mikeprichard

Oooooh, purdy. And yeah, I'm not obsessively checking these forums every 15 minutes, or anything crazy like that. Again, awesome work - I'll try to contribute as I can, assuming I can confirm anything 100% (probably by cheating AL/SL values before opening books - except I've already got 2 VL on my party, and I don't know how to cheat-remove those VL points, so my input might not be as useful as could be).

Slarty, awesome work putting this together; this is exactly what we need. Is there any way you could fix the column alignment though?

Two caches are missing from the list: the gold bar N of Cotra, and the Scroll of Return Life NW of Pyrog's Cave (credit to Mechalibur for these).

Randomizer - yeah, the issue with the numbers is it's difficult to parse out AL vs. SL vs. VL within your current totals for each spellbook. If you do have the patience for another non-SL playthrough and to then update the big list, that would be freakin' amazing. Not that you haven't done great work on the list already, as usual.

Man, I remember those days of running into every single wall tile looking for secret doors. That was a damn good time. (No sarcasm, really. )

Perfect timing - I was just going to check if someone had made one of these lists, and here it is. Smashin'. You did miss a gold necklace in the Vahnatai Lands accessible in Chapter 3 - it's just S/SE of the Test of Strength, by the walled ruins in the open. Also, according to Randomizer's list, there's a lemonwood longbow cache in the Honeycomb you missed, but I haven't tested that one myself.

Thanks, Mechalibur.

But it's confirmed that the Resistance crystal needs 13 "real" AL points, right? In that case, I'll just get 13 AL + 4 VL, and that will definitely get me both the crystal and all the spellbooks - though it'll probably be overkill for even the toughest spellbooks in the game, from what I'm reading now.

Ha, good for him then!

Yep, this has been requested many, many times (including by me). Why Jeff still hasn't fixed this is beyond me.

Randomizer's item list must be out of date, then - so if the Ward of Steel book doesn't really need AL 17, is AL 15 for Cloak of Blades the highest AL needed in the game? Or is that incorrect as well? EDIT: OK, I see Lilith posted yesterday that Cloak of Blades only needs either 9 or 12 (depending on whether Vahnatai Lore works for that - dang, juggling SL/VL/AL is getting confusing). Still would be nice to know what the "real" maximum AL for the game is, but I guess we're still figuring that out. EDIT EDIT: But I guess if you want the Resistance crystal, that's still 13 AL (SL/VL don't work), so in that case you'll end up getting to 17 AL including VL anyway.

Slarty, I was actually thinking of stuff I've read on other forums - I wouldn't call just your one post in this thread "persistent"! I'm also not saying you're implying "dumbed-down," but many I've seen elsewhere have said that. And I agree about shifting emphases over the past few years in CRPGs to meet changing market preferences. All's I'm saying is, RNGs aren't necessary components of a good RPG, IMO, and I've consistently disliked them in my 25 years of playing RPGs (yeah, I'm old).

To be fair, I think the 90% cap is actually working as intended, both for player characters and enemies - I have seen 3 misses in a row all display a "90%" hit chance, but that only happened maybe twice in 20 hours so far; overall, it does seem to average 9 out of 10 hits when 90% is displayed. That said, the persistent notion that "RNG = RPG," and "No RNG = dumbed-down action game for the masses" is pure poppycock. Many fine "real" RPGs have somehow struggled through without relying on the RNG Cheese Factor. True, AD&D games (great as they are) use an RNG system, but those aren't the only RPGs out there. Poppycock, I say.

My initial testing indicates "Fast Recovery" is probably useless. I fought the same battle in the Deep Rapids area against the eleven chitrarchs/larvae in the hellhound lair with both 4 First Aid + 3 Fast Recovery, and only 4 First Aid. I saved the game into two slots just after the battle but before hitting "space" to trigger the first aid/recovery results in the message log - using the editor, one game had the 3 FR traits, and the other didn't (long story short, I know this kind of editing will correctly update the battle message log recovery results). My results for both scenarios (after checking 20 times for each scenario) averaged about 40 health/8 energy restored, with no significant difference between the two (with 3 FR, I maybe had an extra 2-3 points of health and 1 point of energy on average). So that extra "5%" recovery per the FR tooltip is probably not worth it, especially when there are more attractive traits left to pick. In my case, I'm ditching it for another health trait (see my prior post).

