I don't know if these are bugs, cheats, or nothing at all...

[Unwieldy]

I've run into a couple of spots in the game where I can easily kill/loot without consequence, but I'm not sure whether to feel good about being strategic or bad that I'm maybe taking advantage of an oversight in the game.

 

The first concerns Athron's treasure. As far as I can tell, people acquire it by either killing Athron or leaving through the west door. I was able to steal all of it with my party at very low levels (and not nearly enough tool use to open the door) by simply moving my party right past Athron (even though she had turned hostile) and then out of the dungeon! I then reentered her lair and approached her only to find that she was speaking with me as if nothing had ever happened at all!

 

The second situation that definitely seems like a bug concerns killing the spider queen in her upstairs lair - the one across the river NW from Fort Dranlon. I was getting slaughtered in this battle on Torment with my party at around level 20, and then I realized I could simply kill her with absolutely no resistance by just entering combat mode and never entering into the scripted dialogs. The game clearly allowed me to do this, but it doesn't make any sense, so I'm wondering if I'm ruining the realism of what should clearly be a fight.

 

What do you think about these situations? Am I exploiting the game, or do they somehow make sense in the game universe?

[Randomizer]

Athron is probably a bug in that she should pursue you or at least get attacks before you leave the immediate area.

 

Aranea Spider Queen is a common flaw to scripted fights when you start combat before the game has a chance to start the script.

 

Welcome to Spiderweb Software. Please leave your sanity at the door. The games already make no sense.

[Unwieldy]

Athron did get a couple of attacks on one of my party members, but they were so inconsequential and it was still so easy to escape that I thought I might have done something the game didn't intend for me to do. You would think she would at least block the exit. I still don't understand why when reapproached post-looting, she acted as if I never wronged her. Things like this really damage my sense of being immersed in in the story that drives the game. Maybe that's over-thinking things, but depth and continuity of story are just as important to me as gameplay mechanics.

 

As for the flaws with scripted fights - that's unfortunate. I would say the same as above. It seems like it would be a very simple fix to have a monster launch a particular response dialog if not go directly into combat mode itself if struck prior to the regularly scheduled script. As it is now, it seems some monsters will just sit idly as they're bludgeoned to death, thereby making all realism completely fall apart. No sane adventurers would pick an unnecessary fight with a powerful monster if they know they can kill it without one!

[Unwieldy]

Thanks for your quick response, Randomizer. Sorry my first post is a nitpicky one.

[Alorael at Large]

Athron did get a couple of attacks on one of my party members, but they were so inconsequential and it was still so easy to escape that I thought I might have done something the game didn't intend for me to do. You would think she would at least block the exit. I still don't understand why when reapproached post-looting, she acted as if I never wronged her. Things like this really damage my sense of being immersed in in the story that drives the game. Maybe that's over-thinking things, but depth and continuity of story are just as important to me as gameplay mechanics.

This may be intentional. Talking to Athron is necessary for completing one of the three major game-winning quests. People who get locked out because of being greedy and low-level get annoyed.

 

As for the flaws with scripted fights - that's unfortunate. I would say the same as above. It seems like it would be a very simple fix to have a monster launch a particular response dialog if not go directly into combat mode itself if struck prior to the regularly scheduled script. As it is now, it seems some monsters will just sit idly as they're bludgeoned to death, thereby making all realism completely fall apart. No sane adventurers would pick an unnecessary fight with a powerful monster if they know they can kill it without one!

It's a bug. No sane adventurers would avoid an advantage, but no sane aranea queen would stand stupidly because a script didn't trigger. Bugs happen, and they're really flaws in programming, not verisimilitude. If you want the illusion of a world preserved, trigger the script normally and take the hard fight.

 

—Alorael, who acknowledges that Jeff should fix the oversight. He just thinks your complaint is phrased strangely. The break in realism is having the fact that the game is code shoved in your face by strange behavior when players do something that Jeff didn't expect. (He should have expected it, though!)

