Slawbug

On Mechanics, you do feel it in the demo area if you avoid investing in it. That's pretty much the only place. By the end of the demo area you can go back and open old stuff with the living tools you have, and after that even 5-6 mech is enough to never really have to backtrack. Remember that the formula for living tool use is Lock Level / (Mechanics + 1), and it's rounded down (to a minimum of zero). A lot of doors and traps have difficulty levels of 10, 12, 15, 20, 25... what does this mean in practice? Let's consider some examples: L 10 door (very common) L 10 door costs 1 living tool with Mechanics 5-9 L 10 door costs 2 living tools with Mechanics 3-4 L 10 door costs 3 living tools with Mechanics 2 L 10 door costs 5 living tools with Mechanics 1 L 10 door costs 10 living tools with Mechanics 0 L 20 door L 20 door costs 1 living tool with Mechanics 10+ L 20 door costs 2 living tools with Mechanics 6-9 L 20 door costs 3 living tools with Mechanics 5 L 20 door costs 4 living tools with Mechanics 4 L 20 door costs 5 living tools with Mechanics 3 L 20 door costs 6 living tools with Mechanics 2 L 25 door (unusually difficult) L 25 door costs 1 living tool with Mechanics 12+ L 25 door costs 2 living tools with Mechanics 8-11 L 25 door costs 3 living tools with Mechanics 6-7 L 25 door costs 4 living tools with Mechanics 5 If you're just worried about conserving living tools, the impact is pretty large up to around Mechanics 5-6 but after that it drops off. You end up with a pretty large living tool surplus eventually even just at Mechanics 6. So I think Randomizer is right on here. I was just noting that there is an extra +1 from that book, too, so there's 7 free points by the end.

As Mechalibur says, there's a big gulf between viable and optimal. Giving advice on what's viable is perfectly fine! But don't present what's viable as if it is optimal! That's where it becomes misleading and does a disservice to new players. The problem is "one of the easiest playthroughs is to use cryoas." Not cryoas are an option, but "one of the easiest" is truly objectively silly. I am 100% agreed with Randomizer about Fyora innate haste + no cool down making them (and Drayks) the uncontested spammable AoE powerhouses. Cryoas have none of that even though they are more expensive, and the things they get instead really aren't worth the trade. Fyoras are great, and Fire Shaping is absolutely great and a top tier option -- probably also the one that requires the least thinking since it's just brute force. It just isn't head and shoulders better than the other options like it was in Mutagen. This isn't true. Create Thahd actually gets free points earlier, one from Shanti in the intro and one from a book in Drypeak. (And the default point in Create Fyora counts against trainer use, so its lifespan is limited.) Create Artila has two free points also available early in the Awakened Lands, and artilas have also been buffed compared to Mutagen - higher base level is basically the same thing as free books/canisters anyway, and they are actually sturdier than fyoras now (and still have an oddly strong melee attack). Early on fyoras aren't actually better yet since it's not yet efficient to spend the essence on AoE spam (rather than just making 2 fyoras, and of course you can also just make 2 artilas). If you don't want any involvement with the Servants or the Awakened, then fyoras are definitely the best option early midgame (until you hit the Loyalist Encampment at least). If you do, even temporarily, then you'll have access to the stronger creations of your choice much earlier. Your experience is your experience, but that doesn't change questions of fact. Long-term, fire shaping really wants drayks, which can be available early if you align with Zakary or Pinner immediately. Long-term, magic shaping really wants gazers and glaahks, which also can be available early if you align with Zakary or Pinner. Gazers only with Pinner, but this is already an asterisk on availabilities for both shaping types. The only circumstance where you get drayks early but don't get gazers early is if you align with Zakary and only Zakary. The key offensive fire creations (fyoras and drayks) are actually squishier than comparable magic creations, to say nothing of the fairly tanky glaahks. Good battle shaping is extremely reliant on rotghroths, but rotghroths are an obscenely good value, and tankier than anything else in the game.

Guardian Krogst's QA training for Barzites looks like it can be done a total of three times. He says he thinks he's done after two, but it looks like you can still pick it a third time. However, nmlambert's index says only twice. Can anyone confirm whether you can still pick it a third time as a Barzite? I guess it doesn't matter much. Between the free points, the chance from MW and haste, even for a Guardian QA hits diminishing returns pretty quickly.

