Thaeris

I for one love the architectural styles of the original Avernum series. ...I've been contemplating what Avernum and the world above would look like for some time now regarding weapons and architecture. Exile presented a more old-school fantasy vibe to things, original Avernum had that unique style mixed with cheerful Foglio art, and the new series looks like a reversion to contemporary high fantasy art standards. The challenge and fun would be finding how to blend everything together, I guess! As per old mechanics which don't show up in the new games - I kind of miss the manual aiming of arrows and spell in Exile/Blades of Exile. It would be really nice to chuck fireballs at invisible units and do area fire against them, even if I had a reduced chance to hit. I've not yet encountered invisible units in BoE, but I can only assume that manual aiming can make things a little easier in those situations.

I'm happy to say I've been playing this for the first time since I downloaded the demo in, like, 2008. One of the principal problems I noted having with the demo was the loss of the boatyard in Krizsan. Is there anywhere else to buy a boat on the continent?

That's the problem with an all-caster party. As much as it makes them awesome, it also limits their max levels in base skills due to needing... all the base skills! Even then, your characters tend to be biased towards certain skills regardless. Priests end up being pretty good fighters in most cases; combine that with elite warrior and you've got a really scrappy trooper. And I'd really love to give my priestess something a bit better than that steel greatsword... but meh, I'll yank it out of there sooner or later. (Just don't keep trying to do that, or you'll be waiting a long time indeed to level up again. )

Going back to the Shrine puzzle, I have to wonder this... Is Blademaster a requirement for pulling out the Alien Blade? Or does a given character just need to have a lot of strength?

That settles it then. I'll stick to the size of old Avernum/Exile.

I think my argument would be this: when you see a sign listing a location as being 10-25 miles away (anywhere there is a location so listed), the distances on the map tend to be... fairly consistant. And so that's actually a better question - how do the distances in old Avernum compare to Exile, and how do those distances compare to the new Avernum?

I'm hesitant about getting into the new Avernum trilogy, as silly as that may sound. I really do love the aesthetic and feel of the old games, and I'm certain that's why you still have great fans of the original Exile games here (Blades was the only one I ever got into). And certainly the only thing I can actively pin on Exile as having a real "up" over Avernum on is the great variety of spells and weapons in the older games. Variety is great. (As an aside, I also love reading comparisons between Avernum and Exile, especially when I've never really bothered to delve into playing into the originals)

I think checking your numbers may be necessary, at least with what is given on the world map. According to the signs, Draco and Formello are indeed at least 80 miles apart by road, unless "mi." has a different meaning in the world of Ermarian. Even if the actual distance really is between 10-15 miles, that's still a day's worth of travel easy, especially if you're on the march with a lot of heavy gear.

I do have the original Nethergate, actually, and it was my first Spiderweb game. It actually still works well enough (I first had it for Mac OS 9, it still runs on Vista), if only a bit laggy.

I always wanted to explore Bargha. I'll need to get the Avernum Trilogy disk at some point so I can do this, as I only have Avernum 2. In which, the best you can do is kill the last checkpoint guards and step a few paces into the city before you die a horrid death, Romans-in-Nethergate style.

Speaking of age (and/or time), I do think this is a relevant question: What is the size of Avernum? Often you will read a sign indicating that a city is 25 to 80 miles away, and making such a trip would range from a day or more (the former) to several days. Despite this, the venture between Fort Draco and Formello takes less than a day in Avernum. This leads me to several conclusions: (a.) The scale of Avernum is not properly represented (which I think is unlikely - I'd like to believe Avernum as a seemingly tractless cavern of massive dimensions). (b.) The Empire-Avernum War was quite possibly longer than two year's time, if we consider the player's party as the driving force behind the success of the battle - this argument is to say that due to the size of Avernum, it would take quite a long time to traverse all of it to complete the given missions. (c.) Because your party is mighty and magical, you run at about 55 miles per hour, or even faster. Duke Nukem has nothing on you, because he cannot shoot fireballs with his bare hands. (clearly I'm not being serious here)

I've recently realized... after a stint of myself being puzzled... that I've failed miserably at one of Avernum 2's most useful puzzles. This of course is the Chitrach Shrine puzzle, where your party must bring three chitrach larve husks from the tower in the south to the shrine in the north. For some reason, perhaps I was tired, I did not realize that multiple trips were in order... so in my latest play-through, I totally trashed that shrine. ...Granted, it was in all likelihood not a good shrine, but free Blademaster is one thing to make anyone a bit less picky. Add in that I've been living dangerously with only one save, there's no recovery point, either. Buth those 50 experience points... But I suppose that happens. It is kind of humorous, but if there is a re-set option for that scenario in the editor, I'd be tempted to run it. Otherwise, I may just need to use the editor to... pretend the scenario was executed properly. To that effect, loading up your last save before a character dies is kind of cheating, too. Q&A&Commentary aside, feel free to add in any additional debacles where they have occured. It's all fun until you quit out of rage, after all.