Men are from Slars

It's not the word "noob" that's not okay, it's using it to belittle somebody. Make sense?

Gamerman: saying things like "ur a noob" that are clearly meant to be insulting are not okay here. leet speak is annoying, but forgivable. Belittling other people, however, is not okay at all.

Thuryl's on the right track, but you don't need 200 HP. Judicious use of different pieces of armor combined with a full set of defensive buffs should get you past most traps without lots of Mechanics OR Endurance.

Draykovites.

Are the rebels split along the lines implied in G4 -- extreme drakons vs moderate humans and serviles? Or not so much?

Whenever Jeff makes that parody game, there really needs to be a monster called Rouge Creation.

It's "pwn".

In G1, Fyoras were fine, because all the creations were pretty much identical if you raised their levels / pumped your own stats. G2 I don't remember, but G3 they definitely sucked in because the rebalancing of attack damage had left them doing much less per level of damage than other low tier creations, despite having a worse damage type to begin with. G4 exaccerbates this as the revamped creation XP gain rules make low tier creations worse in general.

Originally Posted By: Randomizer I know Slarty discussed Shapers, but the last time I restored the links I couldn't find the topics. I think for the early part of the game on the second island, you create 7 vlish and that will get you through until you can get better creations. Delayed response here, but: you create 7 vlish as early as possible and that gets you through the entire GAME. Due to the grossly overpowered nature of G3 Vlish, and due to the breakable way G3 handles levelling up creations, 7 vlish allow you to coast through the entire game even on Torment. http://www.ironycentral.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=62244#Post62244

Fyoras suck, incidentally. I'd ditch them for either cryoas or artila when you get the chance.

Khoth is right that Shapers get more essence. And in G4, Agents (er... Infiltrators) also get more essence than Guardians (Warriors). (For essence, Lifecrafters get 100%, Infs 87.5% and Warriors 75%, in G4) Additionally, Warriors start with 2 Int while Lifecrafters start with 4. So there is a real difference in essence availability. The better option is to play an Infiltrator and pump magic. Your direct damage spells won't be amazing, but they'll be better than your Guardian's physical attack would be.

Hmmm... interesting point.

I agree with SoT that justification for the sudden surge in power (as in G1) is great, but there is another solution. PC power doesn't have to rise dramatically over the course of the game. It's well established that having power rise in some way, finding little bonuses -- the "ooh, a treasure chest" or "ooh, a canister!" effect -- is very pleasing to players. But those increases can be spaced out and they don't have to be large. The reason most games employ large power increases is a lame one. If PC power doesn't increase much, enemy power can't increase much either. So if you are not willing to have a versatile battle system with room for interesting and different varieties of enemies at a given power level, a long game without large power rises quickly becomes boring. Personally, I'd rather play a game with enemies that don't get significantly more powerful, but rather employ an increasing variety of attacks and strengths. Make me do something a little different, rather than do the same thing again and again and pretend it's different just because the numbers are bigger.

Specifically, in one valley within one mountain range, and it's on the immediate left edge of the G5 map -- it's not particularly western at all.

Thuryl -- now that the BoE source is out, has anybody located the source of these misbehavings? I know the source is rather sprawling, but the bits involving combat mechanics seemed pretty straightforward to me, even if the code wasn't particularly tight.

Thuryl: that's the same conclusion that TM and I came to several years ago. That said, I do think it's ridiculous that all people carry money on them (let alone wild animals and monsters), but I'm a big fan of realistic and consistent item drops -- which, dear god, is something that Realmz got right that almost no other game has. Although the best answer may be the way the Exile series did it: specifying that "gold" actually refers to all sorts of barterable items and valuables. I'd prefer to see that implemented by changing the name of "Gold" to, say, "Loot".

What balances drayks out is their lack of mental resistance, compared to wingbolts, drakons, or whatnot. Using drayks in the endgame was possible, but required extra effort either in taking care of them (very annoying) or in acquiring and equipping creation mental resistance items. They are also drastically different on different platforms. On PC their ranged attack is fire elemental; on mac, it is physical. Jeff discussed the battle creation dilemma on here a while ago and it sounded like he was going to do something about it, finally.

From a game design perspective, the nice thing about experience is that it can make a player feel like they are making progress when they kill something. The bad thing about it, is that this can be potentially illusory or meaningless, or lead to stupid munchkin sagas that are not worth it for anybody. Having static XP drops and increasing requirements to level, maximizes the good part, but also leaves opportunity for the bad part. Having static requirements to level, but decreasing XP drops depending on your level, minimizes the bad part, but also reduces the opportunity for the good part to happen. Killing something and getting less than you used to is not usually a positive experience, unless the enemies scale up pretty quickly. Personally, I deplore experience, in part because of its potential negative impacts and in part because it is one of the most unrealistic elements in RPGs, perhaps behind only hit points in absurdity.

I'm pretty sure Jeff did say that you would be able to choose any of the 8 classes previously offered (that counts the three pairs of quantitatively identical classes) in addition to the one missing class.

Very weird. Redownload-and-reinstall sounds like the best solution. At least it happened early so you aren't losing much progress.

Huzzah! The new buffs system sounds like a great idea. And weaker haste is excellent.

This problem happened to me in Avernum 4, and Jeff was able to trace the bug to a nasty side effect of the seemingly innocuous "backtostart" cheat. Have you used any cheats?

The loose mention of "cities" in that context doesn't guarantee everybody gets a Dillame or a Dhonal's Keep, just everybody gets some kind of occupied zone.

Weird! I did similar tests in Avernum 4 and Parry definitely had significant damage reduction. (I believe it did throughout Geneforge as well, though I don't remember clearly.) Apparently the reduction from 5% to 3% parrying per point wasn't the only nerfing Parry received in this game. Unless Parry still defends against non-physical attacks (and, ugh, who wants to test that) this devalues it quite a bit. It's still useful, but it may not be worth buying manually on Torment, given the wasted points in Dex and Defense. (The other possibility is that going to 40 in Parry causes some kind of overflow problem, since the skills were originally coded to go up to 30. But this seems pretty unlikely)

No, it wouldn't. If you test further, you will discover that not all damage reduction was created equal. The "x blocked" message reports damage blocked due to armor/resistance (the stats displayed on the character sheet). It does not report damage blocked due to the Protection or Prismatic Shield spells or due to Parry. Try repeating your test but write down every damage result you get. You will get a lower range and lower average damage for the character with Parry.