Mechalibur

The training bonuses were included in the bonus skill list. They are one time increases, so I consider them a +1 bonus like any other

For all those optimizers out there, I figured I'd list out the starting skills, bonuses to those skills, and the formulas for HP, Essence, and Spell Points. Starting Skills - Character skills at level 1. Skills with a * are eligible for a +1 increase from sarcophagi in the Tombs or South Bridge Map (there are other sarcophagi skill bonuses, but they are quite late game, and not really worth noting here). Shaper Strength: 2 Agility: 3 Intellect: 3 Essence Mastery: 4 Endurance: 2 Combat Skills [Weak] Melee Weapons: 0 Missile Weapons: 0* Quick Action: 0* Evasion: 0* Magic Skills Battle Magic: 1 Mental Magic: 1 Blessing Magic: 1 Spellcraft: 0* Shaping Skills [Strong] Fire Shaping: 1 Battle Shaping: 1 Magic Shaping: 1 Healing Craft: 1 Agent Strength: 3 Agility: 4 Intellect: 4 Essence Mastery: 3 Endurance: 3 Combat Skills Melee Weapons: 1 Missile Weapons: 2 Quick Action: 2 Evasion: 2 Magic Skills [Strong] Battle Magic: 2 Mental Magic: 2 Blessing Magic: 2 Spellcraft: 2 Shaping Skills [Weak] Fire Shaping: 1 Battle Shaping: 0* Magic Shaping: 0* Healing Craft: 0* Guardian Strength: 4 Agility: 3 Intellect: 2 Essence Mastery: 3 Endurance: 4 Combat Skills [Strong] Melee Weapons: 3 Missile Weapons: 3 Quick Action: 2 Evasion: 3 Magic Skills [Weak] Battle Magic: 0 Mental Magic: 0* Blessing Magic: 0* Spellcraft: 0* Shaping Skills Fire Shaping: 1 Battle Shaping: 1 Magic Shaping: 0* Healing Craft: 1 Interestingly, when you account for the sarcophagi bonuses, all the characters end up having the same starting shaping skills at 1 each. In fact, if you compare the agent to the shaper after considering that, the Shaper's only higher starting stat is Essence Mastery. Still, the shaper can put the most points into their shaping skills due to the lowered costs, so they're still better at shaping in the long-term. Bonus Skills - The total bonuses to skills you can get outside of sarcophagi and items. Some of these have requirements that you might not necessarily meet, however (quite a few require 5 leadership for example). These are just the raw numbers; for details, check out Randomizer's canister list or nlambert's index. Strength: +2 Agility: +3 Intellect: +2 Essence Mastery: +2 Endurance: +1 Melee Weapons: +3 Missile Weapons: +1 Quick Action: +3 Evasion: +1 Battle Magic: +0 Mental Magic: +0 Blessings Magic: +0 Spellcraft: +2 Fire Shaping: +1 Battle Shaping: +2 Magic Shaping: +1 Healing Craft: +1 Leadership: +1 Mechanics: +3 Stealth: +2 Highest Leadership check appears to be 12, although it's only used in 2 instances. In addition to the +1 you can get from Halm, there is a +2 leadership item, meaning you should never put more than 9 points into Leadership. Interestingly, there are 2 battle shaping canisters, but only 1 for fire and magic shaping. That means your battle creations can get a +1 level lead over the others. Endgame spoiler: Stat Formulas Essence: 4 + [2 + Level] * [1 + Essence Mastery] Spell Energy: 8/10/12 + [2 + Level] * [1 + Intellect] Note: 8 is for Guardian, 10 is for Shaper, 12 is for Agent, although in the long run, these differences don't really add up to much. HP Formula (variables defined below): [Base HP + (5 * L) + (H * E)] * Class HP Mod Base HP = 8 for Shapers and Agent, 10 for Guardian L = Character Level E = Endurance H = HP per Endurance Coefficient. This starts out as 5, and increases by 1 at every even level. So, for example, at level 8, the coefficient would be 9. Class HP Mod = 1 for Shaper, 1.3 for Agent, 1.5 for Guardian

You seem to be missing the following: Battle Shaping - East Kazg, Patrol Bridge Fire Shaping - West Workshop Magic Shaping - Pentil Healing Craft: Arena (requires at least 3 leadership - you also need to tell the servant mind that they are still Janus, otherwise this is locked) Also, I think you have too many entries for Create Thahd - I'm not sure the patrol bridge entry is accurate. Here are all the non-canister sources of skills/abilities (some of these are on your list, but I want to make sure they're all included): Strength: Use the Strange Pool in Spirit City 9 times. Agility + Intelligence: South Workshop, reward for the Slay Corata quest (requires 5 leadership) Quick Action: Icy Tunnels, requires 3 mechanics to open the sarcophagus. Quick Action: Pentil quest reward from Find Source of Vlish Melee Weapons/Missile Weapons/Quick Action/Evasion: Ellhrah's Keep from Swan, requires joining the Awakened. Spellcraft: Ruined School, requires 5 leadership Spellcraft: Wooded Valley, from Anya, requires 5 leadership and 3 Sholai language Stealth: Spirit City, from a Shade, requires 5 leadership Mechanics, Melee Weapons: In Pentil, from Rydell's books Create Fyora: From Learned Jaffee in Pentil, requires being an Obeyer and 5 leadership Essence Mastery: The Sentinels, quest reward from Slay Goettsch. The pre-reqs for this one are a bit complicated. You can't have already reached Goettsch or bypassed the Sentinels through the Mechanics route. You must also have at least 8 leadership. Leadership - Halm in Drayk's Vale will teach you for 2000gp if you don't have the Trajkov Amulet (even if you didn't join the takers, having the amulet from Trajkov directly will prevent you) Mechanics - Flig in Winding Road will teach you for 2000gp Stealth - Dig in Patrol bridge will teach you for 2000gp if your Servile reputation isn't too low

My understanding is developers are able to pick the time their games release, and Steam does the rest. If no time is specified, I believe Steam will use Midnight PST time.

