A6 - Few questions from the newbie

[Februarius]

First, hello to all on this forum. I just reacently and accidentaly discovered Avernum series and I must admit that I was totaly stunned. I am a big fan of epic party based RPG-s in the fashion of great Baldurs Gate, with great story, big world, lots of quests and conversations. Ok to get to the point. I would like to ask few questions to know some things that I will probably discover later through the game, and then if I did something wrong I would need to start game again. And I realy hate that.

Here are the questions:

 

1. First of all I noticed that when you pick traits during character editing you cant see them below character picture. Is this a bug, or this feature is not implemented? I changed traits for the lizard and again his old ones where below picture.

 

2. I also noticed that number of selling price of the item is not the same as the number of item value. I had item with value of 50 and sold it for 10. Whay is this?

 

3. What difficulty level should I pick. I am asking this because in lots of games normal is not quite challenging. And again I dont want impossible game with loading every 2 minutes.

 

4. What is the best weapon combination: dual wielding, one handed, pole, sword, sword and shield. I noticed that you can carry shield regardless of the weapon type, wich is not common in RPG-s, like bow + shield. How does this affect things?

 

5. How realy big is this game? Is the world realy that huge? How many quests are there? And do monsters respawn?

 

Ok I think this is enough for the begining .

I am sorry if someone already asked this questions and I am asking them again. Also if someone can point me to some post where game mechanics are more detaily explained I would be very thankful.

[Triumph]

1. Not sure what you mean. Are you using the character editor or talking about character creation? And by "traits" do you mean racial traits (which show up below a character portrait) or...well, Advantage/Disadvantage "traits?" As you can see, racial traits show up on the character creation screen, but Advantages and Disadvantages do not; that's normal. Humans don't have any special racial traits.

 

2. Just because. I don't believe there's much of anything you can do about it, just be aware that the nominal item value is not what things actually sell for.

 

3. I found Normal to be just right - I occasionally had to reload, but never often enough that it was annoying. You can change the difficult at any time during the game, though, so if you start on one setting and dislike it, it's easy to switch while you're playing.

 

4. Mathematically skilled game gurus (a.k.a. Slarty the Great) have analyze the game extensively, and found that dual-wielding will lead to maximum damage output. However, it's not THAT much more than than the best pole weapons. There are some good shields, but shield-using really isn't optimum in this game (i.e. dual-wielding or pole weapon is better), except maybe perhaps possible for a magic-user. Bows: it doesn't not adversely affect your peeps in any way to give each a bow (well, aside weight if you encumber them). Bows are not as powerful as other forms of inflicting damage, but I found them useful for occasional ranged whittling of enemy HP.

 

5. The game world is...pretty big. Not sure what sort of point of reference would apply. There is a little monster re-spawning, but not a huge amount. There are several tiers (four or five?) major quests to advance through (so I'd say at least 15 major quests in main plot), plus probably a few dozen more optional quests, some very small, and some massive.

 

A6 is definitely a fun game!

 

Edit: at the top of the Avernum 6 forum, you will see some stickied posts. The Comprehensive Skill Effect post will tell you a lot about game mechanics, and the Strategy Central post contains links numerous other informative threads.

[Februarius]

Triumph, thank you for you replay and detailed info.

 

1. Yeah now I see, I didnt know that traits beneath the player picture are racial traits. Thank you for clarification.

2. I thought that it has some relation with reputation, but I guess this feature doesent exist in the game.

4. Ok, thanks for explainin this. I must admit that it was strange for me when I could equip shield with bows and spears. Just a habit from other rpg i guess. I prefere wariors with shield and sword style and spelcasters with light weapons (bow, slig or wathever). Legacy form BG series

 

I'm thinking of creating a party of two humans (warrior and sorcerer), one reptil (shaman looks good, as it is combination of a warrior and priest) and one cat (probably fast fighter/rouge with good lockpicking and use of long range weapo). Maybe I totaly missed the poant here, but this is something that looks balanced form logical point of view. But again I don't know much about how the game works. Well I guess I'll have to learn something by myselfe

 

Again thank you for your reply, and help. Cheers !

[So Much Killing]

2. IIRC, there was at least one of the six games where one of the skills you could develop did increase the amount of gold you would get when you sold items. But it is not A6.

 

4. Dual wielding is definitely the best for front-line fighters in the mid to late game. Early on, a pole weapon does more damage, so makes the early game easier. But there are a lot of good swords in the game, so were I to create a new group, I'd definitely make my front-line fighters all dual-wield.

 

Humans are widely regarded as a bad choice -- which is unfortunate because I'd rather my PCs were human, and I like the pictures better. But the cats are the probably the best choice, with the Slith a close second -- especially if you're going to go with a pole user. If you read the Strategy Central stuff, or other party-building threads, you'll find that Divinely Touched is recommended for all PCs, and warriors should be Elite Warrior, mages should be Natural Mage, and priests Pure Spirit. The loss in XP is more than made up for by all the extra levels of important skills.

