carbon_dragon

I read that and thought it applied to A6. Oh well, my bad. I just stopped into old Fort Avernum, oh the memories. I just asked to borrow a cup of mushroom meal and they about bit my head off. Some people have no sense of humor.

I just want to reiterate on how important I think it is to address the pathing issue. Go play Temple of Elemental Evil with its preview system. Basically you click on a spot and hold your mouse button (or finger). While you do it draws the path your character will take to get there. Even if the pathing remains broken, you can at least avoid the really stupid routes that the character would NEVER NEVER NEVER take. Some of these battles are hard enough without this issue. Number 2 is confusing waiting with hitting a bad guy right next to you. The wait button should be a button on the UI way away from the actual map. That way there would be no misunderstanding. Avernum 6 is fun so far, but I could wish it was a little less linear in that you can't go some places (like the Eastern Gallery) until a certain point on the main quest. Also it's been hard for my poor Mage who has had to train for mage, bowwoman and thief all at once. Maybe that's my fault but the Priest is usually keeping us alive and the fighters are usually fighting so it seemed like the only choice. I use all the knowledge brews and crystals for her but she still can't keep up. Now if you excuse me, I have to go explore Fort Avernum ... well what's left of it anyway.

It's funny you should say that. The Tech vs. Magic battle has played out a few times over the years. I took my D&D group into modern day London once (published adventure). They had fun and they prevailed, but they were appalled at how much damage they took for rifles on full automatic. They would have found missile launchers even more annoying. They foiled a bank robbery with submachine gun toting criminals and that's how they interacted with the Tech! It was a hoot. The problem that Magic has is that you need dedicated, highly trained people to learn and use magic. Any yahoo can use an AK-47 with a rocket launcher. And when you have an entire Army unit with modern weapons, you better have a LOT of magic users. The old game Shadowrun with reemergence of magic into the modern world was fun too. And before you say -- some creatures might require magic weapons to hurt them, remember that old Buffy episode. The demon who couldn't be harmed by any weapon forged turned out to be vulnerable to an anti-tank rocket. Maybe a hellfire missile counts in the mystical world as a +5 weapon ;-)

In that case maybe I can wire him to the battery system of my Prius. That should give him all the power he can handle.

I was just wondering if I should take updates to Avernum 6 on my iPad while I am playing (which might take a while) or whether I should not do that until I complete the game. Thanks.

Even D&D has changed over the years, but I was talking more paper and pencil. I haven't played online. Yes the current edition does have some rules about stacking the same kind of rings. In the old days I don't think that was true and it was all up the DM anyway. Given that players have all kinds of magical doodads, the idea that you can only have 2 rings is a stretch. Why for instance a ring, armor, and gloves and not 3 rings? No way to really justify it, it's just the rules for keeping the game power levels under control. In real D&D games, the DM keeps things under control by what he gives the players. It still gets out of control eventually. Even if items don't get out of control, 2nd Edition AD&D (where I played the most and DMd the most) gets almost unplayable in the high level teens due to the mages becoming so powerful. In computer games, you typically become so powerful that you'd be unplayable in a paper and pencil game (or it wouldn't be fun) but it's fun in the computer game. In fact, mostly games like Avernum just take 1 component of real RPGs (the combat and a little story) and run with it. All the human interaction and cooperation is missing and that's really the heart of the experience. Perhaps you get a little of that back with an online MMORPG.

How would letting 6 1000 point spectres loose make him King? Is he thinking he's be the only one who could destroy them or something?

Many games have followers you can recruit but usually there are restrictions. Skyrim allows basically one though you can get around that on a PC. There's a guy who does videos on YouTube who goes around with an army and it's pretty funny. Traditionally, in D&D you have 4-6 characters in a party. In early computer RPGs you tended to have 6, though some used 4. Often you could recruit some small number. One I saw but didn't play started you with one and you could then recruit an entire party. I guess the idea is to keep it from being too easy, but why not just leave that up to the player? You do have to design the real estate, but it seems to me that 6 would be viable in Avernum and would allow you to carry some specialists like thieves or an extra mage or cleric. I think Might and Magic had MU/Fighter classes I think called Bishops? (or was that Wizardry). Of course Avernum allows you to build your own though the fact is that my fighter isn't going to be a great mage without the traits and attribute points. I did enjoy in D&D based games rolling and rerolling the stats to get a really good character.

