The Reverend

If I remember right, the darkness goes away once you've defeated the last monster - but I'm not sure about that, so don't quote me. In any case, once you've turned all the wheels you should be able to exit that room to the north and find the real surface.

It sounds like you didn't go far enough. From that fake land place, if I recall correctly, there is a hidden switch that will open a passage that takes you through some more tunnels and fights until you get to a room where you can't see past one square ahead of yourself. There will be some nasty monsters to fight in there, as well as some more hidden switches to find and some wheels to turn. Eventually once you've found and turned all the wheels you'll fight another nasty monster and be able to exit to the real surface. The game will then give you the option of staying there on the surface, or heading back down to try to complete some of the other final quests.

If I recall correctly, the Anama don't show up in Exile/Avernum until the third title of the series, but presumably they already existed on the surface by the time of E1/A1/A:EFTP.

 

This gave me the idea to do a playthrough as a group of Anama priests that were sent down for speaking up a bit too loudly about their opposition to magic.

 

The rules for my playthrough will be pretty simple:

1) Every character was an Anama priest on the surface, so they all have to start the game with at least 2 levels of the priest spells skill.

2) All characters must remain faithful to their beliefs. Thus they can never train in or purchase any levels of the mage spells skill.

3) They must attempt to continue their studies even while in the underworld. Thus they must put at least one of their skill points into the priest spells skill every 10 levels. I.e., they must have invested at least 3 points into priest spells by level 10, 4 points by level 20, and 5 points by level 30 (since they must start with at least 2). They are of course free to invest more points in priest spells if they want.

 

I will be doing this playthrough on Torment difficulty, to make it interesting (I've breezed through hard, albeit without these restrictions).

 

My thoughts are to have my front two characters be the warrior-priests. They will be dual-wielders, with just the minimum investment in priest spells (2 at the start, 3 at level 10, 4@20, 5@30). The first will be more defense-oriented - priority to hardiness/parry over blademaster, and perhaps even buying some spellcraft in order to access resistance (since he's already forced to buy some priest spells). The second will be more offense-oriented, but still not neglect hardiness and parry.

 

The two back characters will be full-on priests. I will rush to get attack-oriented priest spells like call the storm and divine fire as soon as possible, to make up for the lack of a mage.

 

Any thoughts or advice? One thing I've realized is that I will never be able to get by level 3 magical barriers, since I'll only be able to dispel barriers with piercing crystals. Is there anything essential that is only accessible via a level 3 barrier?

 

If folks are interested, I can post updates on how this goes as my playthrough proceeds. It may be slow, though, since even on good weeks I only have a few hours per week to spend gaming.

 

And this is exactly why evasion bonuses are most useful for high-dexterity characters (at least for physical, fire, and energy attacks, where dexterity increases evasion).

 

For example, if the enemy has a 150% hit chance, and you subtract the a 10% evasion bonus, it goes to 140%. However, both end up capped by the 95% limit, so it makes no difference. However, if your character had 12 more points of dexterity those would instead be 90% and 80% to-hit chances, both of which are below the cap.

North is the upper-right corner of the screen, rather than the top as you might expect. The minimap, however, has north at the top.

I may be mis-remembering, but I thought eyebeasts and gazers have traditionally been resistant to energy damage in Jeff's games, so seeing it here is normal.

It's been a long time since I was in school, so the introductory textbooks I used are probably out of print/in museums by now. For an intermediate algorithms textbook, which will also serve as a good reference book in the future, I like the well-known "Introduction to Algorithms" by Cormen, Leiserson, Rivest, Stein. Depending on your math background, however, that may not be suitable for an introductory text (it assumes familiarity with discrete mathematics and combinatorics).

 

For other texts, I might suggest checking the websites of various computer science departments at well-known universities. In many cases the course websites are publicly accessible and you can look at their syllabus and recommended textbooks. Some of them also post lecture notes/slides.

Start by learning a language - as previous posters have mentioned, C and C++ is a good choice. Others might recommend Java, and you wouldn't go wrong with that - I believe its what most universities are teaching in their intro CS courses these days. Personally I prefer C (with bits of C++ mixed in when I want some object-oriented features) though, as it gives you more control over what your code is really doing (essential for the type of work I do professionally). It also forces you to think about things like memory management that higher-level languages hide under the covers- which can be the source of bugs, of course, but also helps you learn about what's really going on behind the scenes.

