Jawaj

How does this work though? Does shaping skill still determine their levels?

“Finish the Queen’s Wish series” seems like carefully chosen wording to not necessarily commit to a full game. On a recent stream he sounded like a free “DLC” update to QW2 wrapping up the story was more likely for financial reasons. That said, it sounded tentative and plans can change.

Well the biggest thing is just that creations don’t gain XP. Which was a cool idea on paper, but was fiddly and annoying in practice, like letting a creation die without reloading meant you’d lost a bunch of XP permanently. And more expendable creations fit better with the themes of the series than the Pokémon long-term style.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=n3_4L4F4_Gs He’s a reviewer who specializes in CRPGs and Mutagen was his first Spidweb game. He really likes it and calls it one of his favorite stories in gaming.

Don't the Queen's Wish games have some soft level scaling, where the enemies will increase in level somewhat as you do but you'll still outpace them in growth?

How does melee's damage output compare to magic in the mod?

Sounds more like he means a free update to the reremakes haha.

Jeff has said he's remastering six games, which presumably includes A6. It's definitely the least dated of the original Avernums, but the engine and art and UI could still be updated to modern Spiderweb standards and various things polished and filled out. And after doing the rest of the second trilogy it makes financial sense if nothing else. More details on updating old games from the AMA, Avadon and Avernum 1-3 will likely get a final balance pass one day:

Some information from his latest blog post: https://bottomfeeder.substack.com/p/we-released-geneforge-2-infestation From the recent stream Queen's Wish 3 might not be happening due to finances, perhaps some short "DLC" story (but likely free) for QW2 to wrap things up instead. The part about "polish treatment (like art and rebalancing)" for some games is interesting.

It is quite an odd UI quirk, because in some other cases the spell lists (not even including skills) are split between different dialog options.

Try scrolling down on the spell list in your copy and see what you find.

I've actually just been playing through EFtP and Erika definitely has skills in her dialog tree. IIRC there is some precondition - it might have been joining the Scimitar. I just checked and I have v1.01. It's direct download instead of Steam, if that matters. I'll get a couple screencaps later. EDIT: ok I just looked in-game and the skills are listed in the same place as spells and you have to scroll down. This is probably the source of confusion. Couldn't get embedding to work but: https://i.imgur.com/b4nxH9R.png

It's an interesting idea, though for spells a more permanent or semi-permanent (provide a respec option for a cost or other limitations) upgrade system might work better than creation-style customiazation because you cast them so often.

And GF3 in particular needs story improvement much more than extra creations (Jeff does seem aware that the game needs work).

I don’t think a new creation class makes sense. You’d have to add a bunch of new ones or split the existing ones, unless you make the one-per-game new creatures a “special” school but that has its own problems (you don’t have access to them early game for one). Also the game already rewards specializing in one school. Only proper Shapers can really go multischool and it’s still arguably suboptimal. Giving access to a smaller percentage of the creations each play through doesn’t seem fun. Jeff is very unlikely to just add 4 or 5 more creations and double that for variants, so what would a new creation school add to the game?