Student of Trinity

You're not doing anything wrong. There are pockets of extreme difficulty in the game, where you have to either come back later, or unload most of your reserve of good pods and crystals, and use expert tactics in doing so. Holes in the ground almost always lead to areas of greater difficulty. The second set of tests in the Testing Ground, the ones that improve the bracelet: these are just really hard, and they get steadily worse. The Servant Mind does tell you that you are probably too frail for them; you should listen, and put them off for much later. Getting through all of them is very worthwhile, at least for Shapers, but the rewards for only completing a few stages of the golem trials are probably not great enough to make it worthwhile pushing yourself to beat them at low levels.

Dried Herbs -- on second island (Harmony) Research Notes -- if you talk a bit rebel -- on third island (Dhonal's) Shaper Equipment -- on fourth island (Gull) I think that's it, actually. In other words, most of these quests come rather late in the game. If you are really keen, you can save all the relevant items and drag them from island to island until you finally get to cash them in one giant spree of money and experience. Or just kind of forget about them.

Ahh, I'm blanking on his name, but he's that guy who lives in the cross-shaped building in the woods, in the zone with a bridge and lots of mine chains. He wants you to give him those mysterious notes from the mines. (There's a better deal for them later, though.)

1. Yes. Rob the mine-meister. 2. Click on the word 'abilities' at the top right of your stats page.

There are Shapers and then there are Shapers. That is, there are foot-soldier Shapers like Erika, stuck in the Main Army Camp, junior executives like Diwaniya, and mighty lords like Rahul -- who actually has the title 'Lord'. Just how does Shaper society organize itself? What does it take to get onto the Shaper Council? Is the system a meritocracy, or is it an aristocracy of some sort? I wouldn't be at all surprised if the actual rulers of Shaper society had shaped themselves into superiority, and then concealed this violation of taboo from the masses of lesser Shapers. This kind of corruption at the top of Shaper society might go a long way to explaining why so many Shapers seem to go off the deep end, doing reckless things in pursuit of personal power. It might also open up an interesting new kind of factional conflict: honest Shapers versus corrupt elite Shapers. The elite Shapers would actually turn out to have far more in common with their Drakon enemies than they could ever afford to admit. And the 'honest' rank-and-file Shapers in turn would have some common ground with the ordinary humans and serviles who just want to throw off the unnatural Shaper yoke.

That would be it; I only played one Rebel game. Thanks. I can't remember now whether I wore it or not. Probably.

Hey, where in G3 can you get the Forbidden Band? Maybe I saw it once in an earlier game ... or did I?

How could I forget the Gruesome Charm (shudder)? But it's completely worth it. Just try dropping it before hitting an Endurance canister.

Ah, I was forgetting that we now have an influx of new Windows players. But I don't think mentioning those few cryptic names is really much of a spoiler. Anyone who even knows what they might mean knows enough to already know that things like that are bound to be in the game somewhere. Here, though, is a SPOILER answering DV's question: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . It takes a Mech of 20. I'm planning to bring every doggone Mech-raising item in the game in with me in my backpack, and put them all on just for the spawner job. That's +2 each from Tinker's Gloves and Infiltrator's Ring, and +1 each from Infiltrator's Charm, Shield, Vest, and Cloak, and +1 from Tinker's Bauble, for a total of +9. So you only really need a measly Mech of 11.

Don't wait in order to save your enhancing stones, because there are lots more ahead. Go ahead and enhance a bronze sword -- by the time you find an iron one you'll also have found more stones. If you happen to have a really good item that you're going to want to use for a long time, though, you might wait until you get hold of a really good enhancement for it, because you can only give it one. The market value of the enhancing stones is a pretty fair measure of their value, and the best ones are worth 500 to 1000.

Maybe that's my problem: I've never been able to get any creations to keep up with my Guardians, either. I think maybe it's because the Agent-style speed tactics are entirely sufficient for beating the game with a solo Guardian, if you pump your personal combat stats enough, but they're incompatible with caring for creations. I mean, my solo canister-free Guardian just whacked Akhari Blaze toe-to-toe on Torment, using 18 AP, a life-draining Claymore, and a number of Steel Spines. This has convinced me that solo melee Guardians are as capable in G3 as ever. Even my Agent had more trouble with Akhari, because he had her beat on Quick Action and she couldn't stand a single hit from him. My Guardian just shrugged off all his attacks and kept trimming him down. I have yet to see how he fares against the Alpha Creator, but I expect he'll be fine. He has built up enough Mech to shut off the Monastery Caves spawners.

The weird thing is that you've gotten to the mad creator at such a low level. Did you just rush straight to it by the quickest route? I've just started a solo Guardian, and he is level 8 after cleaning out Kentia (including basement) and the southernmost zones (including Sea Caves). At the rate he's going I seriously expect him to be a good two or three levels higher by the time he reaches the Greenwood boss. You do need more Spellcraft. If you're going to put points into all three magic types and healing, you can get the same effect cheaper through SC. You might want to raise Quick Action some -- it is a much cheaper way to ensure that you always act first than raising Dexterity. Your point distribution looks fine to me otherwise, though. Have you bought all the training you can in the various spells? That also helps. Speed is good, and don't hesitate to abuse it by hiding and making peace after one shot, then confronting the enemy again, repeating so as to get many unanswered attacks in a row. War Blessing helps with spell attacks too. And you do often need to be a bit sneaky as an Agent -- retreat when you first bump an enemy, so that one or two of the group chase you, instead of engaging the whole group -- that sort of thing.

Naw, stunning will take effect right away. Maybe you're thinking of Slowing, which only drops your AP every other round.

