Seasons of Destiny

Blades of Avernum resurrections are my favorite kind of violation of the natural order! 👻

Dunno if you're still needing a copy of Discord, but since you haven't posted an update about that yet, I just so happen to have one!
https://www.mediafire.com/file/6u03qqi4jovw16d/Discord.zip/file

Heya! It's always a delight to see activity in the BoA scene, and, since you're looking for beta-testing/critique, I figured it was as good a time as any to brush some dust off and play Citadel. What follows is the contents of a .txt I was jotting notes in as I played through it.

I wrote this list of feedback as I was playing the scenario, so it should roughly be in chronological order, more or less. As far as party composition and the like goes, I was playing with a human polearm-using berserker, a human sword-using rogue, a human priest/archer mix, and a slith hedge wizard. The total party level was around 3 at the beginning, having just beat Ephesos' "Adrift", and I was playing on Hard. The Hard part in particular might skew some damage rolls and the like, so, letting you know that in advance.

Citadel Feedback:

Ending Notes:

Try as I might, I couldn't figure out how to get an ending that solves all of the plot holes like the ending text teased. I looked into the code a little, and there was apparently supposed to be a lot more to at least one of the ending bosses (specifically, the non-magical one), as well as some areas in the sewers (specifically, some kind of laboratory); something about the floor being caved in at one point, too. Couldn't figure out how to do any of that, though, and it was getting a bit late at the time. Something tells me that a quick list of hints included in a .txt might help the player in the absence of a proper walkthrough (more so for completion's sake), but that's just me. All in all, though, I rather enjoyed the scenario aside from the occasional rough spot or an encounter's afflicting of Sudden Aliven't Syndrome; it had some neat ideas and interesting dialogue throughout! If I had to say what part I enjoyed the least, it would have been doing both Griffon areas early on; ended up doing the first without at least Level 2 War Blessing (for both Bless and Shielding), which led to a lot of one-hit-kills.

Having never played Restless Souls until now, I figured that this was as good a scenario as any to get my scenario-reviewing feet wet, so to speak.

Story:
I wouldn't say that the story itself is anything to write home about. Aside from a somewhat interesting underlying tale involving a long-dead tribe, it progressed like your standard "kill big bad dead to end plague" story with an added twist should you feel sympathetic. What I DO feel warrants mentioning, however, is the writing itself. As a sucker for well-detailed, descriptive text in scenarios, I enjoyed the writing in Restless Souls. I concede that it did get a bit excessive at times, such as most conversations with the mayor. In these cases, less would have been definitely more.

Combat:
My view will be a bit skewed here since I was admittedly too lazy to whip up a new party for this scenario, instead using a level 10 party that I had naturally ran through a couple other low-level scenarios. To help make up for that, I cranked the difficulty up to Torment. Combat was manageable for the most part, though the groups of Homologous Imps encounters throughout the scenario were fairly difficult to deal with even with my inflated health pools: fast, fairly durable, could debuff party members with curse and weakening, and had access to the dreaded Ice Lances spell. I count myself very lucky that I only ever got hit with two Ice Lances at a time despite the groups of imps often numbering around four or five per fight.

Design:
First and foremost, the level design was all laid out very, very interestingly. From the first town and onward, I was extra diligent in my headbanging for secret walls, and my efforts were often rewarded. Very little space in this scenario was wasted. I also loved how you rewarded especially curious players with a level of Far Sight just as the amount of headbanging was starting to get tiresome. My adventurers were no doubt nursing sore craniums by the time they made their leave from Charon. As for the environments, it was shocking just how much detail was stuffed into every nook and cranny of every map. It seemed to give everything an "untamed" feel to an extent that I don't think I've seen in any other scenario. Alas, said detail did border on overly noisy in quite a few places; difficulty navigating the terrain was a common problem in the outdoors, especially in the trek between more civilized lands and the actual wilds. Some kind of shortcut being unlocked if you decide to help the source of the plague would have also been very appreciated, and the scenario kinda dragged along at that point without one. Finally, I think each Homologous Imp giving the entire party an extra 100 experience on death may have been a bit overkill even after taking their strength into account. A smaller amount, like 50 experience, probably would have been a bit more balanced.

Scripting:
While not necessarily impressive in their own right, I very much liked the small cutscenes that took place throughout the brigand lair early on in the scenario. They kept the dungeon from feeling like a standard hack n' slash, instead breathing a little life into them and reminding the player that the brigands are people, too. The puzzle involving raising and lowering sections of floor to get by was also a pretty cool one. I liked how the level shifting also applied to the stairs that you needed to climb to get to the exit portal; a detail that wasn't necessary, yet was added anyways.

