Slawbug

I wonder if it's an emulation hiccup. Saying this because there's no record of anyone on the internet reporting this before (and given how heavily E3 and BoE were discussed on these forums 20+ years ago, I can't believe no one ever tried to poison arrows), while there are some reports of being experiencing really weird things using OTVDM with BoE. Notably, there is a report of Capture Soul always using slot 1. Which slot Capture Soul picks is random -- well attested -- which suggests something really goofy is going on with the RNG call, when played under OTVDM. The same post says there are other "sometimes" glitches -- it doesn't elaborate on them, but that could also be consistent with an RNG issue. Emulation can affect RNGs due to initialization values, etc. Usually we're used to seeing old systems suddenly have better RNG when emulated (think about the old exploits for NES games where you'd restart, perform a specific series of actions, and then guarantee a particular encounter or whatever), but I guess this could be working the other way around. And it's definitely possible that something about the poison chance RNG is different for ranged attacks vs melee (maybe just in terms of order of things in the code rather than an intended gameplay difference). (The report was for BoE, but something similar could presumably happen here -- they share an awful lot of code.) There are also reports in that thread of text inconsistently missing values... which could point to something weird going on with memory read/write. Definitely a possibility with emulation, if the game is handling it in an unusual way. (Looks like OTVDM has had issues in the past with heap sizing that are attested, could be something like that.) And here's another thread that suggests truly bizarre RNG with OTVDM, this time E3 itself. I don't think E3 even had a door strength setting that could produce such low chances for success at bashing a regular door with 18 Strength. If you have a way (and the time) to try out a different emulation method (like just DOSBox) with a transferred save, it might be worth seeing if you experience the same behavior.

Weird. I assume you get the same behavior when using other bows and arrows, when attacking other monsters, when the PC has more skill in archery or poison, etc.? Just trying to think of any possible unknown edge case that could explain this... I assume from your other posts this is just in Exile III, right?

What bow and arrows specifically do you have equipped?

Poisoned arrows were definitely a thing since the very first game. The in-game tips even talk about them. (And "poisoned weapon" is just tracked by a simple status effect -- it applies to the PC, not the specific weapon.) I dunno -- can you be more specific about exactly what you're observing? You're following exactly the same sequence both times, but melee attacks are applying poison but ranged attacks never are? What do you have equipped?

Hi, thanks for reporting this! Looks like Google now wants a whole bunch of manual setup to enable this kind of thing. Not sure if it was ever working here and just never got reported till now. I've disabled Google login for the moment.

Some great insights in here. I can help out with a few of these questions: 1. This is only in G5; as you surmise, it's the result of the 3 loyalist classes being directly edited for NPC use in G4, and then having the NPC style resists accidentally preserved in G5. 2. They do not break the 90% cap. Comment: It's a fairly enormous bonus for the entire game, unless you are going well past 86% resistance without those bonuses (which is pretty hard to do without sacrificing other bonuses for it). (86% is around the point where a 30% bonus will get you to the 90% cap.) Though I suppose you're also right that if you simply don't need more survivability because you are truly fluent in glass cannon, then it's not necessary. Of course, there's no downside to taking those classes; the only real consideration is if you want to go Sorceress instead (and from a strict minmaxing perspective it doesn't beat out the resist bonuses, despite Sorceress being the imaginary class we salivated over through all the previous games).

Ugh, I forgot about Leadership. I was testing on friendly drayks. Here's the thing -- I never once saw Terror resisted, but Daze was close to 50/50. I think I ran about 30 trials of each. That's really weird in combination with your results. But I guess weird happens. Testing on friendlies is necessary, I think, since those are the only creations where we can be truly sure there are no hardcoded modifications made to them.

Slow, there's a wand, a melee weapon, and a couple of enemy melee attacks. Shock I don't remember -- Ur-Glaahk skin maybe? I'm pretty sure I saw it a few times.

EDIT: I was suspicious about Shade creature types, so I did some testing myself on drayks. They resist Vulnerable, Curse, Wrack, Slow, and (notably) Daze. They do not resist Poison, Acid, Terror, Dominate, or Stun. I couldn't easily test Shock and I could actually see that one going either way.

