alhoon

Thanks.

14 minutes ago, Nim said:

 

 

And just a warning, don't get too extreme with the item dumping, afaik that can lead to problems.

Wait, what? Could you be a bit more specific please? I have kinda filled a small room with thrown stuff and I dump artifact materials there. Will I be in trouble?

Oh, that area is probably the poorest designed area I have seen in the Geneforge games I've played.

Still, I would 100% suggest you continue with the games. Among the best stories in games (aside of some frustrating story-light zones) I've seen. Very original.

If I may ask, which other Geneforge games have you played? I've played GF4-5 to completion, part of GF3 and part of GF2.

Have you seen the Barzites? I consider them the worst (from a moral standpoint) faction I've seen.

PS. I heartily suggest you avoid reading spoilers; it's the story that counts. When you have trouble, I believe it would be better for you to ask here, like you did, than use a walkthrough or cheat.

True, true...

but I assumed our friend was in similar shoes with me. I have been very frustrated in the Taker lands so I decided to go for the Awakened ending without breaking my face on each of those places.

I haven't considered that the other player could have missed the Barzite parts but still found his or her way to the Takers.

Dead pass and infected crossroads are in the Takers side though. Experimental valley our friend says he has mostly cleared, or that's what I got.

And good grief, from that map it seems I have like 25+ areas that I haven't cleared and at least 10 that I haven't seen.  At least I saw where the Barrier of Winds is... that's where I am heading now.

Regardless, p55caroll, have you been to the Bazrite lands? Which areas are you trying to access and find it hard?

Hello... I'm in the midsts of GF2 myself. All the places you mention are in the Takers area. So... you've cleared up most of the game. I can't pass dead pass either, I haven't cleared the Infected Pass or crossroads (I doubt I went more than a couple of steps), or actually the Shade patrol and I still work towards my endgame with the Awakened without any problems so far. I got a token from the Icy Breeding pit that lets me cross 1-2 more areas.

All in all, I think you have seen what you can see without joining the Takers or getting powerful enough to crush through them. I would say work towards the endgame but I am no expert.

OK, I know the answer to this is a 99.5% a "lol no!"...

But for that 0.5% I have to ask: Is there any mod that makes Gazak-Uss more plot-worthy? I was stunned that it's the Samman's Isle of GF2 while it is so hyped up and even carries to GF5. Or at the very least a mod that makes it less choke-full of monsters or easier?

I think I went there through a heavily trapped area. And I think it has some nice loot.

Whaa... ?!

Isn't it the big-showdown area? Where everything comes to head? I thought that's where the geneforge would be.

Why the Drakons called Gazaki-Uss after that place if it's indeed, as some NPCs say just a wasteland that Drakons and Shapers threw their most powerful rogues and locked the door?

Thank you for the warning though. I will probably avoid it. I can't believe that I was caught in the hype...

Awakened: It was not an easy choice. I don't agree 100% with the Awakened, mind you. They are right next to the entrance and have just a few tuldaforged mages. Litalia et Co would wipe the floor with them if they come in numbers. The "I ran away" ending told me that 12 Guardians are in the first wave. Well, 12 Guardians could take down Medab.

OK, I take it back... I found a token in the icy pit that allows me to explore further the Taker lands so I still haven't joined. In any case, here's the important part:

Gazak-Uss: There's a servile. A hermit. He told me a wild story about Gazak-Uss. About mad creations made by the Barzites and the Takers and dumped there, sealed. Something about the key shattered. About a "door" the "that is where world lies entombed". Some mumblings and half-words about getting in there only if the others thought I would kill -?-

And there's the GF5 capital called Gazaki-Uss in loving memory of the Litalia'd Gazak-Uss.

I bet that's where Ghaldring is. I will totally go there. I'm not leaving this accursed valley till I check that place that learned Thani hyped so much.

Another thing, Question about build: At the time I'm with 5 Vlish, my 26th level Cryora and Heust Blade (one of my most reliable "creations" so to speak, that hits with 75% when others hit with 25%) I am also at 18 intel thanks to a couple of charms and I sit on ~300 excess essence.

One of my Vlish is "expendable"; I can make and remake it. Sacrifice it if needed to transfer people.

However, there's a Tulda-forged servile I could get to join me once I join the Awakened.

Should I ditch the Cryora that by that time would be like 27-28 lvl? Should I ditch one of my 5 vlish?

