These are the Consequences of our Actions - Exile 3: Ruined World

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Parts Kit: Jun 9, 2006; durr
i have a hole in my head
durr

The real concern with higher level summons is any creatures that cast spells do not take friendly fire into account. So you can get Firestormed/Shockstormed into oblivion by your own dudes.

I'm really, really late to the Anama chat, so I'll try to keep this short. It may seem like their dialogue is clumsy, and it kinda is since the engine and folks' non-quest short attention spans are not suited to long intricate dialogs, but the thing is people really do argue like that regularly. Especially in contexts where either the person is outright not at all interested in a discussion or has a short chance to grab attention of a handful of undecided viewers. Internet arguments (before devolving into "you're Neo-Hitler" level namecalling anyways) are an obvious example but you'll see it on news shows and in editorials too. People will bring up something that is undeniably tragic, demand their opponent respond, hoping they can either smugly act as if a "yes it is horrible" answer proves their position correct and if the person tries anything else immediately interrupt and paint them as a horrid person. This tactic also has the side benefit of keeping responsibility for making a statement on the person asked, so the asker doesn't have to actually put forward a position to fight in the first drat place. It's a fairly common tactic all around but especially in all sorts of movements that can be summed up with "I don't like (thing), it's bad, let's ban it." And people do fall for it. Hell, it's pretty much a staple of the Daily Show gag interviews. Ask something that's a fairly simple moral question, cut to them pausing for a second or two from somewhere else in the interview, let audience decide they're lovely people, rake in advertisement profits.

edit: oh poo poo I just remembered, Katie loving Couric has been slammed in the last week or two for just this kind of setup complete with deceptive editing. So yay recent real world example!

Since Vogel was clearly on the internet in the 90s (the anvil thing with X is apparently some old proto-forum in-joke) it's not unlikely that he was familiar with the kind of bumper-sticker level of conversation that the Anama give. Since I was a kid in the 90s and mostly interested in goofing off and being a kid than following the news I can't say it was reflective of how people argued then but it sure as hell is now.

Parts Kit fucked around with this message at 01:39 on Jun 11, 2016

# ¿ Jun 11, 2016 01:27

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# ¿ May 15, 2024 17:58

Parts Kit: Jun 9, 2006; durr
i have a hole in my head
durr

TooMuchAbstraction posted:

Presumably what was meant is that he had a group of online friends and they liked to joke about dropping anvils on people, so he worked it into the game. Online forums have been around in various forms for many decades now -- there's BBS systems as probably the earliest incarnation, then Usenet was huge for quite some time.

Yes, I forget exactly where I read it, probably on the Avernum forums, but it's at least in part a reference to some ancient BBS joke.

# ¿ Jun 12, 2016 03:54

Parts Kit: Jun 9, 2006; durr
i have a hole in my head
durr

Dmar posted:

Even so, he gets my money every time

Hey if Nintendo can do it so can Vogel.

# ¿ Jun 12, 2016 20:48

Parts Kit: Jun 9, 2006; durr
i have a hole in my head
durr

Krumbsthumbs posted:

Did, did Art leave those poor dogs to die in a fire after Blue was obviously so taken with them? Or did I miss something?

You can't save them and if you leave the door open they'll wander and eventually get eaten by a spawning roach anyways.

Uh, I meant to say, they're on a farm now where they can play and be happy with all sorts of other doggies.

# ¿ Jun 21, 2016 16:11

Parts Kit: Jun 9, 2006; durr
i have a hole in my head
durr

LuffyVeggies posted:

Finally, in regards to the Anama, something I didn't learn until I ~~stole~~ obtained Anama rings is that during battle, occasionally, you will see a chat message that says "Your Anama ring glows briefly" when an enemy casts a spell on you or your party, and a status-effect spell will NEVER have effect on one party member if that shows up. I think that having the rings gives your entire party permanent but random magic resistance, but I can't tell for sure.

Yep, random resistance to various harmful effects like slow and curse. Primarily seems to block hostile magic effects but I think it might block the odd disease or whatever from monster attacks.

