Student of Trinity

Hmmm; I never really noticed this big jump in difficulty on Gull. A jump, yes, but just enough to be interesting. From the landing on, it was clear that the stakes would be higher; but I was ready. But I was hitting Gull at level 30 as a lone Agent or a melee Guardian with Alwan, and I wasn't too far behind that as a Shaper with a pair of good Glaahks and four Vlish. A pair of Battle Alphas and a Searing Artila really does not sound like much of a crew for Gull, to me. I can well believe Omen Eye was tough!

Yeah, I don't see the problem. He's tough, but perfectly doable, whatever your class or difficulty level. I've never bothered fussing with the crystal; just walk up and start whacking. Having a lot of AP helps, and quaffing the odd healing pod when he hits, but otherwise just keep a-chopping, and he'll crumble eventually. Perhaps you are trying to do this at too low an experience level?

The in-game instructions say that it blesses, speeds, and shields. Do you find otherwise in practice? It has been too long since I played a Shaper for me to remember.

Should include a spoiler warning in the subject. Create Drayk is in the northern wing of Lord Rahul's private quarters. Yes, you can train after canisters in G3, so you can forget about the tedious strategy from G2, of skipping all the canisters then going back for them after training. I don't know about getting Create Fyora 4, but thanks for the word on Cryoas. I never got into them before. Vlish still worked fine for me in G3, as did Glaahks. A pair of Glaahks worked okay on Battle Alphas, and also served well enough as damage sponges that I started thinking of mine as two-legged tanks. The Rotghroths on Dhonal were a bit challenging, but doable, and then by the time I met the multiple Rotghroths of Spears, I had Gazers, so nothing mattered anymore.

Quote: Originally written by Hectonkhyres: You say they suck ass? You are correct. That is the reason I like them. Are the Windows graphics more elaborate than on the Mac, or is there more in the 1.0.3 patch than Jeff has let on?

These golems are just extremely bad news. There are some tricks that might let you beat one or two of them, but the bracelet only gets really good when you can beat the final five, and those are brutal. So you basically have to come back a lot later. If you do want to take down one of them, just to say you did, you might manage it with a lot of pre-buffing. Use the essence pool to put Augmentation and Essence Shield (and anything else you can) on everybody, use Mass Energize and Protection, and don't touch the rune until all your creations are in place to stab the golem the moment it appears. Even dirtier tricks are to hit-and-run the golems down the corridor, going around corners a lot, etc. This is easier to do with an Agent, but you might manage something of it. Worst of all is to lure the golem outside the complex, and then the Battle Beta will help you. But even these tricks will only get you so far against the increasing numbers of golems in the later tests.

I finally read through the manual pages, and noticed that Protection only blocks 20% of damage, but Shielding (which has the same little icon) blocks 50%. So maybe I should be using more of those Shielding pods and spores and rods! I thought they were just giving me Protection. Mass Energize is said to 'shield' everyone. And since Battle Roar is said to 'protect' and 'shield' them, it seems that the manual page is being precise in its terminology, so I presume that Mass Energize gives the 50% protection. That does make it even better than I thought it was. Plus you ought to be able to cast Protection on top of it, for even more. There is an icon for 'resistant', which is said to describe a character who has been made resistant to lots of things. How can you actually get that in the game, though? I've never seen it happen.

Go back to the other rune in the complex, where you picked up the bracelet in the first place.

Yep.

Or the Rotting Demon in the appropriately named Demonic Depot.

Resnick just had a bad trip once. It'll never happen to you. Canisters are 110% safe.

Otherwise, all merchants in the game pay you the same lousy 25% price. Whether they are cheap or outrageous in the prices at which they sell, they all buy at the same margin. No wonder they have infinite money. You can sell lovely and flawed shards right away. Beautifuls can be combined with gems to make icy crystals, so you may want to save them for that. Depending on your tactics, and on how many gems you scrounge, you can probably still sell a lot of beautiful crystals.

I often have the same problem. To clear it you have to switch off all the pylons, which means turning a couple of different switches, and persuading the servant mind to switch off a few more. If your leadership isn't high enough you can't do this last one. If you've killed everything, I'd just use the zone-clearing cheat code.

Ivory Skull on a weapon lets you put a weak curse on enemies. I don't know what it does on other equipment.

