Adventurer's Guild 𝙲𝙻𝙰𝚂𝚂𝙸𝙲 Issue #10 — Exile III: Ruined World

[Rand]

I haven't played it, but I've heard the first remakes are pretty good and the second remakes dumb the games down, fwiw.

I generally agree. The second remakes are well made, but have major compromises. The second remake of Exile III has no horses, for example, and you have to strain to fail the timers for the plagues to expand.

I like most things about the first remakes better (Avernum to Avernum 3), but have some gripes.
Only a four PC party sucks.
How you fight Garzahd was better in Exile II.
Like I said in an earlier post above, I'm not a fan of the factory puzzle in Avernum 3.
A few other minor gripes like less useful spells. No area attack spells, for example (engine issues until he figured out how to do it in much later games).
But I generally like them the best, even though I have a soft spot for Exile III.

[Rand]

My current priest is lagging behind in levels due to low damage output.

I found that my priest did well as a support warrior with blunt weapons.
As encumbrance doesn't affect their spells, you can armor them up like crazy and they don't need to move much.
He got plenty of XP bonking already weakened monsters to death while the warriors concentrated on the tough stuff.

[J1M]

I never considered playing the remakes because I didn't like the smaller party size.

[Tangerine]

Do we have a badge for this?

[SpellSword]

Not official (yet?) pin for Exile 3:

Do we have a badge for this?

J1M created an excellent badge earlier.

You can find the complete list here.

[rusty_shackleford]

Going to make dinner then I'll get the badge up

[Kalarion]

I've finally reached the surface. I explored almost all of the Portal Caves. The sole exception was the far northeast, which has a character who is central to the first trilogy's plot and a really nasty fight (a little meta here, as there's no telegraph of the difficulty of the fight - I just remembered it from the last time I played).

This game is unfortunately woke as ****, especially for a 90s game. Girlbosses everywhere, from halberd-wielding death machines to stronk indypindy kaptins of men. Tons of unmentioned and unexplained racial mixing; you're going to see white, arab, black and asian portraits all over the place. I will say that the Empire spans the entire globe and is highly cosmopolitan, so maybe that makes a little more sense. I didn't remember most of this (except for the lesbian relationship between Elspeth and Nance, another cross-trilogy point). I don't think there was much more than Elspeth and Nance in 1 and 2. It was much more subtle back then. Elspeth hints at being a **** with Nance in like one dialogue where she explains why they were cast into Exile by the (B-B-B-B-BASED?!) Empire (because they're ***** and the Empire doesn't like scissoring *****). In Exile 3 it's rife, at least throughout the Portal Caves: the aforementioned ***** are back (Elspeth is of course a strong blacksmith - and she's not the only one). Then there's this:


I think I missed it when I first played. I can't believe what a giant ****** Vogel was even back then.

I seriously thought about just not talking about this stuff until I was finished with the game; Exile 3 really is an incredible project, especially for a solo dev. On the merit of gameplay it's worth it for everyone to try. But that felt hypocritical and dishonest, especially given my loudly-voiced displeasure with people who keep insisting, "but the gameplay!!".

So, there you have it.

One of the things I'm really learning to re-appreciate about the Exiles was how much effort went into world-building. There are a ton of dialogues and encounters that don't lead to anything but deeper looks into character and social dynamics, snippets of the history of the world, explanations about NPC character motivations... very cozy and immersion-building.

Which is not to say there isn't plenty of cool **** to find! I found a vendor of most of learnable level 3 Priest spells in Ghikra, the lone Vahnatai city in the Portal Caves:


Some of these will be useful throughout the game. Speaking of Vahnatai, I scried Rentar-Ihrno (some of you may recall that name from Tangerine's posts, big spoiler ), this gives you an idea of how ******* badass Erika is for almost crushing Rentar:


On the surface, I've been exploring the first region. Each region is associated with an Empire capital city. The capital city we emerge to is Krizsan, which is suffering from a couple problems, including a Unicorn infestation. In Exile, Unicorns are something like horse-sized and -shaped gadflies; rudimentary intelligence, ugly, nappy fur, and mildly poisonous. I found a dead adventurer's body behind some secret walls in their cave:


He had some good loot. Next up I'll be working to destroy the first of many monstrous plagues.

[Rand]

I think I missed it when I first played. I can't believe what a giant ****** Vogel was even back then.

