Mechalibur

But friendly rat is the emotional core of the game. 

The Resistance and Luck skills passively increase curse resist. Additionally anything with "Hostile Effect Resistance" will also increase curse resist.

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.

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.

Do you have any equipment giving you melee weapon skill? You have to naturally have 8 without any equipment bonuses.

It's part of a different quest that you get in the Ahriel lands. You need a specific special item to find the carrot.

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.

2 hours ago, Randomizer said:

That's only for Windows PCs.

Well yeah, they said they were on windows 11 😛

Documents > Spiderweb Software > Avernum

That's covered under NDA for testers, but the upcoming backer beta isn't, so you'll know soon enough.

Just for fun - are there any particular characters you're expecting or would like to see return in Infestation? Get your predictions in now 😄

Apologies for the necro, but after replaying QW2 I have some new thoughts on ability power levels.

I think Fireball went from being a mediocre ability to an amazing one. The ability itself hadn't changed at all, but QW2 has a lot more enemy-dense encounters and dungeons that feel a bit shorter (less energy management required). As long as you have a magic weapon equipped to get the damage bonus, it's really great for clearing out packed encounters.

Shock remains kind of meh, but it's worth mentioning there's an off-hand item that gives +2 to shock, making its damage bonus shoot up to a potential +75%. Not game breaking or anything, but it gives a much better option for single target damage than anything else mages get.

A new skill, Mad Flurry is arguably better than Whirlwind and can be effectively used from a distance with a bow. Crazy.

And the best new passive is probably Field Medic, which gives a pretty nice chance of healing spells not costing any AP. Really makes up for the lower healing amounts in QW. Stacks up to a 75% chance to trigger if you get any items that boost it.

This game doesn't have the expansive choice and consequences that you might see in some modern CRPGs, but there are a few consequences to how you handle things. The major endings depend on how you handle the main quest and how you deal with the servile factions.

Skills - Leadership and Mechanics are the only ones that allow for handling quests in different ways. For example with the bandits, if you have high leadership, not only can you convince the bandits not to attack you on sight, but you can negotiate a deal between them and Vakkiri. The other solution is to kill the bandits. Typically how you handled a quest won't massively change things later in the game, it's more of a choice of how you want to finish it.

Opinions - Actually all of the dialogue options that give or reduce servile opinion should completely remove the opposite dialogue choice from future conversations, so how you answer the first time is important. If a dialogue option is repeatable, it probably doesn't affect your reputation at all. Your reputation matters for the purposes of which faction you can join and can affect a few other minor areas (for example there's a character that will only train you in stealth if you have a pro-servile reputation)

Merry Xmas. I didn't get into Spiderweb games until the Avernum re-remakes, but I love how much information is on these forums and how helpful everyone is.

Ah okay. Good to know.

I'm not able to replicate your results for Daze - I cast it repeatedly on my drayks and they never resisted the status effect (checked for about 50 instances of no resisting), whereas my vlish (who have 30 mental resist and no resist3) were able to able resist the effect. Out of curiosity, were you testing it on friendly drayks, and did you have any points in leadership? It gives some mental resist to all your creations, so that could have been skewing results.

Interesting, I didn't even realize slow and shock were in Mutagen. What inflicts them?

Pretty sure acid and poison are resisted by acid/poison resist. I've never been able to inflict poison on a shade (100% listed poison resist), but cursing them seems to works fine. I've also never noticed drayks resisting acid despite the apparent curse resist.

Poison and acid resist seem to pull double duty, both reducing the chance to receive the debuff and the amount of damage it would deal each turn.

I think they're vestigal on drayks.

After some testing, I'm now fairly confident resist3 is, in fact, curse resistance. So drayks have a 50% chance to resist vulnerable, curse, and wrack (which, despite being from mental magic, is actually blocked by curse resist instead of mental resist). Neat, but not especially game changing or anything.

Still not sure why curse resist doesn't show up in the character screen or in the right-click inspect feature.

