Elyssaen

Am I remembering right that the G1 Awakened wanted you to use the Geneforge? That's a decent enough plan – if the PC was canonically as successful as Trajkov post-Geneforge, and stayed loyal to the Awakened... okay, not a trivial ask... that could've won everything for them. Arguably, trying to cultivate a benevolent 'ascendant' in G1 is sadly the best plan the servile rights faction has in any Geneforge game. I admit my memory's a bit fuzzy but many of the later plans for the servile rights factions are wrapped up in drakons and people who are already mad, not just who might become so.

Torment Agent demo done! Ended up with 4839 XP, 18 more than the Guardian, but with a catch: I didn't end in any Iron Bars... damn you Randomizer for putting that in my head. If I do that I'd be at 5079 XP. Highlights: 1. Never made a creation at all. Not really a big deal for an Agent though there were a few times it would've been useful. 2. Luring Grubbhins back to the essence pool where I could finally spam Airshock. I could've lured him to a pylon but dammit I didn't want to. (I did do that with the level ~15 Thahd in the upper area though.) 3. Killing the Baffled Glaahk by hitting him with one Searer and then playing hide and seek with him, and repeating until he died of acid. I want to re-run the Shaper demo at Torment to see how he, err, shapes up. Agents and Guardians felt pretty balanced with one another, even more so had the Agent shape in the few occasions it would've made sense to. It's nice that Guardians can get that sword, and Agents can get Airshock early. I wish the demo was a bit longer... I think the original G2 demo had the full valley?

The reason I had to learn to stop overthinking it is because my automatic way of playing an RPG is to avoid level-appropriate content and chase the hardest thing I can reach... and that's the situation that generates both challenge and a noticeable XP shortfall. If you play more normally I don't think it's ever really a problem! What are you all planning to play for your (first?) playthrough of Infestation? I definitely think this is the time for Guardians. I'm hoping I can focus a fair bit in Battle Shaping and take advantage of how the new mechancis allow you to specialise and throw away creations. I'm excited to try out the new creation as well!

How's everyone found the demo? What do you think of the new Weapon Shaping system, and have you decided what type of character you'll play? Also, I'm really curious how much XP you had at the end of the demo. My Shaper on Veteran ended up at level 5 with 4951 XP, and my Guardian on Torment just scraped level 5 with 4821 XP. Not sure if I've missed something with the Guardian or just did things in a less optimal order for XP. I try not to think too much about XP gain order because if I remember rightly, Geneforge has never been had 'XP commutativity' and overthinking that is a dark path[*]. It's early days to say how I feel about Weapon Shaping. It's definitely a big improvement, but at the moment I'm not sure about the decisions of what to use when and it's still very noticeable that Guardians can't deal with groups (yet). My Shaper definitely still had a lot more options, but that's Shapers for you. Guarded Lunge does get very powerful though – seems you can get it to Level 4 just in the demo, for 155% damage. I haven't quite settled on the right way to use which abilities as a Guardian: Lunge is cheap and powerful, War Infusion is kind of a round 1 buff, and Guardian Push alternating with Thahd stuns got me through a few more difficult encounters. I never got War Blessing for my Guardian but think I really should. Lastly, being able to get a particularly powerful weapon in the demo was pretty critical to feeling competitive with Shapers... think you're stuck with a Bronze Sword otherwise? And was that weapon available so early in the original G2? It's been a while since I played. [*] How much XP you get from an event depends on your level. If you had two events, one giving 50 XP and one giving 100 XP, and whichever you get first will level you up, then getting them in a different order might give you a different XP total. If you overthink this you'll totally ruin the game for yourself...

