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Posts posted by Ess-Eschas
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On 3/20/2021 at 2:37 AM, EzzyKarotan said:
I've never gotten the ancient artila in Pentil Plains to spawn I see that one's listed as dropping "?" Has anyone actually gotten it to show up?
Unfortunately, it’s not possible to glean as much from the scripts in modern Spiderweb releases as one used to. The design philosophy has changed over the past few engines, moving quite a few details away from the scripts into the hard code. It’s not as much of a feature of the Mutagen engine as, say, the modern Avernum releases, but this design approach still means there’s a fair amount of this game that’s hidden away in the base code!
So, while a few of these creatures appear in the scripts, others of them don’t. Information about some of these creatures has been moved into the hard code, so it’s difficult to find out much about them!
In this case, I believe we’re relying on Randomizer’s experience of playing the game. They made a note of which powerful creatures appeared where, simply through the process of playing the game carefully many times. So – unless I’m missing an official list somewhere – any special creatures found on this list will have been observed by Randomizer at some point or other. I think that also means that there could, in principle, be others that haven’t been seen yet!
If you check the script for Crag Valley, you’ll see the code that spawns Benttooth with a 1% chance. If that’s representative of some of these other creatures, such as the Ancient Artila, then that means getting them to show up would require a lot of patience. You could visit the zone many hundreds of times and still – with a quite reasonable probability – not have the creature show up. That makes it rather difficult to learn much about them!
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9 hours ago, Mechalibur said:
That's certainly interesting, but I'd definitely say contemporary usage of "box" almost always refers to a rectangular shape.
Hmm, that’s interesting. It looks like our experiences of contemporary language differ in this case! Perhaps that’s due to cultural differences? I’ve found on quite a few occasions that implied meanings associated with words can differ quite substantially across English speaking cultures.
Where I live, there are a number of common examples of ‘boxes’ that come in a variety of different shapes – many are round to some degree. And not just obscure objects like snuff boxes, too! But I think a lot of these examples are probably specific to my own location. Perhaps that encourages a more fluid use of the word ‘box’ over here, where other countries might be a little more rigid with the term?
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5 hours ago, Magenta said:
Does anyone besides me think it strange that big round balls are called box mines?
Not particularly!
There is a tendency to associate the word ‘box’ with cuboid (3D rectangular) shapes these days, perhaps due to how common cardboard boxes are in so many aspects of modern life. However, this isn’t the most general use of the word. In a broad sense, a ‘box’ is simply any form of enclosed container – and it can be of any shape! In fact, there is something to suggest that the word originated from a Middle English word for a type of jar, one that was usually cylindrical!
As as example of this, take a look at this picture of a traditional snuff box. You’ll see it’s far from being cuboid. It’s an (elliptic) cylinder!
In theory, boxes can be of any shape. So, while it might sound unusual, there’s nothing all that wrong with having a spherical box!
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6 hours ago, Simulated Knave said:
It's 5% each time you visit, correct?
Just to be clear on this, we don’t have solid information for how most of these bonus creatures are placed. kuo guessed a figure of 5% for one of them based on their own experience, but that’s all. It’s just a guess, and not a hard fact!
Based on the way these games are usually put together, and on my digging into the scripts, it seems likely that these creatures are indeed placed with a given probability every time the zone is loaded into memory. So, if the spawn chance for the creature is x%, you’ll have an x% chance of the creature appearing each time the zone is loaded. This seems to fit with the experiences reported in this thread!
Practically speaking, that means that you probably have a low percentage chance of the creature appearing each time you enter its zone.
(Although I’d be careful with that if you’re trying to reload to find these creatures. To be safe, I’d probably leave the zone, go to another zone, and then return. Alternatively, I'd use kuo’s approach. That’s just to make sure the zone is properly reloaded each time!)
One thing we can say quite clearly, given what people have reported in this thread, is that these aren’t one-time checks. The game will keep checking and checking again as you play it. So, no need to worry, Simulated Knave! If the creatures don’t turn up the first time you enter these zones, they may well turn up when you come back again!
