Mechalibur

They're listed that way in case you take the Mascha route and just stroll in. Like Randomizer said, if everyone's dead, it shouldn't matter if it's marked Not Yours or not - just grab it.

It's reasonable to assume that upgraded creatures are counted among the 20, otherwise we're nowhere near 20. As a result, I don't think the cockatrice has an upgraded version. Either that, or the ornk has been replaced.

I agree that most wandering encounters should offer something. Maybe not necessarily exp, but they could slightly lower the theft chance of the region or something.

That's a good theory - Sutter takes great offense if you state your intention to rule Haven, and it's very possible Queen Sharyn isn't convinced he would make a good ruler. It is also conspicuous that there are no mentions of the character's father at all. I get the feeling Sharyn will either die at the end of 2 or the beginning of 3, and the final game will be about claiming the throne for yourself.

I don't believe there's any way to get your theft chance down to 0% if you side with the Owen. If you side with the Mascha, meanwhile, the thievery chance won't go up at all. I think it's supposed to represent just how massive of a shift to Vol's economy and governance you're causing by siding with the rebels. It really sort of hammers in the difficulty of making the right choice (The Owen) vs the practical choice (The Mascha).

Did you clear out the traps at the end, THEN talk to them? I think the monster-summoning traps respawn each visit, and they don't want to leave until after you've killed everything.

I'm not sure, but I think it just impacts your Owen/Mascha reputation. Definitely doesn't change the ending.

Yeah, it definitely seems like rushing the 3 forts is a good idea - that's what I did on my latest playthrough on Torment. The only tricky part is that you need to clear the Ahriel Thicket to get to the Ahriel lands - it was the 2nd hardest dungeon in the entire game for me.

The way I interpreted it, the Nisse see the people of Sacramentum as their children rather than as test subjects or resources to be exploited. Of course, they're incredibly abusive parents, while also being possessive of what they see as theirs. The weird construct infiltrators they were developing in Charme sort of reminded me of parents creating fake social media profiles to stalk their children on.

It's definitely understandable. The Ahriel isn't really divided into 2 sides like the Vol or Ukat. Their conflict revolves more around whether or not you want to force new members on their council or not.

I'm not sure if the Burrowing Crawler location is accurate. I fully cleared out the Caves under Castle Troglo for the first time, and I didn't see a single one. It was my first time there, so I don't believe it's a respawn issue. Edit: For posterity, there's a single Burrowing Crawler in the Pabuloso Walls quest. Presumably it will not respawn. Also found a patrol of them around Calloc - that one probably does respawn.

I'd be surprised if Essence Mastery didn't influence your max Essence, similar to Endurance for Health or Intellect for Energy. I wonder if does anything else, though - maybe it also affects Healing Craft spells since those are in the Shaping Category. Or maybe it passively enhances your creations? Regarding Anatomy - maybe it was rolled into Quick Action? Quick Action's skill point cost appears to be higher than Melee/Ranged this time around (although that's not necessarily indicative of a chance in functionality - a lot of skills seem to have had their costs rebalanced)

So, I discovered something really interesting about this fight today. The difficulty is massively dependent on the dialogue options you select with the Watcher. If you hear out the offer, the enemies will all have significantly more hp compared to if you refuse to hear the offer at all. Their other stats appear to be the same, but the increase in hp makes the fight much more difficult. No idea why it was designed this way, or if it is even intentional. Specifically on Torment, the Nisse Warriors went from ~250hp to having over 600, with the mages getting a similar boost, making them quite difficult to pick off early.

It's also worth noting that the "Melee" damage bonus is actually a physical damage bonus instead. It applies to bows, but will not apply to melee arcane weapons. The bonus damage from Barracks are similar as well - you don't get alternating bonuses to Melee and Ranged/Magic, you instead get bonuses to physical and magical. As an extra layer of weirdness, Barracks bonuses don't actually alternate between physical and magical - the first one you build gives +1 physical damage, then the 3rd, 5th, and 7th give +1 physical and magical damage. Same end result, but still bizarre. The actual damage bonus you get from tier 4 also appears to be bugged a bit. At level 18, I was seeing "+4" as my bonus, but it was only giving +3 for some reason according my ability/weapon tooltips (I checked by respeccing my talent points and checking the difference from when I had the bonus).

