Mechalibur

Yeah, it's usually just less of a hassle to go down the south route now. That being said, the battle is still beatable. I recommend liberal use of the Dominate spell since most Sholai have no resistance to mental. Essence Shield can also usually make your creations last an extra hit before they die.

2 Essence per upgrade: Fyora (base 6), Thahd (base 6), Artila (base 7) 3 Essence per upgrade: Cryoa (base 9), Volatile Thahd (base 10), Vlish (base 10), Clawbug (base 8), Roamer (base 8 ) 4 Essence per upgrade: Searing Artila (base 12), Pyroroamer (base 12), Iron Clawbug (base 12), Charged Vlish (base 14), Drayk (base 14), Battle Alpha (base 14), Ornk (base 12) 5 Essence per upgrade: Glaahk (base 17) 6 Essence per upgrade: Cryodrayk (base 20), Battle Beta (base 20), Ur-Glaahk (base 22), Cockatrice (base 20)

I know the difference, I'm just especially prone to typos, especially on mobile!

If you have 6+ Stealth, you can sneak into Rhakkus' horde without her noticing. Not a bug.

Trajkov's journal requires 4. Other than that, no.

You should just be able to drag the venom baton to the missile weapon slot of your inventory.

Okay, but then as a shaper you're risking dazing your own creations and run into a very similar issue as an agent would (which I'll maintain you're probably doing something wrong if you constantly find yourself in a situation where your only option is a melee range daze). Agents only have slightly less essence than a shaper would, so they can easily still have a creation buffer between themselves and the enemies.

I'm not really following the logic on why it's worse for an agent specifically. A shaper would have the exact same hit chance for daze.

Right, but the Sholai still have to charge toward you from their current direction. In my 3 playthroughs (all on Veteran or Torment) I haven't been in a single situation where I had to risk hitting myself with Daze.

It's certainly better than the previous way difficulty was handled - massively inflating enemy stats and changing nothing else. I haven't really been in a situation where daze would target my own character - the game typically doesn't have enemies flank you from multiple sides. Usually the bigger consideration for friendly fire is your creations getting caught.

Creatures have a very large base chance to hit for some reason. Even when a lower level than my guardian (who was wearing no hit-impacting armor), my creations generally had a higher chance to hit and rarely went below 95%. I think an Agent concentrating on only a single school of shaping could see similar results.

Creations use the same rules as before, so this isn't a massive surprise buff to Shapers. Also worth noting, Endurance has a base cost of 3 now instead of 4.

I'm fairly certain evasion is rolled separately from hit chance, and that it scales multiplicitively (i.e. a 4% chance is rolled a number of times equal to your evasion skill).

I don't believe I've ever seen "evade" pop up against AoE attacks. It could also be since you leveled up, enemies have lower base accuracy against you, so they miss more often.

Riposte is a creation skill that Thahds and Battle Alphas have. I don't think players can gain access to it. The damage dealt seems to be about half the damage taken.

Interesting. Discipline Wands just cast daze in this version, but it could be a strange remnant that snuck its way into the remake.

Assuming you get the combat training from Swan, and all the other combat bonuses, you'll end up with 6 Melee Weapons and 4 Ranged Weapons before accounting for spent skill points (also not counting item bonuses, but they don't count toward the skill points required to equip a weapon). Getting to 8 Melee weapons has a cost of 5 skill points, while 8 in Missile weapons will have a skill point cost of 12. Not an unreasonable investment, although 7 of the points are from getting missile weapons from 6 to 8. So are Reapers worth the extra skill points? Let's take a look at baton damage dice (X is character level): Thorn Baton: 2 + (X+2)d3 Venom Baton: 4 + (X+6)d3 Tranquil Baton: 4 + (X+6)d4 Spray Baton: 8 + (X+6)d4 Reaper Baton: 8 + (X+7)d6 Reapers are a decent step up from the Spray Baton due to their increased damage dice, and it's always nice to have a powerful weapon that won't hurt your own creations. At level 18 (a typical end game level, in my experience), a Reaper Baton's average damage is 95.5 (before % increases) compared to 68 for a Spray Baton or 64 for a Tranquil Baton. I'd definitely say that's an increase worth the investment. While we're at it, let's compare Reaper Damage to some end game weapons: Purifying Blade (3 canisters): 2 + (X+14)d5 Shaped Blade/Guardian Claymore: 2 + (X+9)d5 At level 18, the Purifying Blade is an average of 98 damage. A bit higher than the reaper baton, but you have to get close and personal to use it - occasionally meaning you're missing out on a second action due to having to spend AP to get to your target. On the other hand, there are no ammo considerations for it. The Guardian Claymore, meanwhile, has an average base damage of 83, although you should consider the extra 10% damage you're getting from strength. So, that's my long-winded way of saying I think it's pretty reasonable to get to 8 points in both weapon types on a Guardian. I did do that in my first playthrough of the game, but that was in a beta where the sarcophagi worked differently, letting me get an extra 2 skill points. So I'd rather look at the numbers than my personal experience in this case, at least until I try it again on the latest version of the game.

So, for what it's worth, I disagree with your assessment on Agents, and I think giving them extra actions would make them wildly imbalanced compared to the other two classes. But there does appear to be a line for enemies that have extra actions: "cr_bonus_aps = 1;" You may be able to add that to the Agent data in GFitemschars.txt. I haven't tried this myself, and, of course, always make sure to backup your files before editing them just in case.

Firebolt is the only spell you can have as a default attack. I imagine it was designed this way because Firebolt is the only attack spell that doesn't have an essence cost.

Does it say that? Here's the dialogue I see in the scripts: text1 = "There is a living craft waiting at this dock. It is a thin, exhausted specimen, but it might be able to return you to the mainland."; text2 = "However, when you get close to it, it snarls at you. It refuses to obey you. These creatures are legendarily stubborn. You doubt that you will ever be able to mentally overpower it.";

You don't. The map where you can escape is called "Guarded Docks"

You only need 6 leadership to convince Aitch not to fight you. After that you can walk up to the canister and take it - the other alphas will be neutral toward you.

I think Torment mode is in a pretty good place, personally, although I would have to say Mutagen is significantly more difficult on Torment than Queen's Wish was. The latest update changed the hp formulas a bit, so characters are a little less squishy now at least (without enemy hp being affected).

Check the tooltip again - the percentage increase listed after the damage range should be increased if the relevant ability modifier increased. The range itself is the same, but that's because percentage increases are always applied after the damage dice are rolled. So if you boost strength on a Thahd, for example, the percentage listed after the damage dice should be 5% higher. The breath attack is magic because it's fire damage. Regarding Swoop - that's not affected by Strength or Dexterity. It does Cold damage, so it's affected by Magical Skill.

Intensity-stacking debuffs were a favorite of mine. They kept damage over time effects useful against both regular enemies and bosses. In Mutagen, Acid is ridiculously powerful against bosses and just kind of OK against regular enemies.