- For Mechanics "items", there is also a +1 Mechanics book, and it's in the same room as Tinker's Gloves. You truly don't need to invest a lot here. - Intelligence and Spellcraft don't actually improve "all spell effects". Sorry, still on this "don't mislead new players by repeating bad in-game descriptions" horse - Corrections from Mechalibur's post on Weds still needed - Stalkthorn got added but looks like the rest got skipped by mistake - For the shaping section: > "Fire Shaping tends to be the best Shaping type both because you can find canister and codex for fyoras early in the game and all fire creations have range attacks." I think this must be a holdover from Mutagen. The line about Fyoras is completely inaccurate, and given the other adjustments that were made the "Fire Shaping tends to be the best" statement simply isn't true anymore. > "One of the easiest play through is increasing Fire Shaping and Essence Mastery to use cryoas through out the game as soon as possible to replace your starting fyora. They are cheap and have decent attacks even though they are more susceptible to mental attacks." This is an atrocious thing to suggest to new players. Cryoas remain a pretty terrible value even though they have been mildly buffed in Infestation. This was an OK strategy in some of the original Geneforges but not here. And on a purely objective level, they aren't cheap, not compared to similarly powered creations.

No, it's one reputation variable.

tl;dr -- You can't, and there's probably a good reason for it. There isn't a default attack spell so much as a default ranged attack. If you have a missile weapon equipped, it's that. If you don't, it's Firebolt. I believe this is hardcoded with the Firebolt slot and can't be changed (short of editing the PC's creature definition, which is fraught and you'd need to do it before starting a game, unfortunately.) However, I think there is a reason for this: normally when you cast a spell, you get a targeting interface customized for that spell. When you use the default attack you skip that step - you just click on an enemy and it activates. This works fine for single target spells like Firebolt or Searer, but it would be a problem for AoE spells like Airshock. In the original Geneforge games, there were no actual targeted-AoE spells, therefore none required special targeting interfaces. If you did somehow force Airshock into that slot, it would likely cause the game to do weird things.

Fort Muck is hostile if you're a Taker, and you also don't get the ambush-attack on the Fort (and its drops)

Thematically, altering is supposed to be required in order to use any of the top tier spells and creations. But unless I'm missing something, the only thing it actually gates are 3 trainers: Tuldaric (Awakened), Burham (Barzites), and Salgurdar (Takers). It isn't actually required to use the stuff, so you can get them from canisters or from other trainers. Other trainer options for the top tier are Create Drakon - Learned Guas, Phariton (Unaligned) Create Gazer - Learned Guas, Phariton (Unaligned) Create Rotghroth - Learned Guas, Phariton (Unaligned), Tyallea (Servants), Fenen, Kima (Non-Awakened) Essence Lash - Learned Guas, Tyallea (Servants), Learned Thani, Kima (Non-Awakened) Guardian's Roar - Learned Guas, Tyallea (Servants), Learned Thani Mindshield - Learned Guas, Krayoss (Takers), Tyallea (Servants), Kima (Non-Awakened) Mass Energize - Learned Guas Mass Restore - Learned Guas, Tyallea (Servants) Airshock - Krayoss (Takers), Tyallea (Servants), Kima (Non-Awakened) Essence Purge - Krayoss (Takers) Wrackwave - Krayoss (Takers), Tyallea (Servants), Kima (Non-Awakened) Mass Madness - Krayoss (Takers) The only one with no alternate training option (albeit plenty of canisters) is Create Cockatrice, and only Burham trains in that anyway. Note that Learned Guas appears very late in the game, and a lot of those are faction-bound, so it is possible to lock yourself out of a few if you join your final faction choice very early on.

Ayup, that looks accurate. You need the actual badge though, you lose the ability to bluff it with canister use.

Mountain Base - if you have used at least 10 canisters you are forced to attack the guard servile. This appears to be the only actual gameplay impact (as opposed to just different text) canister count has, unless there's something hardcoded elsewhere.