So, a bit late here, but I discovered something very important to damage calculations that I think needs to be mentioned. When casting a damaging spell (basically any damaging ability in the "Magic" tree), your main hand weapon's item level is added to the damage, but only if it is a weapon that deals magic damage. In other words, as long as you're using a wand, staff, or arcane blade, you will get a significant bonus to your damage for Shock, Icy Wave, Acid Rain, Shockwave, and Fireball. This actually makes daggers a much worse weapon for casters than I initially thought, as you're losing out on a significant amount of damage. Late game, the best magic weapons have the following weapon levels: Crystallized Fire/Ice (1-handed): 15 Coldpoint Halberd (2-handed): 17 Warp Spear (2-handed): 15 Living Wand (1-handed): 14 Elixir Staff (2-handed): 18 (Also worth noting that due to a coding oddity, Temptation does not add to your magic damage) So, let's assume your preference for weapon runes is +5% hit/+4 magic damage/+2 magic damage, in that priority order. If you decide to use a Folded Steel Dagger instead of Crystallized Fire, you're missing out on 17 magic damage on all your spells (15 from weapon level, +2 from the rune slot you're missing). That's pretty significant, especially if you're hitting multiple targets, and/or using a spell with low damage dice that needs as much flat damage as possible to make up for it.

Awesome! Can't get in game right now, can anyone confirm if it's healing now?

(On Veteran) I started the fight by attracting the attention of a drake, then running back to the stairs. Shubael didn't follow. I had to do it another time to lure the rest of the drakes over, and one of my characters got killed as a result (an unfortunate series of turns got him pulled into Shubael and stunned), so I just revived him with a life scroll. Killing the drakes was pretty easy, if a bit annoying. After the drakes were dead, beating her first phase was simple. I got a lucky slow at the beginning with a wand, so I was getting about 2 turns for every one of Shubael's until she finally decided to buff herself. After she buffed, I just kept using dispel, so she'd waste further turns buffing instead of attacking. By the time the first phase was over, I probably only used about 30% of my energy, plus one life scroll. The second phase was harder, but I parked my tanky character in melee range, and kept everyone else at a distance, using summons to block the salamanders. Two of my characters had free mind (one from an item, one from being Ahriel), so it was pretty easy to get rid of fear. Curing also gets rid of blind and only costs 4 AP. I used a few scrolls of might to keep haste and blessing up so that I didn't have to spend precious energy on it. I have no idea how to beat the first phase legitimately (i.e. not pulling the drakes), but the second phase was actually pretty simple for me. I might have gotten lucky with some slows from wands, however.

Holy crap, I had no idea you could check enemy stats! That would have been useful for me in my last game. Edit: Also, Sutter's a whimp, I guess 😛

"They'll probably wander off" just isn't good enough for me. I don't want to spend 20 more hours and find out they still won't move no matter what, so I restarted just in case. I was only a few hours in, so it's not the end of the world.

Terror and Charm are both mental, I believe, so I think Slow, Weakness, and Vulnerability is the full list of Curses.

I wouldn't say wands are terrible, I just think the speed bonus from daggers is way too powerful. Especially when staves exist, which are barely any stronger than wands, but make you miss out on an off-hand's defense bonus and augments. Staves are the real stinker here 😛

My only concern with that is that if I can't even get there, I could spend a lot of time doing other things and then just completely be unable to progress through the game if it doesn't resolve itself. I think I'm just going to have to start over at this point to be safe.

You can't get the dreams after making all 3 regions your vassals. You'll have to do it in another game or in an earlier save file, sorry.

I don't mind casual being easier, but I don't think the other difficulties should be touched. I haven't tried torment yet, but the final battle on veteran felt perfectly-tuned (well, maybe the frontliners had a bit too much hp, but it certainly made the fight exciting).

I'm still on part 1... it's been a while since I played the game, is there an alternate route there later?