Avernum Annotated Maps

First Area Detail Map

NORTH Newbielande / EAST edge of world / SOUTH Mertis Area / WEST Cotra
Back to Main Map

NORTH Newbielande / EAST edge of world / SOUTH Mertis Area / WEST Cotra
Back to Main Map

First Area Walkthrough and Information

Welcome Newbie!

After making a party and reading through the introductory text and shuffling aside the question of "why doesn't the Empire just kill the poor sods in a public, gruesome, ominous, threatening, and rebellion-deterring manner?" you're off to Avernum and, not surprisingly since you've downloaded 10 megs and expect it to last more than 15 seconds, you're alive and well in the underworld and get to do stuff.

And if you're wondering what stuff to do, take a step forward, and you'll be given a prompting pretty much instantly - why not follow Andrew's advice and seek out Tor to get "free stuff"? And you don't have far to go. If you just wander south to the most visible building and enter, there's Tor. Grab your stuff and wonder what to do next.

If you're thinking the most logical thing is to start asking around, and see what people suggest you do, you're right. Hit 'a' to turn on your automap. Wander around inside the gates and talk to everything on two legs - use the map to make sure you have gotten complete coverage. Follow all the conversation threads and read it all. You'll get prompts and hints like "go check out the nearby fort for some action" and you'll get a quest to help Warrick find her sister. Why are you supposed to find people in a place you just showed up at? Who knows? Just say "yes" and maybe you'll eventually come back for a small reward.

Now if you're new to this genre of role-playing game, I can tell you right now that the secret to success is in three parts. (1) Talk to everyone and everything, twice. (2) Go everywhere and examine everything that doesn't look like the floor. (3) Serial Kleptomania ¹. That's right, you're going to begin your stay in your new home by robbing your benefactors blind. That's okay, that's normal. That's encouraged. That's the key to victory. So wander around town looking in all the bookshelves, desks, barrels, and boxes for anything that doesn't say "NY" in the corner. Grab those things. If it DOES say "NY" in the corner, that means everyone in town will kill you (and they WILL kill you, you're only level one utter freshfolk) if they SEE you take it. ("NY" stands for "Not Your stuff"). If they don't see it, well. Just remember the number one traffic law: "cop didn't see it, it didn't happen." Grab that stuff, too. If it's in a barrel or a box, and says "NY" and there are witnesses, consider this - if you try to walk into the square a barrel is in, it moves. If you push it up against a wall and move into it, it'll simply switch places with you. So basically, a barrel full of Other People's Stuff can be moved to somewhere hidden to be safely plundered. Keep that in mind as you're looking for more ways to exercise the Serial Kleptomania solution. If you're ever unsure if you might get caught, well, save first. Re-load if people scream for guards.

Oh, yah, that's secret to success tip number 4: save save save. Save under 10 different rotating files. Save often. Save habitually. You can always "time travel" with the load button if you mess anything up, get into a combat you can't win, or even do something as silly as buy an object you realize you don't want (re-loading is more cost effective than selling it back at a loss, you see).

Anyway, enough with the generic advice. Your mission on this map is to: accept the Warrick quest. Get free stuff. Get the suggestion to go to Fort Duvno. Decide to detour elsewhere first. The first "elsewhere" to detour to is the perimeter of Fort Avernum. In the NW corner of the map you'll find free armor on a corpse. In the SE corner you'll find 2 rats - your first kills of the game. The should present no problems to you if you equiped your free stuff instead of merely admiring it. In any case, your mage can hit them with Bolt of Fire which should kill them rather nicely.

Now you're ready to hit the world. There are some who say the best advice is to dump one your front-line fighters off immediately in the rest areas on the north end of Fort Avernum. If this is your first time, I suggest you do that. Strip all the equipment off of your second character, and drop that character off for a nice, game-long rest.

West to Silvar

Go west, and you'll bump into Silvar really, really rapidly. You might begin to think "wow, this map is kinda small, isn't it?" but actually cities are just closer to each other in the newbie area. The game is huge. You'll see.

The first door you enter in Silvar has Warrick's sister. "Wow, the quests are really simple in this game!" No - Mr Vogel is just being generous in helping you off to a good footing. Don't buy any stuff from her yet, though. Wander around Silvar and meet the locals. One of the locals offers to join you for cash. Snag him. He's level three and has nice skills to boot. Now you can survive newbiehood quite easily. Anyway, wander around, pick up stuff. Sell everything that is inferior to what you're equiping, and buy a good weapon.

While here, you may as well also accept the quest to find a hot-spring for the hotel manager. (I always ask the freshest faces who have the least familiarity with the surrounds to find stuff for me, and so does everyone in Avernum). Even if you have the cash (you don't) do not buy a boat.

Once you've picked up Jay and armed him, you might try saving and killing the Nephil in the SE corner of town - with the Battle Rage spell you might just take them. If not, no sweat. Reload and wait until you've quested a little up north. These guys are easy, but not necessarily super easy.

A little more detouring...

Return to Fort Avernum to let Warrick know about her sister. Now go north of Fort Avernum following the east wall of the cave. Try your hand at the goblin horde. With battle rage and healing, you should be able to best them. Wandering west from the goblin horde brings you to Fort Duvno. Well, you're done detouring, time to get down to it.

First Quests

Wander into Fort Duvno and repeat the mantra of success "talk to everyone, examine everything, lift everything that isn't bolted down". Buy some lockpicks from the "farming supply" store but don't chat with him too much - you do NOT want to hear about the bandits up north yet. They're a little too tough for you and will take all your cash, but they don't appear on the map until Jason tells you about them. So don't listen.

Talk to Captain Johnson and you have two great newbie quests to set off on.

As a last thing before you head off up north to do the quests, though, do these things: (a) head a little west of Fort Duvno and grab the nice shiny weapon from the corpse. (b) return to Fort Avernum. Using the strategy of "save, try to pick the lock, reload if the pick breaks", break into all the rooms you couldn't enter before (except the room that says "need L3 Unlock Doors" - you can't get into there until very late in the game). Get more free stuff. In one room in the SW corner, there is a desk. Don't read the contents of the desk. Just remember where it is. You'll be back here later to improve a spell which is just totally above your powers right now. (c) One of the free items you picked up is a Jug of Wine, wander into the woods and give it to the sad gremlins. Beyond them you'll find a patch of potion components - which for now are "things to sell". Finally, (d) pick a corner of Fort Avernum and drop off anything that isn't a weapon or potion - you'll want inventory space to loot corpses.

For soon there will be a lot of corpses. Onward to the aptly named Newbielande.

Footnotes

1 - thanks to Bear Naff for the marvelously appropriate word-choice for item three.

Feedback

You can write me at hasen@flash.net - let me know if I missed or misspelled anything.

Copyright and Authorship Info

Avernum is copyright 2000-2001 by Spiderweb Software, Inc. - http://www.spiderwebsoftware.com, All Rights Reserved.
"Avernum" and "Spiderweb Software" are trademarks of Spiderweb Software, Inc.
The annotated maps were made by silver Harloe.
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