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Displayed name	Slarty
Member number	261
Title	Raven v. Writing Desk
Postcount	3560
Homepage	http://www.stripcreator.com/comics/slartyvsdesk/
Registered	Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00

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Nociduas (spoilers) in Avernum 4
Slarty Raven v. Writing Desk Member # 261	written Wednesday, January 4 2006 22:32 Profile Homepage #7 AAaaaahAHhhh! Shikeys but this guy is tough. Wow. Even on Easy, he seems a bit much for my singleton to handle. The demon is pretty much irrelevant. I suppose I could just shell out the cash for Heal, and cast that and shoot my bow every turn, and use some very large number of energy potions... but jeez. There's gotta be a better way. Synergy, any thoughts? I think I'm just gonna have to wait for a second +AP item, and come back once I've gotten that significant power boost. -------------------- Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central Posts: 3560 \| Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00
A4 Demo in Avernum 4
Slarty Raven v. Writing Desk Member # 261	written Wednesday, January 4 2006 21:44 Profile Homepage #26 Clearly, Alorael is a he. But Aloreal is a he/she/it. Alorael, did you know you have an evil twin? -------------------- Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central Posts: 3560 \| Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00
The Enduring Priest-Tank in Avernum 4
Slarty Raven v. Writing Desk Member # 261	written Wednesday, January 4 2006 16:46 Profile Homepage #13 Arcane Shield is, however, the only spell that will give you mental shielding. -------------------- Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central Posts: 3560 \| Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00
Exodus Progress in Blades of Avernum
Slarty Raven v. Writing Desk Member # 261	written Wednesday, January 4 2006 16:03 Profile Homepage #19 Cool. I see you are unapologetic in your classical appropriations, heh. All the et's and k's and h's make it sound a little Egyptian. I am assuming your letter "h" varies as in English between syllabic (Herethet), aspirational (khoot), theta (theifaam) and thorn (lothamon)? Someone in Avernum really ought to speak an agglutinative language. Hmm. Perhaps the gremlins... Does Barbaric Slith have any syntax at all? For nouns, anyway? Anyway, very cool, I look forward to seeing it in action. -------------------- Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central Posts: 3560 \| Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00
The Enduring Priest-Tank in Avernum 4
Slarty Raven v. Writing Desk Member # 261	written Wednesday, January 4 2006 15:39 Profile Homepage #8 Enduring Priest Update: I've now completed most of the Eastern Gallery. Well, not the chitrach tunnels. Ugh. I think I'll take those out with Bolt of Fire. Even if I have to go back to town once to restore MP, that's better than sitting through each bug swinging and missing five times in a row. I'm at level 20, and the game has become laughably easy, a lot like singleton play in Exile, except slower. It's still fun though, or at least it is in the areas that have more than 1 or 2 types of enemies repeated ad naseum. I have been switching around the difficulty a bit, to see how challenging the higher levels are... they aren't challenging at ALL. Counting item bonuses I have 10 Dex, 10 Luck, 3 Gymnastics, and 6 Defense. Enduring Shield gives me an extra bonus of 40% or so, and rising as I start buying Spellcraft and Magery. On the higher difficulties things will hit sometimes, but still infrequently enough that all my MP (I bought up to 6 Intelligence, for Magery of course) makes them easy enough to take care of. The game does become more tedious on the higher difficulties, though. I haven't missed Tool Use at all. After getting Augmentation, I haven't met a trap that can stump me. (Except that blasted town alarm trap in Grindstone, that really pissed me off.) Unlock Doors is fine for doors. I will probably buy some Arcane Lore (4 points of it, to get to 6, or 12 with equipment) but not till I find a good spellbook. Kelner's Dispel Barrier spell only requires 5 arcane lore, by the way, Synergy... not a stretch at all. If I really wanted to buy Nature Lore (or more Arcane lore, or Tool Use) it wouldn't be a problem. Not on Easy or Normal, anyway. Having 20 fewer skill points would not make a big deal to me right now, and passing up the next 20 would really not be a problem. -------------------- Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central Posts: 3560 \| Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00
Avernum:4 vs Blades Of Avernum which is the best? in Avernum 4
