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If enemy level went up at the same rate as PC level, I could understanding thinking that. But it doesn't. PC level tends to go up faster. There's simply a surplus of stuff available to kill to get good XP at any given level. Also, long-term, eventually you hit zero XP. So an early XP penalty like level 8 is completely irrelevant by then. There is a huge surplus of things that will give you XP, up to a certain level. This is why it truly doesn't matter what order you do most quests and kill most enemies in, you'll eventually be at a level where the vast majority of things in the game give you nothing. You will get zero XP from lots and lots of stuff.

-1000 XP at level 8 and -1000 XP at level 14 mean very, very different things. -1000 XP at level 8 will have no lasting impact at all. Truly none. -1000 XP at level 14 is something you'll feel for a while.

Some vlish have a special ability that gives them a chance to land Shock, which is a DoT. It's not a particularly high chance. I didn't remove any acid-setting ability from vlish, though.

To be really direct though - your FOMO over Mechanics is still really strange to me. If you are a little more patient, waiting for quest completion before you force your way through every locked door you find, you shouldn't have any issues running out of living tools. Overrun doesn't change this at all, btw.

No, it's not that difficult. Lorn had a pile of questions like these about the base game, too 🙂 Lorn: 1) There's literally already an image of it earlier in this thread. 3) Dominate does not require 60 essence. It requires 60 energy. Note that any spell can be cast when you are at max energy, no matter how much its energy cost, and you recover quite a bit of energy for free every round as well. So having low max energy just means you can't spam every spell you want. That said, the reason for the increased energy costs were to make Intellect a stat worth investing in. Intellect was very close to worthless in the base game. Energy also goes up as you increase in level. You can't just spam all the most powerful spells when you are level 7. If you want an unrestricted power fantasy, don't play a balance mod 🙂 4) I have absolutely no idea what you are saying about acid and Vlish. 5) The creation screen has limited space for text, so abbreviations are gonna be there whether you like them or not. They are explained, however -- in the codex. Second 3) You can just use "retrain" to respec your skill points, you don't need to start over.

The beginning of them game and Freegate both happen at very specific points. The Taker passes don't; you can get to them fairly quickly after Freegate, maybe 20-30% through the game, or you can complete basically all of Awakened and Barzite lands first, more like 70-80%. That makes them a poor way to impact progression. This is even more true of whatever 3 zones you pick as Barzite gates. In other words -- Freegate doesn't create any incentives to manipulate the game in weird ways for an advantage. Doing that in the passes would.

No. Those are not choke points. The player is not forced to go through one specific place, so there's no one place you can attach an XP (or whatever) penalty to. Western Pass and Northern Pass are not choke points, they aren't even required zones. The only true choke points are the beginning of the game and Freegate.

Yes, Overrun on Torment does other things also, to make Torment actually challenging even for players who optimize well and know the tips and tricks that make every Spiderweb game easier 🙂 Actually I think that's not a terrible idea about the lower XP award. The real issue (and the reason the Overrun -10's are where they are) is that the game has zero guaranteed choke points that the PC must go through, with the exception of the very beginning of the game, and Freegate. Everything else is optional, and can be done in any order, which prevents negative XP events from really being meaningful.

Your progress on collection quests, including all five of Thornstalker's is displayed in the text log, each time you deliver items to the recipient. The special item tab is in exactly the same place it is in the base game. In the same window with quests, journal entries, and codex entries.

I agree with you about levelling. That said it's very tricky to balance as a dev, because you have to balance both for people who play all side content, and for people who ignore all side content -- which in GF isn't just most of the quests, it's also half of the zones -- and because GF gives you so much freedom as to the order you do things in, it would be difficult to solve simply by having clearer gradations in the base level set for XP in different places. (This is why Overrun on Torment artifically slows the player's progression, ultimately taking away 2 levels worth of skill points. But doing anything equivalent in the base game wouldn't really work for all players.)

I'll bet real money that this isn't a bug at all, and that it's just the Essence Mastery loss from Tessera Eye 😛

I tried and I can't duplicate this. Just confirming, aquamarine: you have a save where rechargeme works, you talk to Rhakkus and get altered, and it immediately stops working? Without shaping anything new? Tessera Eye does something very different, which is that you permanently lose a point of Essence Mastery. This directly lowers your total Essence. Maybe the game simply doesn't take away your current essence when that happens, even if your existing creations would be enough to use up your entire reduced essence stock.

Shaping has a much, much higher DPS than battle magic, melee weapons, or missile weapons do, if you invest in it. The gap is not small. This is true for the entire game. Magic can certainly be effective for damage, and it has some other great advantages. But Battle Magic does not in any way outpower shaping.

