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Yeah I agree. I'm definitely waiting for him to remake the sequel in freaking 2016 though.
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Aug 3, 2013 00:47
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So I'm playing Avernum 5 and just got past the Anama Lands. Is it me or is this game harder than 1-4? Also this is by far the most linear of the Avernum games. Hopefully 6 is a little bit more open.
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Aug 30, 2013 04:15
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GreenNight posted:So I'm playing Avernum 5 and just got past the Anama Lands. Is it me or is this game harder than 1-4? Also this is by far the most linear of the Avernum games. Hopefully 6 is a little bit more open. Yeah, A5 definitely got complaints about both difficulty and linearity. (They're sort of related, since if you're stuck somewhere you can't really go off somewhere else -- most of the sidequests are actually harder than the main plot.) A6 is a lot more open-ended.
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Aug 30, 2013 06:33
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Okay awesome, good to know. My second complaint is that I wish the guy would finish his annotated maps, they are all awesome but end half way through 5.
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Aug 30, 2013 13:44
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I dont think I would've continued playing EftP without the "What should I do next?" guide. There's no clear guide in place so I'd frequently stumble into a high-level encounter, get oneshotted, and then repeat the experience elsewhere until I found someplace more to my liking. This is one game where limited level scaling would've been beneficial.
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Aug 30, 2013 13:45
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GreenNight posted:Okay awesome, good to know. My second complaint is that I wish the guy would finish his annotated maps, they are all awesome but end half way through 5. Yeah, unfortunately the guy who currently maintains those has a pretty advanced case of Parkinson's disease, so his ability to work on that kind of stuff is getting limited.  Possibly someone else will pick them up eventually.
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Aug 31, 2013 08:41
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Thuryl posted:Yeah, unfortunately the guy who currently maintains those has a pretty advanced case of Parkinson's disease, so his ability to work on that kind of stuff is getting limited. poo poo, I had no idea. I checked the Spiderweb forums and he still posts pretty consistently so hopefully he is doing OK. I managed to beat Avernum 5, but what a slog. Easily my least favorite of the series. I'm about 10 hours into 6 and holy poo poo I had no idea they re-did the engine. Goddamn! It's like loving Skyrim compared to the old engine. Also so far #6 is pretty drat awesome.
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Sep 20, 2013 00:22
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Avadon 2 is out today on Steam and the Spiderweb site.
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Oct 30, 2013 13:59
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GreenNight posted:Avadon 2 is out today on Steam and the Spiderweb site. and GOG
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Oct 30, 2013 15:28
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Nevermind
Jesto fucked around with this message at 17:08 on Jun 20, 2021 |
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Oct 30, 2013 17:00
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Jesto posted:Any good news on it, or is it still railroady as heck compared to Avernum/Exile and are you still limited to using a tiny party instead of all your guys for no apparent reason other than shoehorning in replayability? Looks like 3 for most of the game. Bloody stupid to have 5 classes and limit your party to 3 people, and it's not like replaying a game gets Jeff more money. I bought it on GOG to support Jeff's great work over the years and to support GOG itself, but that irked me.
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Oct 30, 2013 17:53
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I'm still really early in the game but I am enjoying it way more than I did the first.
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Oct 30, 2013 19:22
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I'll probably buy Avadon 2 but I felt that Avadon was a bit of a letdown compared to his other series. The setting isn't as exotic as Geneforge, Nethergate, or even the baseline Exile/Avernum, even though he's stated Avadon was a concerted effort to do something new. And I hate to poo poo on all the effort that he put into it, but his attempt to flesh out the companions and build a focused campaign story also fell flat for me. Vogel's normally great at building up a big picture as you explore the setting and injecting a lot of personality in incidental NPCs in his other games, I just think he's not used to doing it with a set party and a fixed campaign progression. A lot of the central narrative also seemed to be focused on building up Redbeard, who I just couldn't find compelling, moreso than the player character. I also disliked a lot of the design decisions like the intersecting ability tree requiring you to take ranks in a useless/unwanted ability just to get ranks in a higher tier ability.
