mikeprichard

I just saw a recent comment on Kickstarter from a beta backer (user Bigus Bovinus - I'm also a backer, but without beta access) and response from Jeff suggesting there may be some kind of time progression mechanic in this one as a possible throwback to Exile/Avernum 3. Jeff's answer was a bit vague - "You can take as long as you want. It won't lock you out of the ability to finish the game." However, can any of the testers please share (obviously no spoilers expected/requested) whether there's any optional game content at all - e.g. merchants, sidequests, etc. - that will be locked out if you take too long? I generally despise these time limits as someone who's both a completionist and who only enjoys an RPG when I can feel relaxed and able to take my time to explore/quest at my leisure without worrying about missing some bit of content, however small. Any info that can be shared under the terms of your beta access would be appreciated!

Like pants for your chest!

Good point; I think it's been confirmed that item crafting and/or enchantment will be in, although I'm not sure how much more developed the system will be than e.g. Geneforge's/Avadon's fairly simple item enhancement systems.

Clearly, my one and only concern is the pants. Forget all the other tried-and-true Spidweb equipment customization options that Queen's Wish is also doing away with (possibly in the interest of simplifying gameplay... which makes me a bit wary). I just want my pants back. If I find out where Jeff has put them, I'll let you all know.

Pants stretch goal? Stretch pants goal?

I may not wear pants, but I damn sure want my RPG avatars to wear them. It's just unprofessional.

I'm very disappointed to see from the screenshots that the character equipment options have been vastly reduced compared to previous Spiderweb titles (no cloak, gloves, belt, pants, or boots slots, reducing 12 equipment slots to only 7). Equipment customization was a huge aspect of the fun in these titles. I suppose it's too late to revert this unfortunate trend now. Still, of course I'm excited for September.

Also, to correct a misunderstanding in this topic, it's possible to both learn and cast Break Barrier as a Roman, even without Rhian in your party. You'll need to set up the following on one player character (which may seem like a lot of work, but as a completionist player, I found it quite simple): 1) Buy one level of Craft Circle from Moira in the Hagfen 2) Wear the Emerald Helm (+1 to all magic stats) (optional if 3) and 4) are done) 3) Defeat Raven for the All Circle Scroll (+3 to all magic stats excluding Druidism) 4) Kill the Selkie chief for the hags and take the Craft Circle Scroll as a reward (+3 to Craft Circle) 5) Learn Break Barrier from the northwest bookshelf in Iltanor's room in Northern Aethdoc (yes, it does teach Raise Dead and Break Barrier, and only to Romans - the list above incorrectly claims it teaches Raise Dead and Total Healing) This gives you an 8 in Craft Circle; only 7 is needed to cast Break Barrier. I ended up not doing this myself in my game, as I thought the hags' quests were icky. But this is very doable in a Roman playthrough (and maybe even recommended for powergamers).

I've finally been playing through N:R for the first time - I finished all other Spiderweb games years ago, but for some reason never got to this one. Anyway, I'm really enjoying the "two halves of the story" gimmick and the general gameplay, but as with the original Exiles/Avernum trilogy and the Geneforge series, I agree it would be great to see a re-remake of this in Jeff's new engine. In particular, I'd want to see four things: 1) Junk bag. 2) The "new" Spiderweb skill tree system that actually allows you to feel like your characters are progressing in power each level, as opposed to the old system where relevant stats get very difficult to raise at higher levels. 3) Better UI that actually shows complete and accurate resistance and other character statistics. 4) JUNK BAG. Of course, this probably won't happen in my lifetime, since next up is Queen's Wish (day one Kickstarter backer here) alternating with the Geneforge 1-2-3 remakes. Of course I'm hyped for all of those too, but it's a little sad that Nethergate never really had much critical success relative to other Spiderweb titles. It's quite different from his "main" series titles, but definitely worth some love. Also, on the very slight chance Jeff reads this one day - please, please, please try to get this on GOG!

Ess-Eschas, thanks for the quick and helpful reply - I appreciate it!