Q: Do we know that's the complete list of statuses Curse Resistance is applied to? There have been SW games in the past where e.g. Curse Resistance was what would resist the application of poison and acid even though poison and acid resistances are used for resisting the actual damage done by the status.

Yeah, it's just a question of value for skill points. It sounds like we agree both that it's not literally worthless and that it's not a great value. I do seem to recall another recent debate where you said you rely on creations to land acid (so the buff duration won't help there) and that acid dealt 80% of your damage in the toughest fights of the game (so the airshock damage increase won't do much there).

If you're a shaper, I would argue that it is actually pretty bad. You get +5% additive to spell damage (easily outpaced by even a third of a stat point to a creation skill); +5% additive to healing spells (potentially useful, if your heal spells are actually falling short, but that's pretty unlikely); and +5% additive to buff/debuff duration (very meh).

The monster spell levels are a bit odd. Especially on the characters who teach you level 6 and 7 spells... hah.

I think the stat labelled "speed" there might be a mistranslation from Japanese, and is really the "skill" stat. Which IIRC mostly affected accuracy.

Energy goes up with level anyway, so if all you need is a bit more, you'd get it anyway in short order.

If you're a shaper, there's not really any reason to put points into INT at all.

Alternate take: you're better off ignoring creation "control" levels entirely. Having more and stronger creations means you're more likely to kill things before they damage your creations in the first place -- or inflict their own status effects on them. This is especially true on higher difficulties, where your creations will sometimes get one-shot anyway, and where (as Randomizer noted) accuracy is extra relevant. Shaping skill and essence mastery are definitely the two good picks, and you'll eventually increase both, so improve what you want. I'd probably go shaping skill at this point, as you're going fire shaping and you have more than enough essence to have a good number of fyoras with the key skills (haste + fire breath + ability spam) already.

It does increase their level (and thus HP), it just takes a few seconds to take effect.

I don't think the games have really said shapers are able to "send mental commands (and thoughts)" to any creations, period. Taking back control is described as an exertion of willpower, and in some cases is mechanically tied to Leadership. There's no suggestion it's telepathic.

No, at least not necessarily. The Mutagen codex is clear on this: "Only the most skilled Shapers can keep them under control. They can be entirely rogue and still pretend to be obedient."

It's 8 leadership for the Awakened and Obeyers, and 10 leadership for the Takers. This is surprisingly affordable skill points wise and you do get other useful benefits out of it. The Takers are arguably the most important one to use leadership on since the alternatives involve permanently closing off either the Obeyers or the Sholai rebels. If you want to powergame it I'd suggest the following: 1) Answer just a few questions pro-servile, kill Control Four, and join the Awakened. (Consider raiding the tombs before getting the free combat training, if you have any zeroes in those skills.) You can join very early in the game, and the experience for a lot of the associated quests, like Control Four, has a very low level for scaling, so you may as well take advantage of that. 2) Answer a bunch of questions anti-servile, get Leadership to 8, and join the Obeyers. (Probably do Demel's quest in the Thorny Woods at this point so you can finish Mickall Blade's quests; you can't do it as a Taker. Also, if possible, make your way to Drayk's Vale and purchase Leadership training from Halm, since you can't do that once you have the Trajkov amulet. If you put that off, you could use Gavrila, who temporarily steals the amulet, as a chance to get it later.) 3) Use Learned Darian to go back to pro-servile opinion, get Leadership to 10, and join the Takers. The main incentive for doing the Awakened first is that you save a set of Mind Nutrients. There are enough sets of it to feed every servant mind that can only be awoken with nutrients, but having an extra set of hand can be very convenient depending on what order you do the zones in. You can technically feed Control Four and then (without talking to Rydell) kill it for an extra set of experience, but I'd rather save time and hold onto the nutrients; ymmv. And if you want to simplify answering opinion questions (or just want that Create Fyora +1 ASAP), you could certainly join the Obeyers first. (This would also allow you to put off Leadership till you want the Takers, as you can go back and kill Control Four even after joining the Obeyers.)