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Oct 30, 2013 21:18
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moot the hopple posted:I also disliked a lot of the design decisions like the intersecting ability tree requiring you to take ranks in a useless/unwanted ability just to get ranks in a higher tier ability. That one's always a pisser. Diablo 2 got around that by having synergy (haven't played Diablo 3 and probably never will) that let you augment abilities with points in prerequisite abilities, but I agree that that is poor design.
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Oct 30, 2013 22:09
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moot the hopple posted:I also disliked a lot of the design decisions like the intersecting ability tree requiring you to take ranks in a useless/unwanted ability just to get ranks in a higher tier ability. JustJeff88 posted:That one's always a pisser. Diablo 2 got around that by having synergy (haven't played Diablo 3 and probably never will) that let you augment abilities with points in prerequisite abilities, but I agree that that is poor design. Also, just as much as the ranks in useless abilities, the equally annoying problem with ability trees is that there's usually one or two kick-rear end builds, a few ways to build good-not-great characters, and then the other 95% of ways to invest skill points fall somewhere on a scale between inefficient, mediocre, and cover-your-eyes-ugly.
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Oct 31, 2013 01:36
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Can someone remind me how Avadon 1 ended before I start Avadon 2? It's been years unfortunately.
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Oct 31, 2013 01:38
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Rascyc posted:Can someone remind me how Avadon 1 ended before I start Avadon 2? It's been years unfortunately. Depending on what you chose at the end, there's a branch in leadership (I guarantee it uses the safe option though), but the general state of things: Avadon, the fortress police force that enforces the Pact of nations, has been attacked and splintered, with a mass of its most infamous criminals from the prison beneath freed, attacks on the entire place leaving it with a skeleton crew, and some of its leaders having fled to a traitor-nation who seem to come out on top from the chaos they left in their wake. You're all rebuilding.
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Oct 31, 2013 01:46
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moot the hopple posted:I'll probably buy Avadon 2 but I felt that Avadon was a bit of a letdown compared to his other series. The setting isn't as exotic as Geneforge, Nethergate, or even the baseline Exile/Avernum, even though he's stated Avadon was a concerted effort to do something new. And I hate to poo poo on all the effort that he put into it, but his attempt to flesh out the companions and build a focused campaign story also fell flat for me. Vogel's normally great at building up a big picture as you explore the setting and injecting a lot of personality in incidental NPCs in his other games, I just think he's not used to doing it with a set party and a fixed campaign progression. A lot of the central narrative also seemed to be focused on building up Redbeard, who I just couldn't find compelling, moreso than the player character. The skill tree has been freed up a little bit in Avadon 2, although you still have to rank up prerequisites in order to get high-tier skills. I actually kind of wish Jeff had made Redbeard's possible death in Avadon 1 canonical for Avadon 2 because I'm a bit worried about him getting overexposed, but no, it looks like he's hanging around for another game. In other, hilarious news: Avadon 2 apparently has a romanceable NPC (opposite gender to the player by default, but the manual lists a cheat code to enable same-sex romance). There's been a surprising number of people on the forums asking for romance options in Spiderweb games for a couple of years now, and it looks like they got their wish. I'm still a little baffled that Jeff actually went through with it, but, well, he has been on a Bioware kick lately.
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Oct 31, 2013 01:49
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Thuryl posted:In other, hilarious news: Avadon 2 apparently has a romanceable NPC (opposite gender to the player by default, but the manual lists a cheat code to enable same-sex romance). There's been a surprising number of people on the forums asking for romance options in Spiderweb games for a couple of years now, and it looks like they got their wish. I'm still a little baffled that Jeff actually went through with it, but, well, he has been on a Bioware kick lately. "Lately"? He's always been upfront about being a big fan of them and Avadon 1 was a fairly blatant attempt at making a game like theirs, minus the romance bits. I haven't gotten far in the game enough to grasp it, is the writing for it at least non-cringeworthy?
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Oct 31, 2013 01:53
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01011001 posted:"Lately"? He's always been upfront about being a big fan of them and Avadon 1 was a fairly blatant attempt at making a game like theirs, minus the romance bits. I dunno, I haven't really had time to get into the game myself yet. What little I've seen of it looks, well, pretty much par for the course for a Bioware-style romance. It's completely optional and avoidable, at least. But on balance I'm in favour of it anyway, just because I'm looking forward to watching RPGCodex collectively poo poo themselves with rage.