Yeah, now I'm thinking of swapping 2 points of Spellcraft per caster for 2 points of "real" AL - especially for that Resistance crystal, though. Just not sure it'd be a good tradeoff. And I see what Jeff did now - if you want to get everything in the game (spellbooks/crystals), you'll need 13 AL + 4 Vahnatai Lore = 17 AL for all checks. Sage Lore don't cut it. I still agree with Lilith on the misleading tooltips for Sage Lore, so I'm using the editor to "fix" the situation.

I'm still trying to nail down my final trait loadout (I keep editing my party build in the fourth post in this thread). Considering Sage Lore is apparently pretty bad in A2:CS (doesn't work for several spellbooks or the Resistance crystal), I'm switching out a couple Priest points on my main priest to get down to 14 from 16 (the last two spells are underwhelming anyway), as well as 2 Spellcraft points on all three casters (assuming the Resistance crystal adds points as a trait, and not as a trainer when it comes to the 10-cap?) to get to 13 AL. I'll then switch Sage Lore (and maybe Fast Recovery - not sure it's even as good as a single point in First Aid?) for the extra Health trait(s). Good/bad idea? Also, Slarty - I stuck both XP traits on my priest at levels 10/12 (better late than never); I'll compare her advancement through the rest of the game to my non-XP trait characters and report back.

No no no no no... you're killing me, Lilith. But there's still no way I'm going to sink all those points into AL at this point... hello, editor.

Yeah, Torment has never been even remotely fun for me for these exact reasons - 80% of the time it seems "tedious" much more than "challenging." But to each their own.

Fair 'nuff. I'll probably check out the A:EFTP remix after I finish my first A2 playthrough.

Any timetable on that remix? Haven't tried your A:EFTP thing yet, but sounds interesting.

Thanks LM/Slarty - and that screen's almost identical to my own fighter build in A:EFTP. I'm still tinkering around with the traits, but I might throw in at least the first health trait level. As for Torment, it sounds like you could get by fine with a party build similar to mine, but it seems the "real" optimal power party is pure magic (no melee tank), as Slarty suggested. I just need to have at least one melee character in my group to get proper use out of the awesome mid/late-game swords, and I find an all-magic party pretty bland roleyplay-wise. Then again, I'm one of those wimps playing on Normal.

I'm also considering ditching the 3 "extra health" traits on each character in favor of something else (I'm thinking Fast Recovery and Luck). Is the 12% HP boost at endgame really worth those 3 trait picks? Probably not. And yeah, I'm addicted (in case you couldn't tell). Shudder to think what's going to happen when my favorite Spiderweb game of all timez (Exile/Avernum 3) is re-re-made in a couple years...

I think I've found a good compromise: for my priest, I'll replace Healing Focus x5 (I agree the 3% healing boost per trait is weak) with Blessing Focus x5, and for my two mages, I'll replace Summoning Focus x3/Swordmage x1/Recovery with Blessing Focus x5. 6 extra levels per summon would've been cool, but it seems like blessings are probably more universally useful than I thought originally. Edited my prior party build post.

I completely agree that the accuracy cap adds nothing positive to the game. As the OP said, there are ways to balance combat difficulty/damage that don't involve a maxed-out blademaster swinging a sword and missing a cave slime 1 out of every 10 attempts (or also in my anecdotal experience, even significantly more often, despite the "90%" display). Anyway, it was a step in the wrong direction moving from the 95% cap to the 90% cap, IMO.

Nalyd - thanks, I didn't notice that. I'm just trying to see which traits I'd want to replace with Blessing Focus for my two mages so they can get use out of it with Haste. I'd like to try out Summoning Focus, and the Intelligence/Extra Health/Elemental Focus traits seem pretty powerful too, so I'm not sure.