I didn't tweak to that when I played, either. Just thought he was a frustrated artist or something. How naive we were. Of course, the queerdos hadn't vomited their polluted thinking everywhere yet.
Gross.

[Rand]

The **** on the Spiderweb Discord love those two ***** Elspeth and Nance because of the "representation". They feel SO seen! (vomit)
I said it wasn't representation, it was just the logical conclusion of an entity like The Empire ridding itself of antisocial undesirables and you'd see a lot of those people in Exile.
They "reeeeeeee"d at me, of course, despite the obvious truth of the statement.

But seeing the above, they may have also been right and Vogel wanted to put his lefty ******** in the game because of his feelings on them being represented.

[Tangerine]

I was taken off-guard by the amount of leftoidisms in the game. In that regard, it felt like playing something made around 2007, not 1995.

[rusty_shackleford]

Not taking suggestions from boomers anymore

[Tweed]

Great game guys, how bout Gayblade next?

[Tweed]

You could have used the power of AG for good and used it for Ultima Underworld.

[Rand]

I like the Church of the Divine Lucre.
I suspect now it's supposed to be something against possibly the grifting televangelist charlatans and maybe capitalism as well, but the churches are widespread, rich, and offer top-tier services selling great spells and potions to anyone with the cash.
It's a success story and an excellent resource for those with the wherewithal to take advantage.

The other churches often have excellent services for money as well. The one in the Mages' Tower can even increase your intelligence for plain cash without using advancement points!
Even the anti-arcane magic (divine is fine to them) cult on Bigail is pragmatic and sells extremely useful, and otherwise rare, magical equipment of all sorts.

[Kalarion]

I finished the first two plagues. The Slime Plague was pretty unremarkable, except for the massive 1,500 gold reward for completing it. While exploring the countryside around the first major city, Krizsan, I encountered my first Empire Dervish, the Empire's elite (and incredibly deadly) shock troops:



He was sent - alone - from the heartland to deal with the Slime plague. He's mildly confident in his abilities:



Also seems pretty chill:

("Worms" are the Empire soldiers' slur for the Exiles)


As I've gotten older I've learned to appreciate the Empire more and more. They've conquered the entire known surface world, and eradicated all non-human species. Their propaganda is ******* sweet. Goebbels should have taken notes:

(Nephilim are cat people)


Did you know it's possible to walk on water in this game? You just have to find the right spots:

(The dagger I picked up there, the Ravager Knife, is absolutely amazing for how easy and fast it is to get)

► Further Adventures

Of course, no Exile game would be complete without the GIFTS (Giant, Intelligent, Friendly, Talking Spiders):



The second plague most people will find is in contention for worst in the game. Not because of difficulty (the Golems hold that title undisputed), but for being the most disgusting:



Yes, that's right, giant cockroaches Luckily, the plan to deal with them involves purging their lair with cleansing hellfire:



This is Quickfire, the most deadly and unbalanced hazard in the game (eventually you'll be able to summon quickfire at will). Remember Armageddon from MnM 6-7? That's Quickfire:



After dealing with the cockroaches, I had to go on a short murder investigation in the Portal Caverns. It involves a trip through some winding caves that are heavily trapped and feature several well-coordinated and deadly ambushes:

After finding some intriguing clues, it's on to deal with the next plague!

[Kalarion]

I'm finally done with the third plague, and working on the fourth (and worst).

We found a little abandoned house at the top of a hill:

Learned a new spell from a book inside, too!

Then we found some rich commune hippies or whatever who forgot how to farm ( ). There's a convenient spell that produces food. I quickly make bank:


While working on destroying the third plague, I came across an evil altar. Naturally I exorcised it (there's a very expensive spell that allows you to do this), but not before its defenses activated:

Off-screen: one of the nastiest monsters you'll fight in the game.

► The Third Plague

This one is a little more interesting, in that I'm not expected to wipe out this plague myself. In fact, even though it's possible to kill all of them, it doesn't stop the plague. Instead, I have to reignite an old war between the two monstrous humanoid races - Troglodytes and Giants - that make it up:

Vothkaro, the king of the Trogs, is who wrote this. He's furious that the True Enemy^TM of the game is keeping him from fighting his ancestral enemies.