Just to see if I could clear this up a little, I did some rummaging around in the game’s files. The rules governing most of these creatures seem to be locked away in the hard code. However, a few of these bonus creatures turn up in the scripts. This means we can learn a little more about them.
The following three creatures seem to have a fixed chance to appear every time you enter their zone:
Roamer Firefang: 25%
Vengeful Spirit: 20%
Benttooth the Roamer: 1%It’s not clear whether these creatures can appear more than once. It seems that they can, but there may be code hidden deeper inside the application that rules this out.
Note the 1% appearance rate for Benttooth. The way the scripts are put together seems to imply that 1% is the lowest possible appearance rate for these creatures. I don’t imagine the chance is this low for everything, but it could be for some of the more powerful creatures – such as the Ur-Glaahk!
I’m sorry to say this, but if the Ur-Glaahk’s appearance rate really is 1%, kuo, then you probably have more work to do! The probably of the creature not appearing after 100 visits is only 37%, which is still pretty likely. To really get down to statistically significant values, you’d need to revisit the zone about 460 times, I think. Only then could you be reasonably sure of the Ur-Glaahk appearing ...
(On that note, if you’re curious about your current result, kuo, the probably of a 1% Benttooth appearing more than once over 30 trials is 26%, I think. So perhaps not as low as one might expect. Probably can be rather slippery like that!)
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Good work, Nephil Thief. That’s a pretty neat way to solve the problem!
1 hour ago, The Almighty Doer of Stuff said:Could I have a link, please?
The links are essentially all there on TrueSite already. You just need to manually type in the name of the zip file at the end of web address, rather than following the link. This is just because the link doesn’t connect to the correct root address at the moment! Still, to save you some work:
Spoilerhttp://truesite.openboe.com/SWArchive/Geocities/alcritas/apologia.zip
http://truesite.openboe.com/SWArchive/Geocities/alcritas/falling.zip
http://truesite.openboe.com/SWArchive/Geocities/alcritas/theseus.zip
http://truesite.openboe.com/SWArchive/Geocities/alcritas/pippen.zip
http://truesite.openboe.com/SWArchive/Geocities/alcritas/lament.zip
http://truesite.openboe.com/SWArchive/Geocities/alcritas/goodevil.zip
http://truesite.openboe.com/SWArchive/Geocities/alcritas/algiers.zip
http://truesite.openboe.com/SWArchive/Geocities/alcritas/redem.zip
http://truesite.openboe.com/SWArchive/Geocities/alcritas/portents.zip
http://truesite.openboe.com/SWArchive/Geocities/alcritas/kayolith.zip
http://truesite.openboe.com/SWArchive/Geocities/alcritas/tomorrow.zip -
Just to help with searching, Nephil Thief, could you please post the specific version numbers of your copies of these three scenarios? This makes it easier to compare versions, since people can tell at a glance whether they have a different version to you.
The quickest way to find the version number is through a scenario’s documentation. Alternatively, you can find it through BoE itself. Just make sure the scenario is visible in your scenario folder (put a space or two at the front of its name if necessary), load up a party outside of a scenario, and flick through the ‘Custom Scenario’ list until you find the one you’re looking for. The version number is right at the top.
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33 minutes ago, The Almighty Doer of Stuff said:
It may have been a decoy, though, come to think of it.
I suspect it was just someone misunderstanding the game's text. There's only one piece of text directly referring to an Alien Blade in the game's code, and it relates to the one you can pick up in the game. Since it talks about finding the weapon on a body, the post you were reading probably just confused the issue, and assumed it was the body in the Barrier Tunnel. It's not!
I'm sure the urban myth that talks about the weapon being there didn't help either!
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Hello Korgrath,
No, there’s no bug thread!
