Student of Trinity

Would you believe it: one of the cupboards in Khyryk's Tower has a spoon that acts as a Puresteel Soulblade!

Well, would you believe that it acts as a Steel Dagger?

Would you believe that it's worth 1 coin?

Sorry, this is not actually about an Easter egg utensil.

The major artifact choice is between the Creator's Belt and the Crystalline Shroud, because pretty early in the game you get enough ingredients to make either one of these two, but you don't get the second Deep Focus Orb until you slay the Alpha Creator, at the far end of the Monastery Caves, which is probably the toughest fight in Geneforge 3.

The relative payoffs:

Creator's Belt gives +20% armor (enormous for a belt) and gives +2 to all four creation attributes.

Crystalline Shroud gives only 16% armor (quite low for a breastplate), but +2AP, +3 to creation Strength, +30% stun resistance (decent), and +12% Hostile Effect resistance (way better than All-Protector's measly +5%).

For a Shaper, the better creation buffing of the Belt looks like it wins, but the Shroud puts up some fight with its Hostile Effect and Strength buff. For an Agent, the Creator's Belt is practically useless, so the Shroud is a no-brainer.

For a Guardian I'm thinking that the Shroud probably wins in the end, since choosing it amounts to picking offence over defence: much lower armor and creation defense, but much better attack. Plus the opportunity cost of the CB is fairly high, because there are other good belts available early in the game. My only concern is that the CS is terrible armor for a melee Guardian in the midgame.

Any ideas?

In the Shaper world, the walls really do have ears.

Yeah, Eyebeasts are only bad if you don't have tons of AP or stun resistance, which I and my creations usually do by the time I meet any. (Having said that, the G3 Eyebeasts have wicked dazing ability, high magic resistance, and a stronger melee attack, so I think they're a bit tougher than in G2. On the other hand, G3 doesn't have anything like the pack of five Eyebeasts that you get in Inner Gazak-Uss. And G3 Gazers have similar upgrades, so they still seem a better bargain than Eyebeasts.)

Gazers always pack a wallop. It's true that Rotghroths hit a bit harder, but they have to get to you first, so you can generally postpone their attacks by stepping around a bit. Gazers just have to see you, so as soon as you see them, you have to kill them.

It wasn't really worthwhile for anyone but Guardians even in G2; the point is that even for Guardians, who can easily get really high Parry, it now seems a poor investment.

I still think that the Guardian needs to be good in melee in order to be different enough from an Agent. High damage from missiles is still too much like high damage from spells, except that when Agents run out of spells they can just ... wait. The difference of having to scrounge or make missiles is a difference of tedium as much as in anything else.

Higher difficulties do not raise experience awards. They just make the game more difficult. Geneforge games on Torment are really quite different from Normal in a lot of ways. You really have to think about a lot of battles, and you often have to explore in combat mode because you have to make contact on your own terms every time. There's a lot more suspense when you're creeping up on something that can kill you with one hit.

You get to see the same story on lower difficulties, of course, and if you aren't quite familiar with how the games work then Torment really is unfair on yourself. But if you can handle Normal easily, give Torment a try. It's more fun once you get used to it.

Thanks for the stats. You should include the weights, though: that's what makes the Crystalline Shroud better for Agents. (Protection doesn't matter because you never get attacked, but you can't afford to be encumbered.) Does the Creator's Belt really give armor 20%?

The Creator's Belt takes Blood Poison and a Deep Focus Orb, no purified essence. So are you sure you found a third Purified Essence?

The major objects (first draft, needs correction):

On Greenwood:

Blood Poison: dropped by the venemous artila in the caves under Kentia South Gate on Greenwood.

On Harmony:

Crystalline Fibers (1): crypt under West Dock.

Solidified Flame (1): storeroom under San Ru.

On Dhonal's:

Deep Crystal: in the Inner Purification Plant.

Deep Focus Orb (1): in Spharon's back room

Unmelting Ice: Darkstone Core, SW corner.

Crystalline Fibers (2): somewhere??

On Gull:

Purified Essence (1): bedroom in Khor's Deep (?)

Solidified Flame (2): in Maker's End somewhere (?)

Demon Claws (1): Khyryk's Tower, in a back room.

On Spears:

Drakon Skin (1): Orois Blaze, breeding valley

Drakon Skin (2): vatbrood Drakon, Forest of Spires

Demon claw (2): Benerii-Eo, demon-golem NE corner.

Pure Crystal Shard: Benerii-Eo, Litalia's bedroom

In Monastery Caves:

Purified Essence (2): Ratlord Eye drops it

Crystalline Fibers (3): somewhere

Deep Focus