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Aw, man. The Alien Blade is one of my favorite artifacts normally.
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Feb 7, 2015 17:23
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Doctor Goat posted:Aw, man. The Alien Blade is one of my favorite artifacts normally.  It was also pretty good weapon-wise as I recall.Now you've got the event intact but there's just a... sword.
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Feb 7, 2015 17:25
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Rough Lobster posted:Have we ever been able to use X's anvil spell? That thing is a huge cocktease. Play Avernum 6
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Feb 7, 2015 17:43
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There's an Oozing blade in Motrax's cave. It hits like a goddamn truck and applies acid! I just recovered my first crystal soul and had forgotten all about my old friend Mr. Doomguard. I burned through just about every drat consumable I had tearing that guy apart.
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Feb 8, 2015 03:43
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sitchelin posted:I just recovered my first crystal soul and had forgotten all about my old friend Mr. Doomguard. I burned through just about every drat consumable I had tearing that guy apart. Focused attacks are your friends with these guys. Don't bother attacking at all until you're in position to get your entire team to apply as much damage as possible in a single turn. You might have to eat an attack or two in the short term but long-term the fight will go much more smoothly.
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Feb 8, 2015 03:46
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I remember getting a copy of Avernum for myself way back in the day as a kid. I fumbled with the checkout process and bought it for the wrong OS or something, but a quick email to Spiderweb Software and they happily offered an activation code for the right version, no questions asked. I thought my bucks were lost for good; that they'd be all "tough luck!" but nope! I always appreciated that about them, so I'm glad to see Mr. Vogel and his company are having such success on Steam and GoG. If any game company deserves it, they do. Which bring me to why I'm here! I got the big collection package on GoG a little while back, but I'm having trouble building my party in Avernum 1. I can't remember what I did when I first bought it, and even then I don't think I ever got very far. What are some simple tips to follow for a first playthrough so I don't end up restarting five times as I work it out trial-and-error style?
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Feb 8, 2015 07:06
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I like to make a pretty standard fantasy party: -a human sword and board tanky guy who's tough to kill -a nephilim archer with lots of utility like tools/first aid/luck -a human mage devoted completely to nuking poo poo with magic and lore bonuses -a slith priest who is kind of mixed stats-wise and can do well in melee combat with spears I try to have at least one member of each race since sometimes special conversation trees open.
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Feb 8, 2015 08:34
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I always go for a swordsman, a spear slith, and two mixed casters. In Avernum:EftP one will lean one way, the other the other. Earlier iterations of the series I remember allowing a much more even split. But they both start with three in both.
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Feb 8, 2015 11:48
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Tuxedo Ted posted:Which bring me to why I'm here! I got the big collection package on GoG a little while back, but I'm having trouble building my party in Avernum 1. I can't remember what I did when I first bought it, and even then I don't think I ever got very far. What are some simple tips to follow for a first playthrough so I don't end up restarting five times as I work it out trial-and-error style? Is this the "original" Avernum 1, or Avernum: Escape from the Pit which came out a year or two ago? The two have dramatically different customization processes. For the more recent Avernum I favor making two dual-wielding sword dudes (put all points into STR from now until the end of time), and two casters, one holy and one magical (put all points into INT etc.). Arguably 3 casters is "more optimal" but whatever. If you want to really nuke the difficulty curve, get your casters 15 points in basic combat skills (melee/poles/archery/throwing, any combination) so they can use the combat discipline Adrenaline Rush to cast three spells in a row. For the older Avernum, I don't really remember builds, but if I recall correctly there are "secret" skills out there that you can't train in until you've accomplished some task. Some of them are really useful, like Anatomy makes your fighters way more effective against humanoid enemies. So it's worth keeping some skillpoints in reserve (over the course of the game, not right at the start) for when you find those skills.
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Feb 8, 2015 16:12
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Well I finished just about everything. 66 hours for Avernum 2, compared to 42 hours for Avernum 1 a couple years back. Quite excellent, although it did seem a fair bit easier than the first game. That may be me knowing the systems better, though. I suppose I'll have to start A3 on torment when it comes out now! And god it's gonna be a long two years for that one. I liked the first two games and definitely liked the facelift they got with these remakes, but to me Exile 3 is the one, stand-out incredible game Spiderweb has done. My first response to Vogel announcing the remake of the first Avernum was "oh my God he's going to get to the third one eventually, right? Right?!".
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Feb 8, 2015 19:31
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I just hope the Golem Factory is as good as the one in Exile 3, and not the lame one we got in Avernum 3.
