. So there were a lot of people, who had a large impact over a lot of society (not that they would individually change society per se, but if they changed their company & grew it to be huge... then scatter that theory over all sectors of the economy) Then too there was the potential Vietnam influence. Roughly a decade after pulling out of Vietnam, (very few) people were asking/saying/pondering "30 years ago we beat the hell out of 'this' relatively advanced country (Japan) & now we essentially lost a war to 'that' underdeveloped country (Vietnam) who is nothing like the country we stomped on in living memory (as both are in Asia & everyone knows that all Asians look & think the same... (:rolleyes)). So that put some focus on what Japan was doing so well too. As far as Avernumites redecorating, iirc it was mainly the diplomatic types (the Castle had at least one room/wizard redecorated/studying them) or the scholars (Patrick, Rone(?), ToM had both diplomacy & scholarship as they had the conduit to Vahnatai lands & were devoted to learning to begin with, and others) who were dealing with/studying this new species/civilization ... the people you kind of expect would immerse themselves in this new field of knowledge/diplomacy. So, a long way around to getting around to "maybe?"

Pretty much, yeah. Geneforge has 5 chapters as originally written (this is a remake of the first one to update it/make it work on modern computers) Avernum has 6 chapters (the first three being a remake of a remake of what originally was 'Exile' waaay back in the day - again to update things) Avadon has 3 chapters Nethergate is a stand alone game but you can play one of the protagonist groups on one play through & the other 'side' on another (so essentially two games in one) Queen's Wish is the latest game series (QW2 scheduled to come out as the next game) & is expected to be a trilogy So, you've got a LOT of wonderful, story filled, entertainment in your future. Enjoy it as it's a hell of a ride. And of course welcome, please leave your sanity at the door.

The problem with it being set off in the future is the name of the game - too far out & Suter (potentially) takes over. I'm fairly sure that 'you' are going to be the same as from QW1, especially as you did such a good job troubleshooting things the first time around... Now QW3 I could see being set a little bit further into the future, especially if Queen Mom has died & there's now a power struggle between Suter & the now much more competent 'you'

First welcome (or welcome back to SW it sounds like). To your point, yes sort of. Many of the named bosses you do have to interact with to get the combat going, true. However most give you at least one turn if you rush the room while in combat mode. They way I usually handle those situations is to buff/hast everyone outside, go into combat & rush into the room, but leave everyone at least one action point when they're done moving, 'then' summon some sort of creature/undead to help out with things (all my characters, even the melee, have at least one point of magic & priest (for fireball/healing purposes). That gives you four additional friendly bodies in the area to absorb hits if not deal damage. If the conversation doesn't immediately start, (stay in combat) use that time to buff your creations. 90% of those boss fights/conversations will initiate without having to exit combat to speak to him/her. Alternately, I suppose you could try buffing/stacking outside the door, entering combat, sending your first guy into the room a few spaces away from the boss/group (far enough for them to 'see' you. All others stay outside where they are. If the conversation doesn't initiate on that turn/start of the next one, have your first guy run back out of the room & see if that will start it then. For the occasional encounter where you do have to talk to the boss outside of combat, buff outside, enter combat, everyone rushes the room but stops, in marching order next to your first guy, exit combat & talk to the boss (this keeps all the buffs active/only one turn burned off of their duration - rather than strolling across the room normally in several turns). Then too, the boss fights aren't supposed to be a cakewalk...

Yeah, no. You have the little health bar under your opponent but that's about it. Resistances, trial & error/experience rule the day. Common sense works too. Fire lizards, don't use fire attacks. Frozen worms, cold may not be that effective... There should be a 'scrolling' option in the main 'options' menu (I'm really an not sure as I've never run into this problem) In the character window during combat there 'should' be an action point counter (I'm replaying A2CS at the moment & it's there, making the assumption that it's similar for A1EFtP). Using a scroll/wand/potion generally iirc uses 5 action points. Attacking/casting a spell, 8. Moving is 1ap per square. You can do anything as long as you have 1 (or more) points left. There is no minimum points needed for anything. Be aware that once you attack/cast a spell you can no longer move that turn (can do other things if you have the points, just not move (in A1 irrc you could step around a corner, toss a ice spray for instance in to a group, & then step back around the corner ... where they would 'not' follow you as they couldn't see you to go into their fight response... ah well.). I don't remember if you can move after drinking a potion/scroll/wand so maybe experiment in an easy fight. Moving away from an opponent takes 6ap(?)