Student of Trinity

Ah, romance in Geneforge IV. Two young creations meet in the steaming swamps and fall in love. The cruel Shapers who control them forbid their union, on the senseless grounds that a mating of Submission Vlish and Rabid Roamer could bring no good. Plot complications build, alarums and excursions, and in the fifth act everybody gets re-absorbed.

There are only two: the Shaper loyalists with whom you nominally begin, and the rebels, who will contact you soon and several times through the game. You can postpone deciding for a long time, but the sooner you decide, the better: there is no reward for sitting on the fence in G3.

The point isn't so much that the melee Agent would be a weak Guardian, but that she would be so much like a Guardian that you might as well play a real Guardian instead. Compensating for your less effective melee attacks with Daze may well be effective, but it isn't as much fun as slugging it out with a live opponent, and may the best entity win. A possibly crucial factor left out, in the otherwise excellent 'melee Agent' analysis of the Agent vs. Guardian thread, was the Guardian's greater Health for the same Endurance. I'd like to see this factored in. Even apart from this, I'm not sure the differences that were pointed out - and which I agree are right - are really so small. As percentages of the stats typical of an end-game melee Guardian, they would be quite appreciable; and earlier in the game they would be larger still, proportionally. Plus, the difference between taking down an enemy in n swings or (n+1) can often be dramatic, so the practical consequences of a modest skill difference might be larger than you'd think from just staring at the raw numbers.

It's really just Speed that is the one key trick for Agents. With all those AP, and high quick action, you can attack infinitely many times in a row, as long as there's a corner to duck around. Everything else is just a matter of speeding up the process of chewing down the enemies, a process that Speed makes inevitable, because they never get to react.

The main advantage of my last Guardian's obstinate purism was that I didn't have to worry about scrounging money to pay those 'trainers', who are really just foul, tempting fiends that want to forge your genes! So I could finally stop picking up every bolt of cloth and suit of quicksilver plate I found, and be free! On the other hand, I had to take several trips back and forth to the monastery island just to haul in all the stuff I needed for my assault on the Caves. I left the place with burnt-out Inferno Wands scattered like cigarette butts in an airport smoking area.

It would be an honor, of course: go ahead! Somebody else posted a nice summary of all the artifact powers and features a while back, too; that would be a good complement. And of course Drakefyre started us off with his Recipes thread.

Delicious Vlish is pretty much the expert on Agents, but I prefer the battle magic emphasis for mine. I like blasting things more than just scaring or controlling or confusing them. For best all-round effectiveness, as opposed to iron-man-like challenges, I think you've got to go for Strong Daze and you've got to go for Speed. Past this I don't think you really need more blessing or mental magic. Put everything else into battle magic and spellcraft, and enjoy zapping everything. You also need to keep up your Quick Action so that you can guarantee to get the drop on things, and raise your Intelligence to keep your Energy up. Nothing else really matters, though some leadership and mechanics can be convenient. That having been said I know that the mental magic Agent also works, and DV can tell you more. I've never heard of anyone trying a blessing-focused Agent. In principle I guess it could work, but I think it would be too much like playing a pseudo-Guardian.

Whether or not Ghaldring will appear in the Ashen Isles in person is explained clearly at a couple of stages in the game. Ask about him when you can and you'll find out. Several other characters are unkillable at various stages of the game. In most cases, this is just to make sure that they get to accomplish certain things before dying, and they become killable again soon. What you can do in the school is lock Hoge in his own bedroom, then kill his Battle Alpha. Doing so turns the whole darn school hostile, including the Servant Mind and Alwan. And if you then decide to open the bedroom door a crack, to see what Hoge has been doing in there all this time, Whoosh. Hostile doesn't begin to describe Senor Hoge at this point. It's like the bedroom-locking and creation-killing also makes him realize that YOU were the son-of-a-clawbug apprentice who put the demon bile in his orange juice last term. All that for a lousy 120 XP: it ain't worth it, my friends.

But you may as well get the closest one, which is his, to his south. IIRC, it's a bit hard to find the area where his shield is, because the path that leads to it is unusually close to the eastern exitzone. It does not start right near Stringer; you have to go back northeast a bit, to find the narrow southern path that leads to the clawbug den in which you can find his shield.

The only non-bug thing I can think of is that maybe you overlooked the fact that what you thought were your living tools were really a few spore batons, since those have the same graphic but just different colors. I apologize in advance for suggesting that you posted a question here just because you made an idiotic mistake, but playing late at night many of us have made similar mistakes, so for all I know at this point it is a possibility. Other than that, this sounds like a major bug.

Alwan would be okay, I think, if he were just given some armor upgrades as well as melee. A baton might also help, but he has to have weaker ranged attack than Greta, and stronger melee, or he isn't different enough from her to be interesting.

You've got to get the mine Servant Mind back in gear, and tell it to command the golems.

As I stated above, this doesn't work. That sneaky Barzahl has his revenge even in death.

Dropping everything at random is bad. Picking one town as a base, and putting everything there near one exitzone, in neatly organized piles, is not a problem -- just a pathology. In every darn Geneforge game I've ever played, I have wound up with way more stuff piled up in town than I ever actually needed. You can really just sell most stuff. But it is worth keeping sets of resistant items, for use in particular areas. And of course it is reasonable to stockpile crystals, pods and living tools.

