Mea Tulpa

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.

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.