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Avernum: Escape from the Pit - Avernum Remix 1.1 Released


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Originally Posted By: HOUSE of S
Although you need Cave Lore for the regrowing herbs, they are not actually in cave lore caches, so I couldn't edit those even if I wanted to. I should probably use the word "cache" to avoid confusion.

Thats good me bruther - ya wanna not be bothering them herb patches.
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A couple of issues with the latest version:

 

Radiate Ice scrolls now need to be targeted; is this intentional? And if you choose a target that's not adjacent, your character ends up trying to run over to it, most likely losing all its AP.

 

And Splinter has a similar mechanic, but even weirder. If you select a target that's not adjacent, the priest runs around, but not in the direction of the target. He just darts around in apparently random directions until he runs out of AP, and nothing else happens. When used as intended, the spell is quite good, but at the very least there should be something in the tooltip about only targeting adjacent creatures. And I worry that hostile spellcasters will not use it properly either, which could make some fights too easy.

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Radiate Ice scrolls: whoops, that's a bug. Fixed for the next version. Actually that affected a bunch of scrolls and a few enemy attacks, too.

 

This (and many of the other bugs) are the result of strange choice made to have each new script definition automatically import all the values of the previous definition... but also to provide an import command so that it can import the values of any other definition in the file. The problem is that you can end up with chains of imports, so that finding out what abilities you will affect when you make a change is not always trivial. I have been pretty good about being on top of this, but errors slip through, as you can see.

 

Splinter: I don't know why on earth it does that. I tried a fix, but it didn't do anything. Hostile casters might actually use it properly -- I'm not sure. Either way, there are only a handful of enemies that cast it and they are all priests loaded up with 5 or 6 different abilities. If you run into a priest who spins around in a circle for no apparent reason, let me know and I'll change it to a different ability for enemies.

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Okay, I'm not too worried about enemy spellcasters wasting their turn. wink

 

I'm up to level 6 on Torment and so far I'm having way more fun than on my previous Torment run. And not just because my fighters are doing more damage, though that does eliminate some of the tedium. Critters can still kill me just as quickly, but I have more tactical options to save myself. The ensnaring effect of javelins can let my speedy missile thrower delay the ones who can one-shot my tank. Scourge weakens their attacks. And War Chant actually does something now, thank you very much. Edit: No it doesn't. Still just an extra 2% to hit for the first level.

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Level 12 on torment and my javelin thrower still is higher on damage. Swords are best with battle disciplines but are slowly getting better. Thrown missiles are so much more effective than in previous games that this is finally viable character. The downside is even pumping dexterity the monsters still have an easy time hitting.

 

Of course the Nephil Warblade with +2 dexterity went to my thrown missile character rather than sword fighter. smile

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Originally Posted By: Slarty
This (and many of the other bugs) are the result of strange choice made to have each new script definition automatically import all the values of the previous definition... but also to provide an import command so that it can import the values of any other definition in the file. The problem is that you can end up with chains of imports, so that finding out what abilities you will affect when you make a change is not always trivial. I have been pretty good about being on top of this, but errors slip through, as you can see.
Yeah, this is the way things are set up in BoA as well. The best way to avoid problems is to always explicitly import.
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the_general_problem.png

 

(Also, I had to eat supper.)

 

Uploading my work now. Are SVG files okay for you? I can make the images some other format instead.

 

EDIT: Link. Looks like you can view SVGs in Firefox, not sure about other browsers.

 

EDIT: Working on a fix that should order children by number. Right now everything is all over the place.

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So, on the one hand, that is extremely cool. I love this stuff.

 

On the other hand, it seems to me that the images are impractically large. Finding the node I need takes more time than just doing a cmd-F for import possibilities. While I can cmd-F the SVG file, at least in Chrome it doesn't seem to relocate the view properly.

 

I guess the real problem is that this is an issue if I forget to check it. The checking isn't the issue, it's the forgetting. Can you make an SVG brain implant?

