avernum weaknesses

After a while, combat gets dull (Common RPG problem.)

Unfortunate solution - setpiece battles with weird rules. Why unfortunate? Because they feel stupidly unfair, especially when they behave according to rules you can't actually SEE that are unlike the rest of the game.

The one I'm stuck on at the moment and am probably going to just give up on involves a large area with crystals around it. There's a central foe who is invincible. You have to wait through endless rounds of combat for the trap to eventually tick down and the invincibility to wear off. All the while huge fireblasts (one of the most damaging attacks in the game) are going off. One crystal at a time is actually damageable and one crystal is booby-trapped and going to blow up with a really huge probably instakill explosion.

But it's extremely unclear whether damaging the one vulnerable crystal does ANYTHING AT ALL. You can't destroy it (really - it has infinite health, the health goes down to one and stays there), and the crystals cycle occasionally whether the vulnerable crystal has been reduced to 1 or not. Should you even be hitting it? No way to know.

The MOST irritating thing about it, though, is that the central baddie casts Fear. And if he succeeds in hitting the one party member whose turn in the turn order comes between him and the cleric who can remove fear, that party member will run away. And if ANY party member takes more than a few steps away from the trap, it RESETS. (Possibly back to complete health. Not that we can tell, since there's zero feedback about progress in wearing this whole thing down.)

grumble grumble I suppose I can try standing soemwhere else to try and TRAP my party so they can't run...

Edit: FORTY FIVE MINUTES REALTIME. That's how long it took to wear that trap down. WHAT THE HELL.