Cockatrice is terrible IMO. It costs about as much as a Gazer and is just flat out worse. Magic Shaping has so much controlled status access via Glaahks, Ur-Glaahks, Gazers, and Eyebeasts. And you're unlikely to get access to it before Glaahks at the very least unless you deliberate avoid buying Glaahk training. Also... kinda on topic... I am so disappointed that "Beka of Rising" is still a thing. She very clearly talks as a Taker, not a Barzite. How was this not changed?

by "here" I meant in your atlas. it's a little hard to tell what's what when the names keep changing.

If you're gonna do that, seems like you might as well join the Takers in between the Awakened and the Barzites. Or is there truly no point?

Q: there seem to be some inconsistencies in what things are called here. Are "Shaper Records" and "Shaper Notes" and "Research Notes" all the same thing? Q: which faction quests inherently alienate another faction and which ones don't? Thinking here of stealing Tuldaric's records, Rising research, etc.

What's the best way to do this here? I poked through the scripts looking for faction membership checks. It's a real morass. There are 445 separate times the game checks to see what factions you're a member of. But there are a bunch of other dependent variables that also get checked sometimes, to see e.g. if a particular zone is annoyed at you, which can happen simply because you're a member of another faction. It's a lot to sort through. That said, it looks like every faction gates the same handful of things: - some keys or easy location access which (I think?) is not the exclusive way in anywhere - faction quests, mostly only gated with the faction leader themself - full access to faction trainers - discounts to faction traders - removing NY from items for 2-3 key zones per sect The main question I'm interested in is how long to put off joining. Once you join a faction, it does immediately cut you off from various random stuff aligned with other factions. So it seems like there's incentive to put off joining if you just want to minmax it. On the flip side, however, joining a faction early is by far the fastest way to gain access to top tier stuff, including creations. This is particularly true for shapers, as rotghroths and gazers are superb and irreplaceable creations that far outpace earlier battle/magic shaping options. (Drakons are good too, but they are more expensive in essence than they deserve to be, and fire shaping already has arguably the best options at all 3 lower tiers.) Is the answer just "be patient, and use Phariton"?

alhoon, please stay away from the canisters 😉

I mean, this is nothing new, creations have been either the strongest or equivalent-to-the-strongest option, by a mile, in every Geneforge game. The only real competitor was broken Parry in OG2. Daze was extremely good from OG3 on but it paired too well with creations to really count as competition.

DoT sources - is this list missing any? (thanks for the additions!) Shocked: - Weapon Shaping - Essence Lash - Magic Shaping - Glaahk passive (unreliable) Burning: - Battle Magic - Essence Purge - Fire Shaping - Drakon/Ur-Drakon ranged attack - Volatile Thahds and Pyroroamers, with upgrade, on explosion (lol?) Acid: - Magic/Battle Shaping - Rotghroth, Rotdhizon, Searing Artila, Iron Clawbug, Cockatrice (unreliable) - Searer - Weapon Shaping - Searing Spray - Spray Crystal Poison: - Magic/Battle Shaping - Artila, Searing Artila, Clawbug, Iron Clawbug, Ornk, Stalkthorn - Searer (low level) - Poison Baton

I think boosting control for casual/normal difficulty was definitely the right move. Maybe even one step up. But for Torment I think it was unnecessary. Still, not really a big deal. Speaking of creations, the Mutagen creations are mostly identical in Infestation, but here are some subtle changes that took place: - Reduced essence cost for Iron Clawbugs, Cryodrayks, and Battle Betas (which were all quite weak in Mutagen) (...and still aren't great) - Minor boost to base level (mostly +1) for both Artilas, and for Iron Clawbugs, Cryodrayks, Battle Betas, Ur-Glaahks, and Cockatrices - Minor stat boosts (+1) to all 3rd-tier creations - Boost to base HP for both Drayks, and to Battle Alphas, Glaahks, and Cockatrices - Boost to HP multiplier for regular Artilas and both Vlish - Vlish went from x0.9 to x.12. NB Searing Artila did not get this - Ornk AoE switched to a worse version (bhahaha)

