Slawbug

@Randomizer

I downloaded your save, plugged it in, and loaded it up.  I don't get crashes hitting get item, hovering over the book, or picking up the book.  Or doing anything else.

Whatever is going on is specific to your installation, somehow.  My only other thought is to reinstall G2 entirely -- if you had file corruption on the mod previously, maybe you have file corruption in some other component of G2 unrelated to the mod?

That's not really parallel to the wandering-journeyman thing.  That would be like the apprentice going and finding a different master to apprentice under for the second part of their apprenticeship.

3 hours ago, Randomizer said:

I'm using Overrun v101 on the v101 game version. I had some problems installing it since the first time I downloaded it, the files got corrupted.

Then I'm guessing your files got corrupted again.  It should take 30 seconds to redownload and reinstall, can you try that?

Weird.  That doesn't happen for me at all.  And the only difference from the base game item is text changes.

Are you by any chance using an updated version of the beta testing app?  I'm wondering if that has any difference from the release version.

@Randomizer

I can't duplicate this, and double-checking the relevant files, I can't find anything wrong.  Is there any message in the console before it crashes?  If not, can you send me the save where this happens?

Also, is this a fresh game begun with the mod installed, or is this an old save loaded with the mod?

EDIT: Also, if you're actually seeing "Wild Adventures" with that text then let me know -- if so, something has gone wrong with your files, because that's not possible with the mod installed.

Sorkin isn't in Pentil, he's in Pentil East.

For Jaffee, I think you might need to learn the Sholai language exists first.

See below for Masha's location.

From the Mutagen index linked in Strategy Central:

Sholai language lessons:
From Learned Jaffee in Pentil. Obeyers only.
From Sorkin in Pentil East. Awakened only.
A tome above the Stairs in Kazg. Included if you learn it from Toivo. 2,54.
From Toivo in Kazg. Counts double, but contains the information in the tower. Takers only.
From Masha in the Refugee Cave, or a case to the west. Complete "Recover Sea Chest Key" first. Counts double.
A tome in the northwest building of the Patrolled Dell. Get one from another source first. 15,5.
From Znaf in the Winding Road for 500/1000 coins. Leadership 1, and cheaper with 3.
From Gavrila in Crossroads. Not available if you have the Trajkov Amulet.
In a tome south of the center of the Research Quarters. 21,22 and 32,35.

On Veteran and Torment only.

The reduction is also fairly tiny.  The goal there was just to create somekind of trade-off so that there's actually a reason to think "is this canister worth using?" rather than blindly using all of them.

3 hours ago, Lorn said:

You do not have a pre-determined route to follow, but if you don't follow what's intended by the dev, you are simply
a) wasting your time
b) going to explore low level places only for a completionist thing, because being higher level you don’t get any xp, only lore related things and you still waste time killing the creatures (well you are indeed faster given that you are higher level).

If you consider combat to be a waste of time rather than something that is at least slightly fun in and of itself, I think you will find a large part of the RPG genre -- and especially the classic RPG genre -- to be annoying.

This is kind of just how the genre works.  It's like playing a platformer and saying that you need to receive a quantifiable reward of some sort every time you jump.

I don't know why you're so focused on forcing a modern-education-system structure onto shaper training, but that's really not going to help anyone figure out what zone this is.  (And if we're gonna nitpick, "artillae" is not the plural, no matter how much you want to force Latin into things.)

Been forever but I want to say they're the reward for some kind of testing area normally used by the school to train students?

I agree about Essence Lash.  (And Chain Lightning I don't think holds up as well as the others, mainly because you'd usually rather just Essence Lash.)

Guardian's Roar is situational, and it's worse than what you can do with Mental Magic or Magic Creations.  But if you're running a Fire or (especially) Battle shaping guardian who avoids magic, it's your crowd control option.  I might call it underwhelming compared to other abilities in the game, but I'm not sure I would in this context, as it fills a completely different niche from the other weapon shaping skills.  The important thing isn't that it makes them run away, it's that it stops them from attacking you while they're terrified.

Whoops.  Pasted the wrong link.

Discussion actually here: https://spiderwebforums.ipbhost.com/topic/28862-factions/#comment-325110

Edit: Irrelevant discussion here, see below for correct link: https://spiderwebforums.ipbhost.com/topic/30084-powergaming-the-sects/#comment-327615

2 hours ago, Broken Mind said:

When I completed my unaligned playthrough I recall the ending mentioning that the Shaper Council had already heard most of what I was telling them.

Not quite.  What the ending actually says is:

"As you speak, the Council manages to slowly grow concerned. They are also strangely unsurprised. It's as if they have recently been told a tale much like this one."

In theory this could mean somebody else already reported what was going on in Drypeak, and the Council just ignored it.  It seems more likely a call-out to the previous game's ending, since your story of Drypeak is incredibly reminiscent on the report they heard from the G1 PC -- right down to the Awakened, the Takers, canisters, and a Geneforge.

I guess I should make some of this codex info accessible without having to install the mod.  So, here you go!  (There's further specifics in other codex entries.)