What we encourage people to do with bugs is to report them directly to the game designer, rather than posting them on here. Posting bugs on here isn’t a problem – and it can be helpful if you’re not sure if what you’ve found is a bug or not! – but there’s no guarantee that it will picked up if that's all you do. The only person who can fix these bugs is the game designer, and he doesn’t always visit these forums regularly.
So, can I encourage you to send a little bug report to this address, please?
support@spiderwebsoftware.com
Don’t feel you need to write anything fancy. What you’ve written here is probably clear enough! However, if you have a moment, including a screenshot showing the precise location where you first noticed this happening would probably help.
When trying to fix bugs, it’s good to know situations where you can trigger them. That way, the designer can check to make sure that the issue is properly fixed!
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Hello simon-12345,
Sorry that you’ve been bashing your head against those barriers! Unfortunately, you’ve stumbled onto an old urban myth. There are a few of those floating around, especially for some of Spiderweb’s earlier games – and this is a particularly persistent one!
So, to be clear, the Alien Blade is not in the dungeon with the barriers.
It’s actually not in a dungeon at all! It’s carefully hidden in the outdoors, although you’ll need an important item to reach it. Let me know if you’d like a further hint as to where to look. Given where you’ve been looking, you’re not that far away!
Regarding the dungeon you’ve been exploring, there is indeed no way through either set of barriers. This was changed in later remakes of the games, but the barriers are impenetrable in Exile I. The body placed between them is just a decoy! If by some arcane magic you found a way across, you wouldn’t find anything there. There’s nothing at all on the body. The Almighty Doer of Stuff was mistaken on that point.
Likewise, the rest of the map past the barriers is just placed there to show that the cave goes somewhere you can’t reach. But that’s all. Amusingly, the design in that section is very bare bones, doing only what’s needed to make it work on the player’s map. The walls aren’t even connected together properly!
To reiterate, there is an Alien Blade in Exile I. But it's not where you're looking!
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12 minutes ago, mikeprichard said:
This would be much more efficient than spamming Jeff with a typo at a time over email, I would think.
Trust me, it's not. If you find a typo, just send it over before you forget! Jeff has made it clear on a number of occasions that he prefers this style of reporting, rather than long, collected reports that take a long time to work through.
So, to reiterate, there really is no need for a topic like this on these forums. Typos shouldn't be posted on here in the first place, let alone gathered together. Just send your typos over, and avoid all this complication of an intermediate step!
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There are five stone circles, not four. Strictly speaking, there’s a sixth one too, but you don’t need to worry about that – you’ll come across that in the course of the main storyline when the time comes!
This map is missing a circle. It’s just above number 13. Take this as a lesson to always take maps with a pinch of salt. They can sometimes contain small errors!
To help you, if you don’t want their absolute locations, here are the nearest friendly towns for the five initial circles:
SpoilerInn of Blades
Squiggus
Kuper
Mernia
Malloc -
While I appreciate what you’re trying to do here, mikeprichard, I’m not sure this type of topic is especially helpful.
I know you mean well, but mass bug topics like this can be a distraction from getting things fixed. At worst, they can least to issues not being reported, and therefore not being resolved. If you need an example of this, check out a similar thread in the Queen’s Wish forums, where there were a number of occasions in which various posters had to step in and email bug reports manually.
If you’ve found typos, then that’s great! But they don’t belong here. The designer of these games visits these forums infrequently, and those of us on the forums don’t have the power to fix them ourselves. And, for something like typos, there really isn’t any reason to wait around to collect more of them. Just send them in when you find them – that’s easier for all concerned!
So, to clarify, if you find any typos, please report them to this address:
support@spiderwebsoftware.com
Posting them here will just result in an unnecessary delay!
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As it happens, you can add NPCs to the player’s party in BoE, at least in a manner of speaking. There are several scenarios that do this, and that do it rather well!
You see, one interesting thing about BoE is that it was very popular for quite a few years. It attracted huge numbers of designers, many of which were very innovative. Quite a few of these designers pushed against the limitations of the engine, and found ways around them.
