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Alchemists with no shaper training can certainly create healing items. There's no reason why Healing Craft can't be a combination of shaping plus other techniques. It is after all a "craft." And for that matter, there's no reason why a healing spell can't be magic and shaping at the same time. I don't think the boundary is clear-cut. After all, most magic spells draw on essence just like shaping a creation does. But I suspect G1 describes healing craft somewhere in-game, and that will tell you exactly what you're looking for.

The QA bonus definitely exists, because otherwise in Kian's tests gazers would be tied with rots for initiative. So it seems reasonable to guess that the Luck bonus also exists (keeping in mind that most of luck's effects seem to be bugged out, but not for initiative, again per Nim). The only stats that are automatically calculated based on level are the core 4 stats, and that process probably just overwrites whatever's in the defs. G2 may have been the first game that did this; I forget, but it would fit.

Yes, it's the 10-cap. I definitely don't suggest pumping to 30 (which is +18 levels), but pumping to 20 or close to it (+15 levels) isn't completely insane. Reaching 14 at least (+12) is probably an easy call for most shaper builds. You are very right about gazers running out of spell energy. HOWEVER, the good news is that spell energy (like HP) goes up semi-exponentially. These are the reasons why those extra levels from more-expensive points in shaping skills are not a bad value after all. The contribution from level and Int (End for HP) is something like [ (Level * Int) / 2 ]. So your fresh gazer above had 289 spell energy (plus whatever the gazer bonus is). If you instead pumped your Magic Shaping up to 20, that's an extra 12 levels which should give it an additional 240 spell energy if I've done math correctly (ditto for extra HP). For the initiative question, keep in mind that level *and* Dex both contribute to it, so it's not quite as much to overcome as you mention. But again, there's no point in beating your drakon's initiative unless there are enemies with equal initiative, which according to you there aren't. So it's a question of how much you need to beat every enemy. Again, with bonus levels from shaping skill and/or following the player, any of those creations (and probably many lower tier creations, too) should be able to reach maximum relevant initiative.

Thanks for the accurate data -- that's useful! I knew it! I really didn't think there were any creations in the series with +22 bonuses, and now we know that indeed, there are not. The initiative order would seem to confirm that QA, at least, does count those def bonuses, and does matter more than Luck. Keep in mind that enough extra levels (either from making a creation earlier, or having more points in its corresponding shaping skill) will overcome this initiative effect. Based on Nim's estimates I'm guessing 4 levels would be enough. The canisters and trainers for the top tier creations are almost identically placed in G2 (and very hard to access even mid-game unless you join the Barzites or Takers). Shaping skill is a different question though, since it's super inefficient (and will create other weaknesses) to pump more than one skill to a high level. This is the real downside to rots; there's little else to recommend itself in the whole Battle Shaping corpus. The real question, though, is whether a rot or gazer -- with their high levels, high Dex, and initiative-boosting abilities (even if a bit less than a drakon) would not achieve exactly the same effect as your drakon did in practice: of getting to act before the enemies do. If you pump shaping skill, I can't imagine they wouldn't.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa Okay, your data is completely irrelevant. And frankly it is a little frustrating that you didn't say earlier that you weren't testing player creations! Seriously. Enemy NPCs don't always use the same defs as player creations, but more importantly, they are frequently set to a non-default level. I mean, really: we already know level affects initiative (both directly, and because as alhoon mentions it is what determines base Dex). Why in the world would you test something whose level is impossible to measure?

What I meant to say was "I should not be making proclamations about details I don't have access to on this machine, and I am about to receive my comeuppance." (EDIT: Actually, turns out I was right after all :P) I don't understand what you're saying about "experimentally" -- you can see the actual Dexterity (and level) of any creations you make; the only hidden stats relevant to initiative are, apparently, QA and Luck, and those are laid out very clearly. The stat bonuses for the 4 primary stats are added to the value the creation has based on its level (and its base level is also given in the defs file). According to Nim's observations, an extra 21 points of Dex should be way more than enough to offset 2 points of QA. Also, I assume you are running tests with both party orders (Drakon first; Rot first) since party order is definitely the tiebreaker for initiative. Edit: Also, I assume you are testing freshly made creations with equal skill in (1) each X Shaping ability, and (2) each Create X ability?

There have definitely never been creations with +22 or +28 flat bonuses to stats.

The point is that the drakon doesn't have anything giving it higher initiative than rots or gazers, which is what was originally stated. Or are we all missing something here?

Hmm, that makes sense. Level I definitely forgot about. Still, none of that is going to put the Drakon ahead of other top tier creations (especially if Luck is relevant as you suggest, with the gazer's luck).

