Men are from Slars

No. Weapon Shaping 100% does not have its own rules. This whole thread is a mix of assumptions, and things that are simply wrong.

The base damage range is determined by the ability itself. In the case of Chain Lightning this does not care about any equipped weapons, it's a separate ability. Jeff asked me for a few suggested tooltip fixes. I sent a short list. He used several verbatim in v1.0.2 (notably for Mental Magic and Blessing Magic), but did not use the ones for Str/Dex/Int, so I assume he prefers the current versions.

The formula for living tool use uses (Mechanics +1) as a divisor. The 5th point of Mechanics only costs 3 skill points and it still makes a reasonable difference in living tool consumption, so that's an easy enough choice outside of challenge playthrough territory.

(This is, btw, why I wish the tooltips for Str/Dex/Int read "physical melee damage" and "physical ranged damage" and "magical/elemental damage" rather than what they currently say. But ah well.)

Guarded Lunge's % bonus does not increase with Intellect. Chain Lightning's will, because it's an energy attack. This is the same reason the Gazer's "melee" attack gets a bonus from Magical Skill rather than Strength -- it does energy damage. Intellect has no special relevance to weapon shaping.

Mechanics 6 is more than enough to get through the first 2/3 of the game with a serious living tool surplus, and that puts you at Mechanics 13 once you get the items and the book point, none of which are gated by late game stuff. You get diminishing returns in living tool cost reduction, and you pay an increasing cost in skill points. Personally I'm quite happy with it at 5. It only takes 15 skill points to raise Mechanics to 6.

Intellect increases the % bonus for weapon shaping status duration, because Intellect is the stat that increases the % bonus for all status durations, regardless of what ability they're on. (I believe this is actually a change in v1.0.2 -- I could have sworn Quick Action did this for weapon shaping previously -- but I might be wrong on that.) Bonus damage from weapon shaping skills like Guarded Lunge is a function of your regular attack damage -- Intellect has nothing to do with that.

- G2 changed the acid/poison DoT power I believe, but Overrun does not. - Shock can't two-shot anything. I think what you're actually saying is you had a creation that took a big hit, and then died from two turns of DoT after taking the big hit. - I don't know how else I can say "collection quest progress is displayed in the text log" and "details about what the mod affects are listed in the codex." I'd love for you to enjoy the mod. It does seem like you're struggling with a lot of things, many of which aren't actually different in the mod. Can I politely suggest that you open up the codex and read through it before your next round of questions? 🙂 I think there is a lot of info there that you will appreciate.

Exile was actually written for Mac first. System requirements from Spiderweb's website (the pages for Exile are still up): Mac: Exile requires System 7, 256 colors, 2 MB free memory, 3 MB disk space, and a 13" monitor. PC: Exile requires Windows 3.1 or 95, 256 colors, 2 MB free memory, 5 MB disk space, and a 13" monitor.

If enemy level went up at the same rate as PC level, I could understanding thinking that. But it doesn't. PC level tends to go up faster. There's simply a surplus of stuff available to kill to get good XP at any given level. Also, long-term, eventually you hit zero XP. So an early XP penalty like level 8 is completely irrelevant by then. There is a huge surplus of things that will give you XP, up to a certain level. This is why it truly doesn't matter what order you do most quests and kill most enemies in, you'll eventually be at a level where the vast majority of things in the game give you nothing. You will get zero XP from lots and lots of stuff.

-1000 XP at level 8 and -1000 XP at level 14 mean very, very different things. -1000 XP at level 8 will have no lasting impact at all. Truly none. -1000 XP at level 14 is something you'll feel for a while.

Some vlish have a special ability that gives them a chance to land Shock, which is a DoT. It's not a particularly high chance. I didn't remove any acid-setting ability from vlish, though.

To be really direct though - your FOMO over Mechanics is still really strange to me. If you are a little more patient, waiting for quest completion before you force your way through every locked door you find, you shouldn't have any issues running out of living tools. Overrun doesn't change this at all, btw.

