Avernum 5 beaten with Hard Singleton

[Bryce]

It is possible to beat Avernum 5 with a singleton on Hard. I hope that someone will follow shortly with a torment singleton.

 

My Singleton was Ssthss the Divinely Touched Natural Mage Slith Custom, lv 45 at game's end.

 

This was fairly difficult. Most of the serious combats had to be approached in an exploitive manner, e.g. taking advantage of flaws in the AI or physics of the game. There are only a handful of boss fights that I won in a manner that would have worked in a "real life" Avernum, right up until the fight with Dorikas which involved luring him out of the fort so that he was too far away to pathfind back to his better tactical place and just stood there trying to freeze me as his health was slowly drained by arcane blow.

 

The game did get easier towards the end: a level 45 character is fun to play. With nearly 600 energy, and quite a bit of magical efficiency, I could do Arcane Blow and Divine Retribution a lot. I got DR near the end of the game (spending the last 8 or 9 skill points I got on a level of Priest Spells so as to be able to use it) and it was fun; I should have gotten it earlier and put less points into nature lore, which I slightly overspent for lack of patience.

 

Arcane Lore, Nature Lore and Tool Use were not as big of a problem as I thought they would be. Nature Lore was the worst for missing content and having to come back, the full set of Nature Lore enhancing items doesn't occur until the Dark River. Arcane Lore was a problem in the early game but quickly became a non-issue, I may have slightly overspent on it because I thought there were only two +2 AL items rather than 3 of them. Tool Use was a minor hassle, but didn't require too much backtracking. I finished most of the content with TU 14, NL 14, AL 17. (With items)

 

I mostly relied on items and quests for primary stat bonuses other than intelligence. My final stats without items were 6 STR, 7 DEX, 10 INT, 6 END.

 

I used a lot of inventory slots on various stat, skill or resistance enhancing items, swaping them for 1 AP as the situation indicated. Since for much of the game I had >10 AP when hasted, this was not a big loss of turns and was often very helpful. However, I usually only had 9 inventory slots for loot

 

I skipped the lake of trails, soultaker's pit, and two of the tribute quests for the dragon, although I plan to go back there with my Darkside Lands saved game and finish them. As far as I know, I did all the other content of substance.

 

Money was not a problem in the mid-late to late game (actually ran out of useful things to spend it on), that is after Vahnatai lands or so. However it was actually pretty tight in the beginning as I had to purchase many skills and other knowledge, which led to me selling most of my crafting items and some other things I probably shouldn't have sold. However, I correctly guessed that I would have plenty of artifact items to armor/weaponize myself, so this wasn't a big loss. I missed out on Mercurial Plate though.

I used all my mandrake for knowledge brews in Muck.

 

Caveats:

As per the A4 singleton rules, I occasionally used a mule when it would not affect the outcome of combats, e.g. for carrying stuff. (Despite the lack of encumberance from carried objects, a lot of valuable armor/weapon loot does not stack and consequently the number of slots is limiting for a singleton.)

 

I started the game on Normal, but had switched to Hard before New Harston, the game being too easy on Normal. Since the game has been done on Torment up until at least chapter 3, this doesn't affect the beatability of the game on Hard/Torment.

[Randomizer]

Congratulations.

 

What you missed should be doable late in the game with divine retribution.

 

Need to finish my torment singleton that's stuck in chapter 3 waiting for time to play it.

[Callie]

I don't know how you guys do this. I attempted to play A3 on torment singleton and I repetitively died fighting goblins in Upper Avernum.

[Bryce]

By reloading after we get killed by goblins.

Then poisoning them and running away many times.

[Xaiya]

Quote:

I don't know how you guys do this. I attempted to play A3 on torment singleton and I repetitively died fighting goblins in Upper Avernum.

It is called multiple tries, as well as kill and rest. It is the problem of having healing and melee powers. And joining the Anama later really helps.

[Randomizer]

You have to think more with the major fights. When your on your own you can't make strategy mistakes with placing your character in the middle of a fight where all the monsters attack you.

[*i]

Good strategy and a lot of patience. Probably more of the latter, although both are necessary.