...are from Tibus

In practice, Intellect doesn't boost weapon shaping in a meaningful way. In practice, skills that improve physical attacks do make weapon shaping better -- it's an indirect effect, but it's meaningful. I understand the complaint about the % bonuses, but this is basically about flavor, not balance. If anything, I think my vote would be "replace Evasion with a dedicated Weapon Shaping skill." Then it could work exactly the way e.g. Battle Magic works. The "sum of Melee/Missile weapons" thing feels like a weird holdover from Avernum's Battle Disciplines (which, in their original incarnation, were incredibly similar to weapon shaping in other ways, too). Evasion itself is an odd skill -- it's the only skill whose effects are a complete subset of another skill's (Dexterity), and while it scales differently from Dex, it's not ultimately a very effective skill. Plus, it pretty clearly ended up there just as a less-vulnerable-to-imbalance version of Parry. (re Essence Mastery, the Guardian/Agent analysis leaves out Shapers, who like Essence Mastery as much as or more than anyone else, so I think that would feel pretty weird)

This isn't something we have to guess at. Wikipedia helpfully gives us this: From 2010 through 2024, there have been 10 games released in roughly 15 years of work. So that's an average of 1.5 years per game -- however, half of those games were brand new (Avadon 1-3 and QW 1-2), and four were new engines (Avadon, AEFTP, QW, Mutagen), which is all extra work. Work on different games isn't completely separated, and the timeline doesn't show seasons, so you can't specifically see which games took more work here, but Jeff has stated in the past that remakes take less work. (The most extreme example is Nethergate: Resurrection, which Jeff said took about 3 months of work. However, that was also a remake in the same engine as the original one, just a much more mature version of it.) If the new games are 2 years, and the remakes are 1 year, that adds up to 15 years. Or you could interpret it as 20 months for new games and 16 months for remakes and get the same total. (Note that this doesn't account for the new-engine time, while the list of 6 remakes we're looking at only includes 1 of those.) Anyway, my money's on 6-9 years depending.

No way. In the last decade or so, Spiderweb has spent closer to 2 years on brand new games, and closer to 1 year on remakes, especially when not the first game in a series. A4, G3, A5, G4, A6, G5 could well be 6 years, and I wouldn't expect it to be more than 8 or 9.

1) You are wrong. I didn't nerf fire. Fire creations resist fire. That's it. Did you read the codex? 2) You just wrote above "you made it so that it's worth shaping everything" so I will refer you to that statement. 3) Did you read the codex? 4) No. Also, it *is* annulet. That's a word. 5) You're probably not ready to do anything with them yet. Did you read the relevant quest?

Yes - see under Quality of Life in this post.

What is "stuff"? These vague descriptions make it really hard to help you. You've never seen it trigger at all, not when fighting anything?

I'm not saying "5 percent isn't much." Sometimes, 5 percent is a lot. I'm saying that adding duration to these statuses, whether +5% or +20%, doesn't matter. Getting 6 turns of War Blessing instead of 5 has zero impact on whether or not any character ever wants to use a weapon shaping skill. Especially not when you compare it with the big cost for a magic-oriented character, discussed above: needing to use a physical attack rather than a spell. Extra duration on statuses really only matters when all of the following are true: - The initial duration isn't long enough for what you need - Reapplying the status is a non-trivial task - The status is strong This describes something like Dominate. This doesn't describe much if anything that weapon shaping does. Just because a bonus exists, does not mean it matters. Just because a bonus has a large number, does not mean it's strong. Context matters.

If it's a creation augment issue, it is not mod-related. Augments are not moddable. Can you be specific about what you are seeing? What does "doesn't hit anyone" mean, what situations did you try it out in? Remember the exploding boils thing? 🙂 I think I'm just going to split all your questions to a new thread. This topic really can't be your personal tutorial topic, especially when half of the questions aren't really about Overrun.

You keep saying "its modifiers" as if anybody cares about either (1) Intellect, or (2) the duration modifiers for these skills. +5% to duration isn't relevant to all that much. Also, in order to use any weapon shaping ability you're using a physical attack. Which uses physical attack modifiers. To do actual damage. Which you probably care about a lot more than an extra +5% duration to war blessing or vulnerability or whatever. Agents don't care that much about Intellect. Agents do care about being able to use their actions to cast spells. That makes weapon shaping not the first thing they're going to turn to. Weapon shaping is excellent when it's a mostly-free bonus you tack onto your regular strong attack. If you're only making the attack in order to use the weapon shaping ability, it's not as good -- most of the time, in that scenario, you'd rather just cast a spell.

How offensive ability strength is determined: Damage The base damage range (shown in the tooltip) is basically a good old die roll: for example, 4d6 + 5. Die quantity = 1 + Character Level + Ability Skill (e.g. in Firebolt or Guarded Lunge) + Weapon Level (if a weapon-based attack) Die size = fixed, depends on ability used. Base damage = fixed, depends on ability used. * If attacking unarmed with the Feisty Slap Gloves, Strength also adds to die quantity. After rolling base damage, apply the bonus damage % (also shown in the tooltip). Bonus damage % is mostly additive. This is where you get +5% from Strength, +8% from Melee Weapons, etc. Most sources are conditional, and the tooltips are not always precise as to when they apply: Physical melee only: Strength Physical ranged only: Dexterity Any magical/elemental damage: Intellect Melee Weapon attacks only: Melee Weapons Ranged Weapon attacks only: Ranged Weapons Melee/ranged attacks only: Guarded Lunge and Essence Lash modifiers Spells only: Spellcraft Spells of a particular school only: Battle Magic, Mental Magic, Blessing Magic, Healing Craft Specific abilities only: the % bonuses certain abilities gain from extra skill, e.g. +25% per point in Firebolt beyond 1. Everything: Statuses (War Blessing, Curse, Enraged, Overload, Rooted, etc.) Everything (summed and then multiplied with the above total): flat % damage bonuses from equipment/charms (e.g. "+5% to melee damage") * In the rare case that an ability does two types of damage (such as that one sword), the first damage type appears to determine which % bonuses are used for both damage components. Duration This is calculated basically the same way as damage. Most status effects omit the dice component, and just have a fixed base duration. Bonus duration % is much like bonus damage % with two exceptions: 1. Status duration always uses Intellect bonuses, never Strength or Dexterity bonuses. 2. Status duration uses "% to blessings/curses" equipment/charm bonuses rather than "% to damage" ones. Bonus duration % is effectively applied with a little bit of variance, which is why you don't always get identical durations when casting the same spell, unless you have no such bonuses.

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.