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Feb 8, 2015 20:15
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I've just about finished the entire honeycomb in avernum 4 and it is kind of funny how much better the gear I've been getting here is. Values have jumped from 500-600 to 2000-2500 for items and lots of them give crazy bonuses. Can you dual wield in av 4?
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Feb 9, 2015 00:10
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Meiteron posted:Well I finished just about everything. 66 hours for Avernum 2, compared to 42 hours for Avernum 1 a couple years back. Quite excellent, although it did seem a fair bit easier than the first game. That may be me knowing the systems better, though. I suppose I'll have to start A3 on torment when it comes out now! Hahaha yes Avernum 3 was amazing. Coming out and seeing the sun for the first time was great. Outrunning the quickfire stuff too was awesome. What's the name of that anti-magery priest-themed group? Do they have a presence in A2? Also one thing I like about A2 so far--a larger number of the random junk you find is sellable!
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Feb 9, 2015 09:09
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Rough Lobster posted:What's the name of that anti-magery priest-themed group? Do they have a presence in A2? Anama. I don't remember them being in 2, but they show up after 3 at some point.
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Feb 9, 2015 13:59
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Chinook posted:Anama. I don't remember them being in 2, but they show up after 3 at some point. They are not in 2. The Anama are a surfacer thing with their "options" and "not living in a drat cave" thing  Anyways, I'm... fighting the commander to finish the very last epic quest in 2, and oh dear god he gets to a level where he can just one shot my tank and god forbid I have people in a group because then he will cast an area spell and everybody will die  (that fight would already be plenty hard even if he didn't teleport people about after a point)
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Feb 9, 2015 16:43
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:I just hope the Golem Factory is as good as the one in Exile 3, and not the lame one we got in Avernum 3. The Golem Factory is a terrible abomination and easily the least-fun thing about Exile/Avernum 3. The Monastery of Madness is a great apology for it, however. That said, I can't wait for the Avernum 3 remake. Spears and Archery were mad viable because once you got the Black Halberd and the Fury Crossbow nothing survives. NOTHING.
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Feb 10, 2015 00:24
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Just beat Avernum 2: Crystal Souls A bit of spoilers ahead: It was pretty good and I enjoyed the new features that weren't in the first game. I didn't have too much of an issue with the dual wielding change, but then again I was playing on Normal. Also, the Garzhad boss battle was way too easy. I ended up trapping him in a corner where he stayed for most of the battle. I was expecting more bad guys to show up, maybe two or three besides Garzhad actually appeared. Between buffs and mass castings of Divine FIre and Fireblast, Garzhad's HP just melted off. Took me about 40 hours to complete about 98% of everything.
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Feb 10, 2015 01:36
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Playing Crystal Souls, is there any way to respec a character in game or would i need to activate the character editor for that? I'm like level twenty so I don't want to restart, but I'm tired of one of my characters being total dead weight for most of the game.
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Feb 10, 2015 05:27
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Agnostalgia posted:Playing Crystal Souls, is there any way to respec a character in game or would i need to activate the character editor for that? I'm like level twenty so I don't want to restart, but I'm tired of one of my characters being total dead weight for most of the game. Gotta use the editor, unfortunately. That's basically what it's there for. How'd you manage to make a dead-weight character? Tried to do a dual fighter-caster?
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Feb 10, 2015 05:32
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:Gotta use the editor, unfortunately. That's basically what it's there for. How'd you manage to make a dead-weight character? Tried to do a dual fighter-caster? Picking polearms and spreading too thin. I guess they're technically my priest but they suck at that too.
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Feb 10, 2015 07:22
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Kuros posted:Just beat Avernum 2: Crystal Souls Yeah, Garzahd's various minions and underlings will respawn indefinitely if you keep killing them, but if you just ignore them and focus on Garzahd then there's a limit to how many the game will make you fight at once, so it's often better to do that. Garzahd's definitely easier than the Hawthorne and Grah-Hoth fights in A:EftP.
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Feb 10, 2015 07:27
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Rough Lobster posted:I like to make a pretty standard fantasy party: thats generally by party until later on, where i switch my sword and board dude to a duel wielder.
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Feb 10, 2015 07:30
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I switched out my archer with a dual wielder for this playthrough, and left the rest of the team as is. Archery doesn't tend to do a whole lot of damage so I didn't really mind, but man, it's hard to hit poo poo as a dual wielder. I mean I end up missing roughly half the time (with a supposed 90% hit rate) so DW really really hurts.