No, it's not that difficult. Lorn had a pile of questions like these about the base game, too 🙂 Lorn: 1) There's literally already an image of it earlier in this thread. 3) Dominate does not require 60 essence. It requires 60 energy. Note that any spell can be cast when you are at max energy, no matter how much its energy cost, and you recover quite a bit of energy for free every round as well. So having low max energy just means you can't spam every spell you want. That said, the reason for the increased energy costs were to make Intellect a stat worth investing in. Intellect was very close to worthless in the base game. Energy also goes up as you increase in level. You can't just spam all the most powerful spells when you are level 7. If you want an unrestricted power fantasy, don't play a balance mod 🙂 4) I have absolutely no idea what you are saying about acid and Vlish. 5) The creation screen has limited space for text, so abbreviations are gonna be there whether you like them or not. They are explained, however -- in the codex. Second 3) You can just use "retrain" to respec your skill points, you don't need to start over.

The beginning of them game and Freegate both happen at very specific points. The Taker passes don't; you can get to them fairly quickly after Freegate, maybe 20-30% through the game, or you can complete basically all of Awakened and Barzite lands first, more like 70-80%. That makes them a poor way to impact progression. This is even more true of whatever 3 zones you pick as Barzite gates. In other words -- Freegate doesn't create any incentives to manipulate the game in weird ways for an advantage. Doing that in the passes would.

No. Those are not choke points. The player is not forced to go through one specific place, so there's no one place you can attach an XP (or whatever) penalty to. Western Pass and Northern Pass are not choke points, they aren't even required zones. The only true choke points are the beginning of the game and Freegate.

Yes, Overrun on Torment does other things also, to make Torment actually challenging even for players who optimize well and know the tips and tricks that make every Spiderweb game easier 🙂 Actually I think that's not a terrible idea about the lower XP award. The real issue (and the reason the Overrun -10's are where they are) is that the game has zero guaranteed choke points that the PC must go through, with the exception of the very beginning of the game, and Freegate. Everything else is optional, and can be done in any order, which prevents negative XP events from really being meaningful.

Your progress on collection quests, including all five of Thornstalker's is displayed in the text log, each time you deliver items to the recipient. The special item tab is in exactly the same place it is in the base game. In the same window with quests, journal entries, and codex entries.

I agree with you about levelling. That said it's very tricky to balance as a dev, because you have to balance both for people who play all side content, and for people who ignore all side content -- which in GF isn't just most of the quests, it's also half of the zones -- and because GF gives you so much freedom as to the order you do things in, it would be difficult to solve simply by having clearer gradations in the base level set for XP in different places. (This is why Overrun on Torment artifically slows the player's progression, ultimately taking away 2 levels worth of skill points. But doing anything equivalent in the base game wouldn't really work for all players.)

I'll bet real money that this isn't a bug at all, and that it's just the Essence Mastery loss from Tessera Eye 😛

I tried and I can't duplicate this. Just confirming, aquamarine: you have a save where rechargeme works, you talk to Rhakkus and get altered, and it immediately stops working? Without shaping anything new? Tessera Eye does something very different, which is that you permanently lose a point of Essence Mastery. This directly lowers your total Essence. Maybe the game simply doesn't take away your current essence when that happens, even if your existing creations would be enough to use up your entire reduced essence stock.

Shaping has a much, much higher DPS than battle magic, melee weapons, or missile weapons do, if you invest in it. The gap is not small. This is true for the entire game. Magic can certainly be effective for damage, and it has some other great advantages. But Battle Magic does not in any way outpower shaping.

None of these things are related to the version change, they are just how it's always been 1 is just how XP works, usually it's just based on level but some enemies appear to have level adjusted in a way that doesn't affect XP. 2 is normal, tier 4 creations have extra mental resist 3 is normal, percentile bonuses to duration are applied in a way that is random 4 is normal AFAIK

"less AoE damage" is not a footnote. It's the headline.

You know, that's not a bad idea. I'll give that a shot in the next version.