About Exile and Avernum Many fans of shareware role-playing games will notice a similarity between Spiderweb Software's classic, award-winning Exile series and Avernum. This isn't just a coincidence ... Avernum is an ambitious upgrade of the older series. Avernum is a major, bottom-up rewrite of Exile: Escape From the Pit. It will keep everything in that old game, and add a whole bunch of new features: The powerful Nethergate game engine. An elegant, all-new interface. Many new characters, quests, special encounters, and other neat stuff. There's almost twice as much dialogue in Avernum! Much more fleshing out of the game world. More history, background, and fun trivia. We also have several new locations to explore: The Tower of Magi, the Castle, Formello, the three final dungeons, and other dungeons have been completely redone, from the ground up. An all-new, enormous, three level dungeon: The Tomb of Lost Bahssikava. Learn more about the history of the Slithzerikai, and do some fighting! Why did we decide to rework Exile? Well, we love that old game, but, the truth is, it's not so popular anymore. It's just too crude and old, especially compared to our newer work. The sad thing about that is that the game contains a lot of really good design. That's why we decided to do Avernum. We felt, simply, that Exile deserved a lot better. After Avernum, we may redo Exile II and III, depending on how the first game sells. There will be a $10 discount for people who have registered Exile (not the Trilogy CD). We really hope that Avernum provides a lot of fun to all rpg fans, whether they've played Exile or not. We're really looking forward to hearing your reactions, and to release a new spin on an old classic. - Jeff Vogel