Avernum 2: Crystal Souls

[Luzur]

well i'll just wait for the torrent.

 

[Pope Amole II]

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.

 

[Agesilaus]

I decided to start playing it, and I'm enjoying it. I have a pole-arm tank, dual-wielding warrior, mage, and an archer priest. Having a blast so far, the most difficult part was finding a screen resolution that I liked.

 

[Correct_Carlo]

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.

This is an interesting party. Will probably be insanely difficult if you are playing on harder difficulties, especially torment. Having a tank with zero damage output is nonsensical, as your other party members will get hit often, no matter how much you try to aggro with him. Plus, if you don't have high strength, you take massive penalties from heavy armor. I always pump strength on my main tank, and just put a point in End here or there once he starts dying too often.

Plus, if it's anything like EFTP, bows are pretty weak compared to magic and duel weilding....and Mages have the most damage output of any caster.

You can pretty much roll any party you want if you are playing on normal, though. Given the skill trees, it's pretty hard to fuck up too terribly, no matter what you do.

 

[Hobo Elf]

They weren't kidding when they said that it's a pretty big game. After 17 hours I finally open up the world map only to see that I've just barely explored ~40% of the map and that's not even counting the Vhantai area.

 

[Correct_Carlo]

For anyone who hasn't bought this yet, but plans to, Spiderweb now offers steam keys when you buy direct from their store (you have to use a special widget on the store page). And Vogel has said they make way more from games they sell with steam keys on their store then via other venders.

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.

Perhaps that will nudge him back in the right direction, game design wise?

 

[Jaesun]

Perhaps that will nudge him back in the right direction, game design wise?

Vogel thinks BioWare actually makes RPG's. There is basically no hope for him at all.

 

[vonAchdorf]

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.

He had a blog post about his sales numbers (4.000 for Geneforge 4) way before (2009) the indie and Steam hype started.

http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2009/03/so-heres-how-many-games-i-sell.html

With Steam and Avadon, his sales numbers became much bigger, but he recently said, that it's more or less back to the old days of creating game for his niche audience again, since Steam is flooded with indie titles. But his games are now 20$ (rather than 30$) back in the gold old days, he probably calculates with higher sales than 2009.

 

[Pope Amole II]

Vogel thinks BioWare actually makes RPG's. There is basically no hope for him at all.

No, he says he thinks so. That's a big difference. He's a businessman, after all. For example, I utterly loathe Wasteland 2. It's a fucking scam. In my opinion. But it's also my most successful funbuilding material to this point. It brought, like, a hundred subs to my channel and pretty much kickstarted its rather slow, but steady growth. So I tend to be very, very non-vocal about it in more public places. I won't lie if asked directly, but I'll try to avoid situations where I'm asked directly, something like that. Or, if you want a less personal example, VD - haven't you noticed that the closer his game is to release, the more polite he becomes? Like, when the first public demo came out, he sent fucks left and right. Compare it to his current rhetoric.

Mind you, I'm not accusing him (or them) of anything, it's just how the things go. People are incredibly defensive about their toys and, well, you don't want to aggro a potential customer for zero practical gain. In the similar vein, whatever Vogel writes in his blog, we can't be too sure if it is true or if it's just kiss-ass approach to attract some new, modern audience or whatever.

Still, there is no hope for him indeed as he become too burnt out or lazy or uncaring or who knows? He had his big chance to begin something fresh when Avadon became a big success, instead he chose to stick to his old ways.

You can pretty much roll any party you want if you are playing on normal, though.

Y'know, no one likes condescending dudes. I'm playing on hard, obviously (torment is too much HP bloat). And this party pretty much breezes through it (lvl 11 at the moment) because each Vogel's game has its own balance issues, so bows being bad in Avernum 1 doesn't mean they're bad in 2. Not sure if they're much better, but there's plenty of ensnaring/immobilizing monsters in this one (at least in the tough fights), so being a pure melee definitely is not always that cool.

The pure-EN tank is also working rather well - Challenger trait seems to work, besides, there's always plenty of choke-points to abuse (which also synergize rather well with the rest of the party being ranged), pretty much forcing enemies to focus on her. And she's the only kind of character that can actually use clerical healing to its fullest. In practice, that means that, whereas my first party cleric had to heal my warrior each turn, here he needs to heal her just once in two turns, essentially giving him more time to cast offensive spells. Not to mention that she can still buff, summon & use trinkets so she's hardly useless.

 

[Zombra]

Good to know this is out there in case I ever get around to finishing Escape From the Pit.

 

[StaticSpine]

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.

I do not get this guy.

 

[Lhynn]

Good to know this is out there in case I ever get around to finishing Escape From the Pit.

