Slariton

The purity officer gives the acid-drip sword as a reward for the canister, IIRC. You don't want to miss that unless you never ever intend to melee.

I think the issue here is less likely to be the RNG than the display of fatuous numbers. Adequate pseudorandom number generators are not hard to come by. Seeing as Jeff once studied statistics in grad school and is clearly competent with simple algorithms, I doubt he would find them difficult to handle. We know from the Armor % display feature that not all displayed numbers are accurate representations of anything. I experimented with to-hit a lot in G3 when I tried to duplicate the A4 99% dodge build, and it failed because to-hit calculations do really weird things in Geneforge when they approach either extreme.

What does it do? I mean, does it generate reasonably pseudorandom numbers, or not?

It is stated in the game in various places that Southern Valorim (a.k.a. Krizsan) was settled fairly recently. I don't have the references here. I settled on approximately 813 for the EE timeline date, and I know I relied purely on solid canon for that number. One of the amusing things about that is that it means Silvar in Exile was founded earlier than Silvar in Krizsan Province. "Why not? Avernum was settled in approximately 10 years (767 IE for the first people, 777 IE when Avernum was established), and it's probably only slightly smaller than Valorim." Um, Avernum was not SETTLED in ten years. The date the Kingdom was founded probably has more to do with either rallying Avernite troops to fight, or the effects of early military victories against Grah-Hoth and the sliths.

Quote: Originally written by wz. As: Given that it already happened, the probability is 1. This is not just nitpicking — you didn't set out in advance to try and get three of these things in a row. If you started a game and thought, gee, I wonder if I'll get three thahdskin tunics off the next thahds I see, that would be a little more impressive when it actually happened. I hope that what you meant was: "you didn't set up a controlled experiment and test for thahd drops." How is intention relevant to this kind of test? And if it is relevant, how they HECK is it desirable to have that potential bias? You're right that I was only recounting an anecdote, but did I ever present it as anything else? Single random data points are not statistically significant, but they are not meaningless, and they are certainly not any less significant than single deliberately chosen data points with an equal lack of context.

If you use the stairs to the jail in Southforge Citadel when you have seven creations, you get a message that says "Error: couldn't place party when entering zone" and the game quits.

I thought the other games capped stats at 30, including items, and did weird things (i.e., reduced stats sometimes) if you equipped and then took off a stat booster with that stat already maxxed out.

Incidentally, has anyone ever gotten a random item drop, then reloaded and not gotten it? Or vice versa. I keep forgetting to try this and see if it works -- as I have never heard of anyone getting a random drop by repeated save and reload. I wonder if they are set when the creatures are spawned on zone loading?

The sentinels have a leadership option at 10 leadership that makes them let you leave. Does that help with the stealth or the alarms?

All creations have a chance of becoming scared and rogue if they are very hurt, the enemy's as well as yours. I've never seen that happen on a parry, though. Can you be more specific about what creations it's happening to? What's your Parry score and what is your weapon? At any rate, I'd be extremely surprised if being a Servile had anything to do with it.

I decided to try a new run as an Infiltrator. (The tipping factor was getting annoyed at having to change my sphere of sight every time I attack an enemy. Now I remember why melee was always deprecated in Geneforge.) Anyway, the first Thahd I killed dropped a Thahdskin Tunic. The second Thahd I killed dropped a Thahdskin Tunic. And the third Thahd I killed also dropped a Thahdskin Tunic. And I didn't pump Luck above 2. Further Thahds have not, so the game isn't broken, but geez. What are the odds? If only I have this luck when collecting Glaahk Eyes.

"+X Levels of damage" basically gives you the same damage bonus you would get from +X Melee Weapons, +X Missile Weapons, and +X Battle Magic, but not the to-hit bonus you would get for those +X's. As for the armor formula: there is no formula. As I have been saying repeatedly, it's just layered multiplication! If you wear one piece of 40% armor, you take 60% damage. If you wear one piece of 20% armor, you take 80% damage. If you wear both, you take 80% of 60% damage, which is 48% damage. The stat screen however will display 60% armor, which is totally and completely bogus.

Was that spell basically the equivalent of Avatar? I'm trying to remember.