For example, is it possible to add spells to the spell list in BoE? No. That’s an engine limitation. Except, by careful use of nodes and special items, you actually can do that, and there are quite a few scenarios that do so! Can you make monsters that are larger than 2x2 squares in size? No. Although, actually, you can! Can you create gates that prevent parties of a certain level from passing? No. Although, actually, you can! And so on ...
Recruitable NPCs are another idea that scenario creators have managed to implement. While there isn’t a built-in functionality to do this in BoE, designers used a variety of techniques to simulate it. By clever use of nodes and special items, designers effectively add NPCs to the party.
Now, you should be aware that the nodework for this can get quite complicated, and can result in a little busywork when creating towns/dungeons. But the results can be quite impressive.
Rather than describing approaches here, I think it might be informative if you looked at an example for yourself. The best example I’m aware of is in the scenario ‘Doom Moon II: Dragons’ Revenge’. This scenario features many recruitable NPCs, who will join you if you complete certain quests, and you can only choose some of them to take with you.
I suggest reading the documentation, and just playing through the early portions of the scenario to see how the NPCs are handled. If necessary, slog through using an edited party! If you can’t find a copy, let me know, and I’ll send you one.
For my mind, I think you might want to use a slightly different approach for your scenario idea. I’d be tempted to use a special item in the style of ‘Shape Drakon’, which uses a chain of nodes to call forth a suitable NPC using a summoning node – and perhaps run node checks during battle to make sure they perform as expected.
But that’s just a thought. I’d still suggest trying out Dragons’ Revenge first, to see NPC recruiting in action!
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kerriganmc, please can I encourage you to take a moment to review our forums Guidelines. You can find a link to these Guidelines in the tabs at the top of this page. In particular, can I draw your attention to the following, found under point number 2 in Rules:
“Don't use obscenities in any language, including masked or abbreviated obscenities.”
I have removed the masked curses from your post. While I appreciate dealing with things that don’t work the way you expect them to can be frustrating, please can I encourage you to try and avoid repeated cursing on these forums, even if it is masked.
To help you with your query, let me highlight something that googoogjoob has already mentioned, but that you might have missed. Most search engines deal with multiple-word queries in the same way. If you simply type in a few words into the search field, the search engine will look for pages that include one or more of those words. So, if you type in Tower of Barriers, our search engine will list every page on here that includes the word of. That’s a lot of pages, which explains why you’re getting so many results.
So, how do you get around this? It is a general convention that search engines will only look for every word you type in if you enclose them in quotation marks: “. If you search for Tower of Barriers, you’ll get lots of results that might not be very relevant to you. But search for “Tower of Barriers” – note the quotation marks about the phrase you’re interested in – and you only get pages that deal with this exact phrase. As googoogjoob points out, that search on these forums yields only a handful of pages, all of which are from the game you’re interested in.
To summarise, if you’re using search engines and are looking for a specific phrase, put quotation marks around it! It will give you better results, and save you a lot of frustration.
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Hello Everett,
I would encourage you not to remove your rings right away!
While you may not be able to buy spells from one particular person, there are plenty of people scattered throughout the game who will sell you spells. There’s quite a lot of overlap in what spells different people offer – so if you can’t buy a spell from one location, you may well be able to buy it somewhere else. I don’t believe there is any spell that is only sold by one person.
Not least, there are a number of people who won’t find your fake rings remotely important. I’d suggest trying to speak to people who might be unaware of the Anama, and what they stand for. Or, if you want more direct advice, trying speaking to the following, amongst others:
SpoilerErika and Khoth!
If you do want to remove your rings eventually, then you’ll need to head to Shayder. You can remove the rings either by talking to Ahonar, or by praying at the grand altar. Praying at the altar is perhaps slightly preferable, since this gives you the option of joining the Anama later on (if you’re curious to see what’s been denied you so far). Having Ahonar deal with your fake rings removes that as an option. However, be aware that using the altar will give you a Dread Curse for your trouble!