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Howdy all,

 

Just wanted to say that I'm really liking how you're re-balancing to allow for more diverse strategies. I also did notice that the bows seem to be inferior to the javelins at least for lower levels. Or maybe I am just not noticing the tradeoff in range or something? And will you ever be able to do anything about the javelin animation being the bow animation? Anyway, many thanks for finally making it worthwhile to not create a team of dual wielding meat heads and pure magic users.

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Longbows do more damage than javelins. Short bows are inferior, yes. Hmm -- there aren't many longbows early on, are there. Maybe I should upgrade some short bows. Thanks for the suggestion!

 

Also, I should fix the javelin animation. Whoops. Thanks for pointing that out!

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Okay, branch ordering is now sorted, not based on the order in the hash table, but you're right: the trees are far too large to search visually. I should have anticipated that.

 

I could save space by not listing the name, but that's probably more of a hindrance than a help.

 

One thing I could do: write another Perl script that takes in the definition ID on the command-line and prints out all definitions that depend on that definition. Would that help?

 

Code:
$ ./depend.pl -type=creature -id=187 < avitemschars.txtVahnatai Warrior (187)    Vahnatai Warrior (188)        Vahnatai Shaper (189)            Vahnatai Shaper (190)            Hraithe (193)    Vahnatai Myrmidon (191)        Vahnatai Lord (192)    Vahnavoi (194)

 

This whole exercise was worth it anyway. Did you know Solberg inherits from Sorceress? Even though Erika does not?

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Originally Posted By: HOUSE of S
Longbows do more damage than javelins. Short bows are inferior, yes. Hmm -- there aren't many longbows early on, are there. Maybe I should upgrade some short bows. Thanks for the suggestion!


I'm currently playing four archers (Even without the Remix), and I found one longbow in either Fort Avernum or Silvar, and then just bought 2 and stole 1 more in Duvno. So I did get all of my longbows early on.
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Originally Posted By: HOUSE of S
*nod*

If you want battle disciplines to be great options, you really need to invest in Quick Action -- or in the case of the ranged ones, Sniper. I think you only need 1 or 2 points to get the first of the two damage increases for Flawless Shot.


My javelin user just broke even on damage with Flawless Shot, with 6 points in Sniper. This doesn't seem right, since it means that the second discipline available in the game isn't useful until quite a bit later.
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I can't complain too much, since missile attacks are so good anyway, but I'll be a little more specific.

 

From the start, the Flawless Shot tooltip showed damage ranges sharply lower than the default javelin attack. I did try it out a few times anyway, with dismal results. At some point—not sure when—a 30% bonus appeared on the battle discipline, but it still didn't keep up with the basic attack, especially as it lacked the knockback and ensnaring effects (Edit: Later testing showed ensnare does work with FS. Knockback may also, didn't see it, but small test.)

 

Only at my last level-up did the maximum damage (before any bonuses) finally catch up: 36-144 for the default attack, and 24-144 for Flawless Shot. And while a 30% bonus might be statistically superior to a 50% chance of a 50% bonus, I'm not sure it's better enough to be worthwhile. And it seems wrong to get access to a discipline at level three that is worse than useless until at least level 7, and then only slightly useful in a statistical way.

 

Here are my stats if you want to see:

 

Level: 7

DEX: 14+2

THR: 9

Sharpshooter: 4+2 (Bullseye cloak)

Sniper: 4+2 (Bullseye cloak)

 

Apart from one point that I threw into END, this character couldn't be more optimized for missiles. I notice that equipping the Nimble Sandals tips the balance toward FS by a couple of points, so I guess I can expect that trend to continue as DEX climbs.

