Avernum: Escape from the Pit

[TripJack]

get exile

fuck this shit

 

[Angelo85]

Vogel implemented a Skilltree very much like the one found in Avadon, that much is clear from the screenshots. I would think that the cooldowns are in as well.
My initial impression from this title: Major decline, as one should suspect from Vogel by now.

 

[JudasIscariot]

Vogel implemented a Skilltree very much like the one found in Avadon, that much is clear from the screenshots. I would think that the cooldowns are in as well.
My initial impression from this title: Major decline, as one should suspect from Vogel by now.

Well, I did see some mana bars in some of those Ipad version screenshots so maybe there's some hope left.

 

[mindx2]

I need to hear impressions from our illustrious Codexers (suckers who will purchase it immediately) here before I spend money on what appears to be a prettied-up "dumbed-down" version.

 

[JudasIscariot]

I need to hear impressions from our illustrious Codexers (suckers who will purchase it immediately) here before I spend money on what appears to be a prettied-up "dumbed-down" version.

Same here. I guess no one wants to admit they have an Ipad or something :D

 

[funkadelik]

What was the skill system like in the original Avernum?

 

[Monocause]

Character development actually seems to be quite neat and an improvement over the originals. The most painful mistakes of Avadon aren't there. Cut Jeff some slack, I know he was a diva with that blog post back when Avadon was released but that isn't a good enough reason to bandwagon on him ignoring the facts.

- Only warrior abilities are on cooldown, just like in AV 5-6. Spells still use mana.
- In Avadon you could raise a higher-tier skill to a limit dictated by the lowest skill level of the relevant lower-tier skills. Here the limit is set by the larger one so fe. you don't need to invest in both pole and melee weapons to gain access to upper tiers which is kinda how it worked in previous games.
- From what I've read on the boards the system provides more opportunity for hybrid classes (at least on normal-hard difficulties, torment still dictates min-maxing as it should) whereas in Avernum 4-6 making a hybrid was always suboptimal both in terms of fun and utility unless we're talking about a mage/priest.
- There's some sort of a perk system.

I'm looking forward to it as character development in Avernum 4-6 was, well, butchered when compared to Av 1-3. The skills made sense but levelling was boring; while a difference of 10 points in a skill sure made the difference you could barely notice it since the increments were small and slow to come. Most of the skills in previous games were also copies of other ones (like Magery/spellcraft or bows/thrown/sharpshooter) and were just bland (+dam and TH, +armor and resistances, yawn). It meant that you were investing points in whatever was cheaper at the moment. The traits also sucked as XP penalty didn't matter in the long run and you were pretty much always better off picking a slith with two traits to rack up skill bonuses (divine touch/elite warrior/natural mage/pure spirit) which were worth more than whatever skill points/HP you missed due to less XP.

The same system worked better in previous games because improving skills came at a monetary cost and prices in skill points were cheaper allowing you for bigger increases which, in turn, made them more noticeable.

The remake isn't dumbed down, at all. All I've read seems to point out that it's actually an improvement over the previous three games. Avadon's improved AoE mechanics and more spell effects (like knockback etc) should make for more interesting enemies and combat in general too.

 

[Johannes]

I'm looking forward to it as character development in Avernum 4-6 was, well, butchered when compared to Av 1-3. The skills made sense but levelling was boring; while a difference of 10 points in a skill sure made the difference you could barely notice it since the increments were small and slow to come. Most of the skills in previous games were also copies of other ones (like Magery/spellcraft or bows/thrown/sharpshooter) and were just bland (+dam and TH, +armor and resistances, yawn). It meant that you were investing points in whatever was cheaper at the moment. The traits also sucked as XP penalty didn't matter in the long run and you were pretty much always better off picking a slith with two traits to rack up skill bonuses (divine touch/elite warrior/natural mage/pure spirit) which were worth more than whatever skill points/HP you missed due to less XP.

The same system worked better in previous games because improving skills came at a monetary cost and prices in skill points were cheaper allowing you for bigger increases which, in turn, made them more noticeable.

I don't see how much good can be said about character system in Avernum 1-3. Mostly all of those complaints apply to them too, maybe the system allowed for more points allocation early on in them but otherwise, The system in later Avernums is better since it contains more interesting options in combat. Not sure about how good the later Avernums actually are in that regard, but combat in first Avernums is quite BSB in itself, just consider how those Spidweb fanatics constantly solo every one of his games on the highest difficulty.

 

[Monocause]

Johannes

The same system worked better in previous games because improving skills came at a monetary cost and prices in skill points were cheaper allowing you for bigger increases which, in turn, made them more noticeable.

Av 1-3 system was simplistic too but there was a larger difference between levels. Levelling both was more meaningful and felt more meaningful; a couple of mechanics were also present that made various skills have more uses (like the encumbrance system that made the defense skill more worthwhile or weight system not limited to equipment). Skills often had more effect on the gameplay and your character's performance instead of a single +to hit; the character system, while still simple, had more depth.

