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Mechalibur

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Everything posted by Mechalibur

  1. You can goad Eass into using the Geneforge in non-Taker playthroughs. He's clearly hesitant to do so, however, because the Geneforge is unfinished, which is why you need a good amount of leadership to get him to do so. There's no guarantee the re-shaped Eass has any long-term stability since either he or you are about to die after he uses it 😄
  2. They made the Geneforge, but they need Tuldaric's research to finish it. The Taker quest line does require stealing Tuldaric's research to progress.
  3. That's more of a Taker tactic than a Shaper one. The biggest weakness of the Shapers is their lack of adaptability. They don't take the Awakened seriously and have many of their forces captured by the Awakened early on in the conflict. They don't have effective answers for an army of flying drakons. They also have Tuldaric designing their defenses - a shaper so brilliant that even the smartest Barzites and Takers can't proceed with their plans until they steal his research. In the Taker ending (and future conflicts in the series), the situation is a lot different. Shaper's homes are being invaded, not just a no-name colony on the fringes. They aren't fighting for supremacy, they're fighting for survival. That isn't the case in the Awakened ending where I imagine many of the shapers being told to reclaim Drypeak aren't particularly motivated to be sent out to fight drakon bomb squads. Wouldn't surprise me if the Awakened increased their forces from defectors or sympathetic individuals living in Shaper lands.
  4. My notes were entirely from a gameplay perspective rather than a moral one. I prefer the G2 Awakened to the G1 version. Their goals are still unrealistic, but they know they need strength to back it up. The Barrier of the Winds gives them enough leverage to, at the very least, secure their freedom, and they don't hesitate to fight back against the Shapers if peace fails. The G1 Awakened really don't have much of a plan at all, although perhaps their naiveté can be attributed to their actual lack of interaction with any Shapers.
  5. Yeah, you can still game the factions. For testing purposes I did a Servants > Barzites > Awakened > Takers run to see how much stuff I could get, but it turns out pretty much all the goodies are on the Barzite side. I'll put some notes in spoilers since I'm getting pretty specific about the backer beta:
  6. I just checked, Randomizer is correct. It may have been different at an earlier point in the beta.
  7. It's kind of weird, really. The quest works differently on 3 levels from the other 2 collectibles. 1. It's faction locked. I'm curious if this is intentional. Gareth actually has dialogue if you're not a Barzite but it's literally impossible to trigger due to him being hostile if you're not a Barzite. The town will also turn hostile if you open the door to Gareth then leave the Barzites, so there's no sneaky way to talk to him while unaligned. 2. The XP isn't level-based. 3. You can turn in any amount. Well, technically you can bypass the iron bar and shaper equipment limits by turning in a huge chunk before you hit the limit, but there is a cutoff point where they won't accept any new deliveries. Gareth has no such point. It also gives a really good value per turn-in, with him giving 40 coins per record (which has a nominal value of 15 coins, translating to a 2.5 coin sell price). Min-maxers are absolutely going to want to join the Barzites at some point regardless of which faction they end with. On top of this quest, they also have 2 unique canisters that can only be accessed if you have the badge, a unique training opportunity for Quick Action, and a charm from a quest only they offer. It's nuts.
  8. Iron Bar and Shaper Equipment XP is level-based, so that's not worth holding onto. Shaper Records, curiously, are not level based and give a flat 10 XP. And I think you can get around 200 of them. Downside is you can't turn them in unless you join the Barzites.
  9. Guardians can absolutely deal with groups. All the shaping paths now have AoE options available (fire is the best, followed by magic, but battle can make use of stalkthorns and rots now which both have AoE potential) and guardians are perfectly fine at shaping to keep it relevant. But even if you don't consider shaping, guardians have access to the allmighty spray baton which works with the new weapon shaping system as well. Spray Baton + Chain Lightning is *devastating* to big groups, and anything left alive is usually either a boss enemy or can be cleaned up by your creations.