Bugs/Errors:
At one point in the outdoors, I was able to walk through a slope and into/out of what was supposed to be a solid wall. Early on in the final dungeon, entering an ambush in combat mode resulted in a graphical error involving some Haste-like particle effects persisting on the room's statues. Shortly afterwards, I seemed to be able to enter a portal through a wall, letting me skip a large portion of what was intended to be a portal maze; I didn't even notice that there was one until my second pass through it. While it may have been intentional, the wording of the text involved in killing the final boss after helping her leads me to suspect that it was not. Even from a story point of view, it wouldn't make sense to carry out your original mission and expect a reward from your original employer after betraying them.

Overall, I give this scenario a rating of GOOD. It was a very enjoyable experience, and I'm glad that I managed to catch wind of it.

Are you sure you're thinking of the right demon? There was a decently bulky demon in the northwest corner of Giant's Forge who instantly hit my entire party with a Death Curse. I vaguely recall trying to blow it up with some Adrenaline Rushes and it still survived for another turn or two, so it should've at least hit you with the status effect unless you were playing on Normal or lower.

That'll teach you to not bully the Anama.

Nah, but it sucks how there's no alternative to get the 3rd level of Summon Aid. I guess you can offset the XP loss with a couple trips to Zang, though? As for summoning in general, I tended to use Simulacrum more than anything else; the Demon Golem was one of my favorites due to its nice ratio of party-friendly abilities to party-harming abilities.

Yeah, it's a bit difficult to see hidden switches on that particular type of wall. Not necessarily a fan of said wall for that reason; you either need a very sharp eye, a light source, or a bit of dumb luck to find some of them.

14 minutes ago, Randomizer said:

That only happens above normal difficulty.

 

It doesn't happen for all spells, but you are a long way from Divine Retribution.

Hoo boy, Divine Retribution's going to be fun what with my first planned run being on Hard and all.

In the room with the leaky power core, you need to constantly bounce between several levers that either control the power flow that goes into the power core or open the southern door. Once you fiddle with the mechanisms of the lever by the southern door enough times, it should open. However, that lever has a bit of a cooldown that forces you to wait at least one round before you can continue unlocking it.

I remember just skipping out on fighting those Crystal Workers and Vahnatai Masters in my Torment run due to them being so strong. Portal Fortress in general was really tough; I was forced to have my hedge wizard Blink down the central passage and out the gate since everyone else had fallen.

1 minute ago, Earth Empires said:

 

For example there are certain dates when more or less big things happen and player needs to attend those and other things which are spoily stuff if hasn't played Exile/Avernum 3 before remake. Basically if spends too much time doing sidequests bad things happen.

Building off of this, there will be at least one warning that something very bad will happen to a certain place; ideally, this will give you ample time to wrap up any sidequests in the aforementioned place before the very bad thing happens. Of course, towns will start to show wear and ruin over time if you dilly-dally as was promoted on the game's page, and I don't think there are warnings for that.

It's been a while since I played G4, but I believe beating Moseh involves fighting or otherwise surviving until the northwestern door opens up, or at least unlocks. I distinctly remember having to go up the path behind the door to turn something off, which is most likely what is allowing Moseh to double and triple heal.

Not sure what the hubbub is about; checked the Avernum 3 page as well as Steam, GOG, and Humble Bundle, and none of them say that Avernum 3 is available. The Avernum 3 page also lacks an option to buy it online, unlike the other remakes' pages.

I might as well chip in with the party I built up to beat A:EftP on Torment. I think that my A:CS Torment party was a bit more optimized, yet looking at the statistics might help those who need it.

The Angry Wall of Meat - Trusty ol' Bulk SquatLift's job was to draw as much aggro as possible and keep the pointy bits away from the rest of the party:

The Deadeye - While lacking in toughness, Faile made up for it with near-perfect accuracy and frequent multi-shots:

The Shaman - An experimental meaty spellcaster, Egwene was useful as an emergency fighter early in the game and continued to benefit from Battle Disciplines like Shield Breaker and the invaluable Adrenaline Rush from then onwards:

The Hedge Wizard - An experimental mage-priest mix, Nynaeve dished out all sorts of elemental damage while saving many a battle with her healing:

Something that isn't present in this party that warrants mentioning is the lack of Priest Spells on either of the fighters. Using a Hedge Wizard in A:EftP taught me the value in having more than one healer, and having two spell energy pools dedicated entirely to healing and nothing else saves a lot of extra healing outside of combat that could potentially go into more advanced spells.

6 hours ago, rebeltinker said:

 

This. I never understood why the party size was reduced when remaking the Exile games into the first Avernum trilogy.

It's also a shame how recruitable NPCs were dummied out in the Avernum remakes. Even if they couldn't replace other party members, it would have been neat if they could have been tacked onto the end of your party a la recruitable NPCs in Blades of Avernum. As it is, they just awkwardly refuse the call to adventure.