I really like this. I've thought it'd be fun if there were different playstyles with creations, including a way to focus on disposability more. Being able to shape an Unstable Thahd or similar mid-fight could be a useful option, especially for Guardians. As you say as well, absorbing your own creations tactically would be a new dimension to the choices you make. Something else would be if a way to absorb some essence from your creations on death (maybe via an artifact level item), which could synergise well with being able to shape in combat to open up new playstyles. I'm not too sure about this one. On the one hand, if creations can do more and more magic, then magic loses value and shaping becomes too strong. On the other hand, conversely, support creations could sometimes be more of a buff to Guardians and Agents rather than Shapers, depending on how they're designed. Being able to heal surrounding allied creations is going to specifically buff Shapers though, I'd rather see a support creation that can sit back and buff one target – a Guardian would love that. I'd be on board with some stuff like that. Mutagen seems to have a lot of long range attacks and huge AOEs that mean positioning often doesn't feel that important. Environmental hazards like you describe could make positioning much more important and make for even more interesting gameplay sometimes. I think that might be a bit too much complexity! I think instead my #1 wishlist item for Geneforge 2 (*) is for more diversification of existing creation roles, esp. the upgraded versions. The Battle Beta is an excellent example. The optional active/passive abilities mean that the Beta could be a very different beast than the Alpha – maybe the Alpha's a shock troop and the Beta's a tank/support? I wouldn't want to see Alphas, Betas and Gammas but them not be meaningfully different. Whereas if we have 1) more differentiation between upgraded versions than Mutagen, 3) rebalance of any stragglers that don't get used much (Pyroroamer?), 3) the Tier 4 creations G2 already has and 4) one more original creation like the Cockatrice, there's honestly going to be an enormous amount of choice. (*) Except for the stuff Jeff has already said is coming, around more options for martial combat.

I've just started playing this last week, reminded about the release by a Spiderweb email about the next one's Kickstarter. I fought the Cockatrice very early, and the only way I could find to beat it was to open with Searer and then have Unstable Thahds pounce on it, killing it in one turn and then having my Shaper run for his life from the Battle Alphas. That got me thinking that unstable creations could be useful for excessively powerful enemies, and since I then decided to bee-line straight for the endgame area at level 10–12 for the Cockatrice Research, I figured I'd need that trick a lot and that Pyroroamers would be an upgraded way to do it. So I did use them quite a bit, though I'm doubting they were worth using over Unstable Thahds. I haven't compared the damage output, but the Thahd's ability to leap is really valuable for getting that damage safely onto the enemies and not onto my Shaper. Pyroroamers got me killed a lot, unfortunately. [EDIT: how did I miss that Pyroroamers have a leap too?!] I also liked the idea of Belchblast as an especially powerful cone attack, but the low level and volatile fragility of Pyroroamers means it rarely felt worth using them for anything but immediate suicide. In the end, a brief detour to steal a Glaahk canister from Diarazad gave me a better way of handling things. If stealth failed I'd take enemies one by one and stun lock them with two Ur-Glaahks. If this is the crypt entrance in Diarazad, I just fought that a few minutes ago! I wish I'd thought of going back to unstable creations for it, that would've made my life a lot easier. : )

I used to love Warcraft 2. After a school day spent with crude-minded, shallow children, I'd come home and immerse myself in an epic with a masterful, charismatic score by Glenn Stafford. I liked Warcraft 3. I didn't love it. Something of the charisma of Warcraft was sapped out of it as it became glossier and lost a grasp of the simple things. Then World of Warcraft came out. And the crude-minded, shallow children had followed me home. The epic stories were gone forever, replaced with shallow quest-grinding and a stark disrespect for my time. The simple things had disappeared without a trace. Twelve years passed. Of course there was no Warcraft 4. Of course it got no better. Now I read things like "The Warcraft series started as a real-time strategy game. Hard to believe, I know". And a part of me dies inside all over again. Don't. Make. Multiplayer. Spiderweb. Games. Jeff Vogel is one of the few game developers whose head is still in the golden era of gaming. Don't take that away.

