Aoslare

Looks neat. I'm not sure it's necessary, given how easy it is to edit the item scripts, which are in fairly plain language once you look up the stat ID numbers. But it looks nice. I'm pretty sure there is a maximum number of it_stat_to_affect x variables you can use. I'm not sure if there is a combined limit for pc stat variables and pet stat variables, or if each has a flat limit.

For #2, it definitely affects the level of characters you encounter. This in turn affects their Str, Dex, Int, End, Health and Spell Energy. Those in turn affect their hit and dodge rates and the damage their attacks do. As far as I know it doesn't affect anything else, but I could be wrong. It DEFINITELY does not affect experience, item drops, characters encountered, quantity of monsters encountered, quests, dialogue, etc.

Applause.

Thuryl, this challenge is proving far too easy for you. So it's obvious what the next one has to be. The Trakovite Royale. No canisters, no spells, *and* no creations.

I am pleased to see that Glaahks are continuing to be useful in this challenge, despite being more vulnerable than Wingbolts.

Quote: Originally written by Cryptozoology: In hindsight, that fight would have been a lot easier if I'd had a Charged Vlish.

First of all, one on one, an Eyebeast will die horribly against a Drakon. It does fire damage, which Drakons are very resistant to, and it does not resist the Drakon's breath. Its melee attack is actually a lot better, but the fear effect won't work on a drakon, so the drakon still comes out ahead. Gazers are on more of an even plane. Where the heck did you get this idea about a Gazer Collective? Gazers have always been presented as individualistic and reluctant to cooperate with others. That is also exactly why they have not amounted to anything the same way the Drakons have. Individual gazers seem to act sort of parallel to the more insular of the insane shapers, like Spharon or Shaila. They do not have the capacity for social organization that drakons do.

Do Ivory Skulls increase hit rate? I forget what they do on armor, but if that's it, then yeah, definitely. I think you'll still want Golden Crystals in the end, since your best missile options hit everything anyway, though.

I'd vote for Missile Weapons investment. There are several items which will be very useful at key moments with a little investment -- Reaper Batons, Wands of Death, Terror, Disruption and Corruption, Jeweled Wands, the wand that dazes, Torrent Gems and Madness Gems, even Ensnaring Fibers... there aren't lots of these but there are enough that you can use afford to use most of the Icy and Spray Crystals on merely moderately difficult spots. The good creations are expensive enough that, by the time you've bought a decent amount of Int, it's going to take an investment of more than 30 skill points to pay for an extra Kyshakk. At that point the cheaper levels of missile weapons are a no-brainer. You don't have any real need to pump melee, Endurance and Parry aren't really attractive once they are expensive, and you only need so much shaping skill. Not sure what else would make sense.

Yeah, normal use of Leadership and Mechanics is fine. The point of that clause is to prevent this from becoming effectively a much less restrictive version of the pacifist challenge.

I think the ST will be a little better. What tipped the scales for me was realizing how vulnerable even a well-armored Warrior will be to enemy magic attacks. Without Protection, Steel Skin, and so on, you'll be taking probably half damage even after Parry and armor. When facing multiple Wingbolts, that means even at very high levels you pretty much need creations to survive. The creations will die, so you go with the disposable creations model, which is fine. Given the disposability model, actually, I expect I *would* pick a creation skill to pump somewhat. Not sure whether to go with Fire or Magic. They each have their good points. Magic is better early on with Artila and Vlish, but Fire gets Kyshakks who sound are the best value meatshields on the market.

The extra essence is nice. On the other hand, the Warrior gets extra HP, which should also be nice. At any given point in the game, the Warrior should have (compared to the ST) approximately: +3 melee skill +3 missile skill +4 Quick Action +5 Parry -1 Fire Shaping -2 Battle Shaping -1 Magic Shaping -2 Intelligence They seem pretty balanced to me. One thing that's worth pointing out is that your creations will _not_ be blessed or shielded (let alone hasted) on a regular basis. This is different from typical Lifecrafter play. Chapter 2 sounds very painful to me for the ST, since you still don't have any creations that can take two hits without dying. EDIT: Do you think it would be doable with the additional constraint that you can't leave zones just to heal?

