Bonam

So looks like armor is very much just a straight up reduction by the listed % on Torment without anything funny going on. With a base damage of ~71, the numbers above are well explained: 71 * 0.67 = 47.6 ~46.3 71 * 0.50 = 35.5 ~35.7 71 * 0.32 = 22.7 ~23.5

Are there any known functional differences in any of the mechanics between any A2CS releases?

Yes, I'm aware of the mechanic. The point I was making was that without the 30% subtraction that was supposed, getting to 90% is really important... whereas if there was a 30% subtraction, getting to 90% would not be nearly as important, since all that huge effort to accrue those last few % of armor would just be subtracted down anyway to a range where it matters a lot less (hence my statement that the difference between 85% and 90% is a lot bigger than the difference between 55% and 60%).

You can also get a Phoenix egg from Rentar-Inhro.

Got it, so the take away is armor works correctly by the listed % on Torment, despite what the damage blocking text says. So armor rating and getting it as close as you can to 90% is very important (since the difference between 85% and 90% is huge compared to the difference between 55% and 60%). I assume this all applies for elemental resistances as well.

Should be easy to test? If your armor is at 90%, take off equipment to make it 80%. If there's a linear 30% subtraction, your effective armor will go from 60% to 50%, so the damage you take will increase from 0.4 to 0.5, or 25% (i.e. if you were taking 100 dmg from someone you will now take 125). On the other hand, if there is no linear subtraction and its just a reporting issue, you should take double the damage at 80% armor compared to 90% armor (if you were taking 100 damage you will now take 200) Given the huge difference we are talking about, would probably only need a very small sample to find out for sure.

Spray Acid spellbook: Cannot read it with 6 AL + 9 from sage lore + 4 vahnatai lore Works when I tried editing my AL up to 8. So either spray acid doesn't use SL/VL, or it needs a combined value of 21.

Ah, yes, sliths.

There's some giants (or was it ogres?) on a little rock outcrop near (above) the waterfall warren. They are trying to build some stone huts and need a hammer.

Any known cap on crit chance %? What's the base crit chance %? There's enough items that give +crit that it seems like you could get your main damage dealer to crit most of the time fairly easily.

Just use the editor... count the points you subtract from skills and then use only that many when putting them into the new skills you want.

2 mages is good. For the tank/warrior... focus on strength is fine, your tank will have plenty of survivability end game without pumping endurance too hard, about 20 base endurance by end game is more than plenty. Give him 7 priest spells so you can get 7 spellcraft (+3 from trainers/drake), so you can train 10 resistance. 10 resistance in combination with 10 (+3) hardiness and decent gear gives you pretty much 90% resists across the board, which is very nice for a tank to have. For the priest... there's really no reason to make him an archer/priest. Priest offensive spells are far more effective than archery ever can be in this game. Any turn that your priest isn't healing/buffing, he'll be casting a priest AE damage spell like divine fire (or early in the game call the storm) rather than firing a wimpy arrow. Don't waste the points on dex. So unless you just really want to have the archery for your own enjoyment from a roleplaying standpoint or something, don't bother with it.

Any idea what some of the other buffs you get like "blessing of the caves" or "crystal blessing" do? (They're temporary but in practice last long enough that you could have em up all the time if they actually had an effect).

AMA from a few days back: Interesting news from Jeff: - he will be switching to a new engine soon, that will include a lot of more "modern niceties" like mousewheel support - Avernum 3 and Avadon 3 are confirmed - The Geneforge series will be getting remakes - He'll develop an all new game, and likely use kickstarter for funding

Ah I see, didn't notice those. Ran back to a town and bought a fruit cause I couldn't remember last place I had seen food was at.

If you walk your characters unimpeded in combat mode you should have plenty of time to get to the gates before they close. Also, you shouldn't need it anyway, but if you don't have adrenaline rush, try a battle frenzy potion/scroll/crystal.

Addition to the original list: you need one unit of food (any type far as I can tell) to pass the hungry statues in the Trapped Halls.