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Thank you all for your patience in dealing with the various bugs that have been plaguing the forums recently. You’ll be pleased to know that these issues should all now be resolved! All features that were previously broken or temporarily removed should now work as usual!
This includes logging in. If you’ve been avoiding logging in due to the problems with the sign-in process, do by all means join us once again!
While we’ve tested to ensure that features are now back to normal, there’s always a chance that there may still some teething bugs lurking. So, if you are still experiencing any problems, or some features do not seem to be working as intended, please do let us know!
These bugs appeared after a recent software update, and unfortunately were severe enough that we were not able to fix them directly. We needed to call in higher powers, which meant there was a slight delay in getting these issues fixed. Thank you again for your patience while waiting for these issues to be resolved!
These problems were fixed in the main down to the excellent work of Slarty (currently 'Sealing Librarian'), who works tirelessly behind the scenes to keep these forums running smoothly. This work is often unnoticed, and rarely receives much praise. So direct any thanks to him, not to me!
Keep up the good work, Slarty! :)- Mechalibur and Isaiah
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That’s a nice idea! I’m not sure I quite buy it as the source of the ‘Krysknife’ name, though.
My main reason for this is that Exile II features an item which much better suits your description: the ‘Blessed Kris’! This is an item found in the Black Waters chapter, and therefore presumably of Vahnatai origin – as such, the wavy design of a kris makes perfect sense. Also, note the standard spelling, unlike the ‘Krys’ in ‘Krysknife’.
For my tastes, naming a weapon by directly mixing together Kris and Knife would be a little strange. Naming something ‘Krisknife’ in that way sounds a little, to me, like naming another type of blade ‘Rapiersword’. It’s not strictly incorrect, but it feels slightly redundant, or at least overly descriptive!
7 hours ago, Thaluikhain said:What is it renamed and repurposed as in late games, though?
In the original Avernum 2, it's still a knife, but a rather different one. It's called the 'Serendipity Knife' and, instead of the 'always poisoned' effect, it gives a very large boost to the user's 'Luck' stat. It's still described using the same text, however.
I believe the reward is entirely different in the remake of Avernum 2, Crystal Souls. In this game, the altar holds a Talisman of Might, which isn't a unique item!
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Thanks for that, Locust! This information is useful, because it eliminates a few potential causes of your crashing. For instance, it appears that your problem isn’t related to the combat or dialogue systems, which is important to know.
I have another suggestion for something to try! Could you try running Queen’s Wish again with no additional applications running in the background? I appreciate that could be irritating, but all that’s needed is just to run the game for long enough to see if you still get crashes when working this way.
To be clear, I’m not suggesting this because I think your computer can’t handle running Queen’s Wish alongside other programs. Of course it can! The idea here is to check to see whether there are any program conflicts taking place. In principle, one program can run code that interferes with the memory/running of another. It’s rare, since programmers obviously don’t want this to happen, but it does still happen very occasionally.
Some program conflicts were discovered in early Windows versions of Queen’s Wish, and have since been fixed. But it’s possible you might have found another one on the Mac side!
In the interests of gathering as much information as possible, could you also elaborate on what happens when your game freezes? Does absolutely everything freeze? Can you move the mouse? Do background sounds still play? Do any animations on screen still play?
Such information is useful, because it might help us figure out what sort of crash you’re experiencing.
In any case, sorry that we’re not able to solve your issues immediately! But I hope you don’t mind poking into the problem a little, with our help. We want to help you solve your problem, and that in turn might help any other users down the line who experience something similar!
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Thanks for the links, Randomizer!
Unfortunately, I think it’s unlikely that either of these issues are being experienced by Locust. The conventional GOG system automatically updates users’ games to the latest versions, so Locust should be using the most recent version of Queen’s Wish.
As you mentioned yourself, the inefficient CPU bug was fixed very early in the release cycle, so it hasn’t been an issue for a long time. Likewise, the issues causing pauses in combat were also fixed in the later versions, at least in principle. Jeff did the best he could, since it was never possible to reproduce the problem on his end.
