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Everything posted by ex post slarto
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Old tooltip mod discussion
ex post slarto replied to ex post slarto's topic in Geneforge Series - Remasters
In a perfect world, I'd love to have tooltips that are both comprehensive and clear. In reality, when the mechanics themselves are a little bit convoluted and there are edge cases, sometimes you can't get both of those things at the same time. Trade-offs have to be made. The priority for me is to make sure the player gets a clear picture of what the skill does so they can make fair choices about whether to invest in it. My other comment, though, is that "each point of this skill increases the damage by a miniscule amount" doesn't actually have anything to do with Searer itself. That's just how literally every damage skill works -- it's hardcoded. It doesn't belong in an individual skill description any more than "Intelligence increases the damage of this spell" does. So if anything, what your plea tempts me to do is to remove that mention from Chain Lightning 🙂 -
Old tooltip mod discussion
ex post slarto replied to ex post slarto's topic in Geneforge Series - Remasters
I meant everything besides level. I was going to add besides level at the end. In parentheses. I was going to. The best laid plans... -
Old tooltip mod discussion
ex post slarto replied to ex post slarto's topic in Geneforge Series - Remasters
Oh, and Mech -- the issue isn't that spell/ability level doesn't ever influence buff duration. It depends how the definition is written. For many spells it's written in such a way that it does impact it. For those weapon shaping disciplines, it's not. -
Old tooltip mod discussion
ex post slarto replied to ex post slarto's topic in Geneforge Series - Remasters
Oh, interesting! That 1% makes sense -- I think everything that used to (in older engines) give 5% accuracy now just gives 1%, right? I suppose I could change "nothing" to "nothing special." -
GF2 - Good build for a pure "loyalist" shaper?
ex post slarto replied to Taithleach's topic in Geneforge Series - Remasters
The math on Quicklash is really bad, honestly. You give up a chance (eventually a >50% chance) of an impactful spell, that does more damage to more targets and/or applies strong statuses... for basically a guaranteed free Firebolt... and you pay out the nose for it. -
Old tooltip mod discussion
ex post slarto replied to ex post slarto's topic in Geneforge Series - Remasters
My version is correct. The fourth/fifth etc points do nothing except for the same "miniscule" damage increase noted for Chain Lightning. Specifically, it adds 1 die, which is miniscule for most of the game, especially compared to the percentile increases of other tooltips. FWIW, this is the only thing extra points in a lot of damage spells have done for Spiderweb games going back 20 years now, all the way to OG1. Some of these might be unintentional, and stem from some subtle changes SW made to ability definitions. However, in this case, if the extra levels did do something else, it would be to very slightly increase the duration of the statuses they cause, which is not very meaningful to begin with. So IMO it's not worth wasting Jeff's time with. (IMO, misleading tooltips that make people invest in things that don't work are a bigger issue than unimpressive spell upgrades.) Since Mutagen -- and that was actually already in the tooltip. Not my addition 🙂 I didn't edit the Mechanics tooltip. It's not an exhausting list of what Mechanics can do, but it's a representative enough list that it won't mislead players. For Healing Craft, you are correct that Cure Affliction will technically receive a tiny increase to the number of turns removed (well, a small chance of removing 1 extra turn is how it really plays out). However, it won't change the number of debuffs removed, and only certain removal abilities get this bonus. I did think about mentioning this in the tooltip, but ultimately decided it would be too confusing and isn't really a plausible reason to raise the skill anyway. So kind of like with Mechanics, the goal was to lead the player fairly, not to force a procession of every possible edge case. -
A4-A6 sound like they are in the "actual remake" category along with the rest of Geneforge.
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He does? That's not what his script says. Are you sure? I believe the only requirements for the Good Unaligned ending are - kill Barzahl - kill the Taker leaders - no current faction membership mike's plan seems fine. Note that the Awakened Applicant quests don't really affect anything so you can safely do those; there are 4 points of Leadership from later items so raising it manually to 8 is unnecessary.
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Amazing! That's great. There are a bunch of smaller ones that aren't dependent on faction membership. - Some of these are obvious: if you complete Kill Twini you can't complete the quest Twini gives you, for example. If you complete Kill Tuldaric, you alienate the Awakened forever. - There are things faction membership cuts off (or enables) that aren't quests, like Taker membership denying you the Fort Muck raid with its irreplaceable drop; also merchants and trainers - There are also things that have nothing to do with factions. If you kill key infernals before getting the special rod from Shandoka, for example, you can never complete those quests or get their rewards - nlambert's Index lists a few other quests as faction-locked not on the list above; not sure which is accurate. for example, Recover Mutant Drayk is listed as Takers Only.
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Playing as a Shaper definitely isn't required. Agents are very good. They just require a different approach. With a Shaper you can charge ahead using brute force, and defeat enemies by overwhelming power. Agents will always be worse at that than Shapers. They can become spellcasting machines, though, and not having a big party (potentially even playing solo) gives them some extra tactical options. Be careful how you enter rooms with big fights; find ways to position yourself (stealth can help) so you don't face everything all at once. Often, you can use status effects (Daze is huge, early on; Airshock is amazing later) to disable extra enemies and pick them off one by one. Wyx is a very hard fight for early in the game, and is not intended to be fought that early. Class has nothing to do with it. On higher difficulty levels you essentially can't. Re-upping on essence is annoying wasted time, since you can (almost) always just leave and do it without penalty, I agree. For that reason, you might consider the shift-D code "rechargeme" to be less of a cheat and more of a timesaver. YMMV.
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A fourth version of the original trilogy? Lol. But that is admittedly a much simpler job. (Number of times Jeff has now created a Tower of Magi map, which he once swore he'd never do again: 15 and counting...)
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Miscellaneous mod related discussion
ex post slarto replied to alhoon's topic in Geneforge Series - Remasters
I think that would get awfully confusing. -
Powergaming the Sects?
ex post slarto replied to ex post slarto's topic in Geneforge Series - Remasters
One exception: you can voluntarily leave the Awakened by going to Learned Pinner, because the Awakened walk the talk when it comes to individual freedom. -
Old topic, old verison; please see new version here.
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Essence Mastery vs Shaping Skill
ex post slarto replied to Iguana-on-a-stick's topic in Geneforge Series - Remasters
Keep in mind that Randomizer probably did a lot of other things optimally. If you're making viable rather than optimal choices in all areas, a mixed-shaping-type party on Torment might be well below 80% to hit chance in those fights. On Normal, agree it should be viable regardless.