None of these things are related to the version change, they are just how it's always been 1 is just how XP works, usually it's just based on level but some enemies appear to have level adjusted in a way that doesn't affect XP. 2 is normal, tier 4 creations have extra mental resist 3 is normal, percentile bonuses to duration are applied in a way that is random 4 is normal AFAIK

"less AoE damage" is not a footnote. It's the headline.

You know, that's not a bad idea. I'll give that a shot in the next version.

Okay, well I'm glad we finally agree, lol. AoE is the whole point of drayks (and fire shaping in general). If you only care about ST, there are better options. They just aren't "better enough" to matter given that most fights (and especially most difficult fights) have numerous enemies in them. Regarding Overload: you say "a ton of damage" but it's not a ton of damage, it's just 15% of Max HP. I never cast Regeneration, I just threw a Group Heal once very couple of rounds. You also don't get 7 rounds of Overload, so Overload will not normally kill your drayks (or fyoras, or rots) unless something else damages them as well. So if you kill things swiftly enough, one Group Heal covers everything. On higher difficulty, if things don't die immediately, you're probably healing most turns anyway. And you don't have to use Overload every encounter, it's there for when you need it. So it's really not a chore to Group Heal once in a while.

Alhoon, those numbers are wrong because you're not comparing the AoE's. You're comparing the ST attacks, which is not what we're talking about (and Fast Recovery isn't even required for those).

For an Ur-Drakon, I agree, albeit that if you have the essence to spare for that big guy, you're losing out on enough creation levels that it's probably an issue. For a Drakon, again, the non-Overload comparison (since you don't like Overload) is that you pay almost 50% more essence (38 vs 26) to do slightly less damage, but have more HP. There might be a good argument for the very very endgame when you naturally have extra essence (from those very endgame points of EM) to run , as you suggest, maybe a pair of Ur-Drakons (or Drakons, bleah) to have a sturdier front line and then fill the party out with Drayks. I think you have a good point there. But this is truly a very late game option, if you don't want to sacrifice creation levels for it. Regarding your qualifiers of "on normal"... normal is a great way to play. The reason most strategy analysis does not focus on normal is because almost any strategy will work on normal. It's that simple. So here we have you saying Overload isn't worth bothering with, someone else was saying status effects aren't worth bothering with. And that's fair enough, but it doesn't make those things bad or weak, even on Normal. However, I do appreciate you actually stating that you're just talking about Normal, that is very helpful context to give.

Alhoon, you are incorrect. A Drayk with 3 augments costs 26 essence. Open the game and try it yourself. 14 + 4 + 4 + 4 = 26. Also, a Drayk will do more damage than a Drakon with lightning. You're arguing against math here. (EDIT: Or maybe you're just ignoring the impact of Innate Haste?)

I'm not sure what you're asking. All augments cost the same thing for a given creation.

You are incorrect, Drayk augments are 4 essence each. 26 essence with three.

Whoops. You are totally correct! Hah, no wonder what I said didn't make sense. The lack of Innate Haste still holds them back, and picking that augment makes the essence cost comparison worse for them. At that point it's 38 essence for a Drakon that can spam Chain Lightning, versus 26 essence for a Drayk that can spam fire breath (and also has Innate Haste). Even without Overload, the Drakon doesn't actually do more damage per turn (on average). So you're paying close to 50% more essence entirely for the drakon being a bit sturdier. Ur-Drakons will do more damage than a non-Overload Drayk (though less than an Overload Drayk). An Ur-Drakons who can spam AoE costs 56 essence, more than twice as much as the Drayk! That is admittedly a great option if you're up to 400 essence, but getting that high means sacrificing creation levels. I don't think the Ur-Drakon is worth it. Still, this is an interesting point.

Not sure how that could have happened. On the encumbrance thing... oh wow. I always figured the dropped items some entities have, were just generated when you kill them. Nope. Apparently they are generated when the entity is created... and the game actually gives that entity all the stats from them, and even tracks encumbrance! This is amazing! This may actually open up a few opportunities to do some other fun things with creation types. This is going to result in a v1.0.21 for sure. For now, sorry about Zora's encumbrance. And thank you, these were the most fruitful bug reports ever!

I see the 6 AP / Encumbered issue and am working on it. However, I'm unable to duplicate the "not fast speed" issue. Randomizer, is there any chance you recruited her after the base game updated to v1.0.2 but before you reinstalled the mod? I set her speed when she's recruited and I don't see anything that could bypass or change that.