Av 4 had less options in combat than Av 1-3 and is the worst part of the series for multiple reasons. Av 5-6 introduced battle disciplines for warriors but Av 2-3 had usable abilities gained from skill crystals. Disciplines are admittedly more interesting and useful, but whatever advantage it gave to the newer games was killed by the fact that you had zounds more of boring filler combat (which in Av 1-3 you usually just steamrolled without pressing "f", just cruising your first PC towards mobs and slashing them to pieces) and HP inflation.

I don't know what "BSB" means.

 

[Falkner]

I don't know what "BSB" means.

Banal, shit, boring.

 

[Humanity has risen!]

The game is finally here for Windows

ftp://ftp.spiderwebsoftware.com/win/AvernumDemo.exe

And it crashes my laptop every time I play it. I can't even press CTRL-ALT-DELETE.

Going to try this on my desktop. I held off from playing the original trilogy to wait for the remake.

 

[Nim]

Awful character screen. Awful traits. I dunno how he does it, I hated the old engines but this seems kinda worse.

 

[hoverdog]

It's much better than the abomination that Avadon was. Not all hope is lost for Jeff.

 

[hakuroshi]

Still looks worse then Exile.

 

[Pope Amole II]

It's much better than the abomination that Avadon was. Not all hope is lost for Jeff.

I second this.

I've played it only for a little, but its already obvious that character system is much better than in Avadon - less emphasis on those stupid skill trees, less linearity, more choice, probably even more than in AV 5-6 due to traits being reworked into something that really should've been called feats or perks, stuff like that. And while some skills do look depressing (like, I dunno, oh, I'll gain a whopping 2% damage increase if I pump this!), most of them are fine, I guess.

Won't say anything about the combat since I hadn't had any serious conflicts yet, obviously, by my major complaints are the terrible, terrible GUI (honestly, Jeff does this shit for, like, 17 years and still can't get it right?) and awful optimization - why does this ancient-looking piece of software lags like hell on my laptop in the real-time walking mode? WTF is this coding? And it's not like my laptop is that ancient - it surpasses all of the game's system requirements, so... Bogus.

 

[Morkar Left]

Has the game the automatic health regen system from Avadon? Or is it classical resting?

 

[Pope Amole II]

Has the game the automatic health regen system from Avadon? Or is it classical resting?

It's exactly the same as in previous avernums - you restore your health & energy by returning to the city. You also will restore some health & energy after each combat if & only if you have bothered to put some skill points into first aid skill, exactly as in previous Avernums.

 

[Canus]

What in the name of fuck is wrong with this games optimization? The fucking title screen nearly brings my laptop to a crawl.

 

[SCO]

I see quest compasses, opinion is invalid, fuck this guy.

 

[Morkar Left]

Has the game the automatic health regen system from Avadon? Or is it classical resting?

It's exactly the same as in previous avernums - you restore your health & energy by returning to the city. You also will restore some health & energy after each combat if & only if you have bothered to put some skill points into first aid skill, exactly as in previous Avernums.

Thanks, will check the demo out than.

 

[Monocause]

The demo is available for download from spiderweb FTP if anyone's interested. Don't know why Jeff had uploaded it and didn't create a link on the webpage, perhaps he wants to release the game concurrently with Steam.

ftp://ftp.spiderwebsoftware.com/win/

and look for avernumdemo.exe, should be around 153mb in size. Played some and it seems decent, will post more detailed impressions later.

EDIT: Ah, seems the link appeared. Wasn't there a couple of hours ago.

If folks have issues with speed on laptops you should try running the directX version. The normal exe runs on openGL and it obviously isn't a good choice for integrated graphics. You can find the directx version of the executable in your game folder.

 

[Johannes]

Completed the tutorial dungeon now. Not a fan of including it, preferred the game just throwing you to the open world cold like in the original. You don't even have the choice to try stepping back to the portal and fry yourself now.
At least when there's practically zero chance for anyone to die (except of boredom) in the fights there (even on Hard difficulty - enemies doing 3hp damage per turn, compared to 20-30hp you can heal per turn), but still took a moment to trudge through it, would be nice to have it skippable or nonexistant.

Character system seems better than old Avernum 1, but hard to say much at such early stage when the encounters have all been piss easy.

 

[Humanity has risen!]

http://store.steampowered.com/app/208400/

At least now people have the possibility not to pay 10$ more straight on release day.

7,99$ for a limited time.

 

[Johannes]

So if I want to buy it, I'll be paying 12$ more when I don't want to use Steam? That kinda rubs me the wrong way.

 

[Johannes]

Ok, the quest compass is beyond retarded. You get a quest like, "find Anastasia", the quest giver has no clue where she is and asks you to find out. So how do I locate her? Press "w" to bring forth the world map, which now has marked the "find Anastasia" quest on the relevant spot on the map - which obviously isn't the town where the quest giver is, but the compass gives you metagame info on which town Anastasia is in! WTF