Slarty Raven v. Writing Desk Member # 261	written Wednesday, January 4 2006 15:12 Profile Homepage #33 Digression is a natural part of conversation, especially in group conversations. It's something that many people appreciate and there's no reason why you wouldn't expect to find it on a message board. -------------------- Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central Posts: 3560 \| Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00
Exodus Progress in Blades of Avernum
Slarty Raven v. Writing Desk Member # 261	written Wednesday, January 4 2006 12:27 Profile Homepage #17 A conlang for the sliths! rolls around in gleeful dork laughter One question: does this language use the same script as whatever the humans speak? If it does, that could raise some interesting questions about racial history. Also, the large number of double vowels seems pretty unusual for a native script. Hmm. Interesting sample, though. Care to provide a word-by-word translation? -------------------- Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central Posts: 3560 \| Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00
Avernum:4 vs Blades Of Avernum which is the best? in Avernum 4
Slarty Raven v. Writing Desk Member # 261	written Wednesday, January 4 2006 12:13 Profile Homepage #28 Friend of mine from Chicago, he's a grad student there now. shrug Worth a shot. There have been several attempts made to phoneticize English spelling in this country. They all died out pretty quickly, though we can still see the results of one in the White Sox and Red Sox baseball team names. (YEAH sox!) Personally, I think it would be fun to force all languages to transliterate into IPA (the International Phonetic Alphabet), but then, I'm crazy. -- [slar'tUkr] -------------------- Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central Posts: 3560 \| Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00
Avernum:4 vs Blades Of Avernum which is the best? in Avernum 4
Slarty Raven v. Writing Desk Member # 261	written Wednesday, January 4 2006 11:51 Profile Homepage #25 I almost brought up Fahrenheit 451 in my own post. God, what an overly relevant book. I have mixed feelings about that thesis, SoT. I don't know that language constrains thought, per se, but it certainly affects and interacts with it. Kel: Classics, eh? Good man. Say, you don't know David Crane, do you? -------------------- Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central Posts: 3560 \| Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00
Avernum:4 vs Blades Of Avernum which is the best? in Avernum 4
Slarty Raven v. Writing Desk Member # 261	written Wednesday, January 4 2006 10:55 Profile Homepage #19 nods I'm not sure the situation with more specialized words (I'm going to use that rather than "precise" which seems imprecise to me) is as bleak as you suggest. At least not compared to the way it was "previously." The language relics we have from, say, the 1800s, are the things that people wrote down. Who wrote these things down? Writers, poets, newspaper reporters, editors, academics... in short, the most literate segments of the population. The most literate segments of the population today know that "awesome" can have something to do with "awe." They have a rich and a dynamic vocabulary. As a recent refugee from the scholarly life I can assure you that sesquipedalianism is alive and well. But do you really think the vernacular, 100 years ago, 200 years ago, whenever, was any LESS full of slang, or of vague words? Do you really think the vernacular had any more access to specialized vocabulary? I wish people read more, too. But if you take a little historical or geographical perspective, people in our society STILL read WAY more than they did 200 years ago... maybe even 100. And they read way more than people in many parts of the world do. I'm not supporting TV and video games over books, believe me, but I don't think you can blame the vagueness of our vernacular on them. -------------------- Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central Posts: 3560 \| Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00
Long Distance Traveling in Avernum 4
Slarty Raven v. Writing Desk Member # 261	written Wednesday, January 4 2006 10:25 Profile Homepage #9 How exactly do you ride a pylon in a wholesome way? As for riding animals, worgs would seem a better choice. And there are clearly some domesticated worgs around. -------------------- Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central Posts: 3560 \| Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00
Singleton party in Avernum 4
Slarty Raven v. Writing Desk Member # 261	written Wednesday, January 4 2006 10:09 Profile Homepage #80 Grats on finishing. cheers -------------------- Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central Posts: 3560 \| Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00
Avernum:4 vs Blades Of Avernum which is the best? in Avernum 4