I've found a fair number of relatively small errors/duplications in the list so far (I'm probably almost halfway through a Celt playthrough), so I'm not sure whether this is one of them, but I can't find the below area in the Southwestern Zone. Any help (screenshots showing the exact location would be great) will be appreciated - cheers! "SOUTHWESTERN CRAGS — Endurance +1"

From Slarty's and my own research in the scripts, although the day triggers relating to town damage aren't visible anywhere in the scripts for some towns (Krizsan, Delis, Shayder, Sharimik, Aminro, Lorelei, Gale, and Greendale), it looks like Jeff didn't make any changes to the town destruction schedule compared to the original A3. So, the info in my old A3 topic here should still apply.

I found a few items (excluding those found in merchant inventories per your stated rule) that weren't in the list. The only ones I can recall right now: 1) A second Swamp Shoes (in an inn in a small town, I think lying on the floor, but I don't remember which town) 2) A second Ten Blessings Band (if you rob the beggar near Moon) 3) A second Mercuric Plate (on the ground next to Sulfras - must kill her to get it) 4) A fifth Crystal - Luck (attack the merchant settlement in the mountains north of Sharimik) Fantastic work!

Thanks as always, Randomizer, and for linking this to Strategy Central.

Anyone got one? In particular, "iampoor" still works, but "iwanttobestronger" (which awarded about 500xp in prior games) doesn't.

Right, that's what I assumed was going on with most of the inconsistencies between the game and this list. As to the Ivanova quest reward, it's +1 Hardiness, not Resistance - so it's not a game bug after all. Thanks! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Also, a few items missing from the list: 1) Swamp Shoes (in an inn in a small town, I think lying on the floor, but I don't remember which town) 2) Venomous Blade (when Hawke's ghost appears in the Manse's statue hall, approach the northeast statue) 3) Stability Girdle (in an outdoors stone circle on an island north of the Distant Hut, with the Orb of Thralni and sufficient Luck(?)) 4) Granite Girdle (dropped by a prototype golem in the Upper Golem Factory, after pulling the lever in the secret room just north of the stairs down) 5) Mauler's Ring (read the book "Secrets of Wainscotting," then search the ground behind the Wainscotting inn) 6) Blessed Armor Band (in a chest past a secret switch in the SW corner of the Remote Cavern pillar room, with Dispel Barrier L3) 7) Blessed Breastplate (in a chest in the E part of the Guarded Tunnel) 8) Crystal: Vahnatai Lore (in a chest in the center of the factory's Golem Spire)9) Crystal: Vahnatai Lore (in a chest in the council hall in the SE quarter of Ghikra, past the barriers) 10) Crystal: Resistance (on the ground past a secret switch in the NE rock formation in the Great Circle) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ And some miscellaneous corrections/additions to the list: 1) The rune disk near Torria that teaches Summon Shade needs 18 Arcane Lore (including Vahnatai Lore, but not Sage Lore), not 17 as shown in the list. 2) Attacking the drakes guarding the Chaotic Halberd gives Dread Curse. 3) Clicking on the eastern of the two green crystals in the final SE room of the Defiled Crypt gives one point of Vahnatai Lore. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

OK, thanks. I've also found a few errors in your list, but I'm not sure you're planning to to update it anymore. Either way, it's great.

Ivanova's quest doesn't give any Resistance (or other skill) points as a reward, although it increases all party members' resistances by amounts that seem to reflect a "hidden" 1-point Resistance increase. I know Jeff never reads these forums, and I don't have or plan to get a Steam account, so how could I report this bug to him? EDIT: Not a game bug; the quest correctly awards +1 Hardiness, not Resistance.

Errata: 1) Sara (in Shayder) is missing from the list of mage spell trainers (pretty average - Bolt of Fire through Spray Acid). 2) Velnas should be in the mage spells list, not the priest spells list. 3) Zachariah should be in the priest spells list, not the mage spells list. 4) The Moon spell-teaching "stands" are placed in the incorrect lists - the priest spells stand should be moved to the mage spells list, and vice versa.

Ward of Thoughts is listed twice, while Ward of Steel should be moved to where the erroneous second Ward of Thoughts currently is. Great work!

