Slawbug

Outdated works for Rhakkus. But Easss was always a drakon -- "the first of a newer, deadlier breed of drakons." Actually this is a widespread issue in the game text. Pinner's mission also calls the three of them drayks. Syros's quest text calls Easss a drayk! Zakary, Pinner, and Macnulty all call Easss a drayk in dialogue, too. I think this can probably be filed under "Beka of Rising."

"The Servants." "The Takers of the high mountains are working on powerful and dangerous research, led by rogue and rebellious drayks. They are called Rhakkus, Akkat, and Easss. To end the threat, they must be destroyed." It does call them all drayks for some reason, but it also gives their names. Since Syros is also a Taker leader and a drayk, and Easss is unambiguously a drakon, the names are probably necessary.

Changed. @Randomizer Might want to correct that.

You are valued regardless of canister use. Canister use does affect whether your peers in shaper training trust you, but not the assignments you're given. Randomizer's atlas says the Servant quest is to kill the 3 drayks. Is that inaccurate?

The Emerald Chestguard was bonkers good then, it was +2 AP, so you could attack twice every turn.

Kind of a pity that the crafting options aren't more exciting. Sharon's ring is really the only one of consequence. Some of the others are OK, but by the time you get the ingredients, you'll likely have something better available.

It uses wine, not amphorae (??), and there is no limit.

There's an interesting consitency to the general direction of travel, and location of the final dungeons/bosses, in Spiderweb games. Most of the time, you start in the south and/or east, and the endgame stuff is to the north and/or west, and usually the far NW corner. E/A1: Start SE, Grah-Hoth in NW corner. E/A2: Start NE, Garzahd in NW corner. E/A3: Start S, Rentar in NW corner. A4: Start NE, Rentar in NW corner. G1: Start SW, Geneforge in NE corner. G2: Start SE, Geneforge in NW corner (Ghaldring even in NW corner of NW corner). G3: Start E, Akhari Blaze in W end. G4: Start SE, Northforge Citadel in NE. QW2: Start SE, final fight in NW corner. This doesn't apply so well to Nethergate, Avadon, Queen's Wish, or to A5/A6, which are all less definite geographically. But I think G5 is the only game that really goes against it entirely, where you start in the NW and travel largely south.