That does mean that there is a small chance that something unusual is still happening in combat, perhaps an issue related to the old combat pauses. That’s why I asked Locust about combat/hostile locations – it’s good to be sure! However, I think it’s probably more likely that something else is causing Locust’s issues.
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Sorry to hear that you’re having problems, Locust!
I know you’ve mentioned that the crashes appear to be random, but I just want to double-check something!
Is there any indication that the crashes are more likely to happen when you’re in combat, or otherwise in a hostile dungeon? I ask this because there have been a few rare reports of strange behaviour happening for some players in such situations. It’s not a problem we’ve been able to reproduce or fix yet, unfortunately, since bug reports about it are so rare – but it would be useful to know if you’re experiencing something similar, or something else entirely!
Also, are you currently playing the game in full screen? If so, could I suggest that you try running it in windowed mode for a few minutes, and see if you still get crashes? This *shouldn’t* make a difference, given your system is easily powerful enough to run the engine! But if you still get crashes running in a window, that could rule out some potential problems relating to how the game interacts with your monitor.
Finally, don’t worry too much about Randomizer’s comments about program inefficiency! They’re true for older Spiderweb games, but those issues were all fixed for Queen’s Wish. That’s the same for the pauses Randomizer mentioned, too – they should all be gone in this engine. Queen’s Wish is one of Spiderweb’s most advanced engines to date, so issues like those shouldn't be the cause of your problems!
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Ah, I have it! Here’s your complete solution:
SpoilerGeneforge Characters:
1. Zakary
2. Barzahl
3. Trajkov
4. Litalia
5. Greta
6. Alwan
7. Rawal
8. Danette
9. Ellhrah
10. Ghaldring
11. Astoria
12. Khyryk
13. Taygen
14. Goettsch
15. Monarch
16. Pinner17. Miranda
18. Shanti
Spiderweb Member:
Randomizer
Thanks for the pointers! Amusingly, I’d already thought of Shanti on my first attempt, but her name ended up getting forced out from other names that seemed better use of letters at the time. As for Miranda, that actually came from my knowledge of Queen’s Wish, of all things – I recalled a comment from during the game's development, where it was mentioned that there was a Miranda in the Geneforge series too!
As for the missing letters, that was actually a combination of mistakes. The extra letter was just a mistake when transcribing from my notes for the partial solution. The missing letters, though, were a mistake in the partial solution itself. I wasn't very efficient when making those notes, so the letters probably got misplaced when I added and subtracted a few names quickly.
As for Randomizer, I hadn't truly appreciated why you included the name until what you said here. That's a very neat explanation, and extremely satisfying.
So, Slarty, do I get a prize? :p
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Hmm, I still can’t quite wangle out the last few names. I don’t think my Geneforge knowledge is quite up to scratch, even given your hints, Slarty! So we might need to do this a little iteratively, if you’re game.
Here’s a new partial solution from me. I’ve wedged in one more name, meaning that I’ve produced 16 Geneforge characters and 1 Spiderweb member from the grid. That’s only two missing – not forgetting any I’ve still gotten wrong, of course!
SpoilerGeneforge Characters:
1. Zakary
2. Barzahl
3. Trajkov
4. Litalia
5. Greta
6. Alwan
7. Rawal
8. Danette
9. Ellhrah
10. Ghaldring
11. Astoria
12. Khyryk
13. Taygen
14. Goettsch
15. Monarch
16. PinnerSpiderweb Member:
Randomizer
Remaining letters:
AA, D, II, M, NN, RR, S, T
For what it’s worth, I can actually get up to 18 names out of 19. But the additional names in that partial solution don’t quite fit the criteria, I think – so I’m not happy with posting that version just yet!
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Oh wow. This is really exciting to see! I hadn’t expected you to be releasing this for testing in sections, but that makes a whole lot of sense, especially when working out the general balance for later portions of the game.
I’ve already downloaded this, and I’m really looking forward to seeing what you’ve done. I know the scenario is far from being finished, but getting to this form of testing is still a big milestone, I think.
