RaustBlackDragon

That screenshot looks nothing like my mac version of geneforge 1. Is the PC one completely different? How do you have a portrait?

I've heard conflicting information on this. When you use the canisters in Geneforge 5, is it like geneforge 1 where it doesn't make a difference, or are there consequences of using too many?

 

I guess my real point is that sliths and nephils are certainly quite playable, if not optimal, even on torment (although perhaps not as a singleton, I haven't tried that). I know from past threads about A:EFTP that RBD likes to play parties with a variety of character types and roles, so I wanted to be sure RBD wasn't discouraged from trying sliths and nephils, even if they are not the optimal choice.

Hahaha, thanks for looking out for me, but I already took one look at the racial perks and went "screw it, everyone's human!".

I considered having the Diana and Orpheus of game 2 be Slith and Nephil respectively, but honestly I don't really like how they look. I have a bias towards humanoid species a lot of the time, I don't know why. I would've considered it if the perks really suited them, but no, Human all the way.

Sliths and Nephils are not horrible choices if you are going to create a pole or missle user, but a human will be better. Remember though that it's not quite as ridculously unbalanced as it might first appear, since the extra traits you get will be less useful than the top 16 traits you'd select. But yes, it is rather unbalanced. Especially since magic is even more overpowered relative to non-magic users in A:CS than it was in A:EFTP, and sliths and nephils don't get any magic advantages.

Oh dear, magic's EVEN MORE powerful than melee now? That because of the Dual Wielding nerf? Well Albus, Diana, Orpheus and Lucille will have to see how that turns out.

When I looked at the race selection, I noticed that the human's benefit, an extra trait every 4 levels, sounds way, way, WAY better than the trait benefits of slith and nephil. Like, that adds up to 7 extra traits, minimum, and together they'd surely do much more to even your raw damage output and defense than the flat race benefits of Slith and Nephil would. Am I wrong? Is there actually a good reason to use Slith or Nephil?

...2%? The boost is 2%? Really? Is it even physically possible for that to have the slightest impact on any battle? I'm just stunned. I mean, what kind of reward is that? Every single special piece of equipment I've ever gotten has done more than that...

Disappointed.

So I'm playing as a tinkermage and I'm at a total loss for what to pick as my honor token reward. They're things like melee damage, melee accuracy, ranged damage, ranged accuracy, spell damage, healing... do any of these things really have value to a turret-specialist tinkermage? Would the healing bonus actually apply to my healing pylon? Would the spell damage bonus apply to my ice turrets? Or should I just accept the ranged damage bonus as the best I'm going to get?

I didn't crunch the numbers, but that seems to be what happens.

so are the right-column specializations my best bet for optimal turrets, even though this has no effect on the most powerful one, or do I want to put the specializations in the middle so that turretcraft gives benefits to the ice/inferno turrets too?

You can actually change this pretty easily by going into the scripts. Avadon 2/Avadon 2 Files/Scripts/av2itemschars is the file it's all in. Ctrl-F for the names of the companions and remove all the lines that have cr_graphic_coloradj in them.

 

Pallette swaps are an ancient and revered tool of SW games, but I really do have to question using the purple and green one.

What do the other numbers do? Can I make Alcander blue by making it a different number?

The text for the blessing pylon says it occasionally hastes along with war chant and protection chant when you get it to level 3 or higher, and since I've gotten that to level three, I have not once seen that happen in after dozens of battles and increasing it further still. Is it a bug or am I just absurdly unlucky?

Which boosts the levels of turrets more? Is it the same, or does putting a level in the specific turret have more net benefit for that particular turret (excluding the added abilities at 3 and 6)?

Glad to see more people liking the writing But also sad because I always feel I'm the only one missing an OST when talking about spiderweb games

You are not alone. I'd like to see one too. I've repeatedly had half a mind to make a fan soundtrack myself.

Update: I. Friggin. Love. Alcander. Seriously, so far he's one of my favorite characters spiderweb has ever come out with

The "love interest" thing, if it turns out to be true, doesn't remotely bother me. Mostly because Silke's clearly not a flat character intended for nothing but that. I like her character and her dialogue, she's really likeable. I wish we had a little bit longer before she got kidnapped so we could feel a little more attached to her, but I liked what little of her I've seen so far, she's not shallow.

Here's what I think about A2:tC so far.

Loving the intro music, definitely one of my favorites in the whole franchise, up there with the geneforge 5 one.

I love the addition of the gender choice. The female blademaster looks awesome with that blue cape and more slender frame, I can just picture her doing berserk leap and looking awesome doing it, and the male sorcerer looks SO. AWESOME! (I know there's a language policy here so I figured I wouldn't take chances, but I was planning on using the word bad***)

...Sadly, I take serious issue with the new shadowwalker graphics. I loved their designs in the first avadon game, but these new ones don't look like anything remotely associated with shadows. They look like people cosplaying at a spiderweb software con (especially the female one). The almost totally unobscured faces I imagine has something to do with it. They just look like soldiers in blue, they don't have the ninja-esque feel to them.

I picked tinkermage for my class, because since the main character is the only character who will ever have to fight anything alone (don't know for sure but knowing the series there's a seriously good chance), I figure it best if said character is the one who can summon reinforcements. Plus, new class, I figure I gotta check it out. And so far it seems pretty cool. I love the idea of a magipunk engineer, and those constructs he'll be able to make look really useful. And it also doesn't seem like there's a hard "1 summon per character" limit, since I was able to summon a turret while another one was still there, so I'm excited about the potential.

I appreciate how the prerequisites have been eased up on, though that one on the left column I still find problematic.