What are you comparing, Kian? Just the base stats of the creations? Keep in mind that (1) they can be outclassed by earlier, cheaper creations that have been levelled; (2) you are using a lot of extra skill points if you boost multiple shaping types up; (3) if you don't, but make drakons *and* gazers, one or the other is going to be significantly weaker anyway. The health "bonuses" certain creations get are not meaningful because they are so quickly eclipsed by natural HP. HP is (level * Endurance) so on odd levels one multiplier goes up, and on even levels both multipliers go up. At high levels artilas have practically the same HP as a drayk. Drakons might get a few hundred HP or something, but even that is really not necessary or useful. What do you mean by "highest initiative"? Initiative is just Dex + (QA * some multiplier I forget). I don't think drakons have an inherent bonus to either of those (it's been a while, but the only such bonuses I remember are on gazers (luck) and rots (QA or +AP? I forget)). Searing Orbs *can* hit multiple enemies. It is unreliable, and the enemies also have to be close together. Compare to the Eyebeast's Aura of Flames attack, which does more damage, works from further away, hits everything, and is more reliable. Finally, canisters consumed has an effect in *every* ending. It is boolean depending on if you are above or below a certain number. (It isn't a life or death impact unless you get the "I failed completely!" ending.)

I'm not saying invest in Magic Shaping now. It's too late to really matter. I don't think G3 had any creation resistances that G2 didn't also have. I think nobody noticed them in G2 because everybody ran Guardians G4 definitely made them more relevant though -- there were challenge bosses with crazy resistance sets, more specters and pylons, and two extremely prominent new creations (wingbolts and kyshakks) with remarkably high resists.

7 is not very high. And yeah, resistances were very rare in the early Geneforges. Maybe it was G4 that added more of those? Drakons are seriously underwhelming for their essence cost. One thing I forgot to mention. By G4 the 4th and 5th tier creations have inherent mental resistance. I can't remember if that was already true of the last tier creations in G2/3. Either way I don't think you face as many mental attacks in the earlier games, so it might not matter. But later on that is one of the arguments against using lower tier creations long term in those games. (There are a lot of other mechanics and cost changes in those games, too.)

Separate from anything else, the fact that this topic's title keeps changing to something completely different makes it very hard to follow (and probably confusing to anyone who reads it for the first time, since the current title never has anything to do with the first _ pages of the topic...) G1-3 all had a similar amount of mechanical differences between creations: not many. G4 and G5 had more. But even in G5 paying higher essence costs is not always worth it. The first thing to note is that all creations have their offensive capabilities and their HP scale with level. HP scales semi-exponentially, and offensive capabilities sort of do as well -- the actual increase is linear, but both damage and accuracy are affected. Level depends entirely on 3 things: 1. base value for the creation type 2. bonus based on your shaping skill (in that class of shaping only) 3. levels gained while following you around (rate depends on YOUR level, not creation's level, I believe in G2) This means the earlier you make a creation, the stronger it will ultimately be. That is the first thing in favor of the weaker, cheaper creations. The other thing is that later creations often have unnecessarily high essence costs. You will likely have enough extra essence at higher levels that you can afford a few such creations anyway, but when your essence is limited they aren't great deals. (Note that level does NOT affect damage type or damage die size -- this is why fyoras, roamers, and anything that is melee dependent remain inferior even when maxed out.) My typical MO is to max out the bonuses from #2 and #3 on stuff I'll have around forever, like Vlish. This means dumping almost all early stat points into Magic Shaping, which for a little while at the start will outpace any levels they'd gain from following you. Once that hits equilibrium you make the creations that will follow you around for the whole game. This may involve boosting Int slightly but you really only need 3-4 of them truly maxed out. (Note that you can put off buying 2 points of Int for them in order to get more created faster -- you probably won't need to control them anyway if you are maxing them out, as they'll just steamroll the game.) When essence is available I'll make vlish to fill out the roster; those may be a level or two below (due to #3) but they will eventually be replaced anyway: by terror vlish, gazers or eyebeasts, though the latter options not till very late in the game. Putting this focused effort in early gives you, essentially, bonuses to their current level that remain static throughout the entire game. This is a big deal. Also, the easiest mistake to make is spending creation "skill points" when they level up. This costs essence, and it is a deplorably bad value. If you have a TON of extra essence at the end of the game, it can maybe be worth it to buy a few cheap posts on cheap creations -- but that's it, and not until late in the game. Although variety is nice, dipping into Fire Shaping for e.g. Cryoas either makes ALL the magic creations worse (either #2 or #3 has to take a hit), or you end up with (relatively) weak fire creations. Drayks aren't bad in G2, but I suspect you haven't pumped your shaping skills much, so at this point anything you make isn't going to compare well. Note that I tried to tell you at the beginning to pick fire or magic and stick with it.

That location smells like a write permission problem. Try moving the app (and folder) outside of Program Files and see if it works properly there.

Rhakkus was a Drayk. There were three Drayks on Sucia: Syros, Akkat, and Rhakkus. This is particularly notable because they correspond to the three Shaper leaders Danette, Defniel, and Corata. (At least one (Syros) and maybe all of them were actually created by those Shapers as their personal drayks. I can't remember about the others for sure and it's been a long time.) I'm a little bit fuzzy on the Drayk to Drakon transition because, frankly, the Takers and Barzites have so many conflicting claims about who did what, and there are so many drayks/drakons involved. There may be a clear answer if we go and look at their words more specifically, I don't know. It does seem that Barzahl kicked things off by working (on?) Rhakkus. Rhakkus created Easss, but I'm not clear if Easss was originally a full-fledged drakon or if he was originally a drayk who shaped himself into a drakon. Easss, of course, created Ghaldring.

