Slawbug

Slow, there's a wand, a melee weapon, and a couple of enemy melee attacks. Shock I don't remember -- Ur-Glaahk skin maybe? I'm pretty sure I saw it a few times.

EDIT: I was suspicious about Shade creature types, so I did some testing myself on drayks. They resist Vulnerable, Curse, Wrack, Slow, and (notably) Daze. They do not resist Poison, Acid, Terror, Dominate, or Stun. I couldn't easily test Shock and I could actually see that one going either way.

Q: Do we know that's the complete list of statuses Curse Resistance is applied to? There have been SW games in the past where e.g. Curse Resistance was what would resist the application of poison and acid even though poison and acid resistances are used for resisting the actual damage done by the status.

Yeah, it's just a question of value for skill points. It sounds like we agree both that it's not literally worthless and that it's not a great value. I do seem to recall another recent debate where you said you rely on creations to land acid (so the buff duration won't help there) and that acid dealt 80% of your damage in the toughest fights of the game (so the airshock damage increase won't do much there).

If you're a shaper, I would argue that it is actually pretty bad. You get +5% additive to spell damage (easily outpaced by even a third of a stat point to a creation skill); +5% additive to healing spells (potentially useful, if your heal spells are actually falling short, but that's pretty unlikely); and +5% additive to buff/debuff duration (very meh).

The monster spell levels are a bit odd. Especially on the characters who teach you level 6 and 7 spells... hah.

I think the stat labelled "speed" there might be a mistranslation from Japanese, and is really the "skill" stat. Which IIRC mostly affected accuracy.

Energy goes up with level anyway, so if all you need is a bit more, you'd get it anyway in short order.

If you're a shaper, there's not really any reason to put points into INT at all.

Alternate take: you're better off ignoring creation "control" levels entirely. Having more and stronger creations means you're more likely to kill things before they damage your creations in the first place -- or inflict their own status effects on them. This is especially true on higher difficulties, where your creations will sometimes get one-shot anyway, and where (as Randomizer noted) accuracy is extra relevant. Shaping skill and essence mastery are definitely the two good picks, and you'll eventually increase both, so improve what you want. I'd probably go shaping skill at this point, as you're going fire shaping and you have more than enough essence to have a good number of fyoras with the key skills (haste + fire breath + ability spam) already.

It does increase their level (and thus HP), it just takes a few seconds to take effect.

I don't think the games have really said shapers are able to "send mental commands (and thoughts)" to any creations, period. Taking back control is described as an exertion of willpower, and in some cases is mechanically tied to Leadership. There's no suggestion it's telepathic.

No, at least not necessarily. The Mutagen codex is clear on this: "Only the most skilled Shapers can keep them under control. They can be entirely rogue and still pretend to be obedient."

It's 8 leadership for the Awakened and Obeyers, and 10 leadership for the Takers. This is surprisingly affordable skill points wise and you do get other useful benefits out of it. The Takers are arguably the most important one to use leadership on since the alternatives involve permanently closing off either the Obeyers or the Sholai rebels. If you want to powergame it I'd suggest the following: 1) Answer just a few questions pro-servile, kill Control Four, and join the Awakened. (Consider raiding the tombs before getting the free combat training, if you have any zeroes in those skills.) You can join very early in the game, and the experience for a lot of the associated quests, like Control Four, has a very low level for scaling, so you may as well take advantage of that. 2) Answer a bunch of questions anti-servile, get Leadership to 8, and join the Obeyers. (Probably do Demel's quest in the Thorny Woods at this point so you can finish Mickall Blade's quests; you can't do it as a Taker. Also, if possible, make your way to Drayk's Vale and purchase Leadership training from Halm, since you can't do that once you have the Trajkov amulet. If you put that off, you could use Gavrila, who temporarily steals the amulet, as a chance to get it later.) 3) Use Learned Darian to go back to pro-servile opinion, get Leadership to 10, and join the Takers. The main incentive for doing the Awakened first is that you save a set of Mind Nutrients. There are enough sets of it to feed every servant mind that can only be awoken with nutrients, but having an extra set of hand can be very convenient depending on what order you do the zones in. You can technically feed Control Four and then (without talking to Rydell) kill it for an extra set of experience, but I'd rather save time and hold onto the nutrients; ymmv. And if you want to simplify answering opinion questions (or just want that Create Fyora +1 ASAP), you could certainly join the Obeyers first. (This would also allow you to put off Leadership till you want the Takers, as you can go back and kill Control Four even after joining the Obeyers.)