Ah, we're just talking about a misunderstanding of a sentence then. We agree: I was saying shades and ghosts aren't the same, which is true. But when you said "can" and "never souls of the dead", I misinterpreted you as meaning there were no actual souls of the dead. So yep, we're on the same page. The resource intensive theory is interesting. I definitely picked up on a lack of quick-Shaping serviles in any scene. We know very inexperienced Litalia made a whole bunch but not if it took vats. But is it getting to into the metagame to ask why ur-drakons can be quick-Shaped but not serviles?

I think you might need a very palatable vlish. No, more... tasty. More than tasty. What's the word I'm after...

I'd do it if I was a immoral Shaper in Geneforge 5's full-blown war. Quick-Shape a few adult humans: apparently they'll have the innate ability to walk right away, as we never needed to teach our fyoras to walk. Select ones with Shaping potential, absorb the others. Train skilled indoctrinated Shapers very quickly, who you can re-absorb if needed. Throw a control tool in if you're Rawal.

Hyena, I've recently binged on 2-5 and I think it's clarified somewhere that shades aren't the same as the ghosts of the dead. It's also explicitly said by one NPC that only human ghosts are encountered – not serviles or thahds. A good example of ghosts are the victims at Dead Pass in Geneforge 2. They're not the same sort of creature as the shades at the Shade Patrol in the same game: they don't even look the same. Ghosts have a translucent version of their appearance in life, whereas shades are more featureless. I think the answer is that creations must lack a 'soul', but I always saw it as implied that soul and essence were related, and we know serviles can have at least some essence. I think it's possible that serviles and drakons (which definitely have essence, as well as presumably their drank predecessors) can becom ghosts, but it just hasn't happened yet. If serviles can't become ghosts it makes the theory that serviles were Shaped from humans originally (a G1 NPC's theory, I read) slightly suspect. Then again, I find that odd anyway: if serviles are Shaped from humans, and if they can be quick-Shaped on the fly like the PC's creations, why has no-one quick-Shaped humans from scratch?

Which Geneforge is this? (Also, have you noticed that some alternative user name suggestions – including Gmail I think – like to suggest [WhatYouWanted]_taco? Maybe you can explain the Taco obsession to me.)

I was looking for any formulae behind this. I decided to replay G5 with a servile and am having fun and games with Talis-Eye's submission turrets. (Aside: also just with Talis-Eye in general.) I've been obsessively trying to save/load and beat a single one for ages now. Only it can hit me, all I need is to resist stunlock for one turn to win. 52% stun resist. I'm not saying I think that's a high stun resist, or that it should work most of the time... but it hasn't worked once. Not once. In a ridiculous number of tries, I've destroyed two submission turrets. The first time, base level Parry kicked in. The second time? Submission Turret takes 107 points of cold damage. Bal is stunned. Bal takes 51 points of physical damage. (73 blocked.) Bal is stunned. Submission Turret is covered with acid. Submission Turret takes 93 points of physical damage. (20 blocked.) Wait, what? I didn't attack with acid. That had to be your own Burning Turret turning on you. It is literally more likely for the enemy to take pity on me and randomly start killing each other than it is for stun resist to do anything ever. Does anyone know what the formulae are for calculating whether or not you get stunned? I need to decide either whether to try to pump it up because it's too low, or just ignore it because it has no effect.

