Slawbug

So, um... 16 years ago?

That's _insanely_ horrible luck. Wow. Wow.

Weird! I dunno. It might be worth using the editor to cheat yourself Mage Spells again (or Lockpicks skill and a bunch of Magic Lockpicks), just to try magically unlocking the door. At least then you can rule out any weirdness with the piercing crystals.

Piercing Crystals should work, and it doesn't look like anyone's ever had trouble with this door before. OP, can you confirm that you have already received the "offer" from Vothkaro to kill Elhioc? The one in scroll form. I'm wondering if this door is a plot-skipping protection, essentially.

If Move Mountains isn't the answer, can you post a screenshot?

Looks like we're each half right: you do have to be "altered" to use any of the high level spells, full stop. Tuldaric is the one who invents altering and so when the game opens, only the Awakened can alter you. If you join the Takers or the Barzites, the first thing they will demand, once you've been let in, is to steal Tuldaric's research; after doing so, they will alter you.

The lack of rewards also makes some sense thematically. The Loyalists you can actually join in G2 are Zakary's Loyalists, and they are presented as, well, a little bit dippy and pathetic. The non-aligned ending where you kill all the leaders, including Zakary, was arguably a much better Loyalist outcome. As for the Awakened... wait. Maybe I'm misremembering, but don't you have to join the Awakened for Tuldaric to Augment you? That's a pretty huge reward, considering there's no way to duplicate it.

No, they really weren't. In G1-3, most of the alternates were scaled up in cost far more than they were in power and effectiveness. There could be situational arguments for a few, like Terror Vlish. Some could have been redeemed with better balancing, like Plated Bugs. But the vast majority of them were simply bad values.

Shanti is also, next to Erika, arguably the most broadly beloved character Jeff has created. I sincerely hope the remake does her justice.

The problem before was that most of the alternate creations just weren't very good. Cryoas were the only real standout, and even then regular Vlish were mostly better.

This is incorrect. The original version did have a generic "magic" element (which was also used for electric attacks). But ice and fire elemental attacks were 100% processed as magical attacks. This was hardcoded.

I mean, +5 is a big enough difference that you can probably make a guess about its presence after 10 trials. Just use a lower variance attack.

Looks like this is the result of some overzealous security features Apple added and, I guess, did not communicate well about. There are a few manual fixes offered here: https://iboysoft.com/news/app-is-damaged-and-cannot-be-opened.html

If there are any mistakes in the corrections, I'm sure somebody else will notice and post about them. But I have to assume they're better than no corrections at all, hahaha.

Agents were by far the most challenging class to play in OG1. Seriously, go back and remind yourself of all the limitations we've forgotten about: a sharply limited spell list (12 spells) that included no crowd control whatsoever, and no daze spell whatsoever; and an inventory sharply limited by Strength, an otherwise useless stat for a firebolt-slinging agent. Exploiting enemy AI limitations was something they were forced into -- not a bonus.

The mechanics behind creations and creation levels were so incredibly strong in G1-3 that Shapers blew every other class out of the water completely. This is definitely not something new in the remakes. In OG1, Agents didn't have most of their good spells yet, and while Guardians had good damage output, they completely lacked Parry, leaving them quite vulnerable -- especially since enemy melee damage was also very high (d8 vs later d4-5). Guardians were especially challenging to play on higher difficulty settings. In OG2, Guardians were very strong because Parry was borderline broken, but Shapers were still incredibly strong, and still put out more DPS than Guardians.

So much for that idea... The extra weird thing is that at least one boat has been left alone. I'd say "maybe data corruption" except you already did a full uninstall and reinstall. I'm stumped!

Hello and welcome! This happens if your total party level is higher than the Recommended Party Level set for the scenario. It can actually affect a few stats beyond HP, too. I don't remember exactly how much higher you have to be for it to trigger, but it does keep scaling up if you go dramatically higher.

This is an extremely isolated error (just 2 reports), but both reports _are_ from people using Steam on a Mac. Actually, I just found a 3rd instance, on Steam -- it was reported entirely in French, so a search for "boat" didn't bring it up. The other report on SW was also from a French user. That's quite a coincidence... Is there any chance you are also playing on a French-language OS? (or a non-English one, at least?)

Huh. If you start a new game and just go straight to Formello, are the boats all present? This at least will tell us if it's an issue with your entire copy of the game, or just your save file.

It's a head-scratcher. The one other thread where this came up, somebody else was able to resolve it by using "resetboats" with the original player's save file. More thoughts: 1. When you type "resetboats" into the shift-D box, does a message about boats then appear in the console? 2. Where were you when you used resetboats? The suggestion seems to be to go to the regular part of Formello (not the lower map where the Vahnatai boat appears) and use it there. (And not the world map either.)

Yeah, those are good points. I guess it really is less obvious in that regard!

I only see one thread with any mention of a Formello boat issue in A2CS here, and none on Steam. So I think "infamous" may not apply 🙂 (I assume you mean A2:CS, not A2.) Notes/questions: 1. "resetboats" is one word, no space. 2. are you on a mac? 3. did you ever download an A2CS demo? 4. have you tried opening the A2CS application manually, rather than letting Steam launch it?

Ah, here we see where the point of confusion is. Joining factions in Geneforge is completely separate from the reputation system. This is to say, although very extreme reputations might lock you out of extreme factions -- with a few exceptions, joining factions, and completing quests for factions you had already joined, had no impact on reputation whatsoever. This is to say, QW really does have the same reputation system as Geneforge -- what it doesn't have (or has a very different version of) is "Geneforge factions." Anyway: the reality is that reputation-changing questions, in dialogue, are almost always extremely obvious. It's true that you don't know the exact values in play -- is this a +3/+0, a +2/-2, a +0/+1, or does it actually not shift anything? But I'm also not sure what difference that makes, as a player; there's so many of them and they're all additive. (Unless you have a very specific powergaming goal that involves minmaxing through rewards that require both low and high reputations, but is there really anything that's worth the bother in this game?)

Yeah, if the issue affects other games too, then it's pretty clearly not a Geneforge issue. I'd go through your steam settings, especially the controller settings, very thoroughly. Probably something in their is interacting weirdly with your mouse.