[Alorael at Large]

2. A1-3 have Barter, which increases the proportion of the value that you get when selling. It disappeared in A4. As a point of interest, the value of an item is the base cost at a store, modified by the shop's relative expensiveness.

 

3. You can change the difficulty at any time mid-game, so don't worry about it too much. Start at normal and adjust up or down to taste. Torment is very tough, too. Don't try it until you're used to the engine and are willing to commit to aggressively optimizing your party.

 

Sliths are very good with pole weapons, but that's their one trick. There's no reason to make a character a slith if you don't want them to beat up enemies with sticks. Nephils also have essentially one trick, but that trick is bows, and since there's no penalty for equipping a bow, you might as well give one to everyone and plink away happily. Notably, it's a good way to let your casters stay effective without wasting their energy. Humans only get a reduced experience penalty, and since experience costs scale, it's actually not terribly helpful to reduce your penalty anyway.

 

Traits are a more important decision. The ones generally considered good are Divinely Touched, Elite Warrior, Natural Mage, and Pure Spirit. Deadeye, maybe, if you want to create a dedicated archer, but that's not an easy or optimal build. DT is good for everyone and improves just about everything. Elite Warrior improves combat substantially. Natural Mage improves casting and, more importantly, lets your mages wear some armor.

 

—Alorael, who wouldn't worry too much about optimizing weapon choices. Duel wielding is nice, but it's also nice to have someone able to wield the spears you find. There are some good shields, too, although it often makes sense to give them to your casters, and dual wielding is markedly better than sword-and-shield. The one thing you don't want to do is try one hand only. You're just wasting a slot.

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: A Hard Day's Rest

Sliths are very good with pole weapons, but that's their one trick. There's no reason to make a character a slith if you don't want them to beat up enemies with sticks.

I've heard of people making slith mages because they wanted the fire resistance and bonus HP more than they wanted the bow skills. I'm not sure if it's optimal, but...

[Drayk Armitage]

Bow skills are less useful in A6, and the resistance bonus has been upped, so it is less clear-cut than in the past. I ended up going with Sliths for my singleton, after a lot of time spent in analysis.

[Alorael at Large]

For singleton, that makes sense. You get benefit from the spear skill bonus. (Or so I assume; you didn't make a dual-wield singleton slith, did you?) A non-combat caster, on the other hand, doesn't need spears at all. The static bonuses are nice, but I've gotten enough mileage out of ranged weapons that I really don't think a slith is the best choice.

 

—Alorael, who should add that one of the major but not obvious benefits of non-human casters is that they get better access to combat disciplines. Disciplines are very good for everyone, and humans really lose out there.

[Drayk Armitage]

I believe I eventually went to dual-wielding, but the polearm skill -is- useful early when strong halberds are easier to find than strong melee weapons.

[Øther]

WHile everyone is talking about traits, here's a quick question: I know that the best thing to do is load up on divinely touched and then EW/NM/PS for your characters, has anyone tried seeing if having, say, a human with the worst disadvantages would do well, since they would have the best experience gain? If I had the choice, I would still go with the good traits, but I am interested in seeing if this could be comparable to going with the good traits.

[Triumph]

I believe ye olde Slarty did the calculations somewhere, and in the end the skill points gained via the good traits beat the skill points gained by a few extra levels. It's the whole diminishing returns on experience thing kicking in. As you level, you get less experience. So a human with penalties levels up faster...and starts getting less experience sooner. In the end you're better off going the way of positive traits, where you may level a little more slowly, but you'll get close to the same number of levels, PLUS all the bonus skill levels that DT / EW / NM / PS bestow.

[Øther]

I figured that was the case, but I was still interested in if it could work out. I must have missed Slarty saying anything about it though, since I don't remember anything about that.

[Alorael at Large]

The difference in experience between a character with a huge penalty and a character with no penalty is only a few levels, and the difference between no penalty and a bonus is even less. For that, you get saddled with whatever negative effects the traits carry for the rest of the game. No, it's not worth it.

 

—Alorael, who will also point out that a few levels actually make not very much difference. The rising skill point costs of the skills you want mean that you're much better off getting bonuses from traits.

[Randomizer]

It's roughly 2 levels of experience per 10% penalty, but you get those bonus skills earlier in the game than if you wait until you have the levels.

 

I think Avernum 4 was the last game where someone tried using a human with the 2 worst traits and that was on easy difficulty. The penalties mean lots of extra damage.

[Lilith]

Loading up on disadvantages does work pretty well in earlier games like A3 and BoA, where experience bonuses and penalties tend to be bigger and the experience scaling curve is somewhat less steep.

[Erebus the Black]

Originally Posted By: Øther

I figured that was the case, but I was still interested in if it could work out. I must have missed Slarty saying anything about it though, since I don't remember anything about that.

I asked about it once and all I got was a wise-crack
here's the address: http://www.spiderwebforums.com/forum/ubb...1469#Post181469