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First off, read and loved your LPs of exile 1 and 2. Had exile 3 on a 250 games disk and played the hell out of it. Restarted numerous times over the years, but never beat it until the Avernum reboot. Anyway, I've played through the beginning area enough to know that there are a bunch of goodies in fort emergence and upper exile. For starters, I think there's a rough diamond in the fort, bottom left area of the map, hug the outside wall of the building. If you pick up a rock and notice it has a different weight and doesn't stack, that's the one. Also a bunch of secret rooms, one on either side of the lava bridge, and one in the barracks with some scrolls. I remember my last run was a gimmick run a friend of mine and I talked about. Luck tends to make you nigh-unkillable, so what if you made a 1-man party with a character who has to hit 20 luck before anything else. Named the character "Coughdrop" and he was certainly in need of one. For anyone doing a proper run and you want to make things easy on yourself, get a level 7 Mage, a bunch of Mage lore, and enough gold to buy a boat in upper exile. One of the best spells in the series can be gotten before you even have a combat encounter.
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Apr 1, 2016 10:46
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| # ¿ May 15, 2024 01:40 |
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Now that we've seen sleep clouds (the ones spawned by the slime pit), it's a good time to note that we can make our own! Sleep Cloud is a spell for just slightly higher than the cost of fireball and makes a 2x2 cloud that can put monsters to sleep. When asleep, monsters don't attack, and take boatloads of damage. You'd be surprised just what it can work on, too. I've bypassed annoying casters, that spiny worm we saw earlier, and even random basilisks on a good roll of sleep cloud. Great spell on anything annoying you can't kill this turn (and anything standing next to it).
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Apr 3, 2016 13:53
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I never figured out all the specifics to stealing, but I'm pretty sure it was just line of sight. Close the door and wait for the room to empty, and steal away. Anything in a crate can be moved to a remote corner and you're good to go. I don't know what, if anything, affects line of sight. Most likely, if they're still on screen then they'll catch you. Certain areas have posted unmoving guards and I legitimately don't think those items can be stolen (at least not hassle-free). Never tried fooling around with Stealth, but I'm guessing it does nothing. Oh, and pretty sure stealing from fort emergence is an insta party kill.
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Apr 9, 2016 14:24
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Right! I keep forgetting about barriers, and especially about web. Since you start with web on a typical mage, that's probably the go-to on a steal everything run. Does web count as a hostile spell? If you use it and it hits a guard, is that bad news or do they not care?
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Apr 9, 2016 15:56
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I was always annoyed by the force barrier in the slime pit. I don't like not being able to explore something fully and having to backtrack. I think there may have been a secret passage in there with a piercing crystal, though (or maybe I just cheated one in?)? Those things were rare as hell and I always saved/reloaded after using them to find out what's behind a barrier and whether it's worth my time. Never knew the minimum days to prevent damages. I've repeated the "free" areas probably dozens of times as a kid, so I might've taken down the slimes by day 10 before, though it's not super-likely since I tended to clear ALL available upper exile first and have a super party to clear out the first few plagues. Anything actually missing for the first set of changes on day 10? I know the first time I played that Krizsan legitimately lost a bunch of buildings and NPCs, and I think one of the cities near Colchis got destroyed too. Are day 10 changes significant like that, or is it just a few holes in the city walls?
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Apr 13, 2016 21:58
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:Piercing Crystals can be bought cheaply in this game if you know where to look. I presume that berryjon will show off that particular section of the game when it becomes relevant. But the whole "try something, if it fails, reload save" thing is sadly not too uncommon in these games -- piercing crystals, lockpicks, and alchemy all can fail and use up consumables in the process. And there's also Capture Soul -- you can "capture" friendly NPCs like that Empire Archer, say, and summon them later, but the spell is so expensive energy-wise that when you fail you'll probably want to save/reload (faster than leaving town, resting, and coming back). There's a wizard in Fort Emergnce with a low, but not 0 chance to have capture soul work. Just one of many game-breakers you could have within the first week. (Wizards have major summoning, so you can go from a 1 man party to a 20 man army that's been hasted) Don't ask how many times I reloaded to learn that.
