RaustBlackDragon

Where do light sources work?

So I've been playing the original Avernum 1, and I'm noticing that there's a TON of removed content, stuff that was in the original game that isn't in the new one, and it's really really odd. Like, this may be the first remake I've ever played that has fewer features than the original. I love the remake, but seeing all the stuff that's been removed, I'm kinda sad to see it go.

It would be more useful though, if there were some way to immobilize enemies in conjunction, because otherwise they can just move back to you. Though I guess it helps mitigate the effects of battle frenzy.

I'm planning on making what I generally categorize as a "Noble Hack" of A:EftP soon, and I just thought I'd share my plans with you guys in case you had any input. Here's the premise of what a noble hack is:

It will be a mod intended to make the normal difficulty (the only difficulty the mod would be intended to be played on) harder (read: more tactically demanding) than torment mode of the original, un-modded game. However, while it will be more tactically demanding, it will also be rebalanced, with various underpowered builds made more viable, and a massively overhauled spell list.

A more detailed list of intended changes is below. Note that a ?* means that I'm not 100% sure this is possible to implement:

*Load screen tips will be changed to warn the player about seemingly innocuous things that may come back to bite them in the butt later on

*Wards and Cloaks will be completely removed to make room for more spells. The issue I have with them is that they're per-party, and that heavily encourages homogeneity in your characters' methods of attacks, as well as what they're vulnerable to.

?*Belts will, on top of whatever else they do, provide a uniform, massive bonus to the first aid skill, enough to fully replenish all HP and MP after every battle, which will allow for the magic system to be balanced to a per-battle basis. Spells will be more expensive than before, and energy potions will be less hoardable.

*Invulnerability potions will be completely removed, as any battle that is possible without them is laughably easy with them.

*Certain spells will be removed to make room for new ones.

*Buff spells will start out as single-target, with group ones being a separate spell, like with group healing.

*Bonus boss battle will be added, accessible after completing the three victory quests, which will be an ultimate test of your party's skills, and which will explain why your heroes are nowhere to be found in avernum 2.

Any thoughts?

Just posting this so that replies start reflecting the new thread title

Success! Two down, 1 to go! I updated the OP with more details

So I reached the battle with Emperor Hawthorne, and I quickly discovered that those golems and their stupid AOE attacks can decimate my party in a single turn. All of them. Even my Paladin with both hardiness and resistance maxed out, even my Amazon with maxed hardiness and a 16 point investment in endurance, nobody can survive without invulnerability potions.

Fortunately, my cave lore makes it possible for me to make a few more invulnerability potions, but it kinda irritates me that such a practice is even needed, so I'm wondering if anybody has ever managed to beat Emperor Hawthorne on Torment without the use of Invulnerability potions.

Did you just get 12 arcane lore for 12 magical efficiency? I personally think that's a wise use of skill points, it's very useful

Yeah, freehold of Kyass definitely gives the best rewards with those epic training prices, the best prices in the game for almost every single spell and skill they offer.

I'm curious, what's the point of resting in avernum 1 if you can gradually restore your MP outdoors for free?

I'm hesitant to assist Thantria, the Empire envoy, because basically I'm assisting the people who threw me in Avernum in the first place (I like playing ethically in-character), but I'm just curious what exactly the details are for each of the quests, and what I will be asked to do (since you have to accept the quest the instant it's even suggested to you), so I can judge whether, and to what extent, I should help her, if there's any good that can come from it.

What do you mean? The message box tells you what the hit rate is whenever somebody attacks. Or is it only that way in the mac version?

Anyway, yeah, the main thing that confused me was the fact that they were identical regardless, they both had the same name and appearance, which suggests to me that they were spawned with a level buff or set_attack_bonus.

And yeah, I think the hit rate difference is rather exaggerated between difficulty levels, though that's not the cause of this. I'm highly tempted to make a Noble Hack intended to be played on normal, but providing the same challenge as the original torment (just with more reasonable and standardized hit rates).

Nope, this 80% hit rate gap is there on normal as well. I'm at a loss for what's going on, this sort of thing seems to start happening at the later parts of the game...

I was using some hacking to work out how much of a difference leveling makes on its own, and I think I've discovered a bug, albeit one I don't fully understand:

I "Modded" the game to turn cloak of curses into a self-XP boosting spell so I could examine the effects of level on performance when stats were artificially made equal for characters of different levels. My initial tests against the tutorial cave's scrawny nephilim indicated that each level adds a base of 2.5% (rounded up) to your chance to hit and chance to dodge. I decided to test this out with a branched save of my current file to see if there was a difference at higher levels:

I used the editor to buff up my ninja's dexterity from 26 + 7 to 33 + 7, since the royal guards in the royal spire had an obscenely high hit rate on them, which I found peculiar. However, to my utter shock, even with that much, the first royal guard I found in the royal spire still had an 86% hit chance on me. I couldn't find anywhere in the code that indicated stat distribution, so either these guards had extremely high strength and I couldn't see it, or their level was ridiculously inflated which would also explain why my characters had difficulty hitting them. I decided to test this on the next guard, and I was in for a bigger shock: The next royal guard to attack me only had a 6% chance of hitting my ninja.

That's a difference of 80%, which is equivalent to 16 strength, or 32 levels.

This kind of crazily inconsistent variance also showed up before during the battle with the demons in the black spire, which leads me to believe that there's something in the code that allows for much too great a range of possible levels enemies can be. The chance to hit is just all over the place, and I suspect it's a normally reasonable variable that torment has accidentally caused to be exaggerated. I'm going to see if the difference is as wide on lower difficulty levels, and I'll post back with my findings!

Just wondering what the general strategy is for leveling skills for Avernum 1.

*Is it most important to pump everything into the base attributes and ignore anything that also increases through increasing those stats?

*Is assassination's usefulness dependent on the difficulty I'm playing on?

*At what point do points in the access stats (potions, arcane lore, decoding, etc) cease to grant me access to anything additional?

*Is it a bad idea to train in things that don't increase with the stats you rely on?

*I've heard Divinely Touched is bugged and is virtually worthless; is that true?

Yeah, and I guess there are no unambiguously heroic mages in the first game...

Heh, I only asked because a lot of classic roguelikes (which this game feels like it could have possibly taken some cues from in the old days) do have that, which I always thought was incredibly annoying.

Thanks for the info, I really appreciate it!

Just wondering if the thing keeping track of days and months and years means I can actually eventually die if I don't move quickly enough in avernum 1. Is this the case?

Throughout their entire journey, after all they've seen, after all of the humane, life-saving uses mage spells have been used for, they won't have learned that not all magic is evil?

Hey, does Brutus want revenge on Emperor Hawthorne?

Does the Orb of Thralni qualify as forbidden magic? Because you can't get to Hawthorne without the orb of thralni.