Men are from Slars

How high a level can we expect to reach in G5? I haven't even finished the demo yet and I just hit level 15. I don't remember levelling up this quickly in the past -- 14 times and only 6 non-town zones explored. Surely it can't continue at this rate? Incidentally, as a Lifecrafter with 3 Cryoa, it's been a complete cake walk. With levels outpacing creation availability I am in the bizarre position of having lots of leftover essence even though I have 40 skill points sitting unspent.

They may be less dangerous to wingbolts on the whole -- I'm not sure. However, note that Firebolt does 1-3 per level whereas Lightning Aura does 1-8 per level plus the ancillary effect. Taking wingbolt resistance into account that's an average of 4 per level per turn for firebolt and 1.8 per level per turn for the aura, plus aura damage. Whereas the wingbolt's attack against the unstable firebolt will do only 1.0 per level per turn.

Almost no effect. For NPCs (*not* for your own creations) level appears to have some kind of an impact on mental magic resistance. It's possible this just comes from Intelligence like with your characters, but it's unclear, since Dex and End do not contribute to acid and poison resistence for enemies.

An unfortunate quote, as I was overhasty in my praise of the Sorceress.

"Viable" and "optimal" are two different things. This is my point. ANYTHING is viable. We are not talking about viable. The base level for an alpha is 20. The base level for a beta is 26. The base level for a glaahk is 20. The base level for an ur-glaahk is 30. So, since you are saying we should put in game experience above tables: how much in game experience do you have with glaahks?

Why in the world would you be using Battle Betas OR Glaahks in the end game? Obviously Glaahks are a poor choice against Wingbolts or whatnot. However, far more enemies resist physical than magical damage. Really though my main point was the Glaahks and Battle Alphas cost the same essence (or used to anyway, nobody's posted G5 costs yet), have attacks with the same damage range, but Glaahks have a significantly higher bonus level with that attack -- meaning they will consistently do more damage against anything that is not a magic creation. (Yes, they WILL do more damage against War Tralls, which resist both attack types.) DV -- if all you want is to play the game, then ALL of these conversations are a waste of time! The differences between the classes are picayune and any set of creations with any build can make it through the game, even on Torment. However, when we are in a state of min-maxing analysis, looking at the tables is the whole point.

Yeah, the melee attack of Gazers and Eyebeasts has an insane multiplier and is magic-based. For Wingbolts, of course, this is probably still a better option. Interesting thing about Unstable Firebolts in G5: according to the defs, they don't use Firebolt any more. They use Lightning Aura. They still have the bonus AP, so this makes them considerably more dangerous. (And still not good news for Wingbolts.)

You're thinking of Gazers. Eyebeasts basically attack with Aura of Flames.

Pumping blessing magic only makes it last longer. It doesn't increase the bonus. Similarly, the damage ramp for missile skill is more or less the same as for battle magic, so you might as well give that bonus to the majority of your attacks instead of a handful of crystal tosses. Adding a couple cheap points once it starts costing 10 or 12 to boost either magic pump skill is one thing, but that doesn't seem to be what's being discussed.

Really? Because unless I'm misreading the defs, Battle ABs still do less damage than Glaahks (-and- don't stun).

You're right, I was misreading the defs.

Well, perhaps it's fun, but if you're trying to find out whether or not the build works, diversifying attacks seems kind of stupid. I wasn't complaining about magic and thrown, I was complaining about all 3 attack types: pick one and stick with it. You can argue the merits of swords vs spells vs missiles all you want, but choosing one of them (swords or spells, at any rate) and investing heavily in it is going to leave you better off, 99% of the time, than having a little bit invested in each one. Battle magic provides enough different attack types and ancillary effects that it will never really be ineffective against a given enemy. Swords aren't great against everything, but there is almost nothing that they aren't decent against, when pumped.

Originally Posted By: The Lurker I want him to be a decent spellcaster when it comes to battle magic... He will also need to be good at swordfighting and throwing missiles. Why, why, why? Pick one or the other. Why develop redundant skills?

This sounds suspiciously similar to the "sudden unstoppable scrolling" problem I had with the earlier Geneforge games. I believe Jeff found the bug responsible and fixed it, but perhaps it made it into A5?

Plated Bugs actually look like one of the best melee creations this time around, thanks to that AP bonus and the lack of good haste. Their attack is 1-5 like all melee attacks, but they get two of them (and they do cause poison). Improving their damage by one level will do an average of 6 damage extra before armor... it scales faster than almost any attack in the game. I still prefer the consistency of ranged attacks, but they are quite good.

Happy happy fun fun?

Are they a significant factor in G5? In G4, for example, there were enough shades and pylons that you couldn't rely much on cryoas or cryodrayks.

When are there ever bottlenecks in Geneforge? The problem with Cryodrayks is that their damage scales up more slowly than any other high essence creation. Drayks and Drakons will both do less damage to Drakons, it's true, but they will also take significantly less damage. Against a wingbolt, with no relevant resistances either way, the wingbolt will simply do more damage. Also, shades and pylons are problems. The real question for the all-magic shaping or all-fire shaping path is: are there any enemies that resist magic, but don't attack with it? And likewise for fire. War Tralls resist fire and magic, and don't attack with either. But Drayks, Drakons, and Wingbolts all have physical resistance, so the only real loser in the matchup is the Gazer (which is excellent otherwise). Eyebeasts resist magic heavily and attack with fire. This is a potential problem for wingbolts, and an easy win for fire shaping. On the other hand gazers resist magic, fire, and ice and attack with magic -- a problem for fire shaping. Pylons resist fire, ice, and physical attacks heavily, and attack with magic. This is a shining moment for wingbolts and gazers, a problem for war tralls, and a sure loss for drayks and cryodrayks alike.