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.

 

[Kem0sabe]

Vogel can go fuck himself, he hiked the prices for his games starting with Avernum 2, because indies, then he spends god knows how many paragraphs trying to get a job at Bioware (yet again).

Now he sees himself as the curator for the gifts to mankind that he sees his rpgs as being, pushing out remastered editions instead of actually challenging himself as a designer and developer, lazy cunt.

 

[Gord]

instead of actually challenging himself as a designer and developer, lazy cunt.

But didn't he say he lost his Mojo?

 

[Pope Amole II]

In other news, I've already made a guide for this game.

Kinda quick, but what can I do, I'm pretty quick. Besides, it's not like this game's system differs that much from Avernum 1 (or just Vogel's general stuff - his rpg system is pretty much one and the same).

 

[RPG Guru]

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.

• 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.

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.

 

[Agesilaus]

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.

 

[Pope Amole II]

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.

Play Avernum 5. It's a superior game anyways.

That's actually my biggest issue with Avernums. I dunno, maybe that's due to him being quite an annoying person, but the majority of the Vogel's characters are such an annoying pricks. They don't have much personality, but that still doesn't prevent them from being annoying pricks. And in the Avernum it's amplified by the constant "oh, avernites are so good, they are so cool, so freedom-loving, so awesum" droning. When, in reality, they're just a bunch of pricks. Especially in the 5. So crushing their puny resistance and slaughtering whole cities of them was so freaking sweet in that part.

It's one of the reasons Geneforges work so well for me, especially 1-2. You're surrounded by a bunch of retarded fucks who think they're so cool and progressive and whatnot. But there's a silver lining - you can slaughter them all day and all night long. And that leads to the good endings. Ain't that sweet?

 

[Hobo Elf]

That's what I loved about Geneforge. I went around meeting all the people and by the time when I had met all the major factions and their leaders I had enough power to start cleaning up the mess they had cooked up. I also kept a checklist of names of all the NPCs I especially didn't like. The Shaper Council approved.

Edit: On a side note, Avernum: Espace from the Pit is on sale on Steam. Grabbed it for 2 Gaben Dollars.

Edit Edit: That was a long and exhausting journey, but I finished all 3 major quests. Took me 49 hours. Phew! I'm ready for a break after soldiering through Geneforge 1, 2 and Avernum 2 back-to-back. Anyway here are some thoughts about parties:

My party was a Human 1h + shield, Lizardman Spearman, Human Priest and Human Wizard. In the end I specced my Swordsman into dual wielding just to try it, but found it immensely more powerful than I had thought it would be. Shields are okay in the beginning but quickly lose relevance, much like parry loses its relevance once you get to the lvl 20+ content. Nothing wrong with sticking a shield for your casters, though.
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.

I don't see much point in archery and recommend on skipping out on it. It's ranged combat but not even close to being as good as magic and so you are better off taking another Magic-User instead. The few good bows I found I stuck on my spellcasters for bonuses.

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.

Lastly I just wanna say that I was rather impressed with how tight the overall quest design was. I never felt like I was a glorified rat exterminator. The quests, even the ones that aren't related to the 3 main quests, felt like they were important and related to the main theme / quests of the game. It's rare to see such good quest design.

 

[e-mailio estevez]

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.

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.

 

[cruelio]

Please God stop buying Vogel's shit.

 

[Jaesun]

You really need to try harder.

 

[Crevice tab]

Please God stop buying Vogel's shit.

Vogel is better than most AAA producers despite his weird Bioware fetisch.

 

[Hobo Elf]

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.

I felt "safe" having two melee guys in the frontlines, but the truth is that with another mage I could've just melted ALL my enemies easily with AoE. Having two casters is expensive, but on the other hand I left about 1/3rd of the content completely unexplored so there was always more gold to be had, so I'm sure it's a lot more manageable than it seems the first time when you are buying spells from expensive trainers.

Also, it never ever occurred to me to get Adrenaline Rush for my Magic-Users. Such a genius idea that I must do the next time I play Avernum.

 

[Explorerbc]

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.

• 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.

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.

- I don't think the pricing is specifically related to Escape from the Pit, if a title is responsible I'd say its probably Avadon 2 that made him rethink his pricing strategy. He also said the price will drop in the future and will even put them on bundles.

- I'm not sure re-writing is a mistake, if the new Avernums sell better than the Avadon series. Plus, I don't see any point in remaking the second trilogy. It is already available on steam and runs fairly well on modern machines. He will most likey just remake Avernum 3 and then move to the Geneforge games.

- Well, if it helps him gain new customers and they sell well, why not. After all he did make a new series and most people think it sucks. Better to re-release something good than create something mediocre.