Because being rogue is not the same thing as going rogue. A "rogue" alpha that has been rogue for years because it's been in an environment with no shapers and lots of independent creations, is not the same thing as a controlled and essentially fettered alpha suddenly, without warning, in the middle of a chaotic combat, having its mental chains snap and becoming free, without guidance and probably with quite a bit of disorientation. Alphas weren't engineered to think, they were engineered with combat reflexes; it's not hard to imagine why it might lash out in such a situation. A drayk is a different question; the lore is extremely clear that drayks are "dangerously smart and independent" -- and particularly "cunning," a word that is used to describe them in multiple places just in G1. Mutagen says shapers need a difficult to acquire license in order to make drayks; in original Geneforge they had been barred entirely, apparently without exception, for over a century. A drayk that has gone rogue might deliberately target its creator in order to avoid being controlled again; but more than that, the game notes the possibility that it might already have been rogue, simply hiding it and waiting for the right moment to strike.

Oop. Thanks, corrected!

Yes, it is 100% possible to do this. Simply leaving a faction won't actually alienate them and they'll always let you switch back, if you still meet the criteria. The meaningful bonuses for joining are pretty much limited to: Awakened - Combat skills +1 Obeyers - Create Fyora +1 Takers - Speed and Create Vlish canisters without angering Kazg; Kyazo and Kaxen quests; much easier access to Trajkov amulet Each faction offers a level of training in the Sholai language, but these are trivial to acquire anyway. Also, the Obeyers and Takers both remove "NY" from all items in their respective main zones on joining. There is mostly no downside at all to having the Trajkov amulet (from any source). Note however: - Halm won't offer Leadership training if you have it - Gavrila will attack you if you have it, which doesn't matter unless, for some reason, you want to collect the maximum number of Sholai language trainings. This has no impact on the game itself Unless something has changed from OG1 (the ending text chunks don't appear to have, but feel free to correct me here), this is wrong. What changes the ending is what you do with the Geneforge (and with Trajkov and Goettsch). Each of the servile sects pushes you towards a different Geneforge resolution, but sect membership itself doesn't actually affect anything.

That is a really good point. There are some other factors I left out -- critical hit chance, for example, which can actually be quite high with the right equipment, and which boosts direct damage significantly (I think it's 1.5x when critting, so an effective +15% to total output considering the best-in-slot jewelry) but doesn't help acid. I decided to just test this all out repeatedly. The good news is my projected damage numbers hold up exceptionally well. The bad news: Goettsch is level 23 and is actually tricky to hit on Torment. This is hard all around, but is particularly terrible for an unfocused shaping skill strategy. Chances to hit (blessed, etc): Drayk (fire shaping 9 + 2 stat lvls) physical attack: 77% Drayk (fire shaping 9 + 2 stat lvls) fire spray: 57% Searing Artila (magic shaping 9 + 2 stat lvls) ST acid: 62% Searing Artila (magic shaping 9 + 2 stat lvls) acid spray: 52% Searing Artila (magic shaping 3) ST acid: 22% Searing Artila (magic shaping 3) acid spray: 12% Additionally, Goettsch resists taking on the acid status about half the time that he is hit. The console doesn't give a percentage here unfortunately. (I think this is the result of his curse resistance, which isn't displayed either, but maybe it's also level-based? I don't know.) Searing Artila acid is almost always applied for 3 procs (sometimes 4 at a small chance correlating to creation Int). Since it does proc twice per "round" for Goettsch, this means a lone Searing Artila will need to reapply it every turn to get the full effect. Mathing it out, the odds of getting at least one successful application per Searing Artila turn are about 46% for the MS 9 artila, and just 18% for the MS 3 artila! (The odds could be slightly better (or worse) depending on how much status resistance he truly has.) So in theory that 230 acid damage per round sounds amazing, but in practice, it's not that easy. For comparison, at level 19, my Shaper has a very similar 64% chance to hit with Searer. For whatever reason Searer seems more consistent at applying the status effect, but I didn't test exhaustively so I'm not confident in this. Searer does layer on more turns of acid, generally 5-6. Ultimate conclusions: - For a Magic Shaping strategy you definitely want a Searing Artila, maybe two, for this fight. Because of all the layers of random chances, this will be swingier and less consistent than a direct damage strategy, but not necessarily worse overall -- but will probably require more reloads. This is especially true if you're also using statuses (Airshock, Glaahks, whatever) to handle crowd control. - For any other strategy, they'll be pretty rocky. - Mixed shaping type strategies will be rocky in general.