Should I start thinking on other creations other than the Vlish army? (A newly shaped Vlish costs hilariously little essence and is 21st lvl. Since it's expendable and I can very easily afford 9 essence, I could enhance the expendable)

Perhaps exchanging Icerim (27 lvl Cryora, have him for 16 levels) with a 26 lvl Drayk? If I manage to betray my poor cryora that is.

75 essence (Drayk with 2 int) vs 39 essence (Cryora) when I have ~300 essence to spare.

EDIT: Nevermind, my problem was solved. I can now make Drakons 8)

Well worth it. Sorry Icerim... it was not meant to be. Litalia would have killed you anyway.

I would love to see Barzahl dying by the 4 Drayks he keeps in pain, and thinking of it, the Gorilla is gone, so I think it would be me and the Drayks if I attack him.

I will "officially" join he Awakened; that would be my "main" ending.

The rest I would do for completion and to see more of the material. But I am exploring still a few of the zones. I figured that I am too low in level yet. Sure, with my leadership and mechanics I should be able to find the non-combat routes. But they are often hard to find so I prefer to level up a bit and some of the zones are interesting (while some are boring and some are frustrating; I am in an icy place where I am swarmed by a dozen high level Fyoras and later on, several drayks).

And I want to See Barzahl's face when the Drayks turn against him. And since I can't see his face, I want to read the text.

And I want to see lying Zakary the deceiver's tears as he begs for his useless life. And since I can't see them, I want to read the text of him... well, dying since I doubt I'll get much out of him.

I joined the Awakened to see what they ask once I join... but they didn't ask me to kill anyone. They want me to sabotage the radiant college so that they can't make canisters. Or, failing that, kill the leaders but they don't care if they survive. I don't know why they didn't ask me to kill Barzahl. Then I loaded. I am still unaligned. I will soon join the Awakened, cause to explore the Takers lands I need to be way tougher than I am it seems.

Clockwork maze:
Drakon cyborg. Lol.
Oh Come on! I wandered through this clockwork maze and I found the anticlimatic ending... the brilliant, Taygen-level brilliant, shaper was dead. From old age.
And the whole complex is nice and empty and the golems are now damaged (because I deactivated their sensors) meaning the Bazrites can move in.

Question: There's a nice (incomplete) golem there. Is it one of the creatures I could take with me? Cause I don't see any dialogue for fixing it. I have high mechanics and read Kari's notes but there's not an option.

Sharon's ring: For all that's holy! That's among the three best artifact I've seen in 4 games!
I have now (if I don my specialized equipment) 15 leadership and 16 mechanics. I don't need to worry about raising them any more right? 12 or so was the top needed in he previous games except veeery few things.

It's official: Sharon is my favorite GF2 Shaper. Perhaps favorite Shaper.

Toll road:
If found my first Drakon-that-talks. Dryss. He doesn't draw s' always. Strange. He shook me for 500 coins though. I had a ton of leadership and couldn't avoid it.
A pity Drakon doesn't share Dryss' view of "That we're stronger than Serviles doesn't mean we get to bully them!"
And afterwords the $%^#! creature told me there are Drayks there that they will attack me, he just won't ask them to attack me...

My 23 lvl creations have like 5% to 10% chance to hit the Drayks without bless. Why Drayks that I could make are nowhere that close?
Beyond that place is an infested roads that I have real trouble crossing, so I'll leave it for the time.

Talked with the awakened about joining. Two sensible, easy quests that I can totally avoid with leadership. Since I have killed the Drayk already, I am more than easily accepted if I want to join...
Talked with the Takers about joining. Quest to join? Go kill Barzahl by freeing the creations. Good one Takers, good one.  I have sabotaged the controls which deactivates the option to break them. They may still join me, but I don't think that I can take Barzahl out already.

Welcome to the forums.

Awesome question.

If I could expand it... how long till Shaped Serviles are ready to handle tools? Some Serviles seem to be Shaped with technical information like an instinct or something. But are they able to go repairing things like 10 minutes after they're created?

Same with batons, mines and living tools that are Shaped and not Bred like usual. Can they actually be used immediately or they require training like the bred varieties?

Most games (if not all) explain that the Outsiders can use them, that's not the issue. I just wonder how they use them. They would probably be more puzzled on how I use a computer I guess. It's not like I'm not giving the computer very complex instructions.

Some of the GF2 factions have living tools where the Shapers tell them to multiply. Probably they multiply like worms.

However, my hesitation with the "press the stem that way and it moves tentacle that way" is that we're talking three tentacles, 3D movement. Aside of being kind of hard to train the living tool, it would take hell of a lot of practice of an outsider engineer to work them properly and still slower than a Shaper.