What about shades, pylons, golems, and other non-creatable enemies with tough attacks and stilted resistances?

What types of enemies are most numerous / annoying in G5? I am trying to look at the viability of different creation attack types.

I just checked, and indeed the Guardian's base essence increased between G3 and G4. Since the Guardian is not a playable class in G4, I have to assume this was done for the benefit of NPC Guardians.

Emulators, irrespective of system, typically have a hard time playing recently released games. Software that was designed for the hardware of 5 years ago is a better bet.

I honestly suspect that the shaper/rebel character differences are unintentional. Especially the Guardian bonus. If you invest in Intelligence at all, the Warrior will eventually overtake the Guardian in Essence anyway. Guardians in G4 could shape in combat, remember? This probably used essence, so suddenly there was a reason to tweak their essence, and since the Guardian was no longer a PC, no reason *not* to. The confusing part is that at level 1, Guardians start out with more than twice as much essence as Shapers! That makes no sense, and is completely contradictory to the first three games. Edit: And DV, the point is that Endurance (and the class modifier) both have relatively little impact unless you pump Endurance pretty high. With a Servile and a starting Endurance of 3, you need to add about 10 points to Endurance to double your HP. The difference of the class modifier is that with a Sorceress, who also starts with 3 Endurance, you need to add about 13 points to double your HP. Or to give another concrete example, at level 19, a Servile with 10 Endurance will have about 322 HP. Whereas a Sorceress at level 19 with 10 Endurance will have about 250 HP.

I've done some digging, and I've more or less gotten the answers. I'm pretty sure I have the exact formulas for Energy and Essence. HP, I don't have the exact formula, but I have a pretty close approximation. The HP data is extremely tricky. Basically, each class has a base amount of HP, Energy, and Essence. The base amounts are all fairly low (with one exception which is probably a bug). Each class also has one of three possible multipliers for each stat. The multiplier changes the amount the stat increases as your level and your Intelligence/Endurance go up. The multiplier makes more of a difference for Spell Energy, a small difference for Essence, and a pretty tiny difference for HP. That last part is different from previous games! THE FORMULAS: Essence = Base + (Int * Lv+1 * Modifier) 8/8 = Large Modifier 7/8 = Medium Modifier 6/8 = Small Modifier Base = 10 for every class except Guardian, where it is 40. I think the Guardian essence was changed in G4, because Guardians were no longer PCs, and nobody realized it needed to be reset for G5. I count this as a bug. Spell Energy = Base + (Int * Lv+1 * Modifier) 14/8 = Large Modifier 12/8 = Medium Modifier 8/8 = Small Modifier Base = 20 for most classes and is between 16 and 28 for all classes. Hit Points = (Base - 6) + ((Modifier * End) + 5.8) * Lv+1) 0.90 = Large Modifier 0.75 = Medium Modifier 0.60 = Small Modifier Base = 20 to 30 for all classes. Note that a substantial portion of HP is independent of both Endurance *and* the class modifier. This is the 5.8 in the above equation. For example, at level 9 with 5 endurance, the difference between the medium and large modifiers is 6 out of over 100 hit points! Not much at all. Class Base Values and Modifiers Code: CLASS ESSENCE SPELL ENERGY HIT POINTS------------ -------- --------- ---------Guardian 40 + 6/8 20 + 8/8 24 + 0.90Warrior 10 + 7/8 20 + 8/8 28 + 0.90Servile 10 + 6/8 16 + 8/8 30 + 0.90Agent 10 + 7/8 20 + 14/8 20 + 0.75Infiltrator 10 + 7/8 28 + 14/8 20 + 0.75Sorceress 10 + 7/8 20 + 14/8 28 + 0.60Shaper 10 + 8/8 20 + 12/8 20 + 0.60Lifecrafter 10 + 8/8 28 + 12/8 20 + 0.60Shock Trooper 10 + 8/8 20 + 14/8 28 + 0.75 Conclusions Endurance is much less useful than it was in G4. Class also has much less impact on HP than it did in G4. Combined with Parry being nerfed (for the third time!) this strips the Servile, Guardian, and Warrior of almost all their defensive advantages. The Sorceress is starting to look significantly less hot. You can still use her as a traditional Agent who ditches Parry in favor of the occasional creation. But she is a poor choice for the role we all envisioned for her, as a shaper with better magic and better skill point allocation. The Essence you lose, compared to a Shaper, would take up more skill points to recover than she saves you on magic skills. Shock Troopers no longer have more spell energy than all the other classes. They do have more energy than the other strong-shaping classes, though. AND, they no longer have an essence handicap! Essentially, they are now Shapers with more spell energy, but less ability to invest in magic skills. If you plan on just pumping Int and using items for magic skill, this makes them an excellent fit. Finally, the Agent and Shaper classes are 100% inferior to the Lifecrafter and Infiltrator, albeit in pretty insignificant ways. The Guardian is also worse than the Warrior, except for the fact that he will have way more essence early on.

Are the secondary creations (Cryoa, etc) all the same as in G5, or have any changed? Anybody got a list? Edit: And if anybody could post a list of essence cost for all creations (I'm assuming there have been a few tweaks, as usual) it would be greatly appreciated as well.