ex post slarto

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.

"too dead"... I love it.

Chain Lightning has a cooldown. Drayks have the augment that cancels cooldowns, Drakons don't. That means they can use it once every 3 turns, which is once every 4 to 6 attacks. Drayks can breathe every single attack, which is now (with the innate haste upgrade) about 1.67 attacks per turn on average. Yes, if you can kill everything with 1 cast per creation the cooldown isn't relevant, but the point is that Drayks reach that point much, much sooner than Drakons do.

She moves slower? Really? That... definitely shouldn't be happening. Thanks for the report, I'll look into that as well.

Well, that's slightly embarassing. Guess I had some placeholder text get left in in the dialogue. Thanks for the report Lorn, I'll work on a fix! Re Zora, I'm not sure what would cause that and I don't see anything I've touched that possibly could. I will keep looking and see if I can duplicate it. For Leadership, you don't yet have the ability to do that. Shanti explained this, the codex does as well.

You seem to be ignoring the other melee buffs, which are rather more significant than this delay. Melee is stronger in Overrun compared to the base game, and the overall game balance is quite different. If you actually play through the mod, you'll have a much better basis to judge all these things based on, versus wild assumptions.

The sword isn't "nerfed" at all. It is delayed. The maximum power is the same, it just needs 20 canisters to get there now instead of 10. There are a kazillion canisters in the game, and no character actually cares about all of them. Why delay it? Because it's the strongest raw damage weapon in the game, and you could get it to max power crazy early. It single-handedly made most other melee weapons irrelevant for actual melee characters for the bulk of the game. IMO, variety is good; but one thing being better than everything else is bad.

alhoon, you completely ignored the second half of the quote. You're comparing an attack you get to use once every 4 to 6 attacks with an attack you get to use every single attack. EDIT: Also, I forgot how meh the Drakon's AoE attack was. With Overload active, one shot of the Drayk's AoE does nearly double what the Drakon's does. (Even the Ur-Drakon's does less than the Drayk's with Overload active.)

This is a large, complicated mod. It is not intended to be user-customized.

On the other hand, a team of drakons would easily lose to a team of drayks. ST attacks are not the same thing as MT attacks. And repeatable MT attacks are not the same thing as MT attacks you get 1 out of every 4 to 6 attacks.

Even if you have the essence, they are only better against single targets. Drayks are generally quite a bit better when facing multiple enemies.

*faceplant* I give up.

Yeah, this does not really seem like a scenario that speaks in favor of Battle Alphas, since other creation types can deal with it better. If anything this is a scenario where needing to leap rather than breathe is a disadvantage, since often turrets or spinecores (especially spinecores) are spread out over a wide area, and leaping means you will be attacked that round by other spinecores further away, where your ranged attackers would not be in their range yet.