 

Once you've learned a language, you'll want to find an introductory book (or books) on data structures and algorithms. Choosing good algorithms and data structures can have enormous impacts on how well your code performs.

After completing all three main quests, I went back to the exit to the surface (and refought the final guantlet, because those monsters respawn), and selected the option to escape to the surface. I figured after all that my characters had accomplished, they deserved to take some RnR in the sun ...

I put a few points into endurance near the beginning, but after that I stuck entirely to my primary attack stat. For raising health, I found the various health boosting traits to be a more productive long-term investment than endurance.

Considering the amount of wine and ale stockpiled in my shadowwalker's room, I figured he was just too tipsy to remember to mention that silly little demon way up there in Khemeria.

Those parts of it take me back to when I discovered the original Exile over winter break of my freshman year of college. Back before kids, and jobs, and other "responsibilities".

Ah, yes. I agree with you there - it's annoying that a high-dex character who normally is almost unhittable can easily be hit by a cleave.

I think this may in fact be the explanation. I'm not certain, but I think I've seen my shadowwalker's razordisk cleaves hit enemies who were 2 spaces from the original target. I always assumed this was the intended mechanic and not a bug.

 

I've also seen cleaving where the cleaved character has an empty space between themselves and the originally attacked character. I've seen it happen with both my attacks and enemies' attacks.

It may not be the "prevailing wisdom" on the boards, but I agree with you - I found magical efficiency useful, for the the first reason you mention in particular. If you use andrenaline rush to spam top-tier spells you may run out of energy in the longer battles. Magical efficiency helps prevent this.

 

And I also agree that frequent runs back to town to recharge can get boring.

Also, there is a way to buy and resell meat for a profit in Mertis if enough characters have the negotiator trait, but it gets a bit tedious:

 

http://www.spiderwebforums.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/257424/Profit_in_Mertis

Giving everyone in your party the negotiator trait will help your cash flow a little - it lets you sell items for more money. The more characters that have it, the more you can sell things for.

Endurance doesn't help that much in the long run - each point only gives you 5 extra hit points, which really isn't very much by the end of the game. The 3 health traits help a lot more in the long run. Endurance can help a bit in the beginning, though, when 5 points represent a decent percentage of your total hit points. Just make sure you don't neglect Strength for your melee fighters, or they won't be able to hit anything.

 

I think I did something like 2 points of strength for every 1 point of endurance early on, and then switched to all strength after my HP got high enough that 5 points didn't seem worth it anymore.

I haven't used any cheat codes, so I suspect this is just some sort of bug. I ran into another leveling up related bug a while back, where Shima had enough XP for the next level but didn't actually level up. I saved, quit, and reloaded, and then he had the new level and I could upgrade his skills and stats.

 

Both of these issues happened before I upgraded to the latest version, though, so perhaps they are not an issue anymore ...

Running out of mana isn't a problem if you're willing to consume the occasional energy potion/elixir - there are a ton of them in the game.

My main character just hit level 20, and got the "True Power" medal (the one for reaching level 20). However, I just looked over the medals I've received and realized that I never got the "Tested by Fire" medal (the one for reaching level 10). Clearly I must have reached level 10 before level 20 , so this seems like a bug - has anyone else run into issues with this before?

The priest does have a couple of nice area attacks - I'm thinking of divine fire and divine retribution in particular. But yes, the mage does have a greater variety of useful area attacks. On the other hand, the priest's healing and unshackle mind skills can be a big help in certain battles.

 

Or you can just use blade sweep, which is surprisingly effective for archers since it is based off of dexterity instead of strength.

Massively underpowered is an exaggeration - archers are perfectly usable in AEFTP - they just aren't as good as other character types in the mid to late game. In the beginning of the game (which is where many people struggle the most), though, they are one of the more powerful character types. And, the variety is nice (I also like playing four distinct character types).

 

I played through with an archer until the very end, and even in the late game she was useful in some situations. I had put every available skill point for her into dexterity, which meant she was very difficult to hit for enemies with physical, fire, and energy attacks. That allowed her to play a tank like role in those situations, tying up enemies who kept missing her while my mage and priest took them out with AOE and cone spells.