But my point is, there are always going to be bad eggs. Is Rawal, say, a bad egg because he's a Shaper? I don't think he is. I think if you removed the Shaper Council, the technology would still have been discovered and there'd still be just as many bad eggs. The counter-argument, that perhaps the Shaper Council inspire Barzahlic behaviours, would be interesting and might have merit though – I'm being a bit of a devil's advocate and slipping into the first interesting stance I saw to take. I can't speak about Gnorrel. I much preferred Greta's Rebellion to the ur-drakons, but I'm not sure what her vision for society was. I decided to replay G5 instead of rush to G1 (I'm considering stalling G1 until a remake, but probably won't manage), so will interrogate G5's Greta a bit soon. It's perfectly reasonable if she was focused on just winning the war – I think they're morally justified to revolt even without a clear plan for a better society. But in terms of ultimate vision for dealing with the problem of a world where Shaping is possible, the servile enslavement issue is a blip. It's a huge, tragic blip, but most Shapers didn't know it was slavery of a free-minded species and the Shaper vision can and must evolve past the blip, free the serviles and stop creating anything with free will. The safeguarding of Shaping is bigger – it's a philosophically murky, eternal problem. And I think the Shaper Council is, as Blxz said, basically right. The Trakovite world would be worse, and a triumphant Awakened/human Rebellion would need to construct something Shaper Council-like to re-establish that safeguarding. (Aside: I'm really tempted to post a thread inviting people to rank all the game's little-s shapers on a few measures of power/skill. I'm dying to have conversations about Alwan vs. Rahul on power, Rawal vs. Barzahl on ingenuity, etc. Has it been done to death here already?)

I'm not saying they weren't Shapers. I'm saying, if the Shaper Council didn't exist, wouldn't the likes of Barzahl, Agatha and Monarch have Shaped anyway? This is a setting where an individual can gain incredible personal power, and in a short time – look at Shaila, and none of us even think she was all that gifted in the grand scheme of things. In that kind of setting, Barzahlic behaviour is always going to happen. Overall, does the existence of the Council make abominations of Shaping more or less likely? You can't blame the Shapers for having bad eggs: only for a] having a bad philosophy, or b] for making bad eggs more likely than they already were.

I think for your analysis to be fully right (and it certainly has a point), we'd need to ask what the world would be like without the Shapers. It seems you're judging them on a mix of how right their principles/values are, and how perfect their execution is. I'd tweak the second part to how good their execution is compared to some baseline. i.e., do the Shapers actively inspire the wrongdoing of the likes of Barzahl, Agatha and Monarch, or would it happen just as much or more without them? The Shaper Council isn't responsible for human nature. I think we can imagine a solution which would prevent Barzahlic behaviour better than the Shapers. Shape complacency and obedience into every citizen. But obviously, that'd compromise too much on "principles/values". Playing G2-5, I'm not convinced the Shapers actually inspire more Barzahlic behaviour than the baseline. I certainly think that, without denying that the Rebellion have a huge moral mandate, probably no faction throughout the Geneforge series offers a better solution than the traditional Shaper Council. You could argue Litalia's Trakovites, but if the Trakovite vision wins in G5 I have to ask: who has the power to stop the next Monarch in G6 when no-one's Shaping anymore? Does anyone have any idea why the Shapers didn't just abandon the servile experiment centuries ago in favour of golems and better use of other Shapepunk tech? That'd be my ideal faction: one that is pro-Shaping but strongly favours Shaping more 'artifices' and less creatures.

Officially, my G3 ending was that I took the boat Rahul had provided for me after I murdered him. I reported in to the Shaper Council and told them I'd destroyed the Geneforge. They were happy with me for that, but said that killing Rahul was unforgivable. They threw me in jail (as they did in a save/load alt where I was still a canister junkie but didn't kill Rahul), and wars went on. At some point the camp was under attack, and one of the Shapers came in and executed me to prevent me having any chance of escaping in the chaos. If I hadn't killed Rahul, the Guardian councillor would have come in and released me, forgiving me for being a canister junkie and saying they needed all the help they could get. But hey, my RP'd canon was I never even left the Isles, I just conquered them. But I had to finish the game and see what it said. : )