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Feb 10, 2015 08:32
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Rough Lobster posted:I switched out my archer with a dual wielder for this playthrough, and left the rest of the team as is. Archery doesn't tend to do a whole lot of damage so I didn't really mind, but man, it's hard to hit poo poo as a dual wielder. I mean I end up missing roughly half the time (with a supposed 90% hit rate) so DW really really hurts. I didn't switch my sword user over to dual wielding until around the start of Chapter 4, because until then the reduced hit rate and damage meant it wasn't an improvement over a single weapon. I was playing on the highest difficulty level, but I was also investing literally every stat point in Strength and wearing leather armour to help improve my hit rate. Dual wielders can eventually do more single-target damage than any other build in the game, but they take a while to get going. If your displayed hit rate is already 90% even with dual wielding, though, then you might as well dual-wield: missing a bunch just means you're getting a run of bad luck, which can happen no matter what attack type you're using. It's just more noticeable with dual wielders because they make more attacks in the first place. Thuryl fucked around with this message at 09:36 on Feb 10, 2015 |
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Feb 10, 2015 09:33
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Thuryl posted:I didn't switch my sword user over to dual wielding until around the start of Chapter 4, because until then the reduced hit rate and damage meant it wasn't an improvement over a single weapon. I was playing on the highest difficulty level, but I was also investing literally every stat point in Strength and wearing leather armour to help improve my hit rate. Dual wielders can eventually do more single-target damage than any other build in the game, but they take a while to get going. This is important, I think. People may get suckered by bad tooltip advice such as claiming that dexterity is very important for non-missile warriors as well, when it's really not. Also keep in mind that you get free statups on a rotation as you level up. I've invested all of one point into endurance for my two frontline dual-wielders, which was probably unecessary but I was having hp woes in the beginning, and the rest into strength. Starting at level 8 or 9, dual-wielding was a significant damage increase at a noticable but small accuracy penalty. All points into intelligence for my casters too, and it's working out well. There's very little build variety in these remakes, there are certain optimal builds that far outshine any other. This succinct guide is worth every new player's time to glance over. Another thing to be aware of this time around is that non-humans pretty much suck, the bonus traits that humans get are miles ahead of the other races' bonii. Technically, the best party is all casters, but that can be hard to get off the ground early on. I've been running two dual wield melee fighters, a priest, and a mage with pretty closely consolidated skills, which is close enough to the standard roles that this kind of game seems to want you to take, yet hits far harder for their weight class than my attempts at the traditional quartet ever have.
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Feb 10, 2015 15:24
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Am I missing something or is the upper limit to hit 90%? I don't remember it being like that in escape from the pit and it's constantly turning difficult but otherwise manageable encounters into party wipes
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Feb 10, 2015 16:14
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Mr Snips posted:Am I missing something or is the upper limit to hit 90%? I don't remember it being like that in escape from the pit and it's constantly turning difficult but otherwise manageable encounters into party wipes Yes, it's 90% instead of 95% in Crystal Souls. And agreed with everyone else, I did put some stats elsewhere, but I had 30+ Str in my fighters and 30+ Int in my Priest and Mage. Min-Maxing for life.
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Feb 10, 2015 16:25
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Kuros posted:Yes, it's 90% instead of 95% in Crystal Souls. drat that sucks, it makes it feel like I have much less control over what happens. One other thing, do enemies on the world map ever despawn? I'm trying to visit Solberg and there are enemies preventing me from getting out of the boat.
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Feb 10, 2015 16:43
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I read that brief guide and it just sounds like Crystal Souls is poorly balanced. Kind of depressing, really. I read one recommendation somewhere for both Escape from the Pit and Crystal Souls, but had also seen similar for Nethergate, to give even your tanks/pure fighters level 1 priest spells. It's very cheap and it gives them minor heals and buffs, which extends your resources greatly in long dungeon and wilderness treks. That's the kind of min-maxing I can get behind.
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Feb 10, 2015 17:18
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Mr Snips posted:drat that sucks, it makes it feel like I have much less control over what happens. That is more of a set battle and they won't despawn until you beat them. JustJeff88 posted:I read one recommendation somewhere for both Escape from the Pit and Crystal Souls, but had also seen similar for Nethergate, to give even your tanks/pure fighters level 1 priest spells. It's very cheap and it gives them minor heals and buffs, which extends your resources greatly in long dungeon and wilderness treks. That's the kind of min-maxing I can get behind. This is a very good idea, I would give your fighters that 1 point ASAP since you can use them for after battle healing early on and allow your Priest to save MP for better spells.