# ¿ Jul 17, 2016 18:24

Parts Kit: Jun 9, 2006; durr
i have a hole in my head
durr

berryjon posted:

Oh, my physical ones are quite worn down. I'm using digital copies for this LP.

So, while I'm writing the update with Golddale, raise your hand if you remember what's so special about the NPC's here, and don't spoil it.

Yep, been waiting for this one.

# ¿ Aug 26, 2016 06:28

Parts Kit: Jun 9, 2006; durr
i have a hole in my head
durr

GodFish posted:

Well Golddale was the town I was thinking of, but I never knew that about the NPCs.

There's at least one more 90s TV reference in the future. :getin:

# ¿ Aug 26, 2016 15:43

Parts Kit: Jun 9, 2006; durr
i have a hole in my head
durr

berryjon posted:

What am I?

About to be stabbed repeatedly

# ¿ Aug 27, 2016 19:07

Parts Kit: Jun 9, 2006; durr
i have a hole in my head
durr

Fireballed repeatedly works too.

# ¿ Aug 27, 2016 22:46

Parts Kit: Jun 9, 2006; durr
i have a hole in my head
durr

Always nice when the game deals with pesky gremlin NPCs so you don't have to. I can't remember if killing them yourself does anything bad other than making the others hostile since the dryad disappears when you leave. Also didn't know about the poppy pod, that's neat.

When I was cheating my rear end off in this game as a kid after I found out the refresh shop debug command by accident I hit up that junk shop (with cash help from the editor) and outfitted everyone with mithril chain and crystal shields. No encumbrance and total party immunity to basilisks? :getin:

ed: and if anyone didn't notice it the price note at the bottom of the shop interface says the prices are "very reasonable," unlike the other one in the Tower of Magi which IIRC is "utterly ridiculous." So this one is very, very much worth the trip from time to time.

# ¿ Aug 31, 2016 14:16

Parts Kit: Jun 9, 2006; durr
i have a hole in my head
durr

MagusofStars posted:

This is not the Flaming enchantment which causes you to do fire damage on top of your normal attack*. Instead, this allows you to cast the spell Flame from your weapon a limited number of times as a usable item (a'la Scrioth of the first game). However, it still has limited charges, so it's a waste of your enchantment. If you really want it, grab a stick off the ground and custom-make your own Wand of Flame rather than wasting the ability to enchant a good weapon.

That said, it's wonderful for exploiting: If you cast it on a weapon, any weapon, it dramatically increases the value of the weapon. Ridiculously so - some vanilla Iron Sword with the Flame enchantment is suddenly worth thousands of gold. An already high-value weapon like a Steel Halberd can actually become so valuable that selling it can actually cause a money overflow error (!) and make your funds turn negative. Even more importantly, the value is high enough that you can buy a weapon, enchant it, then sell it immediately and make a crapton of profit.

I think it's even worse than that, IIRC from when I was a kid and got the enchantment it destroys the weapon when you run out of charges. Never thought about having it put on a stick though, that's a neat idea.

The cash overflow error is pretty funny. The game doesn't really handle getting negative gold that well and you can still buy everything in a shop like you had positive gold. Not useful though since if you've got 30k gold you can buy a bunch of everything in a normal shop anyways and as soon as you move it "drops the excess" negative gold.

Also Sandra's icon changes to the apprentice mage halfway through the conversation. (fun fact, there's no check to see if you've talked to her so you can fire up a new game and immediately ask the commander about her)

# ¿ Sep 9, 2016 14:58

Parts Kit: Jun 9, 2006; durr
i have a hole in my head
durr

TooMuchAbstraction posted:

I'm curious -- with the Bless/Curse combination going, how often do you get hit in melee / by mundane ranged attacks? Those are all that armor helps you with, after all, so there's not much point in investing in more heavy armor if you're already not getting hit.

Of course, casting Bless/Curse for every fight gets expensive, but still, at some point additional encumbering armor just becomes an unnecessary luxury. I'm used to that happening pretty quickly for singleton parties...but the singleton gets to equip all the best gear, so that's not really surprising!

