kuo

This was a pretty fun challenge and not as hard as one might expect. "No canisters" is usually paired with the pacifist route but I wanted to see if I could kill all the endgame bosses (Oroboros, Danette's Shade, Goettsch, and Geneforge'd Trajkov). This video (14 min) summarizes the playthrough and I'll soon upload all the raw gameplay footage. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=serW-ZeqteE&list=PL4yB6b4DfcFEo_vSYiqN72MQdU6ewuiOG I only put points into combat skills (1 point in Melee Weapons, everything else in Agility/Missiles/Quick Action/Evasion, ending stats are 20/20/15/11 with items equipped). The biggest tips for getting through the game are: - fight enemies one at a time whenever possible - save before/after every fight - constantly restart combat so you can reposition and execute extra attacks. - every fight is possible if you have enough space to run away PS If you want to achieve the maximum level possible (~21-22) you should always be killing enemies / doing quests that are 1-2 levels below you. Some of this requires running through zones without killing anything so you can reach lower-level enemies in further areas e.g. Holding Cells. Clearing everything besides The Geneforge zone will get you to level 19, and then you can let Trajkov use the Geneforge (+1000 XP at Lv20), kill him, use the Geneforge yourself (another 1000 XP), then destroy the Geneforge (another 1000 XP). I ended at level 21 - if I had used the Geneforge, read Codexes, and used canisters I probably could have reached level 22. PSS it is possible to shape Fyoras without using canisters! Get the skill point from Learned Jaffe.

Couple of additions, could be due to patches. - The Gallus Meg quest gives 200 XP at level 12 rather than level 10. - The Western Workshop Sholai Leadership check is level 9 rather than level 1. - Gavrila and company are hostile if you are Taker aligned. - Learned Halm will train you even if you are a Taker as long as you do not have a Trajkov Amulet.

Any way to find this within the game's readable source files? Trying to figure out optimal clearing order for the highest endgame level (without abusing infinite spawns). I also vaguely recall that some enemies give a different amount of XP than what is indicated by their level.

Dialogue can be changed easily, but adding additional characters into a zone and changing their behavior takes much more work.

Wands and crystals are fair game...I'm not that crazy, I'm just roleplaying a Trakovite!

No canisters, no magic! I've found a highly efficient tactic is one point in melee weapons early to wield a steel sword, and from there it's all missile and agility.

Yeah, I'm trying Anything is possible with enough reloads, so it's more of trying to figure out a balance between using consumables, zone order, and not relying entirely on luck.

Great, thanks! Sounds like a feasible strategy even for a non-canister PC.

Was it easy killing Goettsch? I've never seriously tried after seeing his level 23? tooltip.

My take on this is that high variability in enemy count heavily affects the player experience. On Torment, for example, if two Pyroroamers jump on top of me I have to reload. A fight can sometimes be 2-3x times harder than it "should" be because of the number of enemies you walk into. While I love a tactical approach of isolating enemies and waiting for favorable pathing, I definitely think having a creation army duke it out with many enemies at once is the core spirit of this game. Unfortunately, as you've laid out in your post trying to do this usually just means your team gets rolled by area abilities. On the other hand, the game becomes trivial if the player chooses to kill enemies one-by-one with the assistance of 8 creations.

@Randomizer Digging this back up, I saw your thread where you got level 21. I'm nearing the end and only have a few xp sources left: the codexes/canisters, The Geneforge, Shaper/Inner Crypt, Spirit City, the Front Gate, and The Great Temple. There might be a few other level 15+ enemies scattered around the map, but not many. What level were you around this point? I am currently level 17 but I don't think this is quite enough to even bring me to 20. Do you think I'm just being pessimistic or I failed to optimize earlier? One notable thing is that I missed out on a bunch of leadership / mechanics but at this point I think I'm too high level to get xp from those.

Not even one semester later, probability theory comes back to haunt me! Thank you for such a detailed response.

I have been trying to get the Ur-Glaahk in Freeplace to spawn for an embarrassingly long time...I'm not sure if there's another factor (like maybe you can only kill one of these rare creatures?), but I must've tried over 100 times with no luck.

I think it's the perfect way to canonize savefiles.

You put crystals in the machine, then flip the switch. If nothing happens then you probably didn't put in enough crystals.