Meaning, usual tools (The ones we see around shaper bases) would be perhaps better to use by outsiders.

Welcome to the Arena modification for Geneforge 5. As the name of the mod implies, this is a mod where you pit your character against an assortment of enemies.

The Arena mod, while fun, is not a full gameplay mod. There are no quests, there are no deep NPCs etc. It started as an effort to test the various changes I make as I work on the "Total Conversion Mod". However, new battle scripts and changes in items and creations give this mod an air of freshness.

The premise of this mod, is that your character is in a dream. It requires you to start a new game.

You start at 18th level, in a large room. A Drakon Lifecrafter nearby can boost your level, abilities, spells etc. A Shaper can create enemies and allies for you. There are 4 chests with equipment of different tiers for you to choose.
Once ready and you have told the Shaper to bring in the enemies, proceed to the next room. There's a signpost there. Read it and start the fight.

DOWNLOAD LINKS:

Link 1: http://www.mediafire.com/file/km52qxbj3pvq1gy/ArenaGF5.rar

INSTALLATION:

To install:
- Backup your "Geneforge 5" folder.
- Copy and paste the folder "Geneforge 5" to your Geneforge folder (where all the Geneforge games are). You should be prompted that some files will be overwritten. Accept and the mod will be installed.

To uninstall:
Simply overwrite the Geneforge 5 folder with the original from your back up.

The mod is tested and works with a clean installation of Geneforge 5 on Windows 10. It has not been tested for MAC.

This mod is not compatible with your GF5 saves! Don't try to use it with your normal GF5.

There is no wrong way to use this mod. If you want to make a character with 30 intelligence at 18th lvl so you can have a bazillion of top creations at full modifications, all the power to you. If you want to give your character Battle Shaping 15 and Shape Clawbug 15 to make 45 lvl clawbugs, so be it. If on the other hand want something more reasonable, like a lvl 23 character with mid-early equipment and 3-4 tier 2 creations and see how you fare against moderate enemies, so much the better. And of course, if you want to see how a pair of Battle Alphas fares against a rotgroth, all you have to do is Shape those Alphas and have them fight the Rotgroth without you interfering.
As said, no wrong way to use this mod.

Changes from the normal combat gameplay of GF5:
- The levels of most creations is different with a larger gap in power between the various creations.
- Some items have changed
- There are new NPC types (Batoneers, conscripts, Shocktroopers, Lifecrafters, Prospectives etc)

- There are a couple new Creations
- Some enemies have more complicated scripts

What you should be aware of:
- Not all creation types are available for the Player to Shape; I have put in only the creations that would be present in the total conversion mod.
- The scope of the total conversion mod is to be from levels 18-35 or so. However the intention is to make the world of the total conversion as such, that a level 35 character doesn't have immense power able to stomp everything underfoot.
- The chests are in "tiers". Beginning, mid-early, mid-late, end-game.
- There is an option to activate a "Healing field". This may periodically heal a few of your enemies every turn.
- In one of the chests are "sanity crystals". Having them in your equipment would be a great boon when fighting a Dementor.

- Therions are slightly overpowered compared to their essence cost compared to other Tier 2 creations. This is intentional because in the actual game learning to Shape them will require more effort.

A new one:

Living tools.

How non-Shapers use them? I bet that's somewhere in GF1.

For Batons, we know that when their tail is pressed, they shoot a thorn. But living tools do more complicated jobs than "fire!" They have to twist their tentacles in specific ways etc. A Shaper could just control the tool and tell it what to do, direct it on what to do. An outsider?  

How dare you sir!? I am not a lawful representative of the oppressive, evil, genocidal regime that kills PhD candidates. I have turned my back to these snakes. I would have killed Agent Shanti myself if I had the chance, to give more time to my friends to prepare for the Litapocalypse.

If I had a monocle, a tall hat and a cane I would challenge you to a duel over this. (I have a goatee so that part is OK)

I think it may be a bug because I assumed the creatures would be -neutral- not friendly. If they're friendly, then all I have to do to get people killed is turn them hostile (without turning the guards hostile).

EDIT: Not nice. I feel again as I was feeling when doing Shaper quests in GF4. That is, guilty. OK, Stanis was a butthole. But the way he died? As it played out, betrayed by me as I sabotaged the machinery since I was as much a coward as he said and my Vlish were keeping him immobilized while my servile was hitting him with acid.

That's a bad way to go... Sure, Shanti suffered the same indignation, but I wish I was better than Stanis. At least, he will get a grave.