 

I realize that there are probably a lot of variables involved here, and frankly missiles are so powerful in this incarnation that they don't need much help. But I wonder if there might be something more useful that could be done instead of a damage boost—maybe knockback of an adjacent target, followed by a normal missile attack, or something creative like that. (Not sure how you justify that, but hey)

 

Edit: It's worse than I thought. I just did a few tests against the ogre in the Nephilim fortress. My hit rate drops by 15 points with Flawless Shot, and despite the tooltip, damage is pitiful. It was a small sample, but damage with my regular attack ranged from about 110 to 180 (including blocked), while FS never got higher than the 50s. Actual damage in the teens or twenties as opposed to forties or fifties. Even if that's a statistical blip (bet it isn't), the hit % is not. Sorry, Slarty, this ability is broken. frown

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In next update:

 

* Changed all short bows to use long bow ability, too. Now all bows have the chance of bonus damage so bows don't suck early.

 

* Fixed Warmth Ring and other rings. Whoops. It does give melee damage in addition to the resistance. Just not 15%. 2%. :-P

 

* Lightning scrolls already fixed, all radiate abilities were fixed.

 

* Jerakeen, THANK YOU so much for relaying all those details. That enabled me to find a culprit I wouldn't have otherwise, as it was the result of confusing imports again. Both ranged battle disciplines did not take levels of damage from an equipped weapon. Whoops.

 

(Unfortunately, they won't take levels of damage or accuracy from Bow/Throw skill. They will get those from Sniper, however. Likewise for the melee disciplines and QA.)

 

Now Flawless Shot should actually do the full 3.5 damage per level. Initially, this is about equal to a longbow's average, but it guarantees you won't get 2.0. I am also increasing the bonus percents or base damage of ALL the direct damage battle disciplines.

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Originally Posted By: Jerakeen
(Edit: Later testing showed ensnare does work with FS. Knockback may also, didn't see it, but small test.)

Are you absolutely sure about this? I've looked over the ability several times and I don't think it is possible for FS to cause ensnare in the remix!
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Uh oh. I think I found the culprit. It's not the weapon.

 

You're going to love this.

 

The 2 ranged battle disciplines have TWO variants. Which one is used depends on whether you have a bow or thrown weapon equipped.

 

However, the battle disciplines info box will ALWAYS display the bow ability and its details, even if you have a thrown weapon equipped.

 

EDIT: Fixed in next release.

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1) I could do that, but it would have to require a high level of Sniper to use, as it would be too good to give such an attack to all characters, free. However, ranged attackers already have a lot of advantages; they are probably the best option for single target damage, and their Cloak is strong and available early. So I dunno.

 

2) Only if you already sold them. The two powerful artifacts I'm thinking of are in relatively distant caches, however.

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Originally Posted By: HOUSE of S
1) I could do that, but it would have to require a high level of Sniper to use, as it would be too good to give such an attack to all characters, free. However, ranged attackers already have a lot of advantages; they are probably the best option for single target damage, and their Cloak is strong and available early. So I dunno.


Maybe make it reduced damage, and no chance to proc the extra damage you gave bows? I never use the cloak.

With a party of DW, Archer, Priest, Mage, only Arcane makes sense.
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I don't honestly know whether this is something you changed, or whether it's a quirk of the vanilla game, but:

 

Bronze Bracers:

Value: 40

Armor: +6%

-5% hit chance

+1% to evade attacks

 

Fine Steel Gauntlets:

Value: 250

Armor: +6%

-5% hit chance

 

 

So that the latter is strictly worse than the former.

 

Still having loads of fun with your mod!

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I'm just about done with my first playthrough & am really looking forward to installing this & running through again. It looks really well thought out & addresses many of the minor complaints that I had/encountered during the initial run through.

 

Thanks for the time you put in, I'm sure it was a LOT but it will benefit a lot of people as well.

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This is great, finally missile weapons have some punch to them, and I like the razor discs and I always ran out too fast. But a couple things that are not good, the spell Splinter doesn't work, she casts it, nothing happens, she turns and walks off, loses her turn. And Mertis Spiral, once everything goes dark, when I got back out all of Avernum was dark and that didn't change, I had to go back to an earlier save. I was hoping to get that brooch this time.

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I'm not sure how my changes could have affected the Mertis Spiral darkness, but I'll look into it. Can anyone else tell me if they did the Mertis Spiral with the Remix, and if so what happened?