The gloves weren't in the original list at all (randomizer will check and add it). I just bolded the melee part cause that's what makes em interesting.

So seems like the general consensus is that doing damage through melee is kinda gimped. Most enemies have much higher resistance to melee than to spells, and so melee does less damage even against single target. And of course in most fights, you will position your casters so as to be hitting multiple enemies with their spells, so that a mage will likely do at least like 10x the damage of a melee fighter in most fights. Now, at first glance, one might think low damage is ok since a melee character is "tanky" and trades off defense for offense, and also since they get access to AR, giving them 3 attacks in the first round. But the way the skill trees are, a spellcaster can access hardiness and even some parry if they want and be just as tanky as a melee character, and can get access to AR as well. I'm not a fan of nerfing things, I'd much rather see melee get better in future games. So here's a few ideas (not necessarily all at once, pick and choose a few): 1) Lethal Blow: Change this skill to have the effect "When attacking a foe with a melee or missile weapon, this skill subtracts 2% per point from their armor value". This will more than double the damage of an offensive melee character since resists seem to be in the range of like 80-90%, and this would drop them to 60-70%. It's far enough up the tree to be limited to offensive-focused melee/archers. 2) Polearms: Every polearm attack should hit all 8 squares surrounding the character, always. This adds the ability to do more AE damage. 3) Swords: Sword attacks take 5 AP, like using an object. If haste takes effect on a sword attack, it takes 3 AP instead of 5. Allows you to do 1 more attack most turns, letting you damage multiple targets. 4) Elemental Weapon Trails: If you are wielding a weapon like frozen blade, flaming sword, oozing sword, molten halberd, etc, your character should generate elemental trails like ice puddings and such do. 5) Riposte: Always activates when the character takes damage. Reflects 10% per level of incoming damage back at the source. Also works on missiles and spells. Battle Disciplines: 1) Well aimed blow: can't miss, reduce turns to recover to 2 2) Shield breaker: does low damage, but reduces target's armor by 50% for the next 3 turns 3) Leg sweep: immobilizes all enemies in the squares adjacent to you 4) Blade sweep: same cone area effect as magical cone attacks 5) Focus spirit: Instead of curing effects, makes you immune to effects for the next 2-3 turns 6) Mighty blow: boost damage more, reduce turns to recover to 2 7) Stunning blow: cone area effect stun 8) Battle Frenzy: buffs the entire group, not just the character that uses it (when used with a polearm, well aimed blow, shield breaker, and mighty blow would affect all enemies that the polearm hits) And probably need to make the enemies a bit harder so that the game still stays challenging with all these changes Of course, archery has even more issues than melee, but I never play an archer in Jeff's games so no comment on that...

Missing from the original item list: Duelist's gloves: 3% armor, 10% faster fatigue recovery, +2 melee weapons Drops in Tomb of Delrin-Bok, SE room with lever

The cap works the same as in avernum 1. You keep gaining levels past 30, but skill points only once every 5 levels, and no more traits.

Capture Soul spellbook: confirmed works with 4 AL, 2x sage lore, 2x vahnatai lore

You need at least one character that can stand in the front and take a beating (i.e. "tank"). In your case, that's probably the "pole fighter". Did you invest in hardiness and parry on this character? Missing the enemies with your melee character a bit more often is no big deal, since most of your damage will come from your mage anyway.

Thanks, good points. Updated above.

With 8+3 first aid and no FA traits, I get about 10 spell points back after a typical fight in a dungeon. In said typical fight, my casters (in my current 2 melee 1 priest 1 mage party) will usually use 40-60 spell points. So you're talking about a ~20% increase in how long you can spend fighting between town runs by getting ~10 first aid. This might have more of an impact in the 4 caster parties we are discussing, since each caster would only cast half as many spells before all the enemies were dead. If one was to dump the 12 free points mentioned above (subtracting 2 for the necessary AL Slarti mentioned) into first aid, get 8 trainable points, and run with the +9 first aid available from items, you might get ~30 SP back per typical fight, which with 4 casters might work out to almost being SP self-sufficient.