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Apr 15, 2016 11:29
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That's not the only game breaking mage related thing the tower provides. If you're a rank 7 mage, you can pick up another fun, potentially game-breaking spell just by digging around until you find the right secret passage: Major Summoning. Not only does it tend to summon 4-6 strong monsters, those monsters are often casters which will haste and bless and summon more things. Summons tend to be really good ways to avoid taking damage during really hectic fights. Also, you can occasionally get basilisks from major summon, whose stone breath can even kill Mung Demons. If you ran a theoretical party of 6 mages who all spent the entirety of their points maxing mage level, then abused the +int glitch, you would legitimately be ready for endgame with the stuff you could've picked up by this point. I was always sad that the Avernum remake series cut magic spells down to almost nothing, but I do at least understand. For as fun and creative as the magic in these games were, it was also INCREDIBLY broken if you knew what you were doing.
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Apr 22, 2016 04:46
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Oh, and I suppose I can talk about another broken spell since we've now seen it for sale: Mass Charm. There are points in the game where you encounter LARGE armies of opponents. Mass Charm hits EVERY participant, and it takes some high level monsters to actually resist it. Mage will have the more consistent game-breakers by max level, but Priest can end certain fights turn 1 by casting Mass Charm and hiding behind some map geometry while everything kills each other. I've never experimented with it inside dungeons (does it work through walls? What are the limits, tile-wise?), and I think my farthest venturing party was mostly mages, so I never tried it against truly "endgame" threats. I can confirm that it can break some mid-game threats over its knee, however, as The large trogolodyte camp outside the castle, filled with dozens of trogs, some mages and priests, and a king is highly susceptible, and you can easily have one half of the army turn on the other. Pretty sure it also charms some of the things the mages tend to summon, so that's a bonus. Was always curious on how the mechanics for resistances worked? Does any enemy listed as "Magic resistant" have the same resistance to Sleep Cloud as they do Mass Charm? Does it hold true across the board?
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Apr 22, 2016 23:40
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The philosophy is irrelevant. In game, you answer "yes" regardless to keep open the possibility of joining the Anama. Since I don't believe there is any equal incentive to say "no", doing so limits you arbitrarily and is thus a bad option. (Though I think you can say no a few times as long as you answer "yes" to most?) I don't officially know if there are ways to actually join the Anima if you fail their tests too many times, but you will still be able to get fake Anima rings later. Fake rings, as far as I know, allow you to act as Anima for all events except venturing up to the second floor of the church, which leads to the discovery of your forgery and the disintegration of your fakes. No free priest spells and no opportunity to loot the vault unless you join the club properly...
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May 6, 2016 10:31
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Rockopolis posted:We're just going to murder a priest and take his ring, aren't we? Well, I suppose it would be 6 priests to get 6 rings. For some reason, membership is an all or nothing deal. Maybe there's something in the scripture about not being in adventuring parties with non-Anama?  Also, it begins to sound like one of those moral dilemma questions: Given the choice, is it morally better to save the life of a priest or let him die and use his ring to unlock magic that could save more people? Is it morally ok to kill one priest for a ring that'll give you access to magic that could save more people? If the priest was a fat man standing near a train...etc.
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May 7, 2016 06:48
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is a pretty universally applicable counterargument, after all.
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It's killing me that so many people think summoning in this game is bad, as that is absolutely NOT the case, especially if you are doing a one character run. Granted, low level summoning spells are generally garbage. At best, they'll take a hit for you, but odds are good that any real fight will have enemy casters, and those casters will AOE your whole group of nephilim or snakes or whatever in a single fireball, and probably hit you too. High level summoning and capture soul/simulacrum can be gamebreaking, and I remember beating a very endgame scenario Tower of Magi demon invasion with repeated casts of high level summoning magic Major Summoning (Which can summon basilisks, which can insta-kill Mung Demons!) and staying out of the line of sight. Since Capture Soul can catch friendly Wizards (and they can cast level 7 magic, including more high level summons), you can basically create an entire army turn 1 and sit safely in the backline. Such tactics aren't necessary for the usual group of bandits, but any big encounter can benefit from it, and it becomes almost a must in a solo run where both magic points and health are precious. Unrelated, but I was always wondering why the Empire even bothered with creating Exile at all since they still have capital punishment anyway. The idea that Exile may have originally been a way to throw unwanted mages and criminals at an unknown and dangerous landscape so that the Empire wouldn't have to spend it's own troops sounds pretty well in line with their usual Machiavellian thinking.
