Men are from Slars

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...

Are you sure you tried it after using *fifteen* canisters? The script certainly looks like it forces you to attack.

War Tralls actually resist all sorts of damage, and they have one of the strongest missile attacks in the game. Gazers are *not* immune to mental effects, either, although they do have high mental resistance. Tralls have mental resistance too.

To clarify, the scripts do have item drop information, but only for generic creatures, not uniques.

I don't know about the ending (which is not in scripts), but there are only three places where the scripts check canister use. One is dialogue only and checks for 8 or more. The others are forced combat checks: at the Dera Bridge for 15 or more and in Outer Gazaki-Uss for 10 or more.

Yup. The stat descriptions can be a tad misleading at times. Battle Magic, Spellcraft, and training in the spell itself help with missile-like spells. (Items that give a flat bonus to hit also help with spells, I believe.)

I haven't gone there, so I don't know. That's why I'm asking. :-D

Something I've been contemplating recently. Is it possible to dash through the Depository in the demo, dropping Fyoras behind you to keep the golems away, and grab the Create Drayk canister at the very beginning? If so Drayks become an option for nearly any build. A Drayk you make at level 10, even with no extra points allocated to Fire Shaping, will be close to maxxing out on levels by the end of the game anyway; and of course it will be absurdly strong early on. At 60 essence, it's actually affordable enough to make early, too. While it will never quite equal a War Trall or Wingbolt in usefulness, it provides a nice secondary option.