Slarty Raven v. Writing Desk Member # 261	written Wednesday, January 4 2006 08:56 Profile Homepage #16 quote: It's me/It's I...I only pointed this out as a curiosity, since "It's I" sounds dreadfully awkward now, though still technically is the originally correct form, whatever it has become now. But when you say "originally correct" you are defining "originally" rather arbitrarily. I am guessing "originally" can't mean, say, Middle English, and I don't think you'd hold up 17th century English as a proper model for us either. At what point in time did English magically reach its "originally correct form"? quote: I learned this in no uncertain terms in college English, for whatever that is worth. Aha, I see you have answered my question already. ;) Don't believe everything your teachers tell you. It's a romantic notion, and I daresay a wonderful one, to hold up a language at one particular moment and say "This is good. This I love. I want to use this as a standard." I think that's great. But it's still totally arbitrary, and if you expect all men to do the same thing, you're deluding yourself. And if you are going to nitpick language you certainly can't say "originally" to refer to such standards! Yes, English is being "dumbed down." It is also being built up. All languages are constantly being dumbed down and built up as words cycle in and out of the lexicon and as their meanings change in subtle ways. English still has a truly enormous vocabulary. I think awe-inspiring works for "truly awesome" although awesome itself still works, given proper context. As for something "so laden with fantasy elements as to make it unbelievable," what about chimerical? Phantasmagorical? There are other words with related meanings to both of those -- numinous, say. Defining words is difficult, particularly words that don't refer to concrete objects. You can often triangulate on a meaning by asking yourself "would I describe this as __? what about that?" for many things... at first this is easy, but when you get to a very precise level of definition, you may start to be iffy about some answers; and you will eventually start to get different answers from different people, even from native speakers from the same area. And these fuzzy meanings will change over time in very subtle ways, even for a single speaker. For a language which is spoken by millions of people around the world, you can imagine all the changes it goes through. Many of these balance each other out, like myriad ripples on the world's oceans. But beneath the seas, there is always some tectonic activity, and eventually we see continental drift. quote: English was once much more precise than it is now What makes you say that? I'm interested, but looking back on the various texts I've read from Chaucer's day to ours, I can't say I've ever gotten that impression. Certainly Shakespeare is rich language, but that has as much to do with the author as the language, and I daresay he succeeds more at creating poetic multiplicity of meaning rather than at being "precise." -------------------- Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central Posts: 3560 \| Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00
Avernum:4 vs Blades Of Avernum which is the best? in Avernum 4
Slarty Raven v. Writing Desk Member # 261	written Wednesday, January 4 2006 07:09 Profile Homepage #13 quote: While, common misuse has made the correct form... sound wrong, it is correct. Sigh. I spent the past two years studying linguistics, and this kind of prescriptivist attitude really irks me. Language is a dynamic entity, constantly changing, and you can only pin it down in a certain form so long as you freeze time at a certain moment. The correct form IS the form that is typically used. The fact is that language is essentially arbitrary, and it isn't any better or any more "correct" to use one word or another, or one syntactic structure or another, to communicate something. The only time you could really make such an argument would be in a certain word or structure is confusing or hard to use to communicate -- but in such a case, its use would never become widespread anyway. As for "It is I" versus "It's me" -- English is what syntacticians call an analytic language. Speakers of English rely heavily on word position to figure out how a word is being used. "I" and "me" and the rest of our personal pronouns are left over from the influence of other languages where inflection is used rather than word order. While "I" and "me" carry different syntactic information and are not exactly the same words, in the context of "It's __" they are pretty much identical in meaning. Therefore, it's not surprising that they have become somewhat interchangeable in that context. Syntactically, the role taken on by the pronoun in "it's __" is not exactly the same as the roles taken by subjective (I) or objective (me) pronouns. You can see this looking at other languages. In French, for