So, many congratulations, Kel!

You’ve released this just at the point when I’m rather busy, so it might be a few weeks before I get a report to you – depending on how much I find, of course. But you should have something from me relatively soon!
Here are some brief comments on your known bugs:
SpoilerMy hunch is that the outdoor cache changing the nature of the outdoor section might be another instance of the set_terrain() bug. It has some of the hallmarks of it, at least. When I get there, I’ll have a play around, and see if I can reproduce the problem in a dummy scenario. I have a guess as to what is causing the duplicate caches, too.
I meant to mention this in your Homeland thread, but I’ve got a nice little scenario set up for testing large-number problems in calls. When I have the time for it, I’ll work high quest numbers into it, and see if I can learn anything about quest numbers in the high 90s.
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You know, with the way I intended this puzzle to be solved, it’s probably not a bad idea to start with a small list of names and work up from there. After all, since the intent was for a core list of names to suggest further names in the grid, it stands to reason that you’d want to be confident about the more obvious names before going any further!
In this new list, you have provided me with 12 names. Out of these 12 names, 9 are correct.
I’ve been thinking about this, and my method of solution, and I think I might have expected a few too many intuitive leaps from people in solving this puzzle. So I think it’s only fair that I give you a little more information about what you have right and wrong here – otherwise, generating any further names would probably be far too difficult! I think I should be taking your difficult assessment a little more seriously, Slarty ...
There are 3 wrong names on your new list. One name is wrong because that Slith only features in Exile, not in Avernum. Another name is wrong because it does not meet the requirements I mentioned in the first post – that slith, strictly speaking, does not interact with the party. The third name is wrong because they do not meet the rubric requirements for an enemy slith.
If you would like any further hints, do let me know! The last thing I want is for this puzzle to be frustrating, unsolvable or, worse, both!

My character tells Sage Clois things I didn't know. Is it a bug or I missed them?
in Geneforge 1 - Mutagen
Posted
Hello alhoon,
All I think has happened here is that you’ve slightly misinterpreted this conversation. Nothing more than that!
As I understand it, this conversation is process of deduction. You give Sage Clois information, and she gives you information, allowing you both to infer things that you don’t strictly know.
Think of a classic detective story, for instance. When Hercule Poirot gathers all his suspects together for the big reveal at the end of a mystery, he doesn’t know directly who the culprit it. He hasn’t witnessed the crime himself firsthand. But he infers it from his investigations. That’s what your character is doing here, I think.
Here’s a summary of how I interpret your character’s process of deduction:
– Your character learns of Trajkov, and something of what he’s hoping to achieve.
– You mention this to Clois, who has heard of Trajkov from members of the Sholai who have passed by her hut. Clois tells you that Trajkov “holds a power your kind feared”, one that “was so horrible that they Barred this island to keep anyone from having it”.
– Your character learns of the Geneforge, the powerful secret the Shapers left behind on the island.
– You mention this to Clois, who points out that this must have been why the island was Barred.
– So the character knows that Trajkov holds the secret power on the island, and that that power is the Geneforge. Thus, Trajkov holds the Geneforge.
– But has Trajkov used the Geneforge? Let’s think about this. Why would Trajkov stay at the Geneforge if he had already used it? As Clois implies, the Geneforge is powerful. If Trajkov had already used it to make himself powerful in some way, wouldn’t he want to go ahead and do something with that power, rather than just hanging around the artifact? And if there was someone immensely powerful on the island, wouldn’t they have made their presence known? Say by destroying some of the Servile villages, or the rogues, or doing a far better job of getting rid of you at the beginning of the game? Granted, this last point is a bit more of a leap of faith than the others, but it seems reasonable to assume that the Trajkov has not used the Geneforge.
In other words, based only on information your character currently has, you can infer that Trajkov holds – but has not yet used – the Geneforge.
Do ask for more information if you’d like, and of course feel free to question my interpretation of what’s going on here!