We take him up on his offer, killing the High Khazi (Trog equivalent of a high priest) who was forcing the Trogs to focus on the Empire instead of the Giants.


With the Trogs now free to fight at Vothkaro's direction, we head to the Giants to see about... facilitating the proceedings

While checking out one of the major cities in the game, I'm presented with what seems at first an absurd offer:

8,000 gold for the "privilege" of having a free place to rest?!


Well... yes

A careful inspection of the environs nets me one of the best weapons in the game:

Now my blender can really blend!

After a lot of searching, I finally find the location of the magical artifact that powers the barrier between the Trogs and Giants. It's guarded by the most annoying monster in the game, a Doomguard. Doomguards are immune to magic. They split every time they're hit, with the new copy having the original's current HP. Essentially, I have to kill literally hundreds of them in a slow grind-fest, because I'm not yet capable of causing massive damage in a single blow.

The crystal gets unceremoniously smashed to bits, causing a gigantic explosion and bringing down the barrier. Guess what's waiting on the other sides:

Whoops.

Exile has something for everyone, including mobs of mooks that have little or no resistance to elemental damage, making them perfect targets for our casters:

I let them bunch up and then carpet-bombed them out of existence in a single round.

And a variety of nasty traps for the unwary:

This Quickfire was behind a dispellable barrier, which tempted me into releasing it. Curse you, Vogel!

And different ways to traverse terrain. Later on, you can even fly!!

PS: if you land in a non-safe spot (mountains, trees, water), it's an instant TPK
PPS: hope you know how many tiles you can fly at a time, and plan accordingly

That little excursion does however net me the best caster gloves in the game:

@Tweed ascends from Koboldry to Dragon-hood.

There are also a variety of nifty little dungeons that give good rewards and have interesting challenges. This one featured my finding an ancient Vampire, ransacking his massive hoard of treasure, and then destroying him for good after he tried to fake his death and recuperate in a healing crystal:

Note the quickfire and lava tiles. I had to walk over them to get back here, it hurt! But the baddies have to learn that EVIL NEVER PAYS!!

And now, a preview of coming attractions!

Tweed kneels.

[Kalarion]

The Golem Factory is draining my will to live. I haven't played in 2 days.

I recently found out that the Golem machines can be (at least temporarily) disabled with use of a certain spell. I'm going to use it and see if I can push my way through.

[Kalarion]

Finally beat the game.

The Golems were by far the worst plague in the game, nothing else comes close. Not only are they durable, nasty and infinite, they have this abomination of a dungeon:

Imagine this, but 3 full floors and a penthouse, with Golems endlessly respawning while you're trying to figure out how to destroy the factory. The horror.

After much struggle, numerous curse words and several day-long breaks, we finally to the factory's control room:

Many buttons will be pushed.

Shortly after, we destroy the factory... which was being run by a Vahnatai Crystal Soul. We find the council room where the Vahnatai were directing the Golem war effort:

This is very, very bad.

The Exiles are very worried when they find out who we're up against:

Anaximander thinks this is very, very bad.

Time to power up. But as we're merrily looting the countryside, ransacking it of artifacts, we run across an event that @Tangerine missed due to completing the game so quickly

Note the in-game time. This event won't happen for at least 160 days. Recall that Tangerine beat it in a little more than 130.

The Tower of Magi has been overtaken by demons! This is a callback to one of the major quests of the first Exile. As we're leaving Anaximander's office, we continue receiving psychic calls ala The Shining:


As we make our way to the now-ruined Tower of Magi, trying to find the demonic portal to close it, the leader of the demons taunts us:

Oh, we will.

Inside the Tower, we grab a Blessed Athame, a knife that can cut anything. We'll be using it to destroy the portal.


After slaying many demons, and receiving ever-more-desperate taunts from Grah-Hoth, we finally arrive at the portal, powered by the soul of the woman who brought the demons to the Tower:

Interestingly, you can choose to step into the portal here, rather than destroy it. I'll give you three guesses what happens if you do.

We destroy the portal, and send the demons back to the Hell they came from:


Now, back to our quest!