Hey, I love this. This series is pretty old now, but here are two players doing the same thing at about the same time. I played G5 years ago, but in the last month or two have gone G4, G3 and then G2. I'll be moving onto G1 in a bit, if I can resist replaying 5 with some self-applied challenge (probably solo). How far have you got with G3? G3 still has artifacts, and they're pretty damn useful. You can craft some really useful ones semi-early (Dhonal's), but you won't have the recipe 'legitimately' until much later. So you might want to consider if you're happy using spoilers to find recipes. It's all here: http://spiderwebforu...facts-spoilers/ Each item counting to the weight is really frustrating. You might want to consider having item stashes at exit of an area and going back a few times. But if you're playing a Shaper, you could also just say sod it and accept having 2 AP a lot of the time. In a tough fight drop some stuff, but in the easier ones just use your Shaper as a pack horse. I was a Shaper in G3 just recently and that's wat I did. Needing 5 AP left to attack is really quite the shift. It makes melee-only types a bit weaker. I went with Magic Shaping and was mostly disappointed by my glaahks. I did need them to round off damage types, but the AP shift made them underperform a little compared to my expectations. Lead/Mech: there's a Charm, Ring (+2), Vest and Cloak. Plus a +2 Lead shield, +1 Mech shield, +1 Mech necklace. No +2 Mech Gloves in this, I don't think. I don't know exactly what you need to invest when. I think I get to 5/5 ASAP, and it's good to keep a few SP spare to be able to bump either up 2 levels in a 'crisis'. Try to hit 8/8 natural, I think you'll be fine with that. Vlish are definitely amazing. I went with three vlish and a terror vlish – I needed a different damage type. At that point it's efficient to stick with Magic Shaping. Glaahks are always great, and I found my eventual gazer did even better than the vlish. Battle Shaping seems a bit sub-par really. Fire Shaping's inbetween. Drayks/cryodrayks are solid, and I was surprised to miss the can't-hit-the-broadside-of-a-barn kyshakks. I think it's more than 6 canisters. I used them fairly freely early on, and got dialogue situations like I'd gone mad… then stopped and was fine. I think the limit increases through the game, and might get as high as around 12 by the end. All the games are blurring together a bit now but I think G3 has books. Length is maybe 70% of G5, I think. I ended at level 37 with seven creations and being mostly a completionist. Re: Shapers/Rebels, not sure. I played a loyalist. However, the 'win conditions' for the two sides, as far as I can tell, aren't exclusive. I actually did both, and was surprised Jeff wrote an ending for it. It's not really the same as getting the experience of playing both sides though. Can't really say re: easy/hard – think it was about average. And I killed everything so can't say about pacifism. I felt this a bit too, but I also felt that way in G4. I was being asked to deal with Moseh and Monarch at a time when my character was still really just a rookie. The power of those two was breathtaking, and I was being asked to deal with them? Seriously?! G5 felt most reasonable, I think. G2 next, for me, because Drypeak felt a lot more 'primitive' – I could believe that a talented young Shaper could affect things, because you weren't looking at a giant war with drakons everywhere. Yeah, that was a really interesting change for me too. I love the odd perspective you get playing the games backwards. Oh god I've so been looking forward to getting to G1. Where it all began. And it's surprising how little I've been able to piece together of what happened on Sucia Island from 2–5. I thought it would've all been spoiled but… really, what happened there? Who made the first Geneforge, and why? Were the drayks created there or earlier? Do all serviles have the potential to be intelligent, or was it like a 'disease' spread from Sucia? Jeff couldn't have imagined people playing 5->4->3->2->1, but it works remarkably well.