Yeah, that's how I generally survive boss fights if I'm going for magic shaping. If not I'll try to land Searer or use Spray Crystals or something. So yeah, not as helpful in boss fights where my shaper is often spamming heals each turn (which frankly scale too well imo)

I dunno, I like going pretty magic-heavy as a shaper. Debuff duration is pretty relevant in my experience (high acid and charm duration is neat), airshock is pretty high damage total, so % bonuses to that are helpful in my experience. It's also 5% more to essence shield which can be handy.

Not amazing (and certainly not optimal), but I don't think it's completely useless.

Very late reply here, but I think there's a lot of incorrect information in that paragraph.

You don't get XP for using canisters, other than the first time you learn a new creation (in which case the 25 XP is from adding a new codex entry)

You don't really get more canisters from joining the Awakened or Takers (technically in a pacifist run, joining the takers is the only way to get the canisters behind gnorrel, but due to the point above, it really doesn't matter)

To my knowledge there aren't any quests negatively impacted by high canister use.

For fun, here's a list of everyone who survived my onslaught of Sucia Island:

Astrov, Anya, Treplev, and all of the sholai in their camp: Couldn't enter their cave since I killed Masha

Yu-La: Weird interaction, but she vanishes if you kill Ascended Alonzo

Wounded Battle Beta: You need to accept a quest from Flig in order to access this area. Since Flig was murdered, I never got to access this zone.

West Workshop Sholai: These sholai spend all their time in small chambers waiting to ambush you. But that ambush only happens if you pick up the entry baton and the game doesn't let you if you already have one.

Ilya: You need to accept a quest from Goettsch to fight this guy. Not a chance.

Every Servile Mind except Control 4 and Kantre: Psychopath has a soft spot for these little guys

So... after putting this to the side after a pretty bad bout of Covid, I decided to end the updates with the Geneforge zone. Using the Geneforge pretty much trivialized the rest of the content. 8 extra points in all stats and most skills gives 104% extra effect on all damage/buffs/healing, there wasn't anything that could realistically stand in my way. The 8 extra essence mastery is also a whopping 176 extra essence at level 20 which let me have 4 drayks with 2 ur-glaahks and a searing artila for support. With a beefed-up essence shield defending everyone before a fight, and incredibly powerful airshock blasts, Ouroboros went down no problem as did the cockatrice waves in the bottom of the bunker. The Inner Crypt isn't particularly tough - I was able to kill the paired shades even though they recover to full hp each turn if they're not near each other - I just had that much damage available to me. I don't even particularly recall anything memorable about Danette's shade. Pylons were annoying because it turns out you need leadership to disable them, not just nutrients, but I had enough damage to deal with that. The docks were also pretty simple, especially considering the sholai there aren't resistant to mental effects at all.

So yeah, there's the challenge done on Normal mode. So is it possible on torment? Probably! The biggest issue is the beginning, you have to make it to an essence pool as soon as possible so that you can replenish your resources. The biggest challenge on higher difficulties would be thahds having their leap attack, making it difficult to mitigate damage by kiting. Once you've got that sorted out, you still have some difficulty with limited pathing available and not getting an early daze due to bandit woods being cut off, but eventually things get a lot smoother. By the end game, it started feeling like a regular playthrough, just with a bit less XP (since I couldn't get quest XP or leadership XP) fewer canisters (a few require leadership), and missing some items (can't purchase items or buff up the Helix bracer unless you talk to someone).

I guess to wrap this up... can you beat Mutagen without initiating dialogue and being forced to turn all friendly NPCs hostile? You sure can.

By energy do you mean spell energy or essence? Because spell energy is so plentiful that the bonus from INT is pretty much pointless in my experience. And if you mean Essence, Intelligence doesn't boost that at all.

That being said, I've definitely taken a point of intelligence at higher levels just because it's cheap compared to everything else I've already increased and 5% to all spell effects isn't bad.

Queen's Wish 2 is a direct sequel - you play as the same protagonist. The games' plots are self-contained but there's a meta-narrative dealing with your family and their relationship with you and each other. No cliffhangers.

The basic mechanics are pretty simple. You get skill points as you level up and put them into various skills/abilities for your party, closer to Avernum/Avadon than Geneforge. There's also the base building, which is the second game especially contributes to how you build your characters.