example, you do not see "C'est je" (It's I) or "C'est me" (It's me) but "C'est moi" where "moi" is the disjunctive pronoun, a modified form of "me" (me). quote: In this case, the question would be, "Which is better?" "Which is best" would apply to three or more choices. And I don't agree about this at all. When you say "which is better?" you're basically saying "which is better (than the others)?" And when you say 'which is best?" you're basically saying "which is (the) best (one)?" Both make sense, and there's absolutely no reason you can't use a superlative with a set of two. It communicates just as clearly as the comparative and it doesn't hurt the use of the superlative in any other situation. They are different logical structures, but there is no good reason (or, AFIAK, any historical justification) to restrict the use of one in a situation where they both fit. -------------------- Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central Posts: 3560 \| Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00
Difficulty switch bug in Avernum 4
Slarty Raven v. Writing Desk Member # 261	written Wednesday, January 4 2006 06:37 Profile Homepage #4 You don't have to open the prefs window. It's happened to me at least twice on fresh starts of the application, going straight to loading the quicksave. Playing under Easy gives you a substantial bonus to your dodge score (actually, I think the enemy levels may just all be reduced, so they all have lower to-hit scores), and as a singleton with high dodge, it's extremely noticeable when this bonus goes away. As I said, though, I can't recreate it, so I don't know what caused it. -------------------- Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central Posts: 3560 \| Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00
Avernum series - Avernum 4 plot in Avernum 4
Slarty Raven v. Writing Desk Member # 261	written Tuesday, January 3 2006 17:32 Profile Homepage #2 A4 has significantly more plot than G3, if that's a helpful comparison. -------------------- Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central Posts: 3560 \| Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00
Difficulty switch bug in Avernum 4
Slarty Raven v. Writing Desk Member # 261	written Tuesday, January 3 2006 16:11 Profile Homepage #0 Has anyone else encountered this? Occasionally, the game difficulty resets to normal when I start up a game which was saved under a different difficulty. I don't know what causes this, and I can't consistently recreate it, so it's hard to document, but I'm 100% sure it's happened to me repeatedly. Also, the difficulty options in the Preferences window and in the Edit Party window don't always seem to be in sync. Sometimes changing one will change the other. Sometimes it won't, and it's easy to get them to disagree as to what the difficulty level is. The Edit Party option seems to be mostly irrelevant to the game, except that it usually (but not always!) changes the value in the Preferences window if you change it when starting a new game. -------------------- Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central Posts: 3560 \| Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00
First aid, uh, high score in Avernum 4
Slarty Raven v. Writing Desk Member # 261	written Tuesday, January 3 2006 16:06 Profile Homepage #0 So, my singleton, who didn't buy any First Aid to start out with, just purchased 2 levels from Cecil. A second later I saw the familiar first aid recovery message: "... (1296 health, 260 energy)" Presumably, this was my reward for all the slaying I'd done so far. Someone was asking what the highest first aid reward anyone had gotten was... does this take the cake? :) -------------------- Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central Posts: 3560 \| Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00
FIne Slith Spear, not so fine? in Avernum 4
Slarty Raven v. Writing Desk Member # 261	written Tuesday, January 3 2006 14:02 Profile Homepage #3 It could. For whatever reason, it doesn't. "Base damage" is always the multiplier range times the weapon level. So the first number is always going to be the same as the weapon level. For your regular slith spear, that's "8 - 24" meaning 1-3 x 8. Edit: Yeah. Thanks Thuryl. [ Tuesday, January 03, 2006 16:00: Message edited by: Slartucker ] -------------------- Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central Posts: 3560 \| Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00
FIne Slith Spear, not so fine? in Avernum 4
