RaustBlackDragon

It occurred to me recently, with all the talk about how the recommended builds involve putting everything into one stat, that the various loading screen tips seem to indicate that this isn't how Jeff plays his games. I'm sure he does play them, so I'm curious if he's ever shared what builds he generally makes for his characters?

I'm guessing that since the game's been out for well over a year, this is old news, but I found a way to easily defeat the Incubi in Moritz' Kri's tower on torment at level 21 (possibly even lower). Is anybody interested, or is there already a guide detailing such a strategy somewhere?

Yeah, but I find it incredibly odd that my character doesn't think it's worth telling ANYBODY about.

So I just got back from the second visit to Khemeria, and when I reported back to eye miranda, I was disturbed to find I was unable to say what I thought was by far the most relevant, sensible and ethical thing to say:

"Moritz' Kri is dead, but he managed to summon a horrific demon. It's trapped for now, but it must be stopped."

and then when she asked me "do you think our business in Dohl Stead is complete?", I really hoped to be able to say

"Actually no, there's a huge, obscenely powerful demon just barely restrained that just MIGHT be worth our attention."

The dialogue said I could always leave it to Avadon's mages, but the game doesn't even give me the option of letting Avadon know?

That's not the part I consider a bug actually, it's the fact that cleaves are un-dodgeable that I consider a bug, and the large range simply turns what would normally be a minor annoyance into a big problem.

It was a wretch spearman, btw. And you don't even have to be next to the cleaver either, check this out:

Those two wretch spearmen/assassins missed my shadow-walker, and my sorceress got cleaved twice.

Are they special, like bosses, or do cleaves just normally work that way?

Regardless, I don't view this as a game mechanic. I view it as a flagrant bug that might actually merit a patch.

That's not the case though. Here's the layout:

X = my guys

Y = enemy

O = empty space

OXO

OYO

OOX

Y is attacking the top X and the lower X gets cleaved.

But I've been cleaved by spearmen when my shadow walker and blade master had an empty space between them. Is that a bug, or a super-cleave, or what?

How exactly does cleave work? From what I understand, it completely bypasses all evasion, parrying, etc (which I really think should be classified as a bug), but what's the range for it? How should I position my two melee fighters so that they don't get cleaved when the other gets attacked?

Any thoughts? Is anybody interested in seeing my progress?

Hey, I had an idea for making food and bandages useful again: Why not make food give a long-lasting regeneration buff, and have bandages cure a single hostile effect on top of their small healing? This would make food useful for conserving on healing spells in long dungeons you can't backtrack in.

While I think the previous functions of food had the potential to screw people over after a large investment of time into a file, I think it's a shame that food wasn't given any other use, yet was still left in the game.

Hey, I've been trying to make a Let's Play of Avernum, but my recording software is such that it's not built for recording long periods of continuous play, and the game progresses rather slower than would be ideal, so I thought I'd make a picture-and-text Let's Play in multiple installments. This is the tale of a group of unlikely heroes, ones which use builds generally frowned upon in guides. I intend to use every skill, every weapon type, and both schools of magic in this party, and each character will be split evenly between two primary stats.

If you're interested, click the dropbox link below to download the prologue. I'm working on chapter 1 as we speak!

Prologue

Enjoy!

I understand his decision too. There is a sort of charm to having ambiance instead of music

I LOVE video game music. The first song that really struck me was this one:

I heard this when I was between 5 and 7, not quite sure, and ever since then I fell in love with video game music. If you really can't think of any songs you like that were originally made for video games, I honestly have difficulty believing that, though I guess it's just a difference of opinion. It seems that you have very specific tastes, which would explain why only Civ 4 and 5's classical soundtracks have appealed to you.

I'm actually thinking of making an unofficial fan soundtrack to Avadon and AEftP when I complete those games. I'm an amateur composer, and I think it might be fun.

Of course, I have a feeling that, having played without any music, many people might actually prefer the lack of music in many situations, but hey, I'm gonna give it a shot anyway. It's not like I'll actually be able to make the songs play in-game or anything, but again, I'm planning on doing this for fun

This was largely motivated by my discovery that the prevailing strategy for fighters in avadon is to put absolutely everything into dexterity, even for the blademaster, which honestly struck me as an exploit rather than a strategy.

It does indeed sound like Jeff cares about avoiding screwing the player over, which is awesome. The stats themselves just feel like they're highly prone to the "one stat to rule them all" phenomenon, and I thought something like this would likely change that.

I think I'll avoid discussing the balance issue further until I've beaten both Avadon AND Avernum EftP as well as one of the older games. Can anybody recommend a game that uses the old system which still would run on a modern mac?

Hey guys, me again, and I wanted to post my two cents about the one real issue I have with these games. I posted about this before, but I thought I'd take another stab at it, because the issue is honestly rather depressing in my opinion.

It seems to be a common trend in Spiderweb Software games that putting all of your points into a single stat, which usually has serious consequences, is instead not only viable, but the most, or even ONLY viable build strategy. I've wondered why that is, and it finally hit me: It's because of the way the stats are generally set up.