Because being rogue is not the same thing as going rogue. A "rogue" alpha that has been rogue for years because it's been in an environment with no shapers and lots of independent creations, is not the same thing as a controlled and essentially fettered alpha suddenly, without warning, in the middle of a chaotic combat, having its mental chains snap and becoming free, without guidance and probably with quite a bit of disorientation. Alphas weren't engineered to think, they were engineered with combat reflexes; it's not hard to imagine why it might lash out in such a situation. A drayk is a different question; the lore is extremely clear that drayks are "dangerously smart and independent" -- and particularly "cunning," a word that is used to describe them in multiple places just in G1. Mutagen says shapers need a difficult to acquire license in order to make drayks; in original Geneforge they had been barred entirely, apparently without exception, for over a century. A drayk that has gone rogue might deliberately target its creator in order to avoid being controlled again; but more than that, the game notes the possibility that it might already have been rogue, simply hiding it and waiting for the right moment to strike.

Oop. Thanks, corrected!

Yes, it is 100% possible to do this. Simply leaving a faction won't actually alienate them and they'll always let you switch back, if you still meet the criteria. The meaningful bonuses for joining are pretty much limited to: Awakened - Combat skills +1 Obeyers - Create Fyora +1 Takers - Speed and Create Vlish canisters without angering Kazg; Kyazo and Kaxen quests; much easier access to Trajkov amulet Each faction offers a level of training in the Sholai language, but these are trivial to acquire anyway. Also, the Obeyers and Takers both remove "NY" from all items in their respective main zones on joining. There is mostly no downside at all to having the Trajkov amulet (from any source). Note however: - Halm won't offer Leadership training if you have it - Gavrila will attack you if you have it, which doesn't matter unless, for some reason, you want to collect the maximum number of Sholai language trainings. This has no impact on the game itself Unless something has changed from OG1 (the ending text chunks don't appear to have, but feel free to correct me here), this is wrong. What changes the ending is what you do with the Geneforge (and with Trajkov and Goettsch). Each of the servile sects pushes you towards a different Geneforge resolution, but sect membership itself doesn't actually affect anything.

That is a really good point. There are some other factors I left out -- critical hit chance, for example, which can actually be quite high with the right equipment, and which boosts direct damage significantly (I think it's 1.5x when critting, so an effective +15% to total output considering the best-in-slot jewelry) but doesn't help acid. I decided to just test this all out repeatedly. The good news is my projected damage numbers hold up exceptionally well. The bad news: Goettsch is level 23 and is actually tricky to hit on Torment. This is hard all around, but is particularly terrible for an unfocused shaping skill strategy. Chances to hit (blessed, etc): Drayk (fire shaping 9 + 2 stat lvls) physical attack: 77% Drayk (fire shaping 9 + 2 stat lvls) fire spray: 57% Searing Artila (magic shaping 9 + 2 stat lvls) ST acid: 62% Searing Artila (magic shaping 9 + 2 stat lvls) acid spray: 52% Searing Artila (magic shaping 3) ST acid: 22% Searing Artila (magic shaping 3) acid spray: 12% Additionally, Goettsch resists taking on the acid status about half the time that he is hit. The console doesn't give a percentage here unfortunately. (I think this is the result of his curse resistance, which isn't displayed either, but maybe it's also level-based? I don't know.) Searing Artila acid is almost always applied for 3 procs (sometimes 4 at a small chance correlating to creation Int). Since it does proc twice per "round" for Goettsch, this means a lone Searing Artila will need to reapply it every turn to get the full effect. Mathing it out, the odds of getting at least one successful application per Searing Artila turn are about 46% for the MS 9 artila, and just 18% for the MS 3 artila! (The odds could be slightly better (or worse) depending on how much status resistance he truly has.) So in theory that 230 acid damage per round sounds amazing, but in practice, it's not that easy. For comparison, at level 19, my Shaper has a very similar 64% chance to hit with Searer. For whatever reason Searer seems more consistent at applying the status effect, but I didn't test exhaustively so I'm not confident in this. Searer does layer on more turns of acid, generally 5-6. Ultimate conclusions: - For a Magic Shaping strategy you definitely want a Searing Artila, maybe two, for this fight. Because of all the layers of random chances, this will be swingier and less consistent than a direct damage strategy, but not necessarily worse overall -- but will probably require more reloads. This is especially true if you're also using statuses (Airshock, Glaahks, whatever) to handle crowd control. - For any other strategy, they'll be pretty rocky. - Mixed shaping type strategies will be rocky in general.