Mechalibur

I'm starting to wonder if the faction guards are more powerful than Spiderweb originally intended. The Hintbook mentions that The Purging quest (which requires you to kill all 3 faction leaders) should be pretty easy by the point in the game you get it, and the xp rewards for killing them are extremely low (the xp for killing Gnorrel is measured at level 8). The high difficulty of those guards is a bit at odds with that.

That's certainly interesting, but I'd definitely say contemporary usage of "box" almost always refers to a rectangular shape. Seems more like a prescriptive definition than a descriptive one, in other words.

The text console will tell you how much xp you get when you kill something, but not the internal calculations for it. The amount of xp you get depends on the level difference between you and the creature you killed: 0 - 20xp -1 - 14xp -2 - 10xp -3 - 4xp -4 - 2xp -5 - 1xp -6 - 0xp +1 - 22xp +2 - 24xp +3 - 26xp +4 - 28xp +5 - 30xp

Enemies stop giving exp when you're 6 levels above them. I believe the pyroroamers in the Tombs are level 2, so that would explain it.

Yeah, I'm not sure where the term "box mine" came from, since they're, well, spheres.

The end of the credits for Mutagen say "1 down, 4 to go" so I think he's planning on remaking all the Geneforge games, if time permits.

Oh the box mines! Duh, sorry.

Okay, guess not then. I've never seen a creation go before my shaper, even when it was a higher level with more agility, so I guess I assumed it always worked that way.

I'd have to say Queen's Wish. It's also one of the more forgiving Spiderweb Games, and the only one (to my knowledge) to offer free retraining in case you mess up your build.

I'm not sure it's related to enemy stats - in fact, enemies might not even get higher stats on different difficulties (damage you take seems to be just multiplied by a difficulty coefficient rather than giving enemies more stats). If I had to guess, I don't think the rules for turn order are equally applied to everyone. One of the reasons I'm thinking this is that your creations always seem to go after you - even if you have minimum agility and quick action.

I don't think there are any mines like that in the game. Unless you're referring to the crystal-operated mines which you can disarm by quickly clicking on the crystal in between them.

Oh, you have to leave and return? I wonder if that's intentional.

I actually took notes on how much xp you get from monsters based on the level difference. Didn't think they'd be useful, but glad I did now: 0 - 20xp -1 - 14xp -2 - 10xp -3 - 4xp -4 - 2xp -5 - 1xp -6 - 0xp +1 - 22xp +2 - 24xp +3 - 26xp +4 - 28xp +5 - 30xp The penalty for being a higher level is much harsher than the bonus for being a lower level, so for pure xp optimization, it's probably best to keep killing these around your level and avoid enemies that are too high of a level. I believe locks and quest rewards use a similar system/scaling.

Oh, with modding? Sure, but then, any creation can be good if you want to mess with the scripts.

I don't know if anyone here is an active wiki member. I personally find the guides on these forums more useful anyway.

No, it will still be bad. You can't even boost it up that high because its base level is 1 and there's only a single canister. A drayk meanwhile has a base level of 7 and there are a total of 4 canisters available for it.

They're complete jokes, still. The fact that they have abilities (bull rush and acid spray) don't make up for their awful base stats and low level.

Specifically, ornks can be found in

I think one of the endings has a single line of text that changes based on canister use. Specifically... This is based off the scripts for the ending slides. If anyone can confirm/deny my guess, please let me know.

Huh, that's really interesting. Definitely seems like the Fiery Slap is being used regardless of whether you have a weapon equipped or not. Probably not intentional, although I'd say it makes the gloves stronger overall if you can still get weapon bonuses.

That's true, and it's definitely a bonus that they don't have to spend any essence to get their buffs up.

It's very far to the Northeast. The game's story will ultimately take you there.

Research Quarters is a separate map, it's not in the bunker.

I think it's reasonable to invest in multiple shaping skills (well, maybe not for an agent). Only investing into a single one will cause increasingly high skill point costs and in the early/mid-game you run the risk of running into control issues. Each school of shaping also specializes in particular strategies and having multiple creation types available allows you to cover for a school's weakness. Fire creations, for example, have no resistances and can die extremely quickly, especially on higher difficulties. Battle creations tend to have noticeably higher hp, as well as decent resistances to physical damage and stuns allowing them to take hits for your softer creations (or yourself, if you're a shaper). Magic creations offer great utility, especially with debuffs - I find Magic Creations to be best on Guardians since they offer debuffs that you normally would have to get from investing in spellcasting.

Pretty much all that affects hit chance is your level, buffs/debuffs, and possible armor penalties. In practice, I haven't found agent creation accuracy to be much of an issue. In the early game you can keep your creations at your level pretty easily, and late game they're still high enough to have a great chance to hit against most enemies. Ignoring shaping entirely on an agent is absolutely a mistake that I think a lot of players may make. Hell, just from a skill point perspective, an agent isn't missing out on too much. Assuming you want to unlock all tier 3 spells on both characters, it would cost an agent 10 points (4 for healing craft, 2 for battle magic, 2 for mental magic, 2 for blessing magic), but a shaper 23 points (2 for healing craft, 7 for battle magic, 7 for mental magic, 7 for blessing magic). An agent investing those saved points into shaping skills will have parity with a shaper through the first 6 shaping skill unlocks, which I think is pretty reasonable. And of course, they'll still have the other advantage like much higher hp pool, more spell damage, going faster in initiative, etc. I'm not sure which I'd say is better at the moment (I've only played guardian and agent on torment so far, but I haven't had too many issues), but I know for sure the agent isn't so bad that they'd need twice as many actions to compete with a shaper.