REPLAYING SUGGESTIONS

Try the game on a higher difficulty level. Try the game playing as all the NPCs for a super-powerful party. Try the game as all magic users. Try it with only 2 people in your party. Try it with all sliths, with completely inept people, etc.

GOING SOLO

This is one way of determining whether or not you're a true Avernum 2 master. To see if you're a king, try it on Torment difficulty. A few suggestions first, though:

Try a slith, they are the most powerful race, and give him the natural mage trait, and some other trait, probably. Why so many traits? Experience is very easy to come by. When I played a solo game with a slith natural mage, I maxed out my level before finishing any of the 3 major quests, and then stopped playing. I would not go for either beastmaster or divinely touched, since as a solo character you'll get crystals with these abilities quickly. Maybe go for strong will, because if you're paralyzed or put to sleep, you're pretty much dead. Fast on feet could be good, too. Elite warrior isn't as useful, since your character may build up enough skills to become quite powerful without this spell. Toughness could be nice as well, but with only one character, you end up equipping all the best armor anyway, minimizing the bonus of this skill.

Starting out: Plunk most of your skill points into spells. You'll rely heavily on them at the beginning. Hardiness is also an important skill, since you want to keep all of your AP and wear the best armor possible. The exception may be the thinking cap, which is an excellent item that improves your spells, something that is badly needed. You may want to eventually replace it with the mage's bracelet, and put on a blessed steel helm instead. In terms of armor, get the best possible. Go for blessed plate rather than icy chain, and then go for a dragonskin cloak. You won't regret it. Getting a freedom charm early may be a good idea.

How things are different, bad: You'll get smacked around more, and will need to cast haste before almost every fight. You can't learn several spells (the ones that require vahnatai lore>5), and will have a very hard time obtaining some items (like the alien blade and the mage bracelet). You actually have to put skill points in barter in order to sell items at a good price, and will have to cast safe travel 3 occasionally, too. The fight-end cheat doesn't work anymore.

How things are different, good: Getting slowed isn't so bad. Just end combat, and fight the enemies one on one. Haste 1 and 2 are very nice, battle rage 3 is super. You can use all the mind crystals on one character, rather than spreading them around. A lot of spells that once weren't used at all suddenly become somewhat useful.

The best reason for trying this is that you create a character who can slay empire troops without any hassle, and who is ultra-powerful, almost like a Greek god. It's very satisfying.

Additionally, from Luthien:
Another con is looting dungeons! It's a major pain to have to leave every time your inventory is full. However, you can get around this by using the create a PC option, and creating a character with 10 strength to lug stuff around for you. This also will help you use the fight-end cheat. Also, you can store characters with high barter skill and use them when selling expensive items (or when needing vahnatai lore or rune reading). A quick note about creating characters -- you can only do it in 'major' towns, which still makes it a bit awkward when you're deep in a dungeon. However, if you simply clean out a dungeon via fighting and don't pick things up along the way, you can go to town and create 3 characters with 10 strength and come back. Another con is Gymnastics costing 5000 gold for 1 character- yowch!. Finally, another con about looting is wilderness encounters. Sure, in a dungeon you just make lots of trips. But when you fight wandering monsters (especially empire troops), you all too often need to leave chain mails and steel shields lying on the ground!

Some of the pros are that you can spend all your money on one character (including all those knowledge brews!). Also, I've used bows with the 1 PC more than I ever have before. What a great way to save those precious spell points! That's why I went back and started again as a Nephil -- good with bows and acts quick in combat without needing fast on feet, which leaves room for natural mage and elite warrior (or strong will as some people suggest).