Casting any spell: Some energy and/or essence Saving your ornk-meat from a horde of bloodthirsty rogues, letting you cut them down one at a time without breaking a sweat: Priceless Some things energy and essence can't buy. For everything else, there's Strong Daze.

That's the spirit! Let us know how it goes.

Hmmm. I'm starting a very slow fourth game, with an Agent again because now I know the game well enough to totally steamroller it with an Agent. I picked up Greta because I thought a pair of Agents would be cool. But I just don't like the Rebel game as well as the Loyalist. I haven't any complaints about it, I'm glad it's there, I think it's well done; but I don't find it as much fun. So I'm not sure it'll be worth taking Greta just up to Dhonal. I suppose I could talk straight loyalist but fix the Dhonal creator, and then keep Greta through Gull; but it wouldn't feel right.

Yeah, slowing is bad. Curse me, damage me, stun me, poison me, cover me in acid: okay. Just keep that open hand away from me. Rotghroths are worse than ever now because of it. I got the speed from pods, but the blessing and protection were my own. I found that a bit of Blessing Magic really helped. By the end game, I would put on an Agent Cloak just to do Steelskin, then drop it and heal up the extra points from my Symbiotic Cloak. There was never any point in raising my skill high enough to do Essence Armor, since there were enough Armor Potions in the game for when I wanted Armor. Speed is so great, more because it lets you attack and escape than because it lets you attack twice. The bottleneck with casting Speed is the enormous energy cost -- it is really tough to get a Guardian's energy up high enough to cast it at all. So I relied on pods and spores and rods for Speed throughout most of the game. It's handy to know that if you chug two speed pods you go up to 1.5x AP. You often need those extra AP to be able to hide after attacking.

I think Alwan should have a (relatively weak) missile attack, but what he most needs is armor upgrades.

I have always thought that G2 assumes that the Geneforge was destroyed without being used in G1, so that there is no 'Overpowered One' in existence. Just as G3 assumes a loyalist or unaligned ending to G2. I suppose there is some loophole for a geneforge-enhanced character from G1 to be ruling an isolated empire somewhere, while G2 and G3 go on; but it would seem pretty strange that nobody in G2 mentions this important fact while giving their history lessons.

Kind of depends on my mood. I agree that Shapers are most original, but sometimes the micromanagement of creation movement gets tedious. Agents are fun and easy to just blast things with. Overall, though, a Guardian might actually be most fun, because on Torment you really have to think a lot about what you're doing, and use all the tricks in the book. I usually play an Agent first, because then I'll be able to concentrate on exploring and following the plot without having to think much about tactics. Then I try a Shaper, and try to play a different way (in G3, I went rebel). Last of all I try a Guardian, when I'm familiar with the game and want more tactical challenge.

I managed to do it before leaving Harmony, with a melee Guardian accompanied by Alwan. My trick was just to use a lot of Speed pods and some crystals. I had saved a bunch of crystals up to that point (by slogging through the Vlish Woods and places like it tree-to-tree and hand-to-hand). I stood near the book after each reading as the first few shades came in one at a time, taking them down with a shot or two from range (steel javelins maybe? Don't remember.) or an assist from Alwan. I stayed blessed, protected, and hasted as much of the time as I could, throughout the battle. As the shade numbers grew, I retreated around the corner into the passage that leads to the sealed door, and began popping out to fire one shot at a time, then popping back, dropping out of combat, re-entering combat, and repeating. This allowed me to whittle down a few more shades as they slowly approached, as long as my speed pods lasted. Eventually I was dealing with the ghosts and infernal shade from the last reading, cornered up next to the sealed door; but there was still a tiny corner I could hide behind, right next to the door there, and speed and my last spray crystals took them all down. Alwan bought it in this final struggle, of course. Turned out I was able to deal with the rest of Krya's Refuge alone, though, using one last speed pod, some melee, and a lot of thorns on Krya himself.

"Badges? We ain't got no badges. We don't need no badges. I don't have to show you any stinking badges!"

Shaper society has a peculiar kind of flat tax. Everything anyone owns above 30K is instantly confiscated and used to fund that fine universal health care system that puts scissors, scalpels and bolts of cloth in every zone.

Quote: Originally written by Azul: The rouge creations say that they have a right to freedom I knew they were pinkos, whining for rights all the time like that.