Luzur
Good Sir
well i'll just wait for the torrent.
So I've fiddled with it, understood that my party is crap (as usual in the rpgs, lol), restarted anew. New party is all humans (traits are very useful and non-human bonuses are shit compared to 8 extra traits), all custom - pregenned classes are fucking horrible. The current crew is:
Lagrima - buffed-up tank. 5 starting en, 2 points in melee, 1 hardiness, 1 parry, 1 arcane magic. So she's gonna be the tank (all level ups will go in endurance, 1 skill point per level will go towards maxing out that parrying tree, will take challenger & other tanky traits) & the arcane buffer (the other skillpoint will go towards that + the inevitable swordmage traits) for the group. She won't be able to do any kind of considerable magical damage or, well, any damage at all for that matters, but I expect her to be very good at blinking into the midst of foes and drawing as much aggro as possible to herself. And, well, someone has to do those arcane buffs.
Venenum - disciplined archer. 5 starting dex (dunno about late game, but in the early to mid dex seems overpowered - 5% evasion per point, so all level ups there & dex maxing traits), 3 points into bows, 2 points into melee. All skillpoints will go into bow & melee until she gains access to the adrenaline rush discipline (but the more important thing here is that she'll gain access to the awesome blade sweep at lvl 3), then she'll focus on the blade master & quick action skills (so she can "cast" her disciplines as much as possible).
Krag - playing so much remakes of remakes makes him want to throw up. 5 starting dex (all further points also there - dex seems strong), 3 throwing, 2 archery. Here, he'll rush the skills until level 3, so he also has this quick blade sweep (which, btw, is dependent on dex in its damage), then he'll focus on the sharpshooter-lethal blow-sniper trifecta (maybe with a dip into gymnastics if i'll find him not tanky enough).
Tjukurrpa - just a cleric. 5 starting int (all further points there), 3 priest spells, 1 arcane lore, 1 magical efficiency. WIll go for the fast priest spells & magical efficiency as all the priestly stuff is very good but also very expensive. Just a cleric and, well, in the early game she's gonna be a helluva awesome damage dealer (once she gets to the Formello, that is).
Ah, and all starting traits are nimble fingers - skillpoints are really precious in this one, even despite you gaining 2 per level. Yeah, you get even less traits, but humans can afford that exchange.
Perhaps that will nudge him back in the right direction, game design wise?
HE also tweeted that this sold 2,000 copies its first 24 hours, and seemed happy about it. I don't remember his tweeting exact numbers for Avadon 2, so I can only assume that Avernum 2 is way out selling it.
Vogel thinks BioWare actually makes RPG's. There is basically no hope for him at all.
You can pretty much roll any party you want if you are playing on normal, though.
I do not get this guy.My main goals when doing these rewrites is to respect and maintain what made people love them in the first place. This is made so much more important by the fact that I can't write new games like this anymore.
I still need to keep doing the rewrites. They make good money. People like them. The old games don't run well (or at all) anymore. I get tablet versions out of the deal. So I'm going to keep doing it. When people complain about rewrites, it just means they've failed to fully acknowledge how awesome I am.
And I still need to write new games, with new systems and interfaces and stories, or I will simply go insane.
Just play the old exiles, they are really worth it. Even vogel himself acknowledges that his remakes have lost the magic that made his older rpgs great.Good to know this is out there in case I ever get around to finishing Escape From the Pit.
instead of actually challenging himself as a designer and developer, lazy cunt.
I feel like the rebels are really failing to appreciate the fact that I, and I alone, resolved the whole barrier issue. Are there other factions I can join? I want to punish all these unappreciative arseholes.
In hindsight a more optimal party would've been one dual wielder, two mages and one priest. Perhaps it is one of the most optimal parties.
The game is heavily biased toward Magic. Mages will do a shitton more damage than melee, resist charm effects (very important in late game) and they will have better magical resistances, which is important since pretty much every single boss encounter is against another caster.
Please God stop buying Vogel's shit.
I'm slogging through Avernum 1 at the moment with a cookie-cutter DW Tank / DW DPS / Healer / Mage party. I don't know if it's more efficient, but I really like having a Melee DPS in my party.
I have my melee DPS stacked with -fatigue duration and +AP gear, which lets him start with 10AP around and perform 2 actions if he hasn't moved at the start of a turn. So you can attack once, pop Adrenaline Rush then attack 3 more times in one turn. My melee DPS can't clear swathes like my mage or priest can, but is easily my best at single-target damage. Helpful for the many times I've needed something dead on that turn, and he's great at putting a big dent in a boss's health bar. Plus, Adrenaline Rush is amazing and dumping points into Blademaster lets you do it a lot more often.
The biggest problem I'm having is that yeah while he can tank a few melees, he melts to the elements and gets charmed easily and then slaughters everyone.Even level 3 mind shield doesn't seem to protect against charm that well. It would really be nice if you could attack or cast daze or immobility on charmed party members.
Even so... assuming Avernum 2 works pretty much the same way A1 does, I could still see 2 Mages being more powerful at the end of the day. Casters are amazing, once I finally got Adrenaline Rush on my casters and could start casting huge AOEs 3 times a round there were a lot of encounters that went from straight from impossible to trivial. And I could see a 2nd mage being a huge advantage early-game, too. You could even get 10 APs with gear on a mage and cast 4 spells in one round. The only drawback being you're burning through a lot of mana, and you'd regain fatigue a lot slower than a warrior would. But there's probably some Cave Lore magic that lets you churn out enough energy potions for mana not to be an issue. I don't use cave lore much.
I'm also always broke as it is and buying a lot of spells for a 2nd mage seems expensive. Probably an avoidable problem if you mostly buy the 'right' spells instead of spending 2500 gold buying 4 copies of Summon Nephil Shitflinger from an exorbitant merchant.
Jeff Vogel has made a HUGE mistake by rewriting the Avernum series. He's in a very bad situation now.
- Financially--well, read the complaints about pricing in this thread. Clearly, the Avernum 1 rewrite didn't meet Jeff's monetary expectations, so for the Avernum 2 rewrite, he cranked the price up to $20 and no longer packages the game as a demo that, with a purchased key, can become the full game. (Stop blaming those horrible pirates and their keygens, Jeff--the fault, dear Brutus, lies in your rewrite strategy.)
- Now that he's started to rewrite the entire Avernum series, he's stuck. If he realizes his mistake, what will he do? Stop rewriting after Avernum 2 ? Nope, defending his pride, Jeff will trudge through rewrites of the four remaining Avernum games.
Jeff, if you're reading this thread, I warned you a few years ago when you first announced plans to rewrite the entire Avernum series, "Don't do it. Instead, give us a completely new series as different from Avernum as Avernum is different from the Geneforge series." You didn't listen, and now, you're paying the price.
- By rewriting the Avernum series, Jeff is catering to **new** players and telling his loyal followers, who have supported him for more than a decade, to "F--- off". This week, I downloaded the demo for his newly released Avernum 2: Crystal Souls, and my first reaction was "Geez, not this again". Same old, same old.