The Searing Artila does roughly 115 from acid + 35 from its own attacks (prorated for hasted attacks), assuming a. it only attacks Goettsch, b. it never misses, c. at least one status effect application makes it past status resistance (I think this is curse resistance, which we can't see?) on any turn where acid isn't already applied (very likely but not a given, especially in round 1), and d. it doesn't die. The Drayk has two options. If it uses overloaded ranged attacks, it deals roughly 136 damage per turn (prorated in the same way). However, if it instead uses overcharged melee attacks, it deals roughly 193 damage per turn. Regarding the assumptions, (c) does not apply at all, and (b) applies, but depending on which attacks each creation uses, the Drayk will have a 5% to 15% better chance to hit (all things being equal) if it uses ranged, and a 20% to 30% better chance to hit if it uses melee. At low shaping skill levels (likely, if mixing creation types) this is more likely to be relevant. (The Searing Artila actually has a surprisingly decent melee attack itself, but it doesn't apply acid, so I'm ignoring it here.) And of course, this really only applies to Goettsch. Trajkov has surprisingly low elemental resists, and there aren't a ton of other fights with high enough HP for acid to compete this well.

All right, I'm upgrading Searing Artila, since they do have a realistic use case. I think they only make sense if you're going full Magic Shaping, but in that case, they are an obvious support for Glaahks, and probably the main creation pick prior to Create Glaahk. (If you're mixing creation types, one Drayk outdamages even the first Searing Artila, counting acid, even against Goettsch's 1025 hp, 45% elemental resist, 25% acid resist, and is less frail, for nearly the same essence cost.)

Three Searing Artilas? I-- I don't even understand the theory, at that point. Acid doesn't stack. They have an AoE, which is spammable.

Radius AoE effects like Frost Aura don't hit friendlies even on Torment. That said, I did some quick testing to see how much damage it actually does. Frost Aura (Cryoa & Cryodrayk versions are identical) is hardcoded. It seems to do 1-2 damage per level of the creation to every hostile creature within a circular radius of 4 squares (at the orthogonal ends). There is no base damage, and importantly, percentile bonuses/penalties (from Int, bless, wrack, etc) are NOT applied. For comparison, a level 16 Cryoa will do an average of 56 damage with its breath attack (assuming War Blessing, Helix Bracer, and no other bonuses to Int). Given Haste, its DPT will be about 76. It will do an average of 24 damage with frost aura. So it's a reasonable increase of about a third... on turns where an enemy you care about is very close to the Cryoa at the start of its turn. In fairness, there could also be turns where you hit multiple targets this way. However, I think the utility is limited -- especially when you realize that if you have the cryoa rush in to melee range, you're likely giving up a potential extra ranged attack from a haste proc, which is roughly the same average value as the aura damage anyway, except you can actually target it. So the aura seems best against melee-only creations that will actually run up to you -- though probably not the exploding enemies, where it could inadvertently cause a party wipe for you. The problem is that the only creation classes that are strictly melee-only -- Thahds and Battle Alphas (ok ok, and Ornks) -- all have knockback skills that will push the cryoa out of range of its aura. And they do seem to open with those frequently. Meanwhile, a level 18 Cryodrayk will do an average of 92 damage with its breath attack (same assumptions). Given Haste + Innate Haste, its DPT will be about 156. It will still do an average of 24 damage with frost aura. That's much less exciting, even though its Frost Aura passive costs twice as much as the Cryoa's. It's also probably worse on Cryodrayks given that they are actually flimsier than Cryoas.

Later in the game you have better options than Cryoas, too. "Always works"... I mean, if you end up next to an enemy, sure. But the damage is (a) small, (b) delayed, and (c) not something you can consistently target or control. Is it really the best use of 3 essence?

Were you actually still using Searing Artilas against Goettsch, Oroboros, or Trajkov, though? Plus, a lot of those tough single boss scenarios begin with them flanked by a number of high-offense creations, which you have to deal with somehow. Daze is excellent, of course. You can't always Daze the whole battlefield in round 1, though (especially when Daze fails to land) and being able to deal with groups of enemies can be pretty useful then. One thing I should have noted about HP, as well, is something you turned me on to -- how much of a difference Essence Shield can make. It's not convenient for regular use, of course, but for big fights, that can give the less sturdy creations a lot of wiggle room.

Frost Aura did completely pitiful damage when I tried it out -- like, single-digit. Does it scale and become useful at some point?