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Jun 8, 2016 01:36
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:I've cleared Exile 3 multiple times with solo characters without casting summoning spells once, though I did freely stoop to other levels of cheese (e.g. abusing the free INT points in the Tower of the Magi, which we discussed earlier). Judicious use of line-of-sight, combined with buffs and debuffs, can make a single character preposterously strong. Ring of Speed + Boots of Speed + casting Avatar/Slow Group/Curse All means getting ten attacks (20 blows with dual-wielding) for every one turn your enemies get, while also rendering you literally invulnerable (one of Avatar's effects) and your enemies horribly vulnerable to physical damage. Stand in an antimagic cloud and they can't even touch you with spells/breath attacks. This setup is very expensive SP-wise, of course, but Haste+Bless+Curse All accomplishes most of what it does for much less of an investment. Really the main thing is to just arrange things so you're only seeing one or two enemies per turn. A PC is usually a match for any one monsters in the game; it's when you get ganged up on that you have problems. Heh, I used pretty much the same sort of line of sight shenanigans in my run, too. I've run a lot enemies in circles by repeatedly ducking around corners . Not really sure what you do in big fights in open fields, though? There aren't a ton of those kind of situations, but when they happen, that's when I usually start spamming summons, if only to get some breathing room before the entire enemy army converges on me. Don't get me wrong, haste and bless Major Blessing, preferably followed by slow is the "proper" intro to most fights, I just like having some extra meat shields/damage sources up to serve as buffer. GodFish posted:Even using low level summons for meat shields can be fairly useful against the last plagues in larger fights. Drop a wall of blades or two on their front line and toss a bunch of generic summons in front of that, toss in a couple demons on the back row with your mages and they'll spend the rest of the fight helping/creating more meat shields while the enemy AI walks back and forth through the blades and attacks the trash mobs instead of your front line that's killing them.
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Jun 8, 2016 03:30
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GodFish posted:Unrelated to that, up north near Erika's tower, there should be a few fights with a good reward that shouldn't be much trouble at your party level, if I'm remembering correctly. Think its an ogre group, a slith group, and then an undead ogre and slith group for a fancy Slith spear? Close. Ogre, Slith, combined Ogre and Slith, Undead. The undead is probably the hardest, but honestly the ogre magi have always been super aggressive, going straight to major haste followed by kill spells and demons.It's a crossbow, spear is in a separate cavern with a shambler. Back in my first ever run of exile 3, I wanted to clear upper exile out first before going to the surface. Don't remember what level I was, but it was day 60 by the time I beat this part. Anaximander actually has separate text if you still haven't explored the surface after a long time!
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Jul 15, 2016 17:43
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Might be saving it for when you have Firewalk, but there's one other thing in the Unicorn Cave. There's a demon if you walk to the edge of the lava and pop the bubble. Barely a threat, especially by the time you get Firewalk, but I always check EVERYTHING when I visit a place, even if I don't have quite the right spells/equipment. Triggering this with an early game group by walking across lava and casting light heal all after every tile...Not recommended.
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Aug 20, 2016 12:43
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| # ¿ May 15, 2024 01:40 |
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Amazing read. I've played this game on and off for over a decade, and I honestly never gave much thought to the story. There's monsters and I have to kill them and figure out whodunnit? Sure, let's make an all mage team and fireball our way to victory. Too easy? Let's do a one player run, and put every point into luck until it caps (Hilarious, by the way, but takes foreeeeeeeeeever. I can still hear the coughing). At some point, I'd always lose interest and pick it up again to try some crazy team composition. I liked to explore, and I loved that the game had hidden passages that were actually hidden. I loved the varied and sometimes completely broken spells. I loved everything about the game, except actually having to progress the plot. Being able to step back a bit and see that there was a real story going on through all the goofy parts makes me appreciate the game so much more. Art could've been another nameless faceless warrior priest build to help fill out the party, but through 3 games she not only told her own story, but the story of Exile that I had somehow missed all this time. Thank you for that.
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Jun 18, 2017 13:16
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