I've recently noticed that Bert does not make any successful strikes during combat. I wonder if he is "slowed"? I've checked his Status, and he is in fact "hasted", but I wonder if this could be a bug in the game? He is currently wielding his club. I've tried other weapons, and also martial arts. I think I've played this game now for a couple of hours, without Bert making one single successful attack on any enemy.

I was thinking of looking at one of the save game files using a hex editor, to see if I can see a "slowed" attribute on Bert...

I've noticed the same thing, and I'm pretty sure it has to do with his low dex stat. It's decent enough when hitting low-level enemies, but against stronger ones he can't hit the broad side of a barn. There's another NPC you can get later on with an even lower dex, and that one has the exact same problem.

Hasting Bert may help a little (I don't know whether it improves his to-hit chance, but if nothing else it will give him more swings), and using the "berserk attack" option will double his hit chance (though by doing so you give up on his insane damage potential with "mighty blow"). Honestly though, I think Bert is pretty useless, and the best option is just to swap him out for a different NPC when you're given the chance.

Thanks for the info - your idea about Bert's DEX sounds very probable. I'll swap him out of the party as soon as I have the chance..

Other than that issue, I'm enjoying the game. It's flawed, but there's plenty in it to have fun with..

Agreed.

While we're comparing notes, have you had any success using offensive magic spells (fireball, lightning bolt, etc)? It seems like even when I use a spell that the enemy is supposedly "weak" against, and even with the mana-input cranked up to max, the damage level just isn't all that impressive given the cost. Once in a while, if I'm getting mobbed by a huge group and need to soften them up a bit, it can be useful to toss in a single massive area-effect spell as an emergency measure, but I only get to do that once and it takes a good long while for the mana to recharge.

Also, are you playing on hard mode? According to the instruction manual, enemies are more difficult to hit on hard mode.

I've played the game through twice on normal mode, and Bert could always dish out the pain pretty reliably with Mighty Blow. In my new game, though, I went with hard mode, and landing a hit is noticeably more difficult, especially with Bert.

I'm not sure if Dex directly affects your chance to hit, but it does control the number of weapon skill points you get, so Bert doesn't get very many. After the early game, he definitely starts to lag behind for that reason.

I'm beginning to have a doubt about the issue regarding Bert's ineffectiveness during combat. I briefly checked a YouTube video of someone playing Thunderscape. It's called "Wolf Plays Thunderscape 17". If you scroll through to the 20 minute mark and watch carefully, you'll see that Bert strikes an Ogre for 35 and 38 points worth of damage using a standard attack. I'm currently in that particular cavern right now, and I'd say that Bert has had at least 50 attack attempts on Ogres and the like, and not made a single successful strike on any of them. That's really interesting. BTW, the official readme.txt file (found inside the GoG Thunderscape folder) contains an interesting paragraph regarding the game's difficulty settings: I'm assuming that the current difficulty setting for my game is set to 50/100, as the slider bar is set to Normal, and I don't think that I've inadvertently clicked on the Hard button at any time. Yes your commentary about the game's offensive spell mechanics roughly matches my experience, and I suspect of other players too. It's unfortunate.

Having said that, when my party first came in to contact with Skeletal enemies, I consistently and effectively used acid bolts against them. All four of my party members had maximum mana points of about 100, and each bolt I cast was either worth 8 or 10 points, causing between 20 and 30 points of damage per strike. This meant that I could defeat approximately 15 of them, before requiring a rest and subsequent full "mana reload".

(You almost certainly know this, but having a decent xenology skill will allow you to understand what each enemy is vulnerable to. I then used this info, in conjunction with trial and error, to find the best spell against each enemy.)

A couple of other "note comparison" comments are below. Please note that they contain a few minor spoilers.

I don't use magic scrolls. Whenever I find them, I just eventually sell them when I find one of the game's rare shops - and then I find that I can't really do much with this money earnt!

A backstabbing thief can be quite useful. For instance, my dexterous elf has knife and stealth skills, along with some shadow boots and a shadow blade. During one single round of combat with the Dark One, this elf inflicted about 400 points worth of damage on him.

I really wish I'd started the game with someone adept in the pole arm skill, because some of the weapons found during the game, such as the Demon Slayer, The Reaper, and possibly The Dreamer look useful. At the moment, I'm stuck with someone adept at fencing! Quite often I get him to successfully feint an attack on an enemy, hoping that this will improve the other member's offensive attacks.

My fencer is also adept at fast talk, although I hardly bother testing this out during an attack. I wonder whether (or when) this skill is of any good use?