Changes from Original G2: - No changes in ending criteria. The endings are mostly the same, but there are some small changes. - For example, in the Awakened ending, they now explicitly conquer and absorb the resources of the other sects using the Barrier of Winds drakons offensively (!) (firmly putting to rest the argument that they wouldn't have the resources to stand up to the Shapers like the G3 Rebels did). - There are two new minor variations that are not ending dependent, for the hallucination canister in Rising, and for the Sholai (who begin to practice shaping in their lands, if you helped them). - That last one is really smelling relevant to the G3 remake IMO. I fully expect a Sholai pathway in G3, kind of like the Trakovite pathway in G4 -- not a full-fledged faction for most of the game, but a way to end the game differently. - The Servant and Non-Aligned endings have significant text overlap, but the criteria to reach them are completely exclusive. - Apparently Syros being alive or dead makes no difference to anything. Minor Variations in All Endings: - Canister use (0-9 / 10+) - Shanti (did not learn she died / did not find her killer / found but left him alive / avenged her) - Zakary (did not meet / did not kill / killed) - Barzahl (did not kill / killed) - Hallucination canister (if used) - Sholai (killed / did not help / helped) The one requirement for actually leaving the valley is having met Barzahl, so that is a given in every ending, even the bad one. MAJOR ENDING 1: PC HAS NO INFLUENCE Criteria: Don't qualify for any other ending, i.e., give up and leave. Part 1: The council distrusts you and jails you, before you are ultimately executed. (heavy canister use) The council distrusts you and jails you. (low canister use, joined non-servant faction) The council distrusts you, but sends you back to your training, where you are also distrusted. (low canister use, did not join non-servant faction) Part 2: The Awakened are crushed by the Takers (and the Barzites, if you didn't kill Barzahl). The Shapers seize Drypeak, executing Zakary if he is alive, but hostile rogues from the surviving faction(s) swarm out from the Valley and a long war begins. Minor Variations: - Which faction you joined (if any) - If you slew Taker leaders - If you slew Barzahl MAJOR ENDING 2: NON-ALIGNED VICTORY Criteria: Kill Barzahl and Rhakkus, Akkat, and Easss. Not aligned with the Servants or the Awakened. (If you kill both threats but are aligned with one of those factions, yet don't complete their quests, you will get ending 1 instead.) (You do not have to kill Zakary or Pinner for this ending.) The Council is impressed with your actions and returns you to your training. Shaper Troops take over Drypeak, and destroy Medab and Rising. Any faction leaders remaining there are all executed. The remaining Takers flee. You become a powerful, trusted, and valued Shaper. Minor Variations: - Canister use - If you slew Zakary - If you slew Learned Pinner MAJOR ENDING 3: SERVANT VICTORY Criteria: Aligned with Servants + complete their quest chain (which requires killing Rhakkus, Akkat, and Easss). The Council is impressed with your actions and returns you to your training, though not before you defend Zakary. He is executed anyway. Shaper Troops take over Drypeak, and destroy Medab and Rising. Any faction leaders remaining there are all executed. The remaining Takers flee. You become a powerful, trusted, and valued Shaper. Minor Variations: - Canister use - If you slew Learned Pinner - If you slew Barzahl MAJOR ENDING 4: AWAKENED VICTORY Criteria: Aligned with Awakened + complete their quest chain (which requires killing Rhakkus, Akkat, and Easss). The Council puts you in jail and executes Zakary if he is alive. The Awakened activate the Barrier of the Winds, and send the drakons to defeat Rising. Barzahl is dies if he is alive. The remaining Takers flee. The Awakened absorb the resources of both defeated sects, obtain victories over the Shapers and arrange a prisoner exchange for you. You spend the rest of your life fighting for the Awakened. Apparently it's a stalemate, as the Awakened don't bring the war beyond the mountains, but the Shapers continue to send warriors to fruitless deaths fighting drakons. Minor Variations: - Canister use - If you slew Zakary - If you slew Barzahl MAJOR ENDING 5: BARZITE VICTORY Criteria: Aligned with Barzites + complete their quest chain (which requires killing Zakary). The Council puts you in jail. Medab surrenders to the Barzites. The remaining Takers flee. Barzahl absorbs the resources of the Awakened, obtains victories over the Shapers and arranges a prisoner exchange for you. The war continues for years and years, while you partake of increasingly powerful modifications and augmentations, eventually becoming an inhuman "God." Minor Variations: - Canister use - If you slew Learned Pinner MAJOR ENDING 6: TAKER VICTORY Criteria: Aligned with Takers + complete their quest chain (which requires killing at least one of Zakary, Barzahl, and Pinner). The Council puts you in jail and plans a military campaign, but too late. The Takers crush Medab, Rising, and Drypeak in sequence, absorbing their resources and killing any surviving leaders. (Barzahl, they eat!) The Takers obtain victories over the Shapers and arrange a prisoner exchange for you. You spend the rest of your life researching new destructive powers for the Takers, isolated from other humans. Minor Variations: - Canister use - If you slew Zakary - If you slew Learned Pinner - If you slew Barzahl Also, ending 6 is the only ending that explains that the thing behind the locked door in the Taker warrens is "the final creation of Easss."

All tier 4 creations have it -- just like they did in OG Geneforge, so not really a surprise.

They do not change with level. They are pretty simple, although Jeff modified them slightly in v101: Fyora/Roamer: -- Drayk: 50% Curse Drakon: 50% Curse, 30% Mental Thahd: 20% Physical, 20% Stun Clawbug: 20% Physical, 30% Stun Battle Alpha: 20% Physical, 50% Stun Rotghroth: 20% Physical, 50% Poison/Acid/Stun, 30% Mental Artila/Vlish/Glaahk: 30% Magic/Fire/Ice, 30% Mental Gazer: 50% Mental Stalkthorn, Cockatrice: -- Ornk: 100% Stun (alt creation forms never have different resists) The 30% resistance augment on Cryoas and Glaahks counts like a separate piece of armor. It's 30% for all damage resistances (Physical/Magic/Fire/Ice), I don't believe it affects Curse/Mental/Stun/Poison/Acid.

