The way in which you interact with the world of Avernum is an interesting amalgamation of the Geneforge point-and-click interface combined with the earlier Avernum turn-based gameplay. This has both advantages and disadvantages: although new players to the series may appreciate the way in which a turn-based system feels much more like a real time one, veteran Avernites will notice some disadvantages. For instance, in previous Avernum games combat did not start until you explicitly decided to begin it, and you could have your first character in the party attack enemies simply by bumping into them. This allowed you to bypass what would otherwise be tedious battles with oversized rats or wimpy goblins if your characters were high enough level to just kill them in one hit, and you could zip around the map with the keyboard or by clicking and holding the mouse and pointing in the appropriate direction. Because Avernum 4 gives the game almost total control over pathfinding (there was no pathfinding in previous Avernum games), combat now initiates automatically whenever an enemy is sighted. No more bump and run. This can be particularly tedious when battling the aforementioned rats and goblins, although fortunately a bit of nature lore can "calm" wild animals and prevent a lot of the most annoying combat.