► Show Spoiler

Before starting the on the path to the endgame, we pick up several powerful items, including The Ring of Endless Magery (gives near-limitless SP), the Mithral Sword (one of the best single-handed weapons in the game), and the Black Halberd (the strongest weapon in the game):




Drip complete, we head to the next step in our quest: a meeting with the Empress, Prazac, to secure a treaty in exchange for our aid in saving Valorim:

Most powerful human mage - GIRL. Most powerful Vahnatai mage - GIRL. Most powerful human being on the planet - GIRL. I'm sensing a pattern.

The treaty secured, we head to the final beast plague and easily destroy it. I didn't bother taking any screenshots, but they're called Alien Beasts, and they're basically Sleipnirs, the ultimate physical attackers in the game.

It's time to deal with the true masterminds:

This place would doubtless have been used to cook up a new plague.

After rushing through the factory (it continually damages us while we're inside, so we're incentivized to rush), we come to the lands of the Vahnatai, deep underground, below even the Exile caverns.

Home, sweet home.

After slaughtering dozens of Vahnatai, we reach our final destination: The Keep of Rentar-Ihrno.


Rentar is waiting for us with a grisly trophy:

Bon-Ihrno was the Vahnatai who brokered the alliance between Exile and the Vahnatai during the Empire Wars, and helped the Exiles recover their stolen Crystal Souls. He was the most respected of all Vahnatai (even though Rentar was the most powerful). He was also secretly aiding us throughout our quest. Murdering and beheading him was a truly heinous act.

We crawl through the Keep, pushing many buttons in preparation for the final showdown with Rentar. Finally, our efforts complete, we confront her. And then:

OH LOOK MORE GIRLBOSSING. It was pretty epic though.

This is no cut-scene, by the way. The pedestal that will end the game is indeed free, but we have to go through a pair of dueling archmages in-game in order to reach it. Erika and Rentar-Ihrno take against each other as you'd expect, summoning tons of nasty reinforcements and flinging devastating AoE attacks.

Finally, we reach the control pedestal and throw a torpedo down the exhaust vent overload the Keep's production facility, causing its complete destruction, and the transition to the end-game cutscene.

GIB BADGE!

[Tangerine]

I want to know what he was thinking with the Golem factory.

[Kalarion]

I want to know what he was thinking with the Golem factory.

I don't think he was. Jeff has always been a cargo-cultist, slavishly copying the design considerations of other games without much thought about how they would fit together. Exile III came out in the hey-day of long, grindy dungeons with lots of respawning enemies (EotB, Wizardry 6 and 7, etc), so Jeff plopped one into his game.

That said, there was still enough creative spark in Jeff that the Exiles feel like their own thing, and are generally enjoyable. The obvious cargo-cultism really shows itself with the Avernums, and fully manifested with Avadon.

Of all his game series, the two most unique were probably the Geneforges (very cool setting, which nevertheless riffed hard off the creature capturing/breeding of Pokemon and similar) and Nethergate (the closest Jeff ever came to a truly unique setting and systems, which he promptly abandoned).

[J1M]

I want to know what he was thinking with the Golem factory.

I don't think he was. Jeff has always been a cargo-cultist, slavishly copying the design considerations of other games without much thought about how they would fit together. Exile III came out in the hey-day of long, grindy dungeons with lots of respawning enemies (EotB, Wizardry 6 and 7, etc), so Jeff plopped one into his game.

That said, there was still enough creative spark in Jeff that the Exiles feel like their own thing, and are generally enjoyable. The obvious cargo-cultism really shows itself with the Avernums, and fully manifested with Avadon.

Of all his game series, the two most unique were probably the Geneforges (very cool setting, which nevertheless riffed hard off the creature capturing/breeding of Pokemon and similar) and Nethergate (the closest Jeff ever came to a truly unique setting and systems, which he promptly abandoned).

Any chance there are golem-bane weapons that people without his knowledge of the game may have discarded or sold before facing that plague?

Or some other character building options that he may have been aware of that players miss that would slow the respawn rate?

[Kalarion]

Any chance there are golem-bane weapons that people without his knowledge of the game may have discarded or sold before facing that plague?

Or some other character building options that he may have been aware of that players miss that would slow the respawn rate?

Weapons, no. There are no Golem-bane weapons in the game (this can be verified via the Editor). You do have access to the +3 enchantment vendor by that time in the game however, which is generally helpful.