After three Auras of Flames from a high level Agent, anything in the game is too stunned to move, and you attack again right away.

If your Agent is weak on Normal, you are doing something wrong. Apply the standard drill: MakeNoCreations, MaxBattleMagicAndSpellcraft, KeepQuickActionHigh, DazeAllGroups, FryEverythingBeforeItKnowsYouExist.

Anyone played both G2 and G3 and then gone back to G1? How does good ol' Sucia Island look, after you've seen the Ashen Isles? Better? Worse? Better or worse because of the added context of knowing the future, or for other reasons?

Bah. There is no unique metric, so the question is not well posed (math jargon for 'it doesn't have a real answer'). Everyone wins just as certainly. Not even how fast you win is uniquely defined. Agents with high INT can indeed pull half a dozen Auras in a row, roasting anything faster than anyone; but then they need to rest quite a while before the next battle. Guardians take longer to whittle down the first set of bad guys, but they're ready for the next set right away, so they're a lot faster to win two battles in a row. Shapers are somewhere in between, since their highest firepower creations also take time to recover. Overall they can be a lot faster than the others in clearing entire zones, because they can spread out to scout -- unless you measure duration in individual turns rather than group turns, in which case Shapers are far the slowest. There are individual zones that I have found more difficult or more easy for one class than for the others, but I really don't see any overall imbalance, once you know what you're doing. The only exception might be in G3, where Guardians seem to have an extended rough patch on Harmony Isle; but this too might just have been that I didn't know what I was doing.

But call it 'Geneforge IV' just to suck in the customers?

The Essence Aegis gives +1 INT, I believe; and there is the Skein of Wisdom. Then eventually there is the Omnicharm, though by then it doesn't matter. And it can sometimes be worth swapping the Girdle of Genius even for the Creator's Belt, at least for a while. One point to note about stat-lowering items: if you are going to use a canister that might raise a stat, and your stat is currently at zero, you might want to drop the items that are lowering it before touching the canister. I think I've had problems with canisters not actually raising my Endurance, and the only problem I could see that might account for it is that my Endurance was zero when I hit the canister. (It did NOT seem to be just that my actual Endurance was negative so the gain didn't show up: I tried to check for this, and I thought I ruled it out.)

I'm not sure human speech can avoid vowels, but a lot of alphabets, including all the ancient ones I've heard of, don't represent them with letters. You just fill them in from context, th sm wy y cn d wth nglsh. The rational modern alphabets created in relatively recent times, for languages that have only recently become written, can be quite elegant. Eskimo languages (like Inuktitut) have only three vowels, and they always follow consonants, so the letters all represent consonants, but each letter can be written in three orientations -- literally turning sideways or upside down -- to indicate which vowel follows it.

Yeah, most people agree specialization is the way to go. This means people usually choose either Fire or Magic Shaping, and the poor old Battle creations get left out. Most people think they're just not as good, though there are some Clawbug fans. I prefer Magic, because I like attacking from range and I find Artilas and Vlish very effective. Vlish especially are clearly the best tier-two creation. Fire is good because you have both ranged and melee at every tier, but the creatures tend to cost more in Essence. As to gear, the list of decent choices is very long, but the principles are pretty obvious. For a classic 'zookeeper' Shaper, it's everything for the creations, and your own needs don't count. First of all get gear that raises your Intelligence. Next in priority, wear stuff that buffs up your creations, even if it drags all your own stats down to zero. Apart from collecting all the crystals you possibly can, and maybe raising your Dex or Missile Weapons a couple of points to keep them reasonably effective, forget completely about your own offense. You can throw in the odd spell or baton or crystal attack to finish off wounded enemies, but your main offense must be from your creations. One point to note is that you only need to wear stuff that raises Shaping Skills at the actual moment you are creating something. Leave it in town, dress up to make a new critter, then dump it and put on other stuff for actual operations.

For Agents, even Greta is strictly for companionship. You're an army of one. I find the same for Guardians, though other people somehow manage to play Guardians well with a few creations. But with a Shaper, the whole point is to make a little monster army! Doing that is one of the main distinctive things about the Geneforge games! I say, if you want to play with a single creation, play a Guardian. If you're a Shaper, make the best army you can (even if that sometimes does mean just a couple of tough beasties). And if that makes the game too easy, crank up the difficulty level.

SPOILERS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . There are some non-finishing endings, like your death, or what you get if you just leave the Drypeak mountains as soon as you possibly can. In addition to the Loyalist ending, there is a non-aligned ending where you kill Barzahl and the top Takers, and destroy the Geneforge, without joining any sects. The non-aligned ending is not actually much different from the Loyalist ending, though.

Dunno the exact figure, but it really isn't a big deal. Good creations survive fine and fight very well, and the couple of levels of experience you'll miss by the end of the game represent much less of a sacrifice in total power than you would be making by foregoing the extra creations. More creations is actually nonlinearly better, in a sense, because it multiplies the effect of group spells without changing their energy and essence costs.

The Searing Artila and Cryoa are probably well out of their depth on Gull. I'd say absorb them. You might want to evolve the Vlish a few points up. My Shaper used four or five creations plus Greta most of the time. That was on Torment, but I don't see any real reason to suffer along with just one on Normal just because you can. The XP penalty is quite small, and the loss of power that results is amply made up for by the extra thingpower. So I'd get some more creations. Glaahks work well in pairs, and the more Vlish the better -- though you should probably be trading them in for Drayks by now. For me, Vlish start to fade well before you can get Gazers, and Glaahks don't have ranged attacks, so Drayks need to fill in for a while around your stage of the game. If you need more essence, invest in more intelligence. Then just use Mass Energize all the time and you should be fine.