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Oct 31, 2013 02:00
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I played Avadon 1 demo, but the clunkiness of the system got to me. (I still haven't finished Geneforge 1. And there I didn't mind the clunkiness because it had an excuse. And I like the Geneforge world so much better than being a magi-Spectre).
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Oct 31, 2013 02:14
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MagusofStars posted:Actually, the real reason Blizzard added synergies wasn't the intersecting abilities so much as the fact that early skills were so useless that you'd just put in one point to unlock higher tier abilities and save all other skill points until you reached an appropriate character level to get actually valuable skills. All classes suffered from this, but it was most ridiculous with Sorceresses: Since spells were mana-expensive and relatively ineffective at Skill Level 1 and you *also* didn't want to invest stat points in your Magic stat long-term, the optimal means of leveling a black mage basically involved not using magic for most of Normal Difficulty. Oh, I am well aware of that even if I didn't say it - I played a ton of sorceress in Diablo 2, though I never went past nightmare difficulty, and it was a mess for a long time. I didn't optimize, though, and never played PvP or hardcore because I don't hate myself that much, so I would toss Blizzard Orbs, Meteors, and Chain Lightnings all the time. I wanted to play with all of the beautiful blastful toys rather than have 2 spells that were godly and a bunch of no-hopers. You're right though - it was horrid having to put a point into Lightning Bolt to unlock Chain Lightning even though the latter is better in every buggering way.
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Oct 31, 2013 03:21
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Playing Avadon 2 with a sorcerer. Not sure why, but everyone in my party is weird colours. Kind of jarring when the blademaster NPC has a bright green cloak and purple skin while her portrait is a caucasian lady in red. There was also a ghost that looked like a blacksmith NPC and that felt a bit weird. Haven't seen much of the romance except for some vaguely Bioware-style "let's spend time together" dialogue options at the end of the tutorial section. The romance option has had pretty limited screentime for the first couple hours. Probably for the best.
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Oct 31, 2013 03:42
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rodomontade posted:Playing Avadon 2 with a sorcerer. Not sure why, but everyone in my party is weird colours. Kind of jarring when the blademaster NPC has a bright green cloak and purple skin while her portrait is a caucasian lady in red. There was also a ghost that looked like a blacksmith NPC and that felt a bit weird. As near as I can tell, the Day-Glo colour schemes on your party members are (1) to make them stand out in a crowd when they're not in your party, and (2) to make them visually distinct from a main character of the same class.
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Oct 31, 2013 12:23
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Is there some way to enable/re-enable the combat log? I don't see an option for it anywhere.
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Oct 31, 2013 16:20
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01011001 posted:Is there some way to enable/re-enable the combat log? I don't see an option for it anywhere.
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Nov 1, 2013 00:32
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01011001 posted:Is there some way to enable/re-enable the combat log? I don't see an option for it anywhere. Hit the T key on your keyboard. It no longer shows hit chances when you miss with an attack, though.
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Nov 1, 2013 05:09
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It's super depressing that google result number 4 for "Avadon 2" is some warez site. I'm enjoying it so far though. I'm kind of annoyed Redbeard is apparantly alive after I spent like an hour killing him.
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Nov 1, 2013 13:07
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They did the same thing in Avernum 6 - I killed a bunch of dudes in 5 that showed up in 6. It happens.
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Nov 1, 2013 13:35
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Also here is Jeff talking about the release: http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2013/10/we-finally-released-avadon-2.html
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Nov 1, 2013 13:43
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GreenNight posted:They did the same thing in Avernum 6 - I killed a bunch of dudes in 5 that showed up in 6. It happens. Oh sure, I was just making a not too funny joke about how tedious that fight was.
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Nov 1, 2013 14:47
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The Moon Monster posted:It's super depressing that google result number 4 for "Avadon 2" is some warez site. This always happens. Jeff has gotten more philosophical about it these days. Avadon 2 has already made about half the lifetime sales figures for an average Spiderweb game in its first 24 hours, so he can afford to be.