The game engine doesn't go back that many years. The original Geneforge games were published in 2001 to 2008 (and that engine underwent some pretty drastic changes throughout). The two recent games (2021, 2024) are remasters of the original series with a completely different engine, and the only two games published with this new engine. I have seen plenty of weird resolution issues, letterboxing, etc., but few if any reports of jerky stuttering graphics and sound -- for the Geneforge remasters. What you are probably finding when you google are problems reported for the original series being played on modern systems -- there have been tons of those. The first few of the series in particular run into some crazy problems with jerky animations and stuttering when played on machines with operating systems that came out 15+ years after they did. If you play them on an XP machine, that doesn't happen. A few thoughts: - Your CPU was relased in 2017. That's not recent. That's not necessarily the issue -- my CPU is also from 2017 and I have had no such issues. But if you have a massive amount of stuff going on in the background, that could be contributing. - You're on Windows 11. One of the things that popped up googling it was that your CPU doesn't support Windows 11. Maybe that's irrelevant, but it's hard to say. - Two quick suggestions for more data: 1) try running with the Steam overlay turned off and see if anything changes; 2) open Task Manager while the game is running and choppy, and view the first tab sorted 3 different ways, by GPU, CPU, and Memory. If any of those are unusually high, that's plausibly your problem. And if a lot of the activity is coming from something besides Geneforge, try closing or disabling those things, relaunching Geneforge and seeing if things are better. Feel free to share screenshots if you're not sure what to do with the numbers. - Also, since turning sound off helps more than turning graphics down, maybe you're having a weird audio issue. Do you have any kind of unusual audio setup going on, either in terms of software or hardware?

It does seem a little silly. Control wasn't even a big deal in Mutagen on Torment, but it wasn't completely irrelevant at least. Thinking about it... I bet, though, that there's a subset of semi-casual players (but not playing on Casual) who had intensely negative reactions (like "ragequit and write an angry review") to creations going rogue for a turn in the middle of combat when they didn't expect it. So I wonder if this is in response to that. Seems like it could have been gated more by difficulty level, at least. But oh well.

The remasters don't take as long as the new games, though. And remember that the previous Nethergate remaster was literally completed in three months -- SW's fastest game ever. I don't think it's impossible to do or to wish for. It's just a question of if SW thinks it would sell. Personally I'd guess there's a better market for it now than there was in 1998...

Reference Lists Index of Everything (comprehensive index by type of thing, great for ctrl-F) Atlas of Zones (by location; includes some item stats) Cheat Codes Reputation Questions (pro-servile vs anti-servile) Endings (spoilers!) Game Mechanics Experience adjustment by PC level Living Tools formula Creations - Inherent resistances Strategy & Tactics Shapers - Better and Worse Creations Shapers - Essence Mastery vs Shaping Skill Agents - Agent Strategies Changes from Mutagen Changes from original Geneforge 2 (note - some uncorrected errors in top post, see rest of thread) Mods and Technical Info Overhaul - Infestation: OVERRUN - lots of changes to creations, skills, mechanics, etc., and some new content QoL - Quality of Life - 2x walking speed, auto-mechanics equipment, reusable missiles, portable campsite & item storage Fix - Tooltips Boost - Joinable NPC Levels - gradual gains for Zora/Thahd only Cheat - Boost PC Stats by +10 Work in progress. If you have a question about the game, please make a new topic (or ask in an existing one).

Based on some script grepping, locations with leadership checks requiring more than 6 (6 itself is quite widespread and encountered very early): Leadership 7 Gheth, Research Halls, Gheth Gates, Old Bridge, Phariton, Misfits, Infested Farmland, Geneforge, Canister Factory Leadership 8 Medab, Radiant College, Creation Holding, Zhass-Uss, Benarii Power, Benarii Holding Leadership 9 Barrier of the Winds, Clockwork, Benarii Entry Leadership 10 Pit of the Bound One, Clawbug Canyon, Rising The earlier-encountered ones on this list are mostly checks to skip faction-joining quests. Some of these appear to have changed since the atlas was compiled. For example, Learned Pinner's highest leadership option is 8, not 10.

Skimming through this, it looks like there are no longer any trainers for PC skills (nor any sarcophagi) -- just trainers for spells/creations/weaponshaping. This is a pretty huge change from the last... gosh. 20 years of Spiderweb games? No reason to put off investing points in literally any skill now?