New results. I did some tests with magic, acid, and cold damage. Magic and cold damage work almost identically to physical damage, except for Parry. Up to about 10 Parry, Parry blocks a similar amount of damage. (The difference in parry % actually depends on melee vs missile, not phys vs magic damage.) After that however Parry stops doing much against cold and magic. At 20 Parry it blocked about 22% damage compared to about 38% for physical damage. Acid damage... yeah, about that. Acid drip doesn't do acid damage! Basically, although acid resistance does not reduce damage from a given number of levels of acid, as Schrodinger proved -- energy resistance does reduce acid drip damage! I kid you not. With 15% acid resistance and no energy resistance, I resisted 0 every time on acid drip. With 15% acid and 10% energy resistance, I resisted approximately 10-15% of the drip damage (with very wide variation, possibly because these weren't very big drips).

My thought was really that permanent creations would be extremely hard to keep alive, given that you can only heal them from spores. The lower tier ones will die easily, and even Drayks and their ilk can only take so many hits.

No, you'll definitely want to save essence pods. They net you extra disposable creations.

People have been observing for a long time that magic is extremely powerful in G4 (and G2 and G3) and that of all PC abilities, it's the one that is hardest to do without. So. Finish the game without casting a single magic spell. Ever. Not one Minor Heal. Not one Firebolt. Of course, you will want to do it on Torment. And you have to actually fight stuff. This is not a stealth challenge. Suddenly missiles become much more precious. You will have to save the best ones for when you really need them. Creations will be helpful, but the fact that you have limited means to heal them means you can't rely on them in all parts of the game, and they will likely have to be disposable. They are however a free resource, since you don't need essence for spells. The lack of infinite healing also means PC defense becomes somewhat more important. Endurance is critical. But most of all, it will force you to optimize your tactics completely. This challenge is obviously one place the Warrior can shine. You can clearly do this on no canisters, but I'd rather do it on low canisters, as some of the special creations can really shine here. Charged Vlish, for example, are practically the only reusable Slow effect you have (until Ur-Drakons at the very end of the game). Pyroroamers might be useful, too. Bhahahahahahaha.

Here's how hit chance works. Each form of attack has a default chance to-hit. Almost all of those are between 50% and 80%. Each level of attack strength increases hit chance by 5%. For creations and NPCs, attack strength = Strength + skill with the attack ability. Skill is a hidden stat on creations that does not change with level. Strength is used even for missile attacks and yes, even for spells! For the PC, attack strength depends on the type of attack. Melee: Strength + Melee Weapons + bonus from equipped weapon Missile: Dexterity + Missile Weapons + bonus from missile used Magic: Spellcraft + appropriate magic category + skill in individual spell If the attacker has Luck (PCs + Gazers, basically) add 2% chance per level of Luck. Remove 2% chance per level of defender's Luck. Remove 5% chance per level of Dexterity the defender has. (Also remove 5% chance per level of Nimbleness, a hidden stat that Thahd Shades and Plated Artila (and no one else) had in the first three games. I can't remember if Plated Artila still have it in G4.) In summary: Default chance to hit <-- attack type +5% / lvl of attack strength +2% / lvl of Luck -2% / lvl of Luck -5% / lvl of Dexterity Note that if the final number is capped on top by 99% and on bottom by 1%. However, the actual results stop following the expected distribution when you get close to either of those numbers, so in practice the limits are closer to 95% and 10% or so.

I agree that Mass Haste is very unbalancing. However, the unbalancing thing is really the effect of the buffs, which is (intentionally) huge in all SW games. You can frequently cast lots of individual buffs just before a big fight. So for the most part, Major Blessing just allowed you to spend less time in that annoying spell dialog, though it was also (in Exile anyway) cheaper than all the individual spells combined. There are some notable exceptions though, mainly tough special encounter fights on the overworld -- Major Blessing helped a ton on those. In Geneforge it is a little different since Speed uses so much energy. In the early game you can't multicast it much at all and in the late game it could still eat up most of your spell energy. On the other hand, in Geneforge you only have one character who can do *ANYTHING* other than attack. So mass haste can basically just boost your damage output. In E/A -- especially Exile, with all the spell variety -- it can increase your strategic options tremendously.

