I just wanted to check in and let Avernum fans how things are shaping up for the final game in the series.

Things are still looking on track for a late November release for Macintosh. It's a huge world, but I'm almost done with it. I'm getting pretty exhausted, but I'm still kicking out a lot of cool, elaborate dungeons.

(For example, I just spent 2 days on an encounter where you escort a band of soldiers through caves infested with gremlins. Rest assured you will face a wide variety of peculiar and lethal practical jokes.)

The structure of the game is an overarching storyline, alternating with going out and putting out fires in most of the major locations in the series. Each of these semi-optional quests (you only have to do so many) is very elaborate, with lots of cool scripting, characters, and enemies.

Of course, there are also multitudes of optional dungeons, quests, and so on. The tradition of big Avernum games continues. And the demo is unusually large too. Probably not good for business, but it just works out that way sometimes. :-)

A beta tester decided that his day wouldn't be complete without going out and unnecessarily panicking everybody, so he wrote that there is a harsh requirement to have food in the game. This is not true. I actually was in the process of strongly dropping the food requirement. You need food every once in a while to remind you what is happening in the world, but this will not be something people will find a hassle.

Finding food is tough for most Avernites, but it won't be hard for you. Unsurprisingly, the brigands and bad guys you are hunting tend to be the ones who are hoarding the food.

And the ending for Avernum itself is now written. It's, well, it's a very "me" sort of ending, bittersweet, neither triumphant nor utterly disastrous. (Assuming, of course, you don't try to wreak havoc.) I'm really happy with it.

So that's it for now. Game still being written. Out soon. Lots of cool stuff.

- Jeff Vogel

Well, that's some good news.

Dikiyoba.

I never had the slightest trouble running low on food even before Jeff nerfed hunger. If you deliberate avoid picking up any food even when it's right there beside the coins and jewels you're grabbing anyway, then I suppose you might eventually find out what hunger does in A6. But you'll have to go out of your way to do it. Heck, some of the food even looks good. You yourself may have more trouble getting hungry than your party does.

But knowing that you should hang onto food, and regularly picking it up and carrying it around, does work to keep the famine in your mind. It's a good thing.

FTW

But Jeff, what about the return of the Cave Cows?

and the children, don't forget about the children

Mmmmmmm, can't wait for more tasty Avernum goodness. I'm having having an absolute blast with 5 so far and if A6 is ANYTHING like A5 or GeneForge 5 I know I'm going to play the crap out of it. Too bad I have to wait for the PC version

I think it'd be cool if the abrupt starving noise from the Exile series came back. I kind of liked having the heck scared out of me...nostalgia ya know.

And here I was looking forward to practicing cannibalism.

Heh. Maybe Jeff could make everything drop meat (or, where appropriate, mushrooms) upon death, including PCs. But then Return Life would effectively function as a Create Food spell.

I don't miss having to gather up party member's items when they die. Although you did have access to items they were carrying.

just for my own reference, i was wondering in what year the game takes place? i'm assuming it's sometime around the 880's or 90's.
also, the gremlin cave sounds like it'll be an interesting dungeon. i'm looking forward to it.

lee-tle packets of soylent green ...

"dammit, cordelia - that was my ear!"

Then party should be able to start fire somehow.



That's disgusting.

There are such things as flame spells.

KoL got here first.

>.< Still dieing of anticipation of A6.
Getting bored of anticipation ....

Also I return to the forums!!!!!!!

End of message....

@Beta Testers: So can you guys say much about Dual Weapons? Are they gonna dominate?

i got to admit having people drop meat upon death is morbidly creepy even if its realistic.
while i doubt most murderers eat their victims, dead bodies are essentialy piles of meat.

maybe instead of meat it can be weird meat or grisly meat. you know undeniably food but retaining the nauseating knowledge that it is human (or vahanati) flesh

Oooooh, big demo = big overall playthrough.

I second this question (I missed the date bar from the first trilogy alot)

And hooray for more gremlins. But about the ending, will there be multiple endings or one main ending which will have different bits of text depending on what you did?

Obviously A5 happens somewhere between 20 and 50 years after A3, as there are numerous references to Empress Prazac being "no longer young" and having all the original settlers of Avernum dead of old age (Solberg excepted).

I've been wondering how many years/decades this actually is since the in-game Calender disappeared on us and all time frames given are vague in the extreme, usually along of the lines of "oh, it's been a few decades since then," or the ever-popular, "oh, that was such a long time ago in Avernum's history."

Also, I'm still hoping Jeff brings the party-wide Reputation stat back in some form or another, but I'm not holding my breath too much.

or, um - tasteless ?

Someone should figure out how to make chitrachs edible and delicious. (Maybe like really weird lobsters or something?) Then the adventurers of Avernum shall have their glorious, glorious revenge.

Dikiyoba.

What will happen to the all GIFTS?

They are still around and say that, "You're cute."


Dual wielding isn't quite like it was in Exile. Jeff has tweaked it a bit, but with battle frenzy or speed plus enough quick action you can get up to 8 hits per round. I'm still looking for the extra action point item so I can get even more.

We had a long investigation & discussion of this on EE some time ago. The conclusion, basically a best fit line for a number of small pieces of evidence, was:

(Given that X1 = 817, X2 = 823, X3 = 833)

A4 = 855

A5 = 870

Hrm, only 50 (ish) years from A1 to A5? That doesn't seem long enough given that the originally banished people could still be alive in their 80's and A5 makes it pretty clear that we're supposed to be many generations into Avernum's history, with there being grandkids or even great-grandkids to the original "settlers".

Plus I remember there being a mention of how your Empire troopers in A5 wouldn't have been treated so poorly by the Avernites "just a century ago" again implying that Avernum is at least 100 years old by now, possibly more.

Of course, if that were the case, A5 would have to take place 45+ years after A4 and anyone who remembers the Time of the Shades would have to be at least 55 years old, and this isn't the case (see the Nephil in Blackchasm Fort who talks about the events of A4 with you).

Sigh, I guess there's not enough evidence one way of the other, but it's still sorta fun to speculate.

P.S. It's probably way too late by now in the game's development by now, but I always wanted to suggest to Jeff that he add to the information given about a foe when you right-click on it in combat.

I'd love to be able to click on the monster I'm beating on and see "Hostile So-and-So, Health 318/495, Slowed, Weakened, Cursed." You know, instead of guessing when my debuffs were wearing off.

The little floaty Xs in A5 were a good start but when you nail a monster with Daze, Slow, Leg Sweep, and Shield Breaker over the course of 2-3 rounds, you have no idea which one is wearing off when: the Xs remain so long as ANY of the four debuffs remain, and the game never tells you what combination the Xs represent at any given time.

Jeff has somewhat color coded and size differentiated enemy status conditions. You really have to keep track of the important ones yourself, but dazed are frozen, charmed have large red Xs, weaken are small red xs, poison and acid are green characters, ...

You don't get to see health, so for common monsters you have to learn by killing a few and keeping track of average health.

Char1 and 2 (Fighters) collect wood and then say to char 3 (or 4) whois Mage: Hey, cast a fireball to lite those woods. Mage does as asked and whoom, woods are burned to ashes.

Ultima had ignition spell which was used to lite candles etc.

But at least you can see the percentage of health. When a monster is wounded, you probably saw it happen, so you have an idea of how much it took to bring it down as far as it is. But when you first meet a new monster you have no idea how much health its full red line represents. Ah the joy of Torment play, when you whack the horrible boss for enormous damage and its health line shrinks — imperceptibly.

I speak of Jeff's recent previous games, and reveal nothing about A6 one way or the other!