1 hour ago, alhoon said:

Then why nobody informed the Council? 

Because it's an RPG.  It has RPG Plot Hole #1.

Almost every RPG has this problem: what's so unique about the PC(s) that they can do this thing, but nobody else can?  (Related question that afflicts most CRPGs: how the heck does their power level rise so meteorically?)

Geneforge 1 did a better job of avoiding these plot holes than any game I can think of: the player is one of literally two people in this isolated location with years of relevant, specialized knowledge.  Leadership-type manipulation helps explain this even more.  (And for power level, you have both the player's specialized training in learning things quickly -- at the exact point in training where it's primed, but unused -- and on top of that, the canisters.)

G2 and G3 both tried to copy and paste this solution.  In G2 it's weaker both because the isolation is less absolute and because there are other Shapers around (who don't have the psychological and geopolitical explanations for being stuck that applied to Goettsch).  The whole "you're an outside factor" speech that a few people like Darian throw at you is a little weird.  There are lots of outside factors in the valley, just as strong as the PC, and it's not clear why the PC tips the balance but nobody else could.  (G3 in some ways had less of an issue with this, simply because the PC's actions don't feel even remotely as significant.  But at that point it was a copy-paste of a copy-paste.)  (And G1's power level explanation doesn't really hold up in either game.)

Reminder for anyone else reading: this only happens on Torment.

Getting to level 3 is definitely a little bit of a puzzle.  Then you start making some pretty good incremental progress.

Hahaha, awesome!  Yeah, Torment specifically is extra hard here.  Sounds like you can handle it, but there are some tips in the Codex if you need any.

And yup, the one cosmetic change here was blue shaper, shiny armor guardian, and sepia tone agent.

No.  The discussion was about whether or not loyalist shapers like Kima, Macnulty, and Bunk; Aodare; or Elissia, could successfully make it to the Shaper Council or not.  oceanes objected that Drypeak was too far for an easy journey (see above addrsesing that).  Making it to the Drypeak entrance is hardly an impossible task.  Whatever doubts the PC has about Elissia, she can shape drayks.  Kima can shape rotghroths.  And Aodare, well, he made it to Taker lands on his own, so presumably he could make it back.  The only thing that even remotely seems like it could pose a challenge would be a major Barzite force.  But Stannis only targeted Shanti because she was a new factor under constant surveillance.  That does not apply to any of these other shapers.  Barzahl isn't constantly watching them, and even if he did, would hardly send a major force after them just because they started walking east.

What?  Shanti did make it.  This is about the journey between the Drypeak mountains and the Shaper Council, not travel within the Drypeak area.

"You travel with Shanti for weeks... Then you climb into the desolate mountains.  You see the rubble and ruins surrounding Drypeak.  After a long, exhausting climb through the cold wastes, Shanti lets you set up camp in an abandoned shop. You sleep like the dead."

This is the Infestation intro.  It's only "weeks" of travel and that's before entering the "desolate mountains" -- which it sounds like you're only travelling through for one day before the game begins.

As for Elissia, the exact text is "She is old and weak. You doubt that she will make it back to the council alive."  It says nothing about the journey at all -- only that she is old and weak.  There's no suggestion that somebody younger and stronger would have any trouble making it.  There's little doubt that Kima, Macnulty, and Bunk, working together, could easily make the journey.  One Agent and an apprentice had no problem doing so.  It also doesn't seem like they are really having much of an effect on Barzahl.  And as for Aodare, he's not doing anything to actually impede the Takers at all.

Some do express an awareness of what the council might do, including a few commons.  I just think it's not a conversation it made sense to write 80 versions of.

But also, they've been there doing that stuff for years before the PC shows up.  And despite the flowery language a few people give you about being an outsider with a unique ability to influence things... that kinda has zero truth to it.  There have been plenty of other shapers in Drypeak, including those stoutly loyal to the council and not Zakary, like Macnulty's crew, and Aodare.  It's just that apparently none of them chose to go back to the Council and call j'accuse... which is actually a little bit confusing.  The one thing that might make the PC seem more likely to do that than others is Shanti's death -- and that is a topic that makes pretty much everyone who is asked about it nervous, even when they had nothing to do with it.

Everything about Thrackerzod and his group clashes with what we know about Shapers, with the dynamics of having only two (2) Shapers on Sucia in original Geneforge, and so on.  They were a kickstarter backer inclusion, and it kind of feels like Spiderweb got backed into a corner on that one.  As far as I'm concerned, they don't exist.

That said, Zakary does comment on a period when he was some kind of wandering Shaper, too.  So maybe there is some kind of dispensation for that.

Have you actually played Overrun, alhoon?  Please read the codex.

Thanks for the kind words alhoon.

5 hours ago, alhoon said:

You say we should not release altered versions of this mod. Could we do submods for this?

Short answer: no.

This seems like a bad idea.  This just isn't a simple mod where each change is self-contained to one place.  There's real potential for unexpected issues with conflicts over things like SDFs; it would be time-consuming to test; and it would add complications any time updates happen.  The fact that you are asking this as soon as you see the mod, without having used it or looked at it, does not add confidence.