You'll still get hit from time to time, usually by tougher enemies. There is another common Troglo fighting unit I don't think we've seen yet that hits pretty drat hard, but usually Bless/Curse is enough to mostly neuter Troglo Fighters. And there are nastier things still coming where Bless/Curse is good just to keep them from immediately chewing through your fighters. Spell/breath attacks ignore Bless/Curse so anything with mage levels or that special are still a major threat on top of that.

Another plus with the old engines is you can mitigate some of the expense by going into combat and leaving the casters behind in a safe corner. The buffs don't have range for your party so you can top them off from across the map. They actually last a pretty good while on the whole so this drops your SP cost a lot.

# ¿ Sep 14, 2016 11:05

Parts Kit: Jun 9, 2006; durr
i have a hole in my head
durr

rodomontade posted:

I remember someone on the Spiderweb forums talking about a similar strategy: If you put all your skill points into Strength at level 1, it didn't matter that you had no health or weapon skill -- all the blessings meant your one character was untouchable and would completely wreck anyone in his way, and would get about 30-40 HP on the first level up. I tried it in the Fort Ganrick fight in Exile II and had a character dishing out between 25-50 damage per hit and completely destroying the nephil party. Pretty fun way to start the game.

Hah, that sounds really fun. I'll have to try that next time I fire up the virtual machine.

# ¿ Sep 15, 2016 02:59

Parts Kit: Jun 9, 2006; durr
i have a hole in my head
durr

Based off playing with the Blades editor as a kid, enemies can belong to one of two factions. If the factions come into contact they will fight each other, unless you're in sight. For story purposes it's probably the followers of the Shamans and Khazis fighting among themselves, though I don't believe it is ever explained outright.

# ¿ Sep 15, 2016 05:21

Parts Kit: Jun 9, 2006; durr
i have a hole in my head
durr

berryjon posted:

This ridiculous map is the current known overworld. And it's less than half filled in From here on out though, it's going to have to be broken into smaller pieces. This map is already 1.63mb big, and lpix doesn't like files larger than 2.

If you can try saving it as a PNG-8 with 32 colors. That drops the current one to about 700kb. There is some color detail lost but whatever.
ed: actually I just realized how big that map is going to get so don't bother, you'll just waste your time. :lol:

Parts Kit fucked around with this message at 00:38 on Sep 18, 2016

# ¿ Sep 18, 2016 00:33

Parts Kit: Jun 9, 2006; durr
i have a hole in my head
durr

JustJeff88 posted:

I had the shareware version of Exile 3 as a lad and I never bought the full version, but even the demo was so substantial that I don't think that I ever even got to the point where I couldn't do anything else without plumping for the entire game.

If you are up for running a virtual machine or have an old computer with a 32 bit OS still around the games are free now.
http://www.spiderwebsoftware.com/productsOld.html

# ¿ Sep 18, 2016 04:01

Parts Kit: Jun 9, 2006; durr
i have a hole in my head
durr

JustJeff88 posted:

Oh, I know. I even found copies of Exile 1-3 that are wrapped to run natively in 64-bit OSs,

You wouldn't happen to have a link would you?

# ¿ Sep 18, 2016 04:26

Parts Kit: Jun 9, 2006; durr
i have a hole in my head
durr

rodomontade posted:

I remember someone on the Spiderweb forums talking about a similar strategy: If you put all your skill points into Strength at level 1, it didn't matter that you had no health or weapon skill -- all the blessings meant your one character was untouchable and would completely wreck anyone in his way, and would get about 30-40 HP on the first level up. I tried it in the Fort Ganrick fight in Exile II and had a character dishing out between 25-50 damage per hit and completely destroying the nephil party. Pretty fun way to start the game.

Giving this a shot in E3, pumped all 3 fighters up to STR 11, aside from the third one which has 13. :getin:

# ¿ Sep 19, 2016 02:36

Parts Kit: Jun 9, 2006; durr
i have a hole in my head
durr

berryjon posted:

Weeeeeeeaaaaak!

Use a Slith with Strength 20 at Character creation, then they get the racial +2 for a starting strength of 22.

Haha, time to delete a character.

ed: even with blessings the character still missed a good bit from the 1 DEX and 2 pole weapon skill, and unfortunately my health rolls sucked so at level 4 it's only 25. Still, pretty funny.