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Nov 1, 2013 15:12
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Avadon 2 seems far, far better than the first. Got it today, playing a Tinkermage (because new class!), and having a blast. The fights are noticeably harder - I had trouble in the Contested Lands on Normal, much to my surprise. Comparatively there were no (non-optional) fights in The Black Fortress I really struggled with, even at the end. The game actually feels like it has choices now, and Avadon doesn't seem like the only way forward. We start to see alternative power structures, like Hanvar's Council, and it all seems to mesh really well. I've only been to the Contested Lands and the Corruption, but this honestly feels a lot like the first game should've been. That being said, energy still doesn't regenerate between fights, forcing you to either do every fight with as little energy expenditure as possible (boring), or to walk back to the pylon every ten minutes (more boring), or to use cheats to recharge (cheating, but by far the best option). I feel like I either need to spec my dudes around their basic attacks, or risk having to go home all the loving time. In a game with a wide variety of skills, making your best option 'don't use your skills unless absolutely necessary' is a really frustrating design choice. Why we couldn't get passive energy regen between fights, kinda like Avernum's First Aid, I don't know. In addition, the walking speed in Avadon is terribly loving slow in comparison to the Avernum series, and I have to wonder what was wrong with the old engine, where walking was blindingly fast and cut out the 'boring walking back and forth for no loving reason' time out of the game nearly entirely. That being said, combat is more fun, the storyline is actually compelling, I feel like I'm doing important poo poo instead of just wandering along and hoping I'll blindly fall into the plot, I tend to think my dialogue choices through more carefully because on occasion they seem to have actual impact, and it started out interestingly. If it ends up having as many endings as it says it does (seriously, give me, like, three or four proper ones - maybe support the Council, Avadon, the rebels, and maybe a sweet ending where me and my tinkermage buddy look the vaults of Avadon and retire to Svorgald to live like pirate kings), I'm going to be thoroughly psyched. I also like the fact that the advice screens are all 'Hey, buddy. Make your companions like you to get more endings'. Knowing the poo poo that helps me unlock endings beforehand is really appreciated.
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Nov 1, 2013 16:01
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occipitallobe posted:Avadon 2 seems far, far better than the first. Got it today, playing a Tinkermage (because new class!), and having a blast. The fights are noticeably harder - I had trouble in the Contested Lands on Normal, much to my surprise. Comparatively there were no (non-optional) fights in The Black Fortress I really struggled with, even at the end. The game actually feels like it has choices now, and Avadon doesn't seem like the only way forward. We start to see alternative power structures, like Hanvar's Council, and it all seems to mesh really well. There's definitely been a significant rebalancing effort gameplay-wise. In particular, the effect of Dexterity on evasion has been halved, so you can't just evasion-tank absolutely everything any more. Dexterity's still a good stat, but Strength-based melee builds are actually a viable alternative now. quote:I've only been to the Contested Lands and the Corruption, but this honestly feels a lot like the first game should've been. That being said, energy still doesn't regenerate between fights, forcing you to either do every fight with as little energy expenditure as possible (boring), or to walk back to the pylon every ten minutes (more boring), or to use cheats to recharge (cheating, but by far the best option). I feel like I either need to spec my dudes around their basic attacks, or risk having to go home all the loving time. In a game with a wide variety of skills, making your best option 'don't use your skills unless absolutely necessary' is a really frustrating design choice. Why we couldn't get passive energy regen between fights, kinda like Avernum's First Aid, I don't know. Don't stress too much about fatigue: unless you spam skills in every single little trash fight, you're unlikely to actually run out in most early-game areas, although you may run low toward the end. Tinkermages have it especially good, since their basic turret only costs 1 fatigue and lasts easily long enough to finish most fights. quote:In addition, the walking speed in Avadon is terribly loving slow in comparison to the Avernum series, and I have to wonder what was wrong with the old engine, where walking was blindingly fast and cut out the 'boring walking back and forth for no loving reason' time out of the game nearly entirely. It's pretty easy to mod the game to fix this, if you want. Edit the av2itemschars.txt file in the Scripts folder inside the Avadon 2 folder. Look for the name of each class, and change the cr_walk_speed entry under them to some value higher than what it's set at. This will definitely work if you do it before starting a new game; I'm not 100% sure it will work on existing savefiles, but