I know a game with this many scenarios under its belt probably is just the way the users like it at this point so feel free to ignore these suggestions, but I had a few thoughts based on playing some other games. As a software engineer I'll try to keep them reasonable. Also I like the game so I'm not saying it's not already a great game (at a great price too). 1. Find a way so that when you're trying to touch something on the map, what you want to see isn't right under your non-see-through finger. 2. I'm continually moving a character when I want to fire a bow or a spell. It seems that when there is an error (too far away for a bow) it somehow exits the multiple touch system and as a result when I try to reselect the target the character moves instead, usually right into the middle of a bunch of monsters that kill them. Frustrating. 3. It would be nice, not necessary but nice, for the clothing/armor the characters are wearing to be visible on the characters moving around the board. Temple of Elemental Evil did this very well. I pretty sure Realmz did too but I can't remember for sure. 4. It would be nice if the quests showed not only the quest but also what you have accomplished on it. Skyrim does this well. It's hard to remember how many bat colonies you've wiped out when you need to wipe out 4 and so on. 5. Pathfinding needs improvement (to be fair, so does Skyrim). Often I touch on a square 4 away and the character ends up trying to run around the world to get there because of some obstruction I don't see, right into a bunch of monsters that kill her. Again frustrating. Temple of Elemental Evil when you touched the square drew you a waypoint path that showed how the character was going to get there. That was sweet and clever and should be replicated here if possible. It would avoid a lot of pain. 6. Some of the armor items seem more heavy than they'd be in real life. This is a mistake made in most games. Weapons are often also represented as so heavy no-one would ever really be able to use them. Maybe I'm wrong here, but it might be useful to go through the various equipment and do some weighing gear to see if there is any improvement possible. Encumbrance has never been all that much fun for me as a part of the game. That said, this game does a good job of not making it onerous. I just think some of the stuff is a bit too heavy. 7. Why just one ring? D&D limits you to 2 and even that is artificial. Try explaining that to a D&D player. Maybe you should at least allow 2 rings. 8. When you sell something to a NPC, why does he not have it to sell afterward? Sure he might sell it at some point, but I think the things you sell him should add to his inventory. It makes you think you're affecting the world. 9. Replay -- Realmz had a system where you could switch characters in and out of your party from a larger "farm team" group. This allowed you to transfer some decent starting gear off to another group of characters and when you started a new game, you could have them start out with less than the usual pathetic gear. Maybe not many would want to do that, but it also allowed you to bring more mages for some encounters and more fighters for others which was useful. Well, none of these are musts, just suggestions. I wonder if Avernum 7 might be called "Into the Light" and be an adventure above ground in the Empire and below ground in Avernum?

I'm not the sort of person who plays these games multiple times (though I did for Fallout 3 and Skyrim) so that's why I'm asking. I don't want to do all these things that might have terrible consequences only to find out he wants to destroy or conquer the world. I want to know his ultimate goal so I can NOT do the quests (which is what I'll do if I don't find out). Is there actually a laudible goal, or is he the evil bastich he appears to be?

I realize this might be a spoiler (which I don't mind) but having done the first quest, I'm thinking Gladwell isn't the sort of person I want to do quests for. He hits at a "greater purpose" but I'd like to know what that purpose is. I'm new to the series but I notice from posts he appears in other games. Could someone enlighten me? It seems like his quests threaten to destabilize an already fragile world. Also he's an A^%&& (you know what). I'd like to just kill him but I'm guessing the Tower colony wouldn't like it and he'd probably wipe the floor with me anyway. God knows I barely made it out of the tower alive after retrieving the notes.

I find difficulty level hard to assess. I'm on my first Avernum (6 for the iPad) and I just retrieved the notes from the Tower Colony. I have it on Casual because I don't like repeating fights over and over. But since often I find that I'll get 3 town quests from the board and two will be easy and one will pound me into paste in 2 rounds, it's hard to know whether I have it too easy or too hard. Easier to assess with Skyrim where there is scaling. Good game though, if occasionally frustrating. I've played D&D for 30 years and a number of computer games (Wizardry, Might and Magic, Temple of Elemental Evil, etc.) but the one I find is closest to my experience so far was a Mac game called Realmz, sadly no long playable on modern Macs. I like Avernum 6 a lot, but there are a few issues like the fact that you can only get popups on the map by touching them, but doing so makes it impossible to read through my fingers. Frustrating. Also I'd like a system similar to Skyrim where the journal list of quests tells you what you've done on the quest so far. When you have a lot of them, especially when you have to come back later, it's helps as a memory jogger. Great game though.