  10. Kind of crazy to think how many unique items will be in the G5 remake by the time it rolls around.
  11. You use the portal in the back, not the mirror.
  12. There are so many ways G3 could be improved with the remake treatment. Not sure how much of the story Jeff would be willing to change, though. Most of the improvements in Mutagen and Infestation are gameplay-related rather than story-related.
  13. To be fair, I don't think there was any indication the serviles knew about Thrackerzod's crew. Although how he set up a correspondence with Yu-La on the other side of Sucia, I have no idea.
  14. Did you maybe play the original geneforge 2 and get it mixed up with Mutagen somehow? I'm confused as well.
  15. They're briefly mentioned by the shaper in the Eastern Docks. Thrackerzod or whatever his name is.
  16. He built up from the base systems of Mutagen. No reason to completely change the fundamentals in each sequel. The story/location is completely different and there's a bunch of new content too.
  17. Shanti is pragmatic and knows that there are more effective uses of your talents than sitting by a bug hole and squashing bugs as they come up. She wants to root out the cause, not the symptoms.
  18. I think you have more important things to do in Drypeak than squashing scuttlebugs!
  19. But friendly rat is the emotional core of the game.
  20. The Resistance and Luck skills passively increase curse resist. Additionally anything with "Hostile Effect Resistance" will also increase curse resist.
  21. Aw, I like Queen's Wish. It fixed a lot of issues I had with the Avernum remake/Avadon era of Spiderweb Software which was difficulty figuring out how to balance abilities. The Avernum remakes tried to balance it with an energy cost, but that really just ended up being "what level of tedium are you willing to accept to clear this dungeon?" since you could just exit to town whenever you were running low. There were also an extreme amount of potions doled out that pretty much ensured energy management was a non-issue and contributed to mages being significantly stronger than warriors could ever be. Battle disciplines tried to solve that, I think, but it turned out only a single one was ever useful in the late game (Adrenaline Rush) and mages could easily get access to it as well. Avadon tried to fix the issues by introducing ability cooldowns, but they were so long (10+ rounds) that you often only ended up casting any given ability once per encounter. Queen's Wish, by comparison, has a number of useful abilities that you have to manage properly to get through the dungeon. There's a decent of variety of effects, and I enjoy actually having to think about my energy management. I also think it does a much better job with difficulty. Enemies hit a lot harder on torment difficulty and utilize more abilities, but they don't become bullet sponges like they do on torment for previous series. Resistances don't scale to ridiculous degrees where it becomes nearly impossible to hit with mental effects in the late game, and you can actually inspect enemy stats in combat with right click. Story-wise, I'll agree it's not the strongest Spiderweb game, but I liked the premise and characters well enough. The sequel, on the other hand, I think was a great story, Queen's Wish 2 ranks near the top of Spiderweb stories for me with Geneforge 2.
  22. It's hard for me to pick a favorite game, but I generally like different things about each game. Avernum has my favorite overworld (or should that be underworld?) exploration. My favorite story is Geneforge 2, although Queen's Wish 2 is pretty close Geneforge Mutagen has my favorite gameplay, although I suspect that will be beaten by Geneforge 2 Infestation Queen's Wish 1 has the most memorable dungeons (The Lovely Tree is excellent) The only Spiderweb game I've played that doesn't stick out that much is the Avadon series. I don't think it was bad, exactly, but it's not as memorable as the other series for me.
  23. Do you have any equipment giving you melee weapon skill? You have to naturally have 8 without any equipment bonuses.
  24. It's part of a different quest that you get in the Ahriel lands. You need a specific special item to find the carrot.
  25. I think the regions are generally supposed to be around the same difficulty, with the first half of the region being easier than the second. So if there are still any quests left in the first half of the other regions, you could try finishing them first. You can also grab the secondary forts in all regions before trying the quests. That being said, the quests should still be doable at level 11. If you're getting swarmed, maybe try making more use of Mindsteal so the enemies fight each other before you. If the bosses are the hard part, make sure you're casting battle frenzy before initiating combat to get everyone haste and maybe try having your warriors use brutal blow to get 5 stacks of bleed on the bosses for extra damage over time.
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