Men are from Slars

I encountered a similar issue on my MacBook (also late 2006, 10.5.5). It has only come up for me the first time I opened the application, when I left it sitting on the class select dialog for a long time. After a couple minutes the audio loop went to the left channel only, but sound effects were on both. Later when I started the game, the audio loop went to the right channel only. My other uses of the application have been fine.

Some questions are subjective. Other questions are not. People may have different opinions on both kinds of questions, but for the second kind, some of those people are simply wrong.

Wait, he got rid of ALL the charged creations? Is this true? Christ, will somebody with a completed game PLEASE post the list of creations and base essence costs already? Too many of them have changed. Randomizer, DV, I'm looking at you.

Why the Shock Trooper in G4 would ever rate above the Servile is beyond me. G5 is a different story, but in G4 the Shock Trooper really was an inferior class.

It certainly seems unintentional. Jeff is usually careful about making sure you don't lose credit for a quest by completing it before talking to the people involved.

Spiderweb Software brings you Geneforge 5: Overthrow, the final chapter in their fantasy epic. Return to the world of the Shapers one final time. Explore a vast, war-torn world, create and mold your own army of strange, powerful monsters, and choose a side to help lead to final victory. The Shapers have the ability to create life in any form they choose. They can make living tools that obey their commands, plants that can flourish in the harshest wasteland, and powerful monsters that can crush all who oppose them. The Shapers ruled the known lands, and any who tried to rebel or learn their magical secrets were destroyed. But then their creations rebelled. Working with humans jealous of their masters, they stole the secrets of the Shapers and created their own armies. They created and unleashed new, even more powerful creations and matched the Shapers in savagery. And now, years into the rebellion, the war has settled into a gruesome stalemate. The lands are scorched, and city after city falls. The two sides are so delicately balanced that one brave warrior can turn the tide. Will you help the rebels overthrow the Shapers? Will you help the Shapers regain their power, tempted by the incredible rewards they offer? You might be able to end this war. Which side will you choose? System requirements: * PC Running Windows 2000 or later or Macintosh running System 10.3.9 or later. * 50 MB free RAM. * 200 MB hard disk space. * 1024x768 screen resolution with 16 bit color (Windows) or 32 bit color (Macintosh). * Geneforge 5 will run natively on Intel Macintoshes. Go to the Geneforge 5 homepage to download the demo!

Daze was an example. The point is that poison and acid are not required.

I just don't think they're "vital". I could just as easily say a good Daze is "vital" to dealing with the glaahks, but as your example shows, it isn't the only solution. etc, etc

Originally Posted By: Delicious Vlish It is now of vital importance to make sure you have a means of acid or poison application. Isn't this a bit overdramatic? Acid and poison can be useful, but in the end they are just another way of doing damage. If a searing artila attacks a creature every turn, and a wingbolt attacks it every turn as well, the wingbolt will do more damage than the artila will, COUNTING the acid drip damage as part of the artila's damage. The fact that part of the artila's damage happens over time is certainly not an advantage when facing regeneration! The faster you do damage and kill something, the fewer turns it has to regenerate.

Armor's damage reduction also wasn't multiplicative in the original Nethergate, or in any games that preceeded the Geneforge engine. Before Geneforge, it was adding integers instead of multiplying percents.

The clawbug gets 60 bonus HP while the artila gets 10 bonus HP. The clawbug has 40% armor while the artila has 50% magic resistance. The HP difference is significant at low levels but not with the superbuff creations we're discussing. So really it's just armor vs magic resistance. Well, and the clawbug also does slightly more damage, and costs more essence. Are you sure poison/acid status stops regen? Or do you just mean it does damage to make up for it?

When I said "vs wingbolts" I meant "compared to using wingbolts", not "when attacking wingbolts". A fully pumped Vlish will do about half the damage of a typical Wingbolt, against *anything*. (They are both magic damage.) Creations go up to +8. Battle shaping only has poison and acid for ancillary effects. They are pure damage ancillary effects, and they are on creations which, like the artila and searing artila, do a lot less damage in the first place, so I'm not sure how helpful they are.

There have been 7-unzip applications on the mac for ages.