Let's look at the stats and what they traditionally do in Spiderweb Software games:

STR: Improves melee damage and melee accuracy, lets you wear more heavy armor.

DEX: Improves ranged damage and ranged accuracy, helps you dodge attacks more.

INT: Improves magic damage and magic accuracy, helps you to resist magical and mental attacks and improves MP.

END: Improves max HP and resistances.

It recently occurred to me that the reason why the prevailing wisdom is to go all-out on a single stat is because the first three stats each provide an offensive bonus that is mutually exclusive and will never take any of the others into account, AND a defensive bonus which can often serve to keep you safe on its own, without any help from the other ones.

In short, each stat, except Endurance (poor baby), essentially does the same thing in mildly different ways. Thus, whichever does this same thing best will come out on top, and putting any points into anything else is generally a waste.

That's the core of the problem: That you can put all of your points into a single stat without any negative consequences. Such builds in RPGs are supposed to have awesome advantages at some rather unfortunate prices, where in this game every stat can essentially play the role of multiple traditional stats at once, and versatility is utterly useless.

So my proposal is that this should change. Builds that can be effective without any investment into one or more stats should be the exception, not the rule, meaning that each stat should offer something different that every build/class could take advantage of. I have an example, one which adds on two new stats. There are arguments against adding in new stats after all this time, but that's not what I'm defending, this is just an example:

STR: Improves attack damage for both melee and missile, allows for higher equipment capacity

DEX: Improves chance to hit, improves critical hit rate.

AGI: Improves chance to evade attacks and reduces cooldown times for abilities.

INT: Improves effectiveness of abilities and improves maximum MP

END: Increases resistances to damage across the board and makes you harder to knock back.

LUK: Reduces chance of getting struck with a critical hit and increases resistance to status ailments.

This is just an example, but as you can see, there would be significant disadvantages to neglecting one or more of these stats entirely. That's not to say it forces you to spread your stats evenly. It does mean, however, that every class has a good reason not to ignore a stat completely. Warriors who go all strength wouldn't be able to hit anything but the most sluggish of opponents, archers who go all dexterity would be extremely useful for taking down those fragile artful dodgers but not much else, and you can no longer be an offensive powerhouse AND capable of dodging everything via the same stat.

Again though, this is just an example of a stat system I'd recommend. It's the general principle that I'm advocating here.

Ah. Does this apply in AEftP as well? I'm fairly sure it doesn't, but just checking.

In my experience, the description is inaccurate. Even at level 1 it will ALWAYS reduce the energy used by your spells by a small random amount, so it's not like it has a random chance of doing a fixed effect, rather it's the other way around.

Magical Efficiency's largely considered to be useless since you can always go back to town and you won't have to fight your way past all of the monsters you fought last time to get back to where you were. However, I honestly disagree and feel that magical efficiency is highly valuable and definitely worth putting points in, for several reasons:

1: The highest-tier spells are EXPENSIVE. Anything stronger than lightning spray is going to make you use up your energy very quickly, and in many cases you'll run out in a single battle if the foes are hardy enough, particularly on torment, where enemy resistances are ludicrously high.

2: The "just go back to town" logic is NOT always viable. There are a few dungeons I've encountered where you'll still have to fight your way through a large number of enemies to get back to where you were before. In those cases, if you run out of spell energy, you need to use energy potions, which are limited, rare, and largely ineffectual.

3: Magic users are NOT tight for skill points. There are 6 magical disciplines, and you get 63 skill points by level 30. You could get one school of magic to level 17 and still have 46 skill points left over, which is just 1 shy of allowing you to max all four advanced magic skills AND get the minimum learned weapon skill required to be able to use Adrenaline rush with training.

4: Not a utility argument, more of an overall enjoyment factor, but there are many places where going back to town regularly can get extremely annoying.

Granted, I haven't yet beaten the game, so I might be missing something, but I really don't understand why mages should avoid magical efficiency, I think it's an extremely useful skill.

Oh right, yeah the WIZARD can use fast, but not the mage.

Anyway, Black mages definitely feel more useful than before. The vast majority of bugged spells were the ones that were exclusive to the black mage. Tmpr works, sabr works, mages get a few more spell charges, level 1 elemental spells work on all enemies, a lot of stuff. Red mages are still good, but they're no longer "if you use a black mage instead of a red mage there's something seriously wrong with you" broken, ESPECIALLY since intelligence works now.

Heh, lilith beat me to it. Fair warning:

Red mage can't use fast, and intelligence (and all of the bugged spells) actually works.

You're pretty much right, that's why I play FFZZHT, which is what I like to call a "noble hack". The steps of a noble hack are as follows:

1: Fix every bug

2: Buff every underpowered character

3: Increase difficulty up the rear end

So if I get what you're saying, teaching the fighter priest spells is a decent idea, while teaching the thief black magic is a bad one?