[Randomizer]

Jeff;s games have always had coding problems with scripted fights. The older Exile series had special encounters triggered when you entered a tile with a white dot on it, but then in combat you couldn't move onto that tile which sometimes blocked a corridor. Avernum fixed that problem, but added a different one when you could go into combat mode and trigger the script after fighting started or not at all.

[Earth]

about Athron, maybe all chars except 1 stayed out of his range so he didn't attack.

 

Batcave assassin is unrealistic, party can go and kill the bats w/o assassin doing anything as long as doesn't step inside "ring".

[Unwieldy]

Thanks for the insight guys. Escape from the Pit is my first foray into Spiderweb games, and I'm enjoying it immensely. That is precisely why I get frustrated when a programming bug reminds me that I'm interacting with code and takes me out of my immersion in the Avernum world. I haven't been this excited about a game since I discovered Shining Force 2 on the Sega Genesis in the early 90's.

[Monfred]

I've killed Thantria this way - simply entered combat mode and attacked her with melee weapons 'till she's dead. Neither she, nor her golem guards had any reaction to my actions. When I left combat mode I could still communicate with her as usually. After she dies her four menacing guards simply disappear so that's definitely a cheating bug.

[Monfred]

Just tried the same thing with Adze-Haakai in the Tower of Magi. If you won't offend him right away but instead agree to deliver his conditions, you can then enter combat mode and kill him with melee attacks without receiving any feedback from him.

[Randomizer]

Adze-Haakai might make the rest of the Tower of Magi hostile so check downstairs before saving.

[Monfred]

Adze-Haakai might make the rest of the Tower of Magi hostile so check downstairs before saving.

 

Everybody thanked me just like if I've slain him in fair combat.

[The Reverend]

Reading this made me curious, so I decided to do an experiment. I attacked one of the shopkeepers in Formello (the one who gives you the bags of meal quests), and the town didn't turn hostile. In fact, the shopkeeper didn't even turn hostile ... I got the pop up warning that the town might turn hostile if I attack a friendly character, but it didn't happen.

[Mosquito---Slayer]

Perhaps the town hated her for overcharging.

[Lilith]

Some NPCs have their AI set to "neutral" instead of "friendly". This means they won't jump into help you if there are hostile monsters around, but it also means that attacking them isn't counted against you.

[Jerakeen]

It also means that they don't care if you steal their stuff right in front of them!

[The Reverend]

I guess I had always thought that "neutral" was only used for characters where one of the game's three major quests would be broken if they turned hostile. But I went and checked, and that shopkeeper is marked blue (neutral) rather than green. I guess that bag of meal quest really is important!!

[stranger]

You are always going to find these things in Jeff's games, it's just him after all.

 

For example I found a stat point exploit.

 

You just have to decide how you want to play.

I don't enter combat mode and make sure events happen as they are scripted.

[Monfred]

You just have to decide how you want to play.

I don't enter combat mode and make sure events happen as they are scripted.

 

Actually at that time there were no alternative ways for me to attack Thantria (there's no such dialog option and my Tool Use was too low to break the door into her quarters), so entering combat mode was the only solution.

 

In both cases the bug is obvious: creatures should always turn hostile against you after you attack them, but for some reason in some cases this doesn't happen.

[Unwieldy]

In both cases the bug is obvious: creatures should always turn hostile against you after you attack them, but for some reason in some cases this doesn't happen.

 

Agreed. I'm willing to overlook trivial glitches. No programmer is perfect. I am a professional programmer myself, and I've never coded a perfect app - at least not one that has a significant degree of complexity. Some bugs, however, have an urgent and significant implact on the way in which a user interacts with your software. This is one of those. No way should a player be able to kill opponents, particularly ones that are supposed to be powerful and important, with zero resistance. This seriously disrupts both the story and the gameplay mechanics of apparently multiple Avernum games, from what people are saying.

 

It's not acceptable to excuse a serious flaw in a game or other piece of software as "that's just the way (so-and-so developer) does things." A good developer is in a sense never finished with their product as they are constantly driven to increase the quality of it when the need is revealed. I hope that Spiderweb cand find the time and budget to address this particular quibble, because as I've said before, they sure have created something great.