MagusofStars

What does the difficulty level do exactly? It seems that it makes monsters do more damage, but I don't know the mechanics of it, nor any other effects. Does it also affect monster health? To-hit? Evade? XP? Skill point gains upon level-up? Also, if you change difficulty in the middle of the game, does it take effect immediately, only after you switch zones or will it only affect zones you haven't been to? I checked the manual and attempted to search the forums, but despite the wealth of information on all sorts of other stuff, I couldn't find anything on the difficulty.

So I am playing this for a second time and have a question. I normally like to put off any game-changing decisions as long as possible (makes it *much* easier to check out the various endings; also allows free exploration without the risk of somebody thinking you're a traitor). What quests/actions are there that can block you out of some factions? For example, my previous playthrough, I accidentally screwed up the Taygen faction by 'helping' some creations escape from a fort before I knew it mattered ('helping' in quotes because I think I 'accidentally' killed a couple who looked like they might carry cool items). Now when I ask to join, his first quest is "kill creations in a fort" and he kicks me out of town when I report that I did the opposite a long time ago. What else is there along these lines? Thanks in advance.

Replaying A4 and I've been having trouble with the undead in the Mertis Spiral. How do you kill these things? I've tried arrows, swords, Bolt of Fire, Smite, Lightning Spray and Repel Spirit...and they all do damage in the low single digits. Acid Spray does 40/round...but being single target and only acting once per round, it burns a lot of SP and takes way too long. Is there something I'm missing to make these things vulnerable and/or a better spell to use? I'm about level 12 (skipped most of the Eastern Gallery, but I've gone all the way down to Camp Samuels).

Due to the wait till G5 comes out for P, I'm replaying the earlier games in the series and had a couple quick questions about G2 since it's been a long time since I played through it: 1.) How many 'hard points' (e.g. not taking into account Canisters/Charms/Infiltrator stuff) in Leadership&Mechanics is enough to get through the game reasonably? 2.) What are all the available crafted items and who makes them? I remember Darian has a piece of armor and Sharon has a nice ring, but I think there are more and I can't remember them. Also, do any of the ingredients overlap a'la G3, where if you make the Creator's Belt you essentially won't get the Crystalline Shroud until the game's over (because the second Deep Focus Orb is a royal pain to get)? 3.) What collection quests are there? I remember from previous playthroughs there's a lot more than later games (and the limited cash of merchants in the game makes it more important) Thanks in advance!

Spoilers I guess... I was replaying this recently and haven't quite been able to figure it out. In all the previous games, it was pretty easy to tell what the protagonist did from clues given in the following game (e.g. G2 made it pretty clear that the G1 Shaper stayed loyal, wrecked the Geneforge, handled Trajkov and then told the Council about it), but G4 either doesn't do this or I somehow missed it. Thus far, all I've been able to figure out is that the Shaper from G3 somehow doesn't seem particularly liked by *either* side. So what did happen at the end of G3 and where in G4 are the clues/text that I managed to miss?