Even in open world games, what's the benefit? Would Avernum really be more interesting if you miss a goblin or nephil cave, go back to it late game, and discover they all have the stats of a Haakai? (Also, G2 and G5 are still pretty open world, with open-ended progression -- just as much as G1's, I'd argue. Certainly they are more like G1 then they are like the strictly sequenced areas of G3/4, A4/5, or Avadon.

No worries about any of that! You can break up the math that way, but adding is never actually required. It's just Resistance = 1 - Vulnerability Vulnerability = 100% * (1 - resist) * (1 - resist) * (1 - resist) ... Personally, I think it's conceptually intuitive. Think about it with damage. A 40% fire resist shield blocks 40% of fire damage. Then if you also wear a 20% fire resist cloak, it blocks 20% of whatever got past the shield. I don't think you can hit 100% resist -- and I believe it may be hard capped at 90% resistance. (It was in some games, but I don't remember exactly when that started.)

I'm talking about posts here. I have replaced "how you do this" above with "how you discuss modding here." Does that help?

Hi kkeiper, welcome! (Quick mod note - I edited your title because these forums are intended to be "family friendly, and just plain friendly". Not a huge deal) Good news is there's no bug. Resistances of all sorts are not calculated additively. Instead, each "layer" of resistance is multiplied together. (For resistances from stats, the whole total counts as one layer.) In your first example, you started with 21%. The Glaahk Shield reduces your remaining vulnerability by 40%. The math is 0.79 * 0.6 = 0.47, which becomes 53%. I think this actually is explained in the manual somewhere, but it's easy to miss. Hope this makes it a little clearer!

Ahhh, it's probably the melee thing, yeah. That makes sense.

Whoops. I 100% flipped that fraction. (The example math was all correct.) Good catch!!

Just make a new post, you can update it if something else surfaces later and we can link to it yeah. Also, do we know for sure that backtostart can no longer cause the awful all-empty-containers bug? I can't remember if that ever surfaced in Mutagen or not. There's not so much reason to use the code in Geneforge, so it might not have had much chance to surface.

Interesting! My processor is ancient so I'm not sure it's that. Most of my testing was with a party of 6. I don't know if you're running more and that just statistically creates more opportunities to obstaclize, or maybe I just haven't been through the most cluttered zones in the last couple days. Anyway, this is a good warning which I'll make more prominent - thanks!

Hey everyone, Talking about modding, and the game's script and definitions files, is of course completely OK. However, now that some of these topics are being linked to on Steam, I'd like to ask you to be thoughtful about how you discuss modding here. Steam is a much larger audience, and if people are encouraged to make haphazard changes when they have no context for it and don't completely understand what they are doing, there is potential for frustration -- and for wasting Spiderweb's time, when they get complaints or bug reports that don't actually apply to the unmodified game. (This is a thing that has happened in the past, and is why I personally stick on the little "don't bug Spiderweb" disclaimer.) Please keep topics used to distribute individual mods (i.e., the ones with an attached file in the first post) simple and clear for the many brief visitors they are now getting. - Please keep technical discussions/tutorials about scripting definitions/editing out of those topics - Please do not encourage or give instructions for custom-editing somebody else's mod (it might not be as simple as it looks) - If you're primarily talking about a different mod, please do it in that mod's topic instead Thank you for keeping the Shaping Halls clean so the serviles don't have to pick up trash. It gets stuck in their junk bag and they have pull each piece out one by one 😉

This is why I noted this possibility at the the bottom of the original post 🙂 I haven't actually seen this happen since I set the speed to its current value, so I think this should be relatively rare. (With higher values, it was frequent.)

is there some way you know that's all of them?

In theory, yes... but all five of these components involve a bunch of changes to the same one file. So if I made a version of that file for every permutation, that'd be I think 31 different versions X_x

Do Puresteel Bars have any use other than being given to Corin (and one for Phariton)? nlambert's index lists them as an item you can use "All" of, but I don't see what else you can do with them, and she'll only accept 4.

I think the issue is more that even level scaling doesn't hurt the game (which I'd argue for QW) it never really makes it better than it would be without the scaling. Like in QW the whole point is that it facilitates a very order-agnostic open world. But lots of other SW games have had a world like that (or a more open one, in the case of E/A 1-3). There are well-known issues that can come with level scaling. I just don't really understand the potential benefit.