This is very cool. I like that you clarified what works in each game -- that is easy to forget for those of us who played all of them a decade ago! The mine/pylon "escape" thing is an exploit that is very system-dependent, since the game's timing is system-dependent. For attacking neutral enemies -- it might be worth including a word of caution to make sure that they are actually neutral and not friendly. Sometimes leadership abilities cause enemies to actually become friendly -- and then, attacking them will cause all friendly NPCs in the zone to become hostile. "Why is friendly NPC X suddenly attacking me?" is one of the most common questions we get here, so I think people do this a lot.

Again, you are looking at this backwards. They are the ones whose faction (in a fairly different form) happens to have survived in the future path followed by G3, which does not actually correspond perfectly to any of the endings the player can get. (And as Triumph established clearly and I thought you agreed, Litalia did not personally cleanse the entire valley nor was she in a position of power such that it is reasonable to assume that anyone "survived" or "did not survive" her in particular.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Eg67jDh2Ts

Unfriendliness is "zone" based -- basically the map is divided into a (really huge) grid. So if you attacked a friendly character or stole something somewhere in the general vicinity of Shanker's Tower it could anger everyone there. When we say attacking a "friendly" character, friendly is a technical term. It means a character who isn't attacking you yet. If you attack a scripted NPC who is about to attack you, but they haven't finished their dialogue yet, sometimes that counts. But any time you do this, the game will pop up a little box saying "Are you sure you want to attack a peacful NPC?" or something.

The other name that gets tossed around a lot in this speculation is Shaper Monarch (from G4). There are basically zero discrepancies with such a fit. A sub-theory would be Shaper Monarch, who is also the Geneforge 3 PC. This is speculative but it is one possible interpretation of the comments Greta and Alwan make about their former companion, when they are in G4.

Geneforge is definitely a series where some builds are much stronger than others. Tactics also matter; if you're used to the ways to optimize & exploit things in Spiderweb games, your PCs will fare much better as well.

Alhoon, I appreciate the impulse to apologize. I don't think you need to apologize, though. I do see where you're coming from. So I understand the drama. What I do wish you would do is listen to what Triumph is saying about conventions of forum/discussion etiquitte and take some of it to heart. For example, you keep repeating, post after post, that I called you "deceitful." You actually said that seven times on this page of the thread However, I never used that word or anything close to it. In fact I think the only time that word has come up in this thread is when you called Zakary deceitful But let's consider a continuum of words. On one end of the continuum is Alhoon. Alhoon, you like to use words very loosely. You enjoy being able to interpret the same word or sentence in different ways, depending on how it suits your purpose at the moment. You also enjoy using strong language (and bold and italics) to make your points -- even when you aren't 100% sure about them and don't feel strongly about them. You have sometimes cited evidence that you know you are foggy on, because it sounded good. You are more interested in using evocative means of expression. It's almost an artistic approach to expression. It's definitely a high volume approach. On the other end of the continuum, you have folks like me and Triumph, who lean towards precision. We enjoy picking just the right word to use, that communicates just the right nuance about a situation. We also enjoy analyzing all the details of a text (and its context and so on) to settle on a fitting interpretation of it. In our cases part of this is professional habit. Actually there are a lot of folks here who have professions that emphasize precision in language -- programmers and lawyers, linguists and writers, and so on. Naturally, you get frustrated when we try to pin down your words and ideas more precisely -- and we get frustrated when your words are so vague and your arguments so constantly shifting, we don't feel like we can even grasp them with our hands to see what they are. This is why "forum etiquitte" and "discussion/debate etiquitte" are really somewhere in the middle. People need enough freedom to be flexible in how they talk and not get too bogged down in finding the perfect word for everything -- on the other hand, if too little effort is put into those tasks, communication becomes very difficult. I think the double whammy for you, Alhoon, is the language factor. Although you are obviously a very good English speaker, you mentioned that it is not your first language -- and I wonder if that makes the precision aspect harder for you. Speaking for myself, I am happy to give you some extra leeway for that. If something doesn't quite fit -- I get it. But you have to put in some more effort too. You write a crapton of long posts here. Maybe reread them before you hit post. Maybe save your strong language for when you really feel strongly about something. Etc., etc. Again, these are just suggestions. No one is trying to chase you away. But I bet we would all love it (yourself included) if it was less frustrating to have debates between the two ends of this continuum.

Ooh, yeah. Could be an OS version thing. It could also be a graphics thing. In the absence of anyone else trying the same OS version, might be good to check that. Can you share your graphics specs? (If you don't have a separate graphics card, just sharing your mac model should cover that info.)

Per usual, Triumph said it better.

It was. And no, there's no edit history on posts. One of many excellent reasons to think about posts before you make them.

Yes, and from now on, don't worry, I know to quote any post of yours I reply to in its entirity, because I can't trust that it won't randomly change when you decide to edit it.