There seem to be ample suggestions that many creations come in reproducing and non-reproducing varieties. Battle alphas are a good example. Also, we all know how easy it is to turn an individual reproducing creation into a non-reproducing one... snip! (Unless, say, vlish reproduce by casting spells or something, which is possibly even dorkier and stupider than tentacle sex.)

Yeah. I think the max per round is higher, though. When I was carting around seven Artila, they seemed to max out around 90 acid damage per round.

Hmm. That's true. It seems like the easiest way to test this would be to grab something with 1% or 2% armor and take a bunch of hits, and see how much it blocks.

They are definitely cumulative the same way armor is, for a total of about 36% reduction. That I can say for sure. Also, I'm skeptical that the randomization would be per point of damage. In that case, wouldn't we expect naturally very low damage outputs to hit 0 damage post-reduction every so often with enough armor? Yet that's extremely rare.

I voted that way as well... and ditto. If I really felt the need to martyr myself in the face of every evil, unfair situation I was confronted with, I wouldn't have made it very far in the world, or helped much of anything. People with power generally do awful, wretched things. But unless I actually have the power to stop them, I'm not going to add throwing my life away to the list of things I blame them for.

So, I've done the first set of (potentially) many tests to figure out what effect different stuff has on damage. I used 12 data points per scenario, which is not really enough to be statistically sound, but I'm going for breadth over depth here... and there are so many things to test. Possibly as a result, there are a few confusing results. My default test subject was a naked Lifecrafter, level 61 (the hardcoded max) with all stats at base except for Endurance pumped to 20, on Torment. The class and level shouldn't matter; the difficulty setting should matter for the data itself but not the underlying formulae. However, that could always turn out to be wrong. There was enough variation that 50 tests apiece would have been better. That makes sense, given the large number of die rolls involved in computing initial damage (before defensive modifiers). Oh well. My default attackers were the four Thahds at the east entrance of of the Northforge Gates. Anyway, here's some of what I've concluded. 1) Most damage reduction effects move their damage to the resisted number. Some, however, just remove it quietly without increasing the resisted number. Parry is quiet. 2) Str, Dex, QA, and Luck all have no effect on damage taken. Endurance probably doesn't, although that's mildly unclear in my data. 3) Armor reduces damage exactly as the manual says: each piece does its reduction separately, at face value. (i.e., wearing a 20% and a 10% piece will reduce your damage taken by 28%, not 30%.) HOWEVER, this is true only ON AVERAGE. The actual reduction to each blow varied from 9% to 30% when wearing one 20% piece. When wearing one 34% piece it varied from 24% to 44%. However, I didn't test weaker armor. I can't imagine a 2% piece of armor ranges up to 12% reductions. 4) Parry's a little weird. 10 Parry will reduce damage by about 17% (not counting the chance of blocking it entirely). 20 Parry will reduce it by about 38%. And 29 Parry (the highest I could easily get) will reduce it by about 42%. The numbers are a little odd. My best guess is that the 20 Parry test run got a little lucky, and that each point of Parry acts like a separate piece of armor at 2%. That would give us expected reductions of 18% at 10, 33% at 20, and 44% at 29. Note that the blocking percentage is capped at 50%, which is achieved at 25 Parry. Between the damage reduction and the chance of blocking, 10 Parry will reduce the damage you eat by about a third. 20 Parry will reduce it by nearly two-thirds. Even ignoring Parry's reduced effectiveness against magic attacks, this means that Endurance is generally a much better value. (That doesn't take ease of healing into account, though.) 5) One thing, at least, is sane. Spells. Protection gives a FLAT 20% damage reduction to all phyiscal damage, period. Steel Skin does the same thing, and the two effects are cumulative. Essence Shield, Essence Armor, and (unsurprisingly) Elemental Shield all have NO effect on physical damage taken. The first two do help your dodge rate by quite a bit, though.

The good news is this is DRASTICALLY easier to test for in G4, since the game tells you how much damage you take AND how much you resist. The proportion resisted is definitely not static, even given two completely identical attacks on the same PC, but it shouldn't be hard to figure out an average given a decent set of trials. I want to do this, actually. Quantifying the reduction you get from Parry in particular would be useful.