Parts Kit fucked around with this message at 04:35 on Sep 19, 2016

# ¿ Sep 19, 2016 03:57

Parts Kit: Jun 9, 2006; durr
i have a hole in my head
durr

TooMuchAbstraction posted:

Fact of the matter is, if you know what you're doing in the Exile games, they're not usually very challenging. There's too many systems you can abuse to gain major advantages over your opponents, because they simply aren't all that smart.

IMO this is better than a game where your opponents are stupid and there's not a lot you can do to gain an advantage aside from making your numbers bigger.

For instance at level 6 the fighters in the party I just made could stand up to non-spell caster troglos without problem once they were blessed. No curses required!

# ¿ Sep 20, 2016 01:14

Parts Kit: Jun 9, 2006; durr
i have a hole in my head
durr

Whybird posted:

I'm getting the impression that while these guys are pretty hot at magic, they don't really understand people all that well.

Unfortunately that describes basically every powerful magic user in the entire series. :lol:

# ¿ Sep 25, 2016 13:25

Parts Kit: Jun 9, 2006; durr
i have a hole in my head
durr

It's more fun to think of it as just a big moonshine jug though.

# ¿ Sep 29, 2016 23:47

Parts Kit: Jun 9, 2006; durr
i have a hole in my head
durr

FreakyM posted:

For all the time I sank into this game as a kid, I could not figure out if there was in fact a way to explore Erika's inner sanctum. I recall seeing quite a lot of interesting stuff in there and have to wonder if it's all just for show in case someone magic maps the tower.. is there a way to get in that I have missed?

You can get past the electrum lock, but I have no idea how you do it legitimately since I used the editor when I was a kid.

# ¿ Oct 12, 2016 13:01

Parts Kit: Jun 9, 2006; durr
i have a hole in my head
durr

Maybe I'm misremembering but I was sure there was a key you could use to get in there.

# ¿ Oct 13, 2016 03:32

Parts Kit: Jun 9, 2006; durr
i have a hole in my head
durr

berryjon posted:

If any of you know how to get in there, please tell me.

The guards will move if something hostile pops up. I think you can attack one of your own summons without the guards turning on you and that will be enough to get them moving about town.

# ¿ Dec 21, 2016 03:37

Parts Kit: Jun 9, 2006; durr
i have a hole in my head
durr

SIGSEGV posted:

That sounds like a perfect use for sticks to snakes. Perfectly deniable.

I -think- that's just what the townie described and just has some gremlins in there and nothing else of note. Just a FYI for berryjon, if I'm remembering right you won't find anything really cool there.

# ¿ Dec 22, 2016 02:52

Parts Kit: Jun 9, 2006; durr
i have a hole in my head
durr

Best time for killing gremlins is after you've gotten paralyze magic, one of the top tier weapons, and a character with the weapon stat and maxed Assassination.

# ¿ Dec 22, 2016 04:04

Parts Kit: Jun 9, 2006; durr
i have a hole in my head
durr

TooMuchAbstraction posted:

The most obvious items to make are energy potions, which are very nice, but reasonably careful rationing will see you through with the ones you find naturally -- or failing that, you can just buy them. Money is in pretty free supply.

It'd only be worth it with Strong Energy potions anyways since in the Lorelei area there is a traveling potion seller that sells Medium pretty cheap and has unlimited stock.

# ¿ Dec 27, 2016 11:47

Parts Kit: Jun 9, 2006; durr
i have a hole in my head
durr

That's cool, don't let it burn you out or take too much time away from real life stuff. And also don't forget there is a B&W world map in the hintbook on Spiderweb's site if you still want to post a huge map at some point.

# ¿ Feb 15, 2017 02:02

Parts Kit: Jun 9, 2006; durr
i have a hole in my head
durr

Jeweled Golems aren't just a pain in the rear end because of their acid spit but on top of that they have a "breath" attack that can do almost triple digit magic damage.

And of course if you run into multiple you can have the person you just desperately healed from the breath attack killed by the acid damage or vice versa. Assholes.

# ¿ Mar 10, 2017 02:06

Parts Kit: Jun 9, 2006; durr
i have a hole in my head
durr

Bunch of weirdos constantly getting high on "essence" and refusing to spell dragon correctly.