Incredible and appreciated work, as always. Some questions as I plan my munchkin party: 1) Which of the below rewards add the listed skill points to all party members, and which only add the skill points to one party member? i) Drake Lord Blessing (1 point of Blademaster/1 point of Spellcraft) ii) Ivanova's "steal book" quest reward (1 point of Hardiness - not Resistance as noted in the list) iii) Daltrey's "hidden giants" quest reward (1 point of Lethal Blow) iv) Swamp ogres' "kill vampire" quest reward (1 point of Lethal Blow) 2) EDIT: I've confirmed that the Swordmage trait grants an additional allowed encumbrance amount for spellcasting purposes of 10% per trait point, as opposed to the 5% incorrectly cited elsewhere (see here under the "Traits" section for that incorrect cite). The 10% was also applicable in Avernum 1:EFTP and Avernum 2:CS. 3) What is the Shift-D code (or other specific method) to manually edit the current Day? Re: 3), I'd like to recreate the town "decay" timetable as I did for the original Avernum 3 (see here). Also, as someone who likes to take his time exploring every square inch of a game and completing every quest without ever needing to consider time constraints, it would greatly increase my personal enjoyment of the game. Yeah, I know the changing world is the big unique thing with A3, but though I'm sure I'm in the minority in this, A3 is my favorite Spidweb game despite that mechanic, rather than because of it. Anyway - Slarty did a quick review of the script files to find all "day" conditional references (see here), but those only appear for 18 of the 26 towns that originally had time-related effects in E3/A3; still, as he notes, other effects (for those 18 towns or for others) may be hardcoded in the game and therefore not visible in the scripts. Also, thanks to Brood_Star, I've found where Jeff indicated there are no cheats to "alter the general timeline" in a Steam discussion (see here). However, that's not quite clear - he's talking there about resurrecting characters that had already died, but I'm more interested in reverting the current day to an earlier day to prevent future deaths/town changes. That all said, is there a way to manually edit certain game files to achieve this? I can't imagine it's impossible, but it would be really, really disappointing to me if it were - easy options to reset the current day were included in both E3 and the original A3.

Thanks, Slarty! I just loaded up character creation to mess around a bit, and had forgotten how expensive Luck was in A4 (at 4 skill points/level to start) compared to most other SW games - so that's yet another reason not to bother with Luck in favor of other useful skills that definitely aren't bugged. Appreciate the quick reply!

Excuse my necroing this truly ancient topic, considering it's pinned and my question is directly relevant - but could Slarty or someone else who had tested the effects of Luck in A4 confirm whether Luck is actually practically useless as implied in the current topic (posted by Slarty on 6 Jan 2006), or is in fact pretty amazing as described in this other topic (posted by Slarty on 25 Dec 2005)? The two topics directly contradict each other as to whether Luck actually increases character armor (+1/point), to-hit/dodge (+2%/point), F/C/E/mental resistance (+1%/point), and stun/poison/acid resistance (+3%/point). I'm planning another playthrough of A4 after many years, and remember it was almost the last SW game that was released with fairly glitchy/broken mechanics and UI systems (in my opinion), so I wouldn't be surprised to find Luck in fact does not grant the bonuses implied in the in-game skill description - I'd just like to confirm before I plan to pump 10 or so points into Luck for each toon. (And of course, this was only 11 years ago, so I'm sure people will remember exactly what was going on... I'm an optimist.) Cheers!

I've been trying to determine the exact second strike chance % each point of QA gives in Geneforge 4, and can't find it anywhere on the forums. It does seem significantly nerfed compared to G3 (which I just finished) - in G3, with QA 10, I was getting a double strike at least half the time, but with the same QA 10 in G4, it seems more like 20-25%. It's probably not a good sign nobody answered this question two years later, but just in case - can anyone confirm? I'd try to research this myself, but have no idea where I'd find this info in the game scripts.

This is the second time I'm necroing this thread, but again, it's for a good cause. I'm preparing another playthrough of G4 and again found this discussion about the possible discrepancy in Slarty's excellent guide (see link/discussion above), and from looking through all the game scripts, I've figured out why the reputation in the guide seemed to be off by 2 points: giving Fackler at least one research note in Chapter 2 gives -1 to reputation as listed in the scripts and Slarty's original forum post above (not +1 as listed in the guide), and the Chapter 1 ending total in the guide's "Powergaming" section should in fact be 104 (not 102, due to an apparent math error). The net effect of these two corrections would still leave you with the "powergaming" end-of-Chapter 2 reputation total of 120 in the guide. I just wanted to point this out for reference (whether or not Slarty is interested in correcting the two errors in the guide itself), since this is a stickied topic. Cheers!