*nod* The one thing is that with so many chances to boost Strength (level ups, shaping skill, item bonuses, pumping creation stats directly) the attack multiplier becomes a lot more important. So an unstatpumped Wingbolt is gonna dish out a lot more than a +8 strength Vlish. On the other hand, a Cryoa may be preferable to a Cryodrayk because of direct pumping. Basically the best offensive creations end up being: Drayk & Drakon (Fire), Cryoa & Cryodrayk (Ice) War Trall (Phys) Wingbolt & Gazer (Magical) Magic shaping also has ancillary creations: Vlish for weaken, Artila and Searing Artila for poison and acid, Glaahk for stun. All of those involve significant loss of flat out damage vs wingbolts, so I'm not sure they are worth it.

So I did some tests and I found that the experience creations gain is still a constant percentage of the experience your PC gains, based on the level gap. I have only seen percentages in the 50% to 100% range, and unless your creation is more than 10 levels above or below it stays between 60% and 80%. I also found that shaping skills no longer have a 10-cap. Combined, this means that every point you buy in a shaping is worth between 1 level (for a freshly shaped, or disposable creation) and 1/2 level (for a creation you keep with you a very long time). It starts and 1 and will gradually diminish so long as your creation is a higher level than you, but it will never go below 0.5 in value. In practice, since even without shaping skill bonuses the creation probably wouldn't earn the full 100%, and you are not usually going to create a strong enough creation to only earn 50%, the value you get out of it is more likely to float between about 1 and 0.7. Level is hugely important for creations. All creations get +1 to all four stats for every 2 levels, and their HP and Energy increase independently of End and Int for every 1 level -- this means that HP and Energy go up pseudo-exponentially. THE POINT: This makes raising shaping skill the fastest way to ramp up damage, since you are permanently raising Strength for up to 7 creations for every 1-4 points you put in it (depending on the math above). Plus, you raise your creations' survivability tremendously at the same time. The large number of levels available to gain in G5, for your PC, means that (1) you have plenty of skill points available to pump both Int and a shaping skill, and (2) less Int is required to start making the creation type you want. The two free bonuses to Int you can get in the demo don't hurt, either. If you pump Fire Shaping and make a Cryoa, it can easily be level 50 by the end of the game. If you pump Battle Shaping and make a Plated Clawbug when you get to Mera-Tev, it will start around level 35 and can easily be level 55 by the end of the game. Dash for the Glaahk canister and it should go from 40 to 60. But the real charm of this strategy, I suspect, is in making pumped up higher tier creations when you are around level 25 or 30. They will start high and will begin to max out along with you by the end of the game. This is *not* the game for disposable creations!

No.

Actually, it suggests that it undoes some of your previous shaping.

Not all Geneforges are created equal.

Once or more.

What leftover points? Most of the leftover points should be going into Int. (I just don't increase skills till I have a use for it, and in the demo it's unnecessary.) As a shaper-type, in G5, there is so much essence available that you can always have lots of good creations. At that point, even if you increase your combat skills to equal those of your creations (which is very unlikely without some dedicated pumping) all you do is increase your team's potential damage output by 1/7. I'd rather pump Int and upgrade a creation or two. Parry, I suppose I can see some utility for since your creations are probably a lot hardier than you at this point. Or even Strength to wear better equipment, or even Endurance.

No. It does have "iamweak" and "iampoor", though.

Actually, the Unstable Firebolts are also better off meleeing the wingbolts (I think -- depends on how much aura damage there is). Melee damage will be about 2.5 per level per turn for the wingbolts and 5.0 per level per turn for the firebolts, plus poison for each. Note also that wingbolts get a lower bonus on their melee attack. So they are not *that* much better off with melee.

Right, you don't need to add points to shaping. You DO however definitely want the max essence available, which means Lifecrafter or Shock Trooper. Given how high your intelligence will be, the extra 17% spell energy the ST gets over the lifecrafter doesn't really matter. What's left to crank is Int, Int, and more Int, so you can get more of the better creations. Beyond that I remain unconvinced that any of the combat skills matter for this build, but you're right that magic skills don't really require pumping either. I call it a toss-up.

The Servile-Presence appears to be unkillable until you use the Geneforge, looking at its script.

Wow. So I'm kind of tempted to throw the optimizing out the window. With so many skill points in place and, in particular, with so many rolling in so early -- and with most skills still under the influence of diminishing returns and/or the 10-cap. Exception: High levels means Essence builds up quickly. High skill points means Int can be pumped more than usual. A lifecrafter will easily hit 1200 essence at level 60, potentially 1800 or more, and getting to 1000 midgame isn't unreasonable at all. That's crazy. Crazy capacity for powerful creations like we haven't seen in the past. Sheesh -- G5 is a shaper's game once again, even if in a less broken way than G1 and G3 were.