Done! For comparison, here's what he could look like if he'd spent those SP: To be honest, once I had the Emerald Chestguard it got a lot easier, and after Inner Gazak-Uss nothing was really much of a challenge. The Radiant College's entryway was the Barzite's toughest challenge, so I played a hit-and-run game again: hid just behind a corner, ended combat, and took them one at a time as they came into sight. Killed one, ended combat again, got my turn back. I then swore an oath to the Takers just to be a troll. Swore it, gave Toivo the artifact I already had, told Amena I'd already killed a leader (Barzahl), and then I like to think my Guardian said this to Syros: "About that oath of loyalty… just one problem. A man can't swear an oath to a pet." Syros himself wasn't too bad but a long chain of forces came after me – I used the same trick as with the Barzites in Radiant College, hiding just around a corner and taking them on once at a time. 16 AP (Chestguard, Victor's Boon, Haste) made it a bit trivial. Benerii-Uss wasn't too bad after, and I emptied it all except for Easss. Then went to Learned Pinner and said I'd help the Awakened, nabbing a level's worth of XP from cashing in on missions I've already done the work for. Then I destroyed the Barrier of the Wind and executed Tuldaric, cashing in on the reward from the sealed demon. Purely for RP reasons, I entered Medab without killing anyone and went up to Learned Pinner, destroying his Battle Betas for as long as I could. I like to think, in RP terms, that my character told Pinner something like this: "You may be right that serviles should be free. But tell me this: are the Council wrong for controlling the power to create life too strongly, or not enough? You make the case that it's not enough, yet Shape serviles to cast magic you don't understand, seal demons you can't control, and try to develop creations with the power to defeat the entire Council. You're more sane than the Barzites and the Takers, but you're still out of control. Your resistance will kill plenty of Shapers, but all the bloodshed you could dream of will still see you all die in the end. And in the meantime what will you unleash? What will you do to the legitimacy of your cause for future generations?" "I'm returning to the Council and I'll beg them to consider your case. It's a slim chance, but it's a chance, and now I've removed Tuldaric and your ill-considered 'defences' they might just be in a position to listen. I doubt I'll see you again, Learned Pinner, but I honestly, genuinely, wish you luck. But just so you know, my unwillingness to kill any more of your people ends if you send any after me. Good day." The last bit was Zakary. Irritatingly, it turns out you can't join the last faction standing and then leave it – the dialogue option isn't there. So I used the clearallsects cheat to keep to the Unaligned ending – I wanted to nab an entire level's worth of XP cashing in on all but the last Zakary quest, but then leave him. (I probably optimised the XP path quite a bit: sold all Shaper equipment and iron bars in one go as late as possible in the game.) My RP for dealing with Zakary was, again, a bit different to how the game really had to go down. In my head, my Guardian delivered an ultimatum to Zakary's guards: "Zakary is a traitor to the Shaper Council, and the Council will demand justice. Everyone here, you have three options. One: you can protect this traitor and die with him. Two: you can be loyal to the Shapers and assist me in his capture. Or three, you can choose to be a coward and look away." I only killed Zakary, and then left. I RP'd that the others mostly chose option three. I mean… really? They're going to try to protect a dead man walking against the will of the Shapers and the Guardian who just razed Rising, Zhass-Uss and Benerii-Uss to the ground? That was fun. Nice continuation of my theme of choosing weird endings to Geneforge games, too: 5: sided with Taygen, with the RP that I was actually a Trakovite who believed the Purification Agent was necessary and planned to turn on Taygen immediately after. 4: played a Rebel Infiltrator who played them off each other a bit, but ultimately alienated Alwan. But she was very much a human/servile-type Rebel. When she saw what the drakons were doing in Northforge she couldn't support that, and she destroyed the Unbound. At the very end Alwan didn't believe she wanted to work with him, so she was forced to kill him. 3: played a borderline canister junkie loyalist Shaper – but mostly just someone who hated Litalia and wanted revenge. Went through looking like a loyalist, but RPishly 'lost it' at the end with Rahul… he didn't want to go to the mainland, and he was frightened the Council would kill him for his use of canisters. So he killed Rahul instead and my RP canon was he went on to become a Monarch-like figure in the Ashen Isles. 2: killed almost… everyone. Whoo. That was fun. So… G1 now?

Good point. I love Spiderweb games for that. Still, that might let me off too easy... Level 44, 196 SP unspent. I just beat Inner Gazak-Uss. Took some serious patience and the Agent Robe to cast Speed. The Drakon Master was worst: eventually I led him away, assassinated one guardian once separated, and repeated, until he was alone. The constant enemy spawn in the NE can't be blocked, so I made breadcrumbs of fyoras leading the wrong way to slow them. I haven't aligned with anyone. I just wiped out the Barzites. Roleplaying a true loyalist: I'll destroy the Takers, kill Tuldaric, sabotage the Barrier of the Winds, spare Learned Pinner and execute Zakary but spare his people. Should be fun.