Awesome... I don't care about what they will think of me anyway.

And it's not dirty work to rat out someone. I plan to eventually kill Barzahl anyway. Or, ahem, have those 4 drayks he keeps in pain to do the dirty  noble work for me. Poetic justice and all. Because it just that I don't face someone that powerful.

I will try have him killed by Heust Blade, my Servile follower. I will keep loading till that Barzite dies from a servile. In hindsight, that's not much better than what he did to Shanti, but ... well, I can't defend that. It's more about revenge than justice here. I would also have killed Shanti and I want the Barzite to die a humiliating death.

I blame the canisters.  

EDIT: OK, I know that you all told me to cut down on the Edits, but this happened and made me think it's a bug:

Trying to go to the Arena, I accidentally clicked on what I thought was a random guard. He wasn't. He was a Barzite Guardian that have gone full-canister mad, Trotkan. I told him I don't think he's a real guardian and he attacked me. Having a full roaster, I didn't think much of it, until I saw two Alphas from the guards approaching and I thought "Oh, oh... if all the guards turn hostile to support the Barzite I'm in trouble". Well, they weren't. They attacked the Barzite. I may have messed with the controls of the torture pylons but since I didn't get a message now that the Pylons are bad, I think it was a bug of the form of "creature turns hostile, friendly creatures attack it".

In case it isn't and it has to do with the Pylons: Can I later do the Barzite ending (if I ever find the courage to join them) or I have locked that out half-way through the game?

What I meant is that I got the same Dialogue from Barzahl. I couldn't rat out the canister-addled gorilla and tell Barzahl, "I found evidence that thing lied to you, Shanti was humiliated and murdered; not died in an accident, not executed legally."

All I can say is that "the story stinks! I want to challenge that huge, Shaped-to-lolness guy in a one-to-one fight without creations" which seems a not nice way to make a suicide. I am a Shaper, I can't fight alone. Or actually fight for that manner. My battle magic is still pathetically low. I cast blessings on my creations in battles and try to not block their path to the enemy.

Investigating the Crystal caverns at lvl 21. Wandered around, didn't start any trouble. Found a 600+hp cryodrayk that has a perfect crystal. A crystal I need... for an artifact I thing.
I commanded successfully the Drayk to hand it over. But I feel bad for lording around the poor mad creature. I hope the artifact I'll make will make me feel better. I still need to find a drayk's tendon.
If I find out that I took over the mind of a free creature and stole its toy (that kept it calm) only to get something that I will sell, I'll be quite sad.

Found Agent Shanti's body.
It was sensible to have her executed but there's sadistic cruelty in the way it was done. Have I found her alive, I would have killed too, that's true. But I would give her a more honorable death than shooting her in the back while she was disguised as a servile and dumping her body. They could have at least put her in a grave.
To add insult to injury, I can't tell Barzahl that his gorilla executed Agent Shanti despite orders. I thought that would be the "leadership" way to kill my first Barzite.

Either through experimentation, or if you're proficient with the editor, from the editor.

Allow me to help please

That is not the command that adds an Artilla. What this command does, it remove 300 coins from the PC (minimum left 0) and set a "flag" for the game, specifically the flag 41,20 to 1.

The flag 41,20 in this case is used to track whether the Artilla can be added to the party. You have to talk to the artilla and get it to join.

The command that adds a character to the party is:

add_char_to_party(X+8);

with "X" being the number of the character in that zone. For example if I want to add the 50th character in the zone (which I should know who it is) I would put

  add_char_to_party(58);

Why 58 and not 50? Because the numbers 0-7 are for the character and the creatures in the player's group.

From my committee (7 members), 2 openly admitted they have not read the whole thing, true. But even if they were an aggressive bunch, I had a very low risk of death whether I was an incompetent and weakling or not; I would not earn my PhD, but I wouldn't be turned to fertilizer for those rapidly growing plants.

In military officer academies around the world, there's indeed some (very low) risk of death but mostly during training or live ammo shooting. Those without stomach for it are weeded out through non-lethal hardship, like Greta was. Not because as a test they're put through a maze full of enemies and deadly traps.

It is cruel, it is wrong and shows not only elitism, but pettiness towards those that are not up to very specific standards.

I am not saying the early rebel way of sending half-trained people to the geneforge or handing out canisters like candy is the proper method, but at it has a better survival rate.

Shamelessly stolen and sent to various friends and classmates that will defend their thesis within a year. I even sent it to my own students. I'll make sure that I sit near the door during their Thesis defense.