Avernum 2: Great, except when Vogel's irritation personality rears its ugly head

[IncendiaryDevice]

forget it.

 

[the_shadow]

1) The never ending lock-in tunnel of waterfalls.

In order to progress the story/game you have to breach a stage-end gateway which excludes you from going back to the stage you've just become familiar with. A point of no return. this kind of thing is no biggy, you can expect this is many RPGs, but it depends how its done usually. In this game it's done very badly....

You have no idea if you'll ever get the opportunity to go back through the waterfalls. The waterfall stage goes on for screen after screen after screen. There are loads of things to explore, and there's lots of areas of interest... but it fails to give you any means to trade anything you find. Your inventory is packed to maximum after a couple of caves and you spend most of your time shuffling your pathetic inventory space and throwing stuff on the ground. As I said, no biggy in the grand scheme of things, just really fucking irritating.

You find it irritating, I find it immersive.

In order to progress out of these waterfalls you have to send one of your team members through a trial. You have no idea what this entails so you have no idea what items to send your guy into it with. Trial and error for a single fight is normal for an RPG, but trial and erroring a whole screen of fights until you've tooled up your guy with the exact things they'll need is really tedious.

I'm assuming you're talking about where you need to pay your respects to the Crystal Soul. That portion of the game is easy as pie, even if you don't know what is coming. From memory you can always go back through the portal to rejoin your party and heal up/send another character.

To cap it all off, once completing the mission you get access to a treasure box with some genuinely interesting treasures in them (I assume)...

...but they have the caveat that the spirit there wont like you nicking them.

The items are decent for that point in the game, but nothing unique or overly powerful. Stealing the treasure and slaying the Crystal Soul is meant to be an optional 'boss' battle, so it's going to be a bit difficult, especially since you're running a gauntlet.

Nah... fuck that, I'll leave and hope the game lets me come back later...

...The game is then suggestive that you can't come back later "You've already done the trial, you don't need to go back in here"... Don't I? Really? Ok, thanks for that, that's not at all irritating. Not at all...

I don't recall that, but it's the only place in the game where that happens. You won't be able to go back through the waterfall maze again (unless you reset the boats using the editor), but there is nothing critical to the plot in that section of the game. Your main focus is traversing the waterfalls and making it to the Vahnatai lands alive.

3) No traders at the first habitation either.

Yeah. But once you complete the ritual (which takes less that 10 seconds), you can access all the other settlements with traders.

...To which pressing "No [and back away]" isn't actually the 'ignore this for the moment' option, this option is the one to press to fight the guards. Who, obviously, win. Making one reload from the beginning of the last habitation and all those plot and fluff NPCs...

LOL, what did you expect? You're in a land where the inhabitants think your people are responsible for one of the worst cases of sacrilege imaginable.

From gaming bliss to oh fuck-off Vogel in 3 easy weeks.

Avernum 2 is too easy, even on the highest difficulty setting. And that's coming from someone who complained about the difficulty in Fallout 2.

My advice:

1. Get a Soul Crystal (not a Crystal Soul), and then learn Capture Soul/Simulacrum ASAP. Summoning clones of your enemies (particularly Basilisks/Ur-Basilisks) is OP.

2. Take your time and explore, avoid fights you can't win. Don't stress about missing anything, you can always come back later.

3. Get Farsight, it really helps you find secret areas for indoors areas. To find secret areas outdoors, just run into walls. You can use a bit of deductive reasoning to find secret areas: If there is a big area of the automap unexplored, there is probably a secret area there. Eventually you'll get Farsight to Lvl 3, which will allow you to use it outdoors.

4. I'm not sure what you mean about the Tower of Magi not selling high level mage spells. There are two trainers there. The high level trainer is hidden though...

5. It might be worth noting down magically locked doors that you can't open, and magic barriers you can't dispel ATM. Once you get Unlock Doors to Lvl 3 (will open any doors) and Dispel Barrier to Lvl 3 (will dispel any barrier) you can come back and tie up loose ends.

6. Make sure you don't dump too much loot on the ground, as it can disappear over time.

7. It might be worth going back to the areas around Formello/Fort Draco and thoroughly looking around to see if you missed anything.

8. Make sure you note down traders who sell miscellaneous items (there's one at the Tower of Magi, and another near the start of the game). Their inventory changes every so often, and they offer some great magical rare (but not unique) magical gear at that point in the game.

9. That reminds me, you might have seen a fort in the rapids leading down to the Vahnatai lands that was surrounded in magic barriers. Don't worry, you're not meant to be able to access it at that point in the game...

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

forget it.