# ¿ Apr 2, 2017 23:36

Parts Kit: Jun 9, 2006; durr
i have a hole in my head
durr

GodFish posted:

Boy is it ever.

I felt so accomplished when I finally beat it without resorting the the editor for the first time ever last year. :smug:

# ¿ Apr 8, 2017 02:16

Parts Kit: Jun 9, 2006; durr
i have a hole in my head
durr

berryjon posted:

I'm not even pretending to do this dungeon straight.

I'm using the editor with no moral or ethical hangups at all

Yeah not using the editor for a LP would be crazy, even if you were trying to minimize its use in other areas.

# ¿ Apr 8, 2017 03:13

Parts Kit: Jun 9, 2006; durr
i have a hole in my head
durr

LuffyVeggies posted:

First, I'm not sure if you know this (it seems like you probably do but didn't do it because it's revealed later), but the golem-making machines CAN be destroyed with Dispel Barrier. However, there are so many of those machines on the first floor that it doesn't help much unless you try going after all of them, and the flavour-text implies that the destruction is only temporary, so I'm not sure how long the destruction lasts.

IIRC Fireball and similar spells also work.

Another fun fact with the conveyors is they also can move items, which leads to some headaches.

# ¿ Apr 9, 2017 23:40

Parts Kit: Jun 9, 2006; durr
i have a hole in my head
durr

berryjon posted:

And if you don't have those spells, you're in the wrong dungeon, my friend.

Or the Anama. :suicide:

# ¿ Apr 12, 2017 00:38

Parts Kit: Jun 9, 2006; durr
i have a hole in my head
durr

Huh, I think I missed the book with Erika's symbol on my last playthrough, don't remember it.

IIRC Rentar's response to the Trog/Giant evidence is a almost politician's generic "It isn't us. We will investigate this." response.

berryjon posted:

Despite my best efforts to hide it, Matthias has had a Bar of Uranium in his inventory since entering the Tower. That's been accelerating his Disease ticker.

Ah, I was wondering what you did to get those very specific messages to pop up.

# ¿ Apr 17, 2017 11:59

Parts Kit: Jun 9, 2006; durr
i have a hole in my head
durr

thetruegentleman posted:

Also, why would they want you to escape the prison? Even if they want to use the party as anti-Empire propaganda after the escape, that's still a crazy stupid risk.

The assumption I've always made is that it is a fake-out and letting the wights kill an escaping prisoner is a quiet way to deal with someone the Gale leaders don't want around. And if the wights didn't stop a prisoner the fire barrier would.

# ¿ Apr 25, 2017 00:30

Parts Kit: Jun 9, 2006; durr
i have a hole in my head
durr

There are a few here and there in some dungeons and IIRC a couple of special encounters way the gently caress in the boonies, but they are very much a rare enemy.

A very good thing since paralysis lasts a long. loving. time.

# ¿ Apr 27, 2017 02:10

Parts Kit: Jun 9, 2006; durr
i have a hole in my head
durr

TooMuchAbstraction posted:

Note that if you attack a paralyzed or sleeping enemy, you do massive bonus damage -- and the same of course is true for enemies attacking sleeping or paralyzed PCs. That's what makes Gorgons so dangerous: they spam sleep clouds everywhere, and if you're not immune to sleep (thanks to the trait or a Helm of Alertness), you're relying on your saving throw to protect you.

A nice side effect of this though is if you need to get your dedicated spellcasters to catch up in level with your fighters you can paralyze/sleep everything and even a squishy mage will crush them without any blessing. Since the character that deals the death blow gets the majority of the XP you can use this to fairly quickly get your casters to close the (probably 10+ level gap) with any mainline fighters midgame.

# ¿ Apr 27, 2017 04:15

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# ¿ May 15, 2024 17:58

Parts Kit: Jun 9, 2006; durr
i have a hole in my head
durr

berryjon posted:

Nope, only one ending.

Everything has only one ending with Quickfire.

# ¿ Apr 28, 2017 00:45

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Let's Play! > These are the Consequences of our Actions - Exile 3: Ruined World

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