Hmmm, I suppose that actually canisters aren't as big a deal to Agents as they were in G2, anyway. I found that Kill and Aura of Flames were actually quite nerfed, compared to what they were, because the top monsters seem to resist stunning and magic very well. Kill was good for Rotghroths, but otherwise I did end up using Searer and Ice Lances and Essence Orbs most of the time, anyway. Where I'd miss canisters most would be with a Shaper, because then I'd never get Gazers, and so be unable to smirk everything to death. Hey, though: since things have been rebalanced a bit since G2, has anyone actually tried Drakons and Rotghroths? How do they compare with Gazers now? In G2 it seemed they were clearly worse.

Roamers are indeed bad, but I don't remember having any particular problems with my Shaper. You will have trouble fighting six at once with a Guardian, too. And the only reason an Agent won't have trouble is Daze. Did you try Daze with your Shaper? Did you try to avoid engaging all six at once? It's quite rare that you are really forced to fight so many rogues simultaneously. There is almost always some way of using corners and ranges to fight only a couple at a time.

Depends on your stats. Agents get (or should get) high enough MM and SC that their Dazes are very powerful. My sword-swinging Guardian was lucky to daze even a couple of enemies. But even he could get very good mass immobilization from a Madness Gem.

I revive this topic to settle it. The first post has been edited into what I think is the final version. I do not believe there are three Purified Essences in the game, despite a few people claiming that there are. I haven't been able to find more than two, despite looking carefully in my last run through the game. And nobody has ever been able to say where the third one is.

Not to spoil anything, but if you play as a purist, you do get a significantly nicer ending as a loyalist. The differences don't change the world, but I liked them. It did seem worthwhile. A purist doesn't touch canisters, or get shaped or augmented or modified in any way. Training is fine. In G2 you could still get the purist ending if you used no more than ten canisters. (Getting modified for fourth tier magic also counted, but I can't remember how much it counted in terms of canisters.) I don't know what the threshold might be in G3; my Guardian was simon pure, and didn't touch anything weird at all. The purist route is not really such a big deal for a Guardian, but it would probably be quite a burden for Agents and Shapers. Agents, in fact, would be badly hampered. I'm sure you could win the game, perhaps by taking the stealth path instead of battle, but you would probably have to give up clearing the Monastery Caves. EDIT: Mike Montgomery deserves enduring fame for discovering the purist alternative, in G2.

Hmmm. Maybe you're right. I just happen to like the geneforges, and the canisters. But maybe some variety. How about multicolored canisters, that differ in some interesting ways that I can't think of at all right now?

There are two basic directions this kind of discussion can take. We can go 'clear blue sky', dreaming up anything that appeals to us. If there is ever a 'Blades of Geneforge' (though I sure hope they don't call it that), that could be great. Or we can keep in mind that Jeff still has to make a living, so he can't do anything that won't be reasonably commercial over an audience with a wide range of ages. On the whole, I don't think it would be commercially viable for Spiderweb to give up too much continuity with the geneforge series. The stock elements of canisters and geneforges and the various combinations of creatures are popular and expected. If I were in Jeff's shoes, I'd be thinking that if I were going to risk cutting out such basic elements, I might as well give myself the fun of a completely blank canvas, and do something completely different from Geneforge in every way. So, I don't think really basic changes in the games are plausible for Geneforge IV. We can of course hope to see the elements altered and combined in surprising ways that develop new themes. The many technical innovations that are the main advance of G3 open up a lot of possibilities. So my vote would be to put ideas like minotaurs and 'no geneforge' into a thread on 'what I would do with Blades of Geneforge', and leave 'what do you want in G4' for things that Jeff can more easily afford to do in his commercial product.

Even with merely modest luck, by the end of the game you can pick up half a dozen of the things. That's actually good, because combining them with silver necklaces is the only way to turn a decent profit on forging items, as opposed to just selling the components.

To summarize those earlier threads: Parry is different now. There are no Ripostes. Your chance of totally blocking an attack, with that 'tching-tching' sound effect and all, is now about what your Riposte chance was in G2. It happens quite rarely until you get to very high levels in the skill. So it isn't the skill's main effect any more. What Parry does now, mainly, is act as weightless armor. It invisibly reduces the damage you take. This is pretty good, actually. So the bottom line is that Parry is an effective skill, which Guardians especially should take advantage of. It just isn't the gamebreaker it was in G2. And it definitely is not worth sacrificing all your other attributes, when you are initially building your character, just to start the game with a ridiculously high Parry. In G2 that was the dirty trick that made Guardians extremely easy. Doing the same thing in G3 will probably leave you suffering badly on Harmony Isle.

Venom batons are also nice to use on the Creator, so that it keeps on taking damage while you are dealing with its worms. Searer is even better if you've got it. I'd prefer a ranged attack on it, because its melee attack is pretty strong in retaliation. Daze might be good, too, to hold the worms still while you whittle down the Creator. That's all I can think of. This is one of the trickier battles, as it should be, so you can't afford to make many mistakes fighting it. I don't know of any miracle strategy that makes it easy, but if you keep your nerve and your wits, and manage to keep landing hits on the Creator occasionally while dealing with the worms, you'll eventually triumph. It can be done with a singleton Guardian on Torment, so it should be quite possible for your character.

Nope. You may want to save red Beautiful Crystals for forging into Icy Crystals, but just sell the rest to anyone you find. You probably want to save all your gems to make wands and crystals with, but otherwise you can just sell them to anyone. Merchants in G3 all have infinite cash, reflecting the active economy of the Ashen Isles. This also means that stuff you sell is promptly resold, and gone for good. I never found the Loyalist research notes quest. Who gives it?