As Thuryl mentioned, there is no 10-cap on magic. Actually, I don't think there is a 10-cap left on anything except shaping skill, and Jeff mentioned that that 10-cap was unintentional. I have no idea how Damage Shield works. I do wish I did. I imagine it either affects the numbers by subtraction (raw, like Vampiric Touch) or has a small effect on all damage separate from regular resistance-based reduction. Okay, here's a sample armor calculation. I am making up the equipment numbers, it doesn't seem worthwhile to look up real ones. Say we are wearing: 34% armor 12% shield 6% gauntlets 6% hat 5% ring 4% boots 2% belt This adds up to a total of 69%, which will display on the status screen. The actual damage taken is 66% x 88% and so on, which comes out to about 46%. Protective spells seem to reduce damage by about half (again this is based more on my memory of A4), so with buffs, damage taken will be about 23% of max. Now let's pretend we have much lighter armor: 12% armor 8% shield 3% gauntlets 3% hat 0% ring non-armorous 3% boots 2% belt (...they don't have hats in geneforge, huh. Well, that's why this is a demo ) This adds up to a displayed total of 31%, less than half the armor of the above equipment. The actual damage taken is about 72%, so with buffs you end up taking 36%. That's an extra 50% damage. Not insignificant, however 1) If the heavier equipment requires multiple points of Strength, multiple points of Endurance will get you WAY more ability to take blows 2) more importantly, you get an extra 1/2 damage against physical attacks, but take a negligible amount extra from magic, fire, ice, etc., and nothing extra from poison, acid, or mental attacks. So you can endure thahds and drayks better, but are not much hardier against cryodrayks or wingbolts. --- In other news... I have been thinking about your whole approach and I am starting to think you may be right that the Infiltrator is as good as the Servile. However, the Infiltrator makes a worse Servile. The problem is that due to your rather zealous promotion of her and my ordinal orientation, we've been looking at two classes doing the same build rather than doing two different builds with different strengths. Essentially, the Servile IS better with the numbers, but spells can trump numbers, just like creations can. Incidentally, is there anyone here who doubts that the missing sixth class, the Magic strong Combat weak one, would undoubtedly be the best class by a mile unless its essence score was unexpectedly nerfed?

You're right, I think, that we have fundamentally different approaches to this, even with the same build. I would never think about "indulging" so impulsively with a commodity as precious as skill points. No doubt my optimizing seems equally compulsive to you. I do question however the use of wearing such heavy equipment. You just don't get a very good return out of it, if you have to pump strength in order to wear it. Because all the defensive multipliers stack by multiplication, the actual damage reduction is not tremendous; since Endurance gives such good returns now (for an Infiltrator, it's twice what it used to be for an Agent IIRC) that seems a much better defensive investment. If there were no good light armor, that would be one thing, but there is great light armor that gives you bonuses in other areas.

Maybe Glaahks are the true "turgid, fleshy sex drones of Almaria"...

Quote: Originally written by Synergy67: I will be adding no more Strength or Endurance for the rest of the game. I could have done without either if I really felt it was critical to pump the Intelligence, but the build is so successful anyway, I can indulge a little. Your last build ended up with 18 strength at the end. Totally unnecessary! You had +10 from items, and you don't need nearly that much to wear the best stuff, so I'm just curious why you're willing to sink so many skill points there. Endurance, too. 12 or 14 of those points were just getting you up to the Str and HP that a Servile starts with -- more than enough to make up the difference in magic skill costs. There is also the question of why you are pumping Dex at all. Given your investment in magic, missile weapons aren't going to be too critical, and at any rate I'd expect you to get more mileage out of an extra point in Battle Magic. Your Int is perhaps higher than I'd expect, too. What exactly are you spending 230 essence on in every zone?

Wait a second. Xian Cow. ...

I was quite surprised to hear that you bought Strength and Endurance right away, after our last discussion. Why do you need 6 Strength anyway? I see how much you favor heavy, high armor % armor. But why? Remember that the armor % shown on the status screen is higher than the reduction you will actually get, since the percentages are multiplied together and not added when they are applied. I'd take the Carnelian Gloves any day.

I picture something more like the rare Fat Chocobo version of the Chocobo call spell in Final Fantasy 5, where a giant fat chocobo bounces onto the screen, causing an earthquake, then bounces off. Except of course, instead of a fat chocobo, you have a cave cow.

As I recall, it was several months before there were any good third-party scenarios out for BoE. Riddle of the Spheres was the one early outlier, and it got a lot of acclaim for (essentially) not being sucky. But it took a long time before there were 30 passable scenarios, let alone good ones, on those lists. I could be wrong, but I've always had the impression (based on the flurry of activity) that BoE sold fine from the very beginning.

BOVINE THUD!

The thing is that those are two different legitimate strategies. A Lifecrafter is a worse singleton than a Servile, period. A Servile is a worse pack leader than a Lifecrafter, period. A Shock Trooper is a worse singleton than a Servile, period, and a worse pack leader than a Lifecrafter, period. He can be a different sort of pack leader, but it's just a suboptimal version of the same basic strategy.

Didn't BoE have the same registration barrier as BoA? And BoE didn't sell so badly. So I think it's silly to argue that the registration barrier was a serious problem. It didn't help, but I think the oft-mentioned points about the relative complexity and unfriendliness of the editor were the problem.

Actually, there's just one -- Glick -- and that is the only place in the game where being a Servile will affect the gameplay at all. The discount is pretty crappy, too.