Mea Tulpa

The G4 analysis is mostly accurate for G5, I think. The only change off the top of my head is the War Trall missile multiplier. The thorn base damage displayed in the item info window is meaningless and has been since G1. Who knows what it was intended for originally.

Yup -- exactly the same. Reapers have no status effect, they just have the highest damage multiplier in the game (1-12 per level).

Ghaldring, to me at least, seemed much more canny and interesting in G4 than in G5, where he has become a cardboard cutout rebel leader.

This has been true of every game in the series. Well, the G1 --> G2 trip preserved a lot more, actually.

Flat.

I just checked, and there is no 10-cap for Parry. This means that you can get a 60% Parry rate, if you really want to. This is actually higher than G4's max rate of 54%, although it doesn't catch up until you get to 24 points Does Parry have *any* chance of blocking missile-type attacks (physical or magical)?

...has been totally un-nerfed. Some quick tests suggest that 10 Quick Action once again provides about a 50% activation rate. Even better... 20 Quick Action appears to provide a 100% activation rate! I am not quite sure about this, but I have yet to not get a second strike with 20 QA. (Note that you never get a second strike if the first hit kills the enemy. Obviously, I'm not counting that.) Actually, I think the 10-cap just doesn't exist anymore, for any skills. Can anyone confirm this for Luck, Dex, or Parry? *does a little dance* This makes melee a viable attack type again for singleton PCs. Huzzah! *goes off to start a melee servile*

Or throws them out entirely. Based on what Litalia says about Drypeak Valley, it seems that NONE of the G2 endings are canonical. (Except possibly the unsuccessful ending where you quit the game

They are almost the same, but the lifecrafter has a bonus of I think +8 to either HP or SP, I forget which. That's all.

I mean there are no events in conversation with people, in towns, etc. that have a different outcome if you have Luck above a certain amount. This is in contrast to past games. In Geneforge 1 for example having high Luck would let you find hidden items in certain locations.

Yes, the strongest build in the game is probably a lifecrafter with high battle or magic shaping, and high mental magic.

I'm not assuming he's screwing up, and I don't think anybody else is either. But, by the same logic, we're not going to assume it's a genuine bug until we check the things we know can interfere with it working right.

It's not a complete waste. But until all the main useful skills are at high skill point costs to raise, it probably isn't worthwhile. The scripts contain exactly *zero* checks for the PC's luck, btw.

What's your Mechanics at?

Alorael's signature summary puts it well. The only generic enemy that will hassle the War Trall is the Pylon. This old school style of pylon is rare. It is the Wingbolt & Gazer's shining moment. However, Drakons and other fire/ice creations will have *way* more trouble with it than a War Trall will. (It resists physical at 60%, while the Trall resists its attacks at 40%. Drakons & company resist its attacks at 30% or lower and do 10% or 0% regular damage to it!) Wat Tralls are not "just reliable" -- there are enemies that do not resist physical, but do resist all sorts of magical attacks. War Tralls shine against Gazers and Eyebeasts! Whereas Gazers actually have trouble with enemy War Tralls, since they have no armor whatsoever. Drakons on the other hand are not in the same league. They are good, but have no real advantages over Wingbolts. Basically any enemy that the Drakon has good resistance against (i.e. a fire attack user) also has resistance to the Drakon's attack. I would say: War tralls and gazers/wingbolts will be quite effective most of the time, super effective on rare occasions and ineffective on rare occasions. Drakons will often be quite effective, and will sometimes be ineffective.

I agree with you about the sorceress. I was disappointed by her as well, and she is probably worse than a lifecrafter or an infiltrator. Or a shock trooper. My post was simply correcting your statement that the servile can shape as well as the sorceress. He can't.

If your PC is being surrounded and hit by a whole group of nasties at once, you are doing something wrong. Playing the game without either mental magic, or creations, is giving yourself a giant handicap.

"Waiting for the right items" was an excellent strategy in G4, because the best creations didn't have much time to level up anyway. In G5, it doesn't work as well. All the best creations can be shaped by level 25 or so, without skipping entire segments of the game. Some other good ones become available around level 10. That gives you 30 to 45 player level ups, or about 15 to 30 level ups creations are likely to get while they follow you around. Additionally, shaping skill no longer has a 10-cap so the shaping bonus items are just as helpful for strong-shaping classes who have already invested in those skills. Finally, the servile gets 6/7 the essence of the sorceress and also has less Intelligence (I forget if it's 1 or 2 points less). So a servile certainly *can* shape, but he *won't* do it as well as a sorceress, with or without the items. He will be slightly worse at making disposable creations, and significantly worse at making permanent allies.

Nope -- Basilisk released for Windows first, Mac a month later. Ohtar is correct.

Poison and acid resistance are honestly not important. They are great if you have them, but they are not worth dropping points in skills that are holes. They do reduce damage, but not by that much unless you have a lot of them. Poison and acid are annoying, but easily neutralized by spells. And unless you have unrealistically high resistance, you will get at least some poison or acid and will have to use the spells anyway.

Immensely less advantageous, yes; but considering that the advantage of ranged in G3 approached infinity, that only says so much. I wonder if my differing opinion here is due to my playing on Normal this time around. Certainly I've said that to other Normal players often enough in the past...

Unless they pump Spellcraft to very high levels so that Str is far cheaper.

Correct.

Fire shaping was never really dominant. Cryoas have always been good, but with the possible exception of G1 when drayks and cryodrayks were the ONLY high level ranged attackers, magic shaping has always been a lot better than fire shaping. Vlish were broken in G3 and were also the best creation value in G2 -- nobody noticed because Parry was such an attention-getter there. And in G1, there was a good case to be made for using vlish and glaahks. In G4, of course, we all know that Wingbolts were the end of the story. Battle shaping is very good in G5, but it isn't hands down better than the other options -- even if War Tralls are the best overall creation, the lack of ranged attackers before 5th tier means that, even if it equals fire or magic shaping for a given tier, it certainly doesn't surpass them.

Look at the script, Randomizer -- you get a dialog option either way. It only forces you if you have 15. Assumptions are so easy to check...