For the respawn rate, nothing as far as I'm aware slows down golem respawns in the overworld, outside of destroying the Factory (which halts all respawns). Inside the Factory, you have one option, but it's temporary. The Factory's main floor has a half dozen or so machines that spawn new Golems every 50 turns or so. Casting Dispel Barrier on a machine disrupts its production for (I think) 500 turns, before it starts back up. Theoretically you could rush around the floor dispelling each machine, which would give you a couple hundred turns of peace before they turn back on.

That's it. It's just a nightmare of a plague to deal with. I suspect even Jeff knew it at the time, since he made beating it entirely optional; you can trigger the endgame without it, there are other clues besides the decisive one in the Golem Factory that point to the Vahnatai as the true masterminds, and the Golem plague/Factory don't contain any key items that are required for the endgame sequence.

The one thing that did help immensely with the Golems was that I had already started building my Assassination up. Assassination is fantastic after mid-game, when monsters begin having enough armor to seriously degrade your standard melee damage output (Assassination damage can't be mitigated).

[J1M]

What if you split the party and leave someone at the switch? Or block the space the golems spawn in with a character?

[Kalarion]

What if you split the party and leave someone at the switch? Or block the space the golems spawn in with a character?

Unfortunately no to both. The only way to "split" the party (outside of certain events) is to enter combat mode and move each character individually. Dispel Barrier can't be cast in combat mode . Placing party members on the usual spawn spots just has them generate nearby instead. I tried something similar with a Doomguard earlier in the game, actually. I surrounded it with my characters and started attacking. It just resulted in the Doomguard splits spawning behind us

[1998]

Trying this one next. Appreciate the good advice ITT

[J1M]

How much longer is this than Amberland?

[J1M]

Also, I think I just used DOSbox in Win10 to install it inside DOSbox, iirc.
Just use OTVDM. The forums and Discord say that's the way to go now.
https://spiderwebforums.ipbhost.com/top ... 4-windows/

Or whatever Rusty has cooked up.

Can vouch for this. Allows you to run the 16-bit executables as if they were native.

DOSbox and such can work, but the advantage of OTVDM is that you don't have a jarring mouse experience. You have your normal OS mouse speed and responsiveness.

[J1M]

Did Vogel ever explain his weird fetish for making all of the blacksmiths in Exile 3 women?

[J1M]

Any chance there are golem-bane weapons that people without his knowledge of the game may have discarded or sold before facing that plague?

Or some other character building options that he may have been aware of that players miss that would slow the respawn rate?

Weapons, no. There are no Golem-bane weapons in the game (this can be verified via the Editor). You do have access to the +3 enchantment vendor by that time in the game however, which is generally helpful.

For the respawn rate, nothing as far as I'm aware slows down golem respawns in the overworld, outside of destroying the Factory (which halts all respawns). Inside the Factory, you have one option, but it's temporary. The Factory's main floor has a half dozen or so machines that spawn new Golems every 50 turns or so. Casting Dispel Barrier on a machine disrupts its production for (I think) 500 turns, before it starts back up. Theoretically you could rush around the floor dispelling each machine, which would give you a couple hundred turns of peace before they turn back on.

That's it. It's just a nightmare of a plague to deal with. I suspect even Jeff knew it at the time, since he made beating it entirely optional; you can trigger the endgame without it, there are other clues besides the decisive one in the Golem Factory that point to the Vahnatai as the true masterminds, and the Golem plague/Factory don't contain any key items that are required for the endgame sequence.

The one thing that did help immensely with the Golems was that I had already started building my Assassination up. Assassination is fantastic after mid-game, when monsters begin having enough armor to seriously degrade your standard melee damage output (Assassination damage can't be mitigated).

Agree that assassination is a good skill. I took a couple points in it at character creation. It is also good then due to how the math works (good chance for extra damage against enemies whose level is not more than double your assassination skill).

Didn't remember your point about the golem production and dispel barrier. My solution was to enter combat mode and give the entire party 12 AP via double major blessing. It was a pain to move around the main floor like this, but it cut down the respawning to 10% of what it normally would be due to being able to move 12 tiles in a turn.

[Rand]

Did Vogel ever explain his weird fetish for making all of the blacksmiths in Exile 3 women?

Are they?
Yes, there's the legacy Exiled ***** Elspeth and Nance (I forget which is the smith and which is the (laughably) tough *****) in Upper Exile.
And there may be one or two others, but the important ones I can remember are all male. Like the ones that can enchant weapons.