You get more Essence per point at higher levels, but at lower levels small amounts of essence are more significant (for example, upgrading a Fyora is only 2 essence, but 6 for an Ur-Glaahk), so I don't think it's a terrible idea to get some Essence Mastery early. Regarding Intellect, it's worthwhile to note that it affects all spells, including healing, buffs, and debuffs, while Battle Magic will just be attack spells. So I'd say a point of intellect is definitely worth more than half a point of Battle Magic.

Intelligence now boosts spell effectiveness (duration, damage, and healing) by 5% and increases available spell energy (similar formula to essence mastery). I'd still put a few points in Essence Mastery on an Agent, personally.

Guardians seem to be in a reasonable place. They have more tools for dealing with large numbers of enemies, which is nice. Batons feel strong and there's a good variety of them.

Essence formula seems to be 4 + [2 + Level] * [1 + Essence Mastery] regardless of class. Shapers start with 4 Essence Mastery vs the 3 of Guardian/Agent, so while they have a slight advantage in Essence, it's not overwhelming. I don't think it makes sense to consider this a buff or nerf from the original since the game is so vastly different. It does, hiwever, mean that you can't become an expert in bith magic and shaping from investing in only 1 stat. Pumping a bunch of points into Essence Mastery early doesn't seem to be a great idea anyway since you have to contend with creature controllevels.

Right, it makes sense in general, it's just bizarre that they'd be in the Inner Crypt - the bonus dungeon where the game's pretty much already over.

Well you don't get a bonus unless you have 0 in the skill, so the Mental Magic sarcophagus in Inner Crypt doesn't even stack with the Tombs one. The Battle Magic tomb can only affect a guardian with 0 in battle magic, who probably is past of the point of trying to shift into a build that uses battle magic. An agent wouldn't get any benefit from them.

It really is a fantastic change for build variety. The exploding creations actually have a pretty useful niche in my experience, whereas they seemed almost entirely useless in G1-G5.

I don't believe those were changed, my notes match those exactly from the most recent build. Weirdly enough, there are also tombs in the Inner Crypt, which appear to be Mental Magic and Battle Magic. Not sure what the point of those are since if you have 0 of those skills by the time you're in that zone, you probably already have your build figured out.

I don't think that's correct? The earliest one is in which I'm pretty sure is well past the demo area.

Individual pools can't be used more than once, but the items themselves can be dipped in each pool once. As a result it makes the most sense to dip one of the items 4 times and ignore the other. They occupy the same slot anyway.

I figured that was just patrols. There are creations running all around the Ruined School zone, so it makes sense if I'd miss a few of them on return. Even if they are spawned, though, it's usually individual creations that are simple enough to deal with, even on Torment, so the strategy of slowly making your way through a zone should still work.

Usually it's only a single creation, though. I've never had that be a serious issue.

You can combine the Pacifist and No Creation achievements. They work pretty well together since you rarely need any creations if you don't plan on fighting. Anyway, here's some advice I have from my torment experience. Torment gives you a penalty to controlling creations, so it may be better to boost a single creation early on than use multiple. Just keep an eye on your control level as you level up, when it gets low enough, you can create more. Consumables are also really good in the early game. They only use 5AP, so you can use an Icy Crystal and make an attack on the same turn. Since most consumables use AoE attacks, they're also good options for taking out spawners in the early game. Also, the game isn't like Queen's Wish where areas have to be fully cleared to progress, you can just kill a few, go back to town, then go back to the area. It's also worth noting, on the steam forums, a user mentioned evasion is bugged and giving the bonus to enemies instead of your character. Jeff confirmed it and mentioned it will be fixed in the release version, so hopefully when the actual game comes out, your hit chance will be a bit better!

No problem. It'll be worth the wait!

It was uploaded as part of the Steam Festival, I don't think it's still available for download since the Steam Festival ended.

It would help if you went into more details about why you thought Mutagen was tedious. I don't think it's anywhere near tedious, so some more info would be useful here.

Other than the Owen/Mascha reputation, I don't think any of them even affect the gameplay at all (although a few affect dialogue). I'm not even sure if any of them affect the ending code you get.

I'll third the recommendation. In terms of gameplay, it's absolutely my favorite Spiderweb game (although I gotta give Geneforge first for best story/world).

I just noticed, "Drayk" is misspelled as "Dryak" for a few of the canister lines. Thought I'd mention it for anyone searching "Create Drayk" to find all the Drayk canisters.

Sad news, sure, but not really unexpected. If the average of 1.5 years per game continues, remaking the last Geneforge games and completing the Queen's Wish series (which I'm guessing will be a trilogy) would still take 9 years. Adding new projects on top of that just doesn't seem realistic to me.

Anyone have theories on what the unknown letters might represent? Your various tracked reputations (like how nice vs brutal you are, how much your mom likes you, etc.) might be involved in some of those. The 1st and 6th letters are especially interesting since they seem to have so many possibilities. I wonder if they correspond to something that has a wide range of possibilities, such as time passed.