it's worth a shot. Note that if you bought the game off Steam, this may or may not cause the game to fail Steam's integrity checks. quote:That being said, combat is more fun, the storyline is actually compelling, I feel like I'm doing important poo poo instead of just wandering along and hoping I'll blindly fall into the plot, I tend to think my dialogue choices through more carefully because on occasion they seem to have actual impact, and it started out interestingly. If it ends up having as many endings as it says it does (seriously, give me, like, three or four proper ones - maybe support the Council, Avadon, the rebels, and maybe a sweet ending where me and my tinkermage buddy look the vaults of Avadon and retire to Svorgald to live like pirate kings), I'm going to be thoroughly psyched. I peeked at the hintbook, and it's got a list of ending options and criteria. Vague ending spoilers follow: As near as I can tell, it works sooorta like a hopefully-less-ineptly-implemented version of Mass Effect 3. As you do sidequests for people connected to Avadon, the game tracks a hidden score representing Avadon's military and political strength. In the endgame, you can choose whether to serve loyally under Redbeard, challenge Redbeard for leadership of Avadon, or betray Avadon entirely. After playing through the endgame associated with your particular ending path, you're then given a further set of options which determine your final ending, with the availability of some options being dependent on Avadon's strength.
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Nov 1, 2013 16:53
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So I grabbed Avadon 2 off GOG and am thinking about making a tinkermage but again the ability trees for this series bugs the hell out of me. I want to build a ranged and turret tinkermage specialist but a lot of the prerequisites are geared for a melee build. Hell, two out of the three baseline skills that you need to increase for everything else are melee focused. So if I want to focus on just throwing grenades and missiles, I'm still forced into upping stuff like melee damage and armor which would be useless for my chosen playstyle. People have complained that Avadon railroads players, and I think this applies even to character creation, when you can't even customize to your liking and half of your level ups are "wasted" on meeting unfun prereqs.
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Nov 2, 2013 21:10
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So I wanna try these games, and I was going to buy the 1-6 bundle on GoG, but come to find out my card does not support international thingies or whatever, so I need a different pay method. I want the game NOW because I'm an entitled baby, so is it worth starting with #4 from steam? Or is this something I really want to start from 1? tdlr: Which game should I start with?
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Nov 2, 2013 23:26
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Goobish posted:tdlr: Which game should I start with? Avernum: Escape from the Pit or Geneforge 1
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Nov 2, 2013 23:47
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moot the hopple posted:So I grabbed Avadon 2 off GOG and am thinking about making a tinkermage but again the ability trees for this series bugs the hell out of me. I want to build a ranged and turret tinkermage specialist but a lot of the prerequisites are geared for a melee build. Hell, two out of the three baseline skills that you need to increase for everything else are melee focused. So if I want to focus on just throwing grenades and missiles, I'm still forced into upping stuff like melee damage and armor which would be useless for my chosen playstyle. People have complained that Avadon railroads players, and I think this applies even to character creation, when you can't even customize to your liking and half of your level ups are "wasted" on meeting unfun prereqs. Yeah, some of the skill trees are weird. A turret-making tinkermage is still the most powerful build in the game even with its weird skill tree, though, and works fine as a missile build: invest in Dexterity and you'll do fine with missile weapons even if you have to hold off on the second-tier missile skill until late in the game.
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Nov 3, 2013 00:34
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Is Avadon 2 friendly to those who have not played the first game?
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Nov 3, 2013 00:42
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| # ? Jun 10, 2024 15:11 |
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Goobish posted:So I wanna try these games, and I was going to buy the 1-6 bundle on GoG, but come to find out my card does not support international thingies or whatever, so I need a different pay method. I want the game NOW because I'm an entitled baby, so is it worth starting with #4 from steam? Or is this something I really want to start from 1? Have you tried Jeff Vogel's site at Spiderweb.com? He'll sell you the first trilogy for 25 bucks there, and as long as you write down/remember your reg code there's no DRM on copying the files.
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Nov 3, 2013 00:53
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