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Feb 10, 2015 17:38
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JustJeff88 posted:I read that brief guide and it just sounds like Crystal Souls is poorly balanced. Kind of depressing, really. As I understand it, the goal was to have a character-build system that made it harder to make useless characters. Unfortunately, what that really amounts to is limiting the degree to which character customization can affect your success, which means the build system is not especially meaningful. It's balanced, in the sense that you should have the right amount of power for the fights you get into; it's just not interesting.
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Feb 10, 2015 17:39
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:As I understand it, the goal was to have a character-build system that made it harder to make useless characters. Unfortunately, what that really amounts to is limiting the degree to which character customization can affect your success, which means the build system is not especially meaningful. It's balanced, in the sense that you should have the right amount of power for the fights you get into; it's just not interesting. This reminds me of why I miss having 6 characters and why I resent Jeff a fair bit for changing what was, to my mind, the best part about Exile: 6 man parties. It allowed you to have a "useless" character without crippling your group and opened up a huge amount of options for builds. With 6, one can have a wizard/priest combo with no other skills, or a character that just picks locks, undoes traps and has lore skills but couldn't outfight an egg salad sandwich - that's not really possible in a 4-person party. Even 5 would have been better. Nethergate only let you make 4 guys but you could recruit a permanent 5th member fairly early on to help patch up weaknesses, and it worked quite well.
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Feb 10, 2015 17:57
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I remember one of my 6 party members being someone with balanced stats, a bit of melee weapon skills, a bit of priest skills, and a bit of mage skills. Basically dabbling in everything, like a D&D style bard. He ended up being a rather powerful swordsman, sometimes he was even more useful than my actual fighters. 
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Feb 10, 2015 18:40
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Playing Avernum 3 as a roaming band of Anama Warrior-Monks is a blast. Everyone is a priest, everyone gets a sword. DEATH TO MAGIC!
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Feb 11, 2015 06:48
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I'm pretty sure Avernum was the first CRPG I ever played. The Steam version looks a hell of a lot better than the old one, IMO. Are there any major gameplay changes to it? (Not as though I would remember, I played it nearly two decades ago.  )Wasn't there another RPG Spiderweb put out that cast you as a Gaul fighting Romans? Cialis Railman fucked around with this message at 06:11 on Feb 18, 2015 |
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Feb 18, 2015 06:08
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Yeah, Nethergate, which got remade and is on Steam!
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Feb 18, 2015 06:44
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A long interview with Vogel went up at Gamesbeat yesterday and it is full of Jeff Vogel gems: http://venturebeat.com/2015/02/17/the-original-indie-dev-how-one-man-made-22-games-in-22-years-mostly-from-his-basement/Jeff Vogel posted:Jeff Vogel: For example, take Minecraft. Minecraft, in its basic form, is just out of control in terms of contemporary game design. You go into Minecraft, and Minecraft just murders you. And then it just murders you again. Jeff Vogel posted:The video game industry does not need 100 games a year total. Let alone your roguelike 2D platformer puzzle-stealth game.
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Feb 18, 2015 06:45
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DACK FAYDEN posted:Yeah, Nethergate, which got remade and is on Steam! Awesome! I just remember it being such a unique concept for an RPG. Kunzelman posted:A long interview with Vogel went up at Gamesbeat yesterday and it is full of Jeff Vogel gems: http://venturebeat.com/2015/02/17/the-original-indie-dev-how-one-man-made-22-games-in-22-years-mostly-from-his-basement/ Vogel's absolutely right about indie games.
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Feb 18, 2015 07:29
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Kunzelman posted:A long interview with Vogel went up at Gamesbeat yesterday and it is full of Jeff Vogel gems: http://venturebeat.com/2015/02/17/the-original-indie-dev-how-one-man-made-22-games-in-22-years-mostly-from-his-basement/ To me the best/worst part of that interview is him mentioning that he was at the last PAX. I was at that PAX, and while intellectually I know there's no loving reason I would have run into Jeff Vogel even if I was trying to find him, because PAX is huge, there's a part of my brain currently screaming oh my god you idiot you could have met Jeff Vogel and talked about how you've been playing his games for 15 years and completely embarrass yourself over it and it's making me sad.
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Feb 18, 2015 07:49
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Years ago he talked about how everyone tries to talk up the glories of indie gaming free from corporate shackles, and how nobody seems to consider that 99% of "indie games" consist of "tetris but with pirate decorations."
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Feb 18, 2015 13:15
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