 

Splinter works, you just have to be right next to an enemy to use it.

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Okay it does work that way, it would be better if it materialized next to the caster and went from there, part of the idea is to put something between you and the enemy, my priest and mage both have less endurance then the fighters, since my priest fights, she has a little more and better battle skills, but is still lacking for much direct contact.

 

Maybe you could turn the lights on in the Mertis Spiral and solve the whole problem? Kidding, sort of.

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That's how Summon Shade works in the original game. The problem is that the shade generally isn't really strong enough, or enduring enough, to be worth using a turn to summon. It doesn't act the turn you summon it, either. As a result it's kind of a waste to use it in battle.

 

Splinter is more useful in a situation where your priest (or your whole party) is cornered, as it pushes an enemy away in addition to creating the meatshield.

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I agree, actually this is the first Avernum game I found it useful, usually they last about one hit and gone. This game is nice because they do work. I came in on the Avernum series at four, so I missed a bunch of games prior, kind of a newbie in that sense.

 

I like the way Splinter works once its been cast, nice spell.

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I somewhat disagree with Slarty on the endurance of Summon Shade (and all other summons indeed). At least if you play on normal, and if you take all of the summoning traits, summons make very decent meatshields.

 

I just played through with the original rules, without a single melee warrior in my party. It wasn't fast, but with 4 Summons, each at +6 Levels, I was pretty safe in almost all fights. Even against Dragons, Golems and the like, the summons tend to survive 5-6 turns without a heal.

 

I assume we are talking about the highest level summons, not the Level 2 / Level 5 Spells?

 

Torment may be a different story, havn't tried it yet.

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How long they survive really doesn't matter; what matters is what they accomplish. Their attacks are fairly weak. If you get an AoE effect, that can work out well; but one weak ST attack per round, starting the round after you summon them, is not ever going to make up for what else you could have used that action for (i.e., casting an AoE spell) even in terms of raw damage output. Once you take into account that immediate damage is much, much better than delayed damage, due to the fact that it eliminates future attacks entirely by killing things, its offense really falls flat.

 

On the defense end, how many rounds they survive is pretty much irrelevant unless you plan on healing them. They will take a certain number of hits. This can be very useful and more effective than other defensive spells, but again what you are really comparing it to is killing stuff immediately with AoEs.

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Mmh, I guess you are corect if you use AoE as your main damage source. Which a fully specialised mage/priest should, I assume.

 

Nevertheless, the summons, if you do have your party create 3 or 4, do in almost all fights give you the time to pick of enemies one by one. Specifically if the get of some AoE by themselves, they will pull away most or all of the enemies from your characters.

 

I think there are two extremes of battle strategy here, either kill as fast as you possibly can, and hope that the enemy force is significantly reduced before your own party starts hurting too badly, or use your first turn(s) to fortify yourself with summons, buffs and crowd control, and then clean up on your own time.

 

The later strategy worked like a charm for me in my first, normal play-through. I will now start a new game, using your remix, with a similar (but not exactly equal) strategy, but on torment. I'll let you know how it works out.

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I just discovered an interesting bug with the L3 Haste spell (Windows version). I played Jeff's version all the way through & am replaying with the Remix, this only just started happening so I'm assuming that the bug is here rather than with Jeff.

 

When in combat anyone, starting with 8 action points (I don't know about more/less points as I haven't gotten to the point where more is available yet) who casts Haste (L3) ALWAYS uses 5AP & has 3 more left over for another spell. This is only with the L3 spell as everything worked normally (L1&2) until I broke into the Tower's room to read the book for Haste. If you cast haste again, spell energy goes down but you cycle back to 3AP available. If you really wanted you could, on the same turn, cast haste over & over until all the spell energy is gone. Casting a different spell will end the player's turn as will hitting the space bar. Any subsequent actions play out normally, it is just that you ALWAYS have an extra 3AP to do something with after casting Haste. It does make it nice (assuming lots of spell energy available) to be able to top off everyone's haste every couple of rounds & still be able to make a normal attack of some sort.

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