Slarty Raven v. Writing Desk Member # 261	written Tuesday, January 3 2006 12:54 Profile Homepage #1 The regular Slith Spear is a level 8 weapon, but it has a multiplier of 3 like regular spears. Thus, each level of Strength, Pole Weapons, and so on that your warrior has will do an extra 1-3 damage. The Fine Slith Spear is a level 6 weapon, but it has a multiplier of 4 like halberds. Thus, each level of Strength, Pole Weapons, etc. will do an extra 1-4 damage. The multiplier difference adds up quickly when you have high amounts of Strength and so on, as most warriors will. So the Fine Slith Spear is usually a stronger weapon. The "Base Damage" displayed is the damage you will get if you have no skill whatsoever with the weapon, and is often somewhat misleading. (The weapon level affects the "base damage" and it also affects chance to-hit slightly. However, unless you are missing a lot with the fine spear you probably don't need to worry about that.) -------------------- Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central Posts: 3560 \| Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00
Getting extra skills in Avernum 4
Slarty Raven v. Writing Desk Member # 261	written Tuesday, January 3 2006 11:13 Profile Homepage #2 IIRC, the highest Arcane Lore the game ever requires you to have is 15. (And there are several items which boost the stat.) -------------------- Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central Posts: 3560 \| Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00
Avernum:4 vs Blades Of Avernum which is the best? in Avernum 4
Slarty Raven v. Writing Desk Member # 261	written Monday, January 2 2006 23:34 Profile Homepage #4 In two words: A4: depth. BoA: breadth. -------------------- Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central Posts: 3560 \| Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00
Magical Efficiency workup in Avernum 4
Slarty Raven v. Writing Desk Member # 261	written Monday, January 2 2006 16:44 Profile Homepage #0 Verdict: As suspected, Magical Efficiency really sucks. I have a whole bunch of data, but it really doesn't seem worth typing in. Here's an overview: 5 ME: average 91% of normal spell cost 10 ME: average 81% 20 ME: average 75% 30 ME: average 58% Note though that ME is more consistent with higher casting cost spells. With Minor Heal (cost of 2), I once got a free casting with 5 ME, but 5 ME will usually give no reduction. On the other hand, Arcane Shield (cost of 20) gave me results exclusively between 15-19 with 5 ME. With 30, the results were all between 11 and 17, mostly 13s and 14s. Free points from Pure Spirit or whatever aren't bad, but this is definitely not worth spending skill points on. -------------------- Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central Posts: 3560 \| Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00
Singleton party in Avernum 4
Slarty Raven v. Writing Desk Member # 261	written Monday, January 2 2006 16:36 Profile Homepage #78 If you don't mind waiting a bit, you can get 3 points in Mage Spells just from equipment. That means only buying 8 points, which is doable. Heck, I've already bought 6 for Unlock, so maybe I will end up getting Dispel Barrier after all. Certainly it's worth it, if you get 15 knowledge brews out of the deal, and perhaps some extra equipment on top of that. Someone else said they had about 35 brews at the end of their game, which suggests Nature Lore gets you about 20 brews. 40 skill points is only about 12-14 points of Nature Lore, though, so it seems like Nature Lore is a losing proposition for singletons after all. Bummer. Are there any other cool items buried in the dirt, besides the Heartstrike Bow? Update, btw, on my singleton: I just got Enduring Shield -- I forgot you could get that in Formello! Everything has become ridiculously easy now. Even missiles have very low hit chances against me now, turrets for example at about 10%. (Excuse me... not turrets, "fungi.") -------------------- Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central Posts: 3560 \| Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00
Singleton party in Avernum 4
Slarty Raven v. Writing Desk Member # 261	written Monday, January 2 2006 13:03 Profile Homepage #69 "Basically, each piece of armor eats a percentage of the remaining damage. I love this system and wish I thought it up years ago. It makes balance MUCH easier. It is the main factor that helps me keep the game a challenge at higher levels." Ooh, thanks for the answer. That is a great system. Teach me to read the readme! Hmm... so basically, those Poor Leather Helmets are completely useless... One more question: are character-innate resistances (say, from being a Slith, from Luck, from Hardiness, from Endurance, etc) all lumped together and applied as one? And does this mean that an Endurance of 20 will actually make you immune to Poison and Acid? (Or, more to the point, that 10 Hardiness and 20 Resistance will give 100% immunity?) [ Monday, January 02, 2006 13:38: Message edited by: Slartucker ] -------------------- Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central Posts: 3560 \| Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00

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