Level 34, 146 SP unspent. I've 'made it' – managed to take out the Mutated Battle Gamma and Bound One (the latter with a hit and run tactic), getting the Emerald Chestguard. The Belt of Purity from Gazak-Uss took luring Hideki Eye to Learned Guas, and I got the Forbidden Band. Using a Puresteel Shield now – couldn't find a shield that gave me any useful skill-ups. I've now bought from trainers Strength +2, Endurance +2, Melee +2 and Blessing +2. My level 5 is just about as strong as he can get now, so I'm going to see if I'm strong enough to win the game from here. Strength 10, Dexterity 6, Intelligence 4 (still can't cast Speed), Endurance 7. Melee 6, Missile 7, QA 13, Parry 9. Lead/Mech 13 each with the right gear, Healing 3, and Blessing 2. It's a shame I abandoned missile weapons, but trying to win from level 5 it just didn't work out to be practical to rely on them. Not sure if my pseudo-Level 5 Guardian is going to be able to win from here. Should be able to, but I'll have to be very cautious. Drakons don't seem too bad, but every rotghroth and gazer is almost unbeatable. I'm never going to have a hit chance against a rotghroth higher than about 50%, or be able to survive two turns around any gazer, so I'm never going to be able to let my guard down.

Isn't that the formula for your total essence, not your gain each level? So what you gain in a level is: (6 + Int * (NewLevel+1)) - (6 + Int * (OldLevel + 1)) = Int * (NewLevel - OldLevel) = Int * 1 = Int

(Now Level 26, 106 skill points unspent.) Good advice, both, but... I'm still trying to see how far I can get without spending a single skill point since Level 5. : ) Sadly that rules out being able to cast Speed. I bought Blessing up to 2 from a trainer, but can't hit 3 (for Speed) without wearing an Agent Cloak and don't have the Energy to cast Speed even if I did – it takes 100 and I have 33 (Int 2). Leadership and Mechanics are fine. Parry... I'm up to 9, having got the Thrusting Gauntlets (the other item you're referring to, I guess, Triumph). It's been invaluable, but that's the limit without spending SP. Buying Blessing was really useful though, as was getting the Physician's Charm: I can finally cast Augmentation and/or Essence Shield (but not both without an essence pool). I'm not a missile specialist anymore... I may have Missile 7/Dex 6 to Melee 4/Strength 3, but it doesn't matter: I do better with a Puresteel Blade than an Acid Baton and don't have enough Reapers. I nabbed the Guardian Claymore, but the Puresteel Blade has a higher hit chance and damage even with the Strength bonus on the Claymore. I'm trying for the Emerald Chestguard now, but the Bound One, Rotted Demon and Mutated Battle Gamma are all a bit much for a pseudo-Level 5. I'm going to try to buy Melee up to 6 and Strength up to 4 or 5, but it's crazily expensive. Going to try to rob some drayk lairs for cash. I think getting about +15% to my hit chance will be enough to make the Mutated Battle Gamma and Bound One killable, at which point I can finally grab the Emerald Chestguard. Is there any shield that increases any skill other than Leadership/Mechanics? I'm still using a Shaped Shield for the armour, but obviously I'm dying for stat/skill boosts.