Also, great job going the avernum route with evasion, definitely a good idea, now dexterity is no longer quite so overpowered. I'm going to assume that the "All AOE non-magic attacks use dexterity" phenomenon is still in place, but I'm hoping I'm wrong, because that doesn't really seem necessary, and it renders the left column useless to pure melee fighters.

The writing is top-notch as usual (the "But still" on the game over screen made me burst out laughing), no complaints there. I'm curious if the beginning segment is different between classes, because the trap tutorial seemed specific to tinkermages.

I'm curious to find out what the fates of the protagonist, Sevelin, Nathalie, Jenell and Shima were from the previous game. It would be so cool if I got to see them again (obviously the protagonist will be mentioned absurdly vaguely and only in passing if at all, but I can hope for better from the others, so I shall). Also, Redbeard looks LIVID in that artwork I saw, I wonder how much he's changed after the attack. This is all so exciting, I can't wait to see more!

So far, great game!

Oops. Didn't see the first thoughts thread. Sorry mods.

Hey, just thought I'd make a quick post to talk about what I think about A2:tC so far.

Loving the intro music, definitely one of my favorites in the whole franchise, up there with the geneforge 5 one.

I love the addition of the gender choice. The female blademaster looks awesome with that blue cape and more slender frame, I can just picture her doing berserk leap and looking awesome doing it, and the male sorcerer looks SO. AWESOME! (I know there's a language policy here so I figured I wouldn't take chances, but I was planning on using the word bad***)

...Sadly, I take serious issue with the new shadowwalker graphics. I loved their designs in the first avadon game, but these new ones don't look like anything remotely associated with shadows. They look like people cosplaying at a spiderweb software con (especially the female one). The almost totally unobscured faces I imagine has something to do with it. They just look like soldiers in blue, they don't have the ninja-esque feel to them.

I picked tinkermage for my class, because since the main character is the only character who will ever have to fight anything alone (don't know for sure but knowing the series there's a seriously good chance), I figure it best if said character is the one who can summon reinforcements. Plus, new class, I figure I gotta check it out. And so far it seems pretty cool. I love the idea of a magipunk engineer, and those constructs he'll be able to make look really useful. And it also doesn't seem like there's a hard "1 summon per character" limit, since I was able to summon a turret while another one was still there, so I'm excited about the potential.

I appreciate how the prerequisites have been eased up on, though that one on the left column I still find problematic.

Also, great job going the avernum route with evasion, definitely a good idea, now dexterity is no longer quite so overpowered. I'm going to assume that the "All AOE non-magic attacks use dexterity" phenomenon is still in place, but I'm hoping I'm wrong, because that doesn't really seem necessary, and it renders the left column useless to pure melee fighters.

The writing is top-notch as usual (the "But still" on the game over screen made me burst out laughing), no complaints there. I'm curious if the beginning segment is different between classes, because the trap tutorial seemed specific to tinkermages.

I'm curious to find out what the fates of the protagonist, Sevelin, Nathalie, Jenell and Shima were from the previous game. It would be so cool if I got to see them again (obviously the protagonist will be mentioned absurdly vaguely and only in passing if at all, but I can hope for better from the others, so I shall). Also, Redbeard looks LIVID in that artwork I saw, I wonder how much he's changed after the attack. This is all so exciting, I can't wait to see more!

I'll add any further thoughts I have as I continue playing, but so far, great game!

Hey guys, I decided I'm going to pick up Avernum: Escape from the Pit again, this time with the remix patch Slarty made, and give my thoughts on it when compared to the vanilla version.

I'm going to be using the same party I used last time, since the rules I set up mean it's the ideal party to make sure all types of equipment, spells and weapons get used. The biggest difference is probably going to be with Diana, who previously had first aid and cave lore (I was using every single skill as part of the original rules). This time she's only putting one into cave lore, as the rest of the points can be bought while still making back the training money from cache finds alone, as The Reverend pointed out in this thread. As for first aid, well, that's pretty much the only skill that even my charitable eye found completely useless. In fact, I'm a little disappointed right off the bat that the remix completely ignored this. I mean, how easy would it have been to make one of the battle disciplines a restorative ability that scaled with first aid? Something with massive fatigue that restored HP and MP to the party?

Aaanyway, that's 19 skill points that she'll be using elsewhere, and I'll have to think about the distribution of those. I also think some of the traits will be different, not sure.

I have mixed feelings about the nerfing of haste. On the one hand, that was the biggest advantage to using haste, but on the other hand, I kinda obsessed over spamming haste to make sure it didn't wear off, and I'm thinking that with that taken from me, Lucille will probably be slinging way more spells.

I'm looking forward to seeing how the game unfolds for me!

First comment:

I weep mightily as I mourn the loss of howl of terror. It's the best debuff spell in the game, and I loved spamming the crap out of it. This throws off some of my plans... must readjust...

RIP HoT.

Know what? I think I'm going to give this a shot. I'm gonna try and beat it on torment using my general non-min-maxing policy. That promises to be fun!

Avernum: The First Expedition

 

Cut off from the surface, facing nephils, sliths, and demons, a small party of Empire soldiers tries to survive to reach the main expedition.

Oh god yes. YES.

A suvival horror game would be great, not so sure about it being a Zombie Apocalypse^TM game, Somthing more Lovcraftian would be perfect thought, and not quite so new environment graphic heavy.

 

Let's send Jeff a bunch of emails.

Lovecraftian. Oh god yes.

 

Also, there's no need to post two hours after your last post, just to ask for attention to your thread.

Not quite sure what I was thinking there, honestly.

Am I the only one who thinks this would be interesting?

Jeff's got plenty of undead graphics as I just faced some today.

 

Now convincing Jeff to write the story....

Well I was talking more about WORLD graphics...

Yeah, and as I said, I don't have much hope that anything resembling this will ever come to fruition.