Just one final thing. Is it possible to get an email notification when a new message has been added to a thread? Currently, I'm unaware of responses to the threads that I've participated in. I just periodically check in to see if someone has added a new message. I couldn't spot anything inside the options menus. Perhaps I'm blind and/or stupid, but I just couldn't see anything relevant..

Thanks.

Interesting. I wish the game was a little more open about what's going on under the hood. Yes, my dedicated spellcaster has a xenology skill of about 200. I haven't seen any additional benefits since hitting the "150" mark, but we'll see if anything else turns up.

As you say, though, it still seems to require a bit of "trial and error" to figure out what to do. You'd think casting lightning bolt on an enemy weak to lightning would be effective, but that doesn't always seem to be the case. Scrolls and potions would probably be useful if you didn't have a spellcaster in your group, but I don't know why you wouldn't unless you were doing it as a "challenge run". The various "buff" spells (haste, strength, armor, magical barrier) don't ever seem to "wear off" unless an enemy hits you with the opposite status effect, so it's pretty cheap to keep everyone buffed all the time. I keep potions of mana and major heal potions (for emergencies), but apart from that I just sell them. And yeah, I haven't found anything worth buying yet either. "Backstab" is one of two methods I've found to really bring the pain. The problem is that it takes two tunrs to set up (assuming "hide in shadows" succeeds on the first try), so usually the enemies are already dead by the time it goes off, largely thanks to my number-one "bring the pain" option, which is - have someone with high dex and strength wielding a magical warhammer. I don't know why, but that weapon just seems to massively outperform every other one I've come across so far. Based on the manual it looks less impressive than a lot of other axes or clubs, but with "mighty blow' I'm consistently doing 90-140 damage per strike (and typically getting 4-5 strikes per round), even on heavily armored enemies. With a few initiative-boosting rings, my hammer guy can usually wipe out an entire enemy group before anyone else even takes a turn. Maybe I'll find a better weapon later in the game, but so far this one is the MVP. ("Skull Splitter" was a good one for the early game - did about 70-75 damage per strike pretty consistently.) When you get the dwarf mines, there's an NPC you can pick up who has a high polearm skill. So far I haven't found them to be that impressive, but they're solid (about on par with swords, I'd say). I haven't bothered with it - might try it on a future playthrough, but given the number of game elements that were clearly only half-implemented (e.g. a money system but nothing worth buying), I wouldn't be surprised if the skill just doesn't do anything useful. I'm not aware of such a feature, but then I check GOG pretty regularly, so it isn't something I'd go looking for.

Other questions/comments:

-Has anyone tried a "monk" build (i.e. high martial arts skill and no weapons)? I'm skeptical as to whether the extra blows would make up for the lost damage potential of a weapon, but then, this game doesn't always work the way the manual makes it sound like it should.

-This might just be a bug in my current play-through, but in the upper Founder's Cave (level 13) there's a gate you have to go through in the northwest corner, in order to reach a switch above a ledge. The stone above the gate has this weird "shimmer' effect that I'm pretty sure isn't supposed to be there, and whenever I step through the gate, the sound of it clanging shut will get "stuck" on a loop (I have to quit the game - reloading doesn't stop it). Oddly enough, the sound plays fine as long as I stay on the far side of the door and don't enter. Worse still, once the looping sound bug starts, it will "infect" any other sounds I run into and cause them all to start looping (bowshots, enemy death grunts, etc.) The FAQ on Gamefaqs suggests that this is a problem with corrupted level data, and that the solution is to save on an earlier level and then delete the relevant "Level##.dat" file in your save game folder, thus forcing the game to 'reset' the level, but that didn't work for me. I did eventually find a solution, though - if, when the looping sound bug starts, you stand really close to the gate and stare at it, for some reason that seems to convince the game that the gate is actually shut and it stops playing the loop. If you do this before encountering any other sounds, the bug won't spread to them. (Though this can be frustrating as there are a couple of Dark Dwarves on the far side of the gate who love to rush me.) Anyway, just wanted to put a warning out there in case anyone else encounters this problem.

@Azilut, thanks for the interesting information. BTW, I've just discovered something. Based on a hunch that Bert has been "slowed" (but shows no "slowed" warning in his character status panel), I decided to cast Dispel on him. Now, I don't know what's going on here, whether it's pure coincidence but hey presto, Bert immediately began successfully and regularly striking enemies again, even using mighty blow.

A couple more notes on the "looping sound bug", having run into it in a few other places where the "stare at the door" trick wasn't an option:

1. I think I've worked out what the trigger is. The game seems to have a difficult time playing sound effects (especially doors opening/closing and enemy death screams) when there is a "running water" sound effect playing in the background.

2. I've also found a simple solution: whenever you are near running water, just go into the options menu and turn sound effects off. You can turn them back on once you're away from the river.