My accidental Geneforge 2 challenge: Playing from G5, to 4, to 3, I finally decided to try a Missile Guardian in G2... ...without canisters... ...or Shaping/companions, except for the occasional (2-3 times) suicide fyoras... and by the time I hit Level 5, I got so silly about keeping some SP free in case I needed to boost Lead/Mech that I just thought... hey, why not see how far I can get without spending any more SP? I mean, I'm only on Normal... The Build: +1 Dex, +4 Missile, +2 QA, +4 Parry, +5 Lead, +4 Mech, +1 Luck. 34 SP, bought by Level 5. How it's going: 1. Everything up to Freegate wasn't a problem I would've got further in the Crystal Caverns if I hadn't brought out the damn Icy Spectres. 2. Sharon's Grove: got the Four-Fang Bracelet on first attempt. First two I could beat, and the rest (inc. the Battle Beta's glaahk minions) I led back to Sharon and just stole her kill. 3. Went west at Freegate, into Barzite territory, for RP reasons – my job's to find Barzahl and Shanti. 4. Upper Research Hall: insufficient Mech to disable everything, but you can sneak past most of them. Got the Quicksilver Chain with suicide fyoras and getting lucky with Parry. 5. Want to clear the Clockwork Maze. Don't have the Lead, Mech or power. To get up to 10 Lead, I killed the beta Learned Darian wanted: it could one-shot me, but with 9 AP I just kited it. (Any hittable, solo melee foe except Plated Bugs are trivial with 9 AP.) 6. Got an Infiltrator's Tunic earlier, but will need an Infiltrator's Cloak too to handle the Clockwork Maze. The journey through Awakened land to the Northern Pass to get the Infiltrator's Cloak was brutal. Then I decided to go further. Dead Pass made me cry, but I snuck through to Taker territory for fun. 6. With the Cloak, it's time for the Maze. vs. the Drakon Golem, I had four golems to distract it. I ran past it, grabbed the +1 Mech from a book, which was just enough: I ran back, hid until the golems damaged it enough, and disabled it. Area clear. Cue Infiltrator's Ring and Charm: my Lead/Mech can deal with anything now. 7. I found Shanti's corpse, met Barzahl, and knew Stanis had to die. But... yeah, can't touch him. Need a better weapon. Irritatingly, melee turned out to be the way. I sabotaged Rising, and then did something crazy... 8. I got a Puresteel Blade. Stealthed through Dead Pass back to Zhass-Uss. My target: Infested Pass, near Benerii-Uss. Taker Toll Road isn't so bad. Dryss roared one turn before I hit the Infested Pass. 9. Infested Pass. Oh good god. Everything can one shot me (that's not new), and it's a linear path. I had to observe sentry patterns, hide behind jagged wall edges, and even then it was horrific. But I got the Puresteel Blade, and even to Benerii-Uss. The Entrance is easy to sneak through by comparison to the Pass. 10. Time to avenge Shanti! Speed Pod, three fyoras to distract/pin him, Ensnaring Crystal, bit of luck: Stanis is down. You have a Guardian Cloak? Okay, I can forgive you now. At this point I'm Level 20 with 76 SP unspent. Puresteel Blade for melee, have one Reaper Baton, one Acid Baton and plenty of lesser batons. Four-Fang Bracelet, Shaped Shield, Infiltrator's Ring, Girdle of Endurance, Guardian Cloak, Quicksilver Chain. Gives me 7 Missile, 8 QA, 8 Parry, 11 Lead/Mech even before specific gear. I'm not sure where to go next, or how to put off spending SP even longer. I'm going to need better items and some skill-ups from training. I managed to get to Outer Gazak-Uss but don't have the cash for Guas's upgrades yet. This is my first G2 game, and the walkthrough's not as detailed as the later ones, so I'm not sure what my options are from here.

Hope nobody has a problem with me resurrecting this. I had the same problem and dragged this thread up with a Google Search. BANSHEE's solution didn't work for me, and I wanted to put my solution in this thread too: putting it in the same place hopefully makes it easier for anyone else Googling this in the future. Mac OS X doesn't let you switch to thousands of colours anymore, and when I tried to do this with third party software it didn't work either. What eventually did work was having a creation: I was playing a solo Infiltrator and every time I tried to approach Moseh (or test the Unbound in Northforge) the game froze. Having a creation, any creation, fixed the problem reliably. It's possible (I'm not sure) that it wasn't about having a creation out but having something in the 'first character slot', as I bumped my Infiltrator down to the 8th slot ages ago when spamming a roamer army.