As for the main topic, I prefer the Avernum games to the original Exile ones. I liked the quirkiness of the Exile games along with their massive spell libraries, yet one feature that was a really big annoyance was the conversation system; I would always spend a lot of time trying to figure out what word to say or click on to get the conversation branch that I wanted, whereas the Avernum games spell out all your options right from the get-go.

Just thought I'd dust off my account and say that it's really neat that you're doing an LP of all the player-made BoA scenarios. I never thought I would see the day where videos of Spiderweb Software games were actually made, yet here your staggeringly large playlists are. No clue how far you are down the list, but I still wish you luck with the rest of the scenarios that await you.

Who knows? The nostalgia your LP is giving me might inspire me enough to give scenario-making another go.

Well, sometime over the summer I found a paperback copy of The Eye of the World, which got me to start rereading the Wheel of Time series. One thing I've noticed is that things were way less serious back then, which I guess is kind of obvious, considering how ignorant they were of the outside world at the time. I've just finished reading The Dragon Reborn a few days ago, although now I have to wait for the person who has the next book checked out to return it.

Well, I guess I can start working on this once I feel like getting around to designing stuff, although that might be a tad bit difficult, what with the possibility of me being able to get Rogue Legacy today and all. The only problem will be that, since I've always found designing good custom graphics in the style of Blades of Avernum's isometric 3D difficult, I may need to ask for some help with making the graphic for SCP-087-1, and other graphics if I can't make them look decent (ex. the concrete stairs, railing, etc.).

While browsing the forums earlier, I came across the scenario review for Stairway, and it reminded me of this one game I watched someone play called SCP-087, which is based off of a creepypasta that's also called SCP-087. In the article for it, it describes a total of three explorations made in SCP-087 (technically four, but the fourth one is expunged). Later, I had the idea to make a scenario that's based off of SCP-087, but first I need your guys' opinion on something: should I make the scenario based on the actual game, or on the three explorations? If I were to make it based on the actual game, it would be considerably shorter, only following a single, less-detailed exploration, whereas the three exploration one will also include dialogue said by both the character and the doctor monitoring the character, along with the three separate explorations.

Edit: Oh yes, and if I were to do the game-based one, I could have it start out with an adventurer or party of adventurers stumbling upon a stairway that would later be known as SCP-087, or be assigned to find someone that went missing in said stairway.

Congratulations on your first scenario! I guess I'll have to dust off Blades of Avernum to go play it. This release kinda makes me want to start a scenario I've been planning to make since April or May this year.

Well, I wouldn't say that nobody is designing... Like me, I bet there are quite a few designers out there who have either gone on a hiatus, or have their ideas and projects sitting on a metaphorical shelf, gathering dust while kinks are worked out or more content is brainstormed.

Oh. I thought that would just act as a normal mute, and not eliminate the pause. I guess I'll just turn the sound off for that portion of the scenario from now on.

It's still a little weird, though, that those power sources make the zap noise every step, whereas the power source in the first room doesn't.

Well, yes, that WOULD eliminate the sound issue, but wouldn't the game still pause to try to play the now-muted sound?

I've been playing Bahssikava for the past few days, and I got to the Machinery area, where you have to redirect beams to power up power sources to open doors.

Normally I'm fine with puzzles involving mirrors and/or beams, but the problem is that whenever I turn on a power source for any door other than the first one that lets you into the main hallway, it produces the lightning sound of something getting powered up every single turn. I even tried to walk past them in combat mode, but that made things worse by making the sound go off every time a party member takes a step.

As a result of these repetitive zaps, it makes walking around in this area a real pain. Is there any way this can be remedied, or am I doomed to having to edit in beam projectors to turn on the final door to cut down on slowness?

So, here I am, casually strutting along deep within the Giants' Vale, murderlizing everything in sight with my shiny not-so-new Sword of Sharpness, when I come across a dead giant's corpse in the northeast corner of the vale. My adventurer senses kicked in, and I looted the poor guy. Turns out he wasn't poor, and had a bag with 365 coins on him, which I promptly grabbed. I tried to go deeper into the thicket of trees to look for more potential treasure, but failed. On my way out of the thicket, I stumble upon the same dead giant.

So, the strangest thing happened. Instead of just leaving the now penniless dead giant alone, I instead went through the whole process of searching him again, and came up with another bag of 365 coins...

Eventually, the message window was filled with "You have found 365 coins."

Was this intentional, or did Smoo forget to add a SDF at the end of that encounter?

Nice to see someone else reading the same series I am! Anywho, I finished reading A Memory of Light, and I have to say that it became quite the tear jerker near the end. Sadly, the series is over now... Might have to reread the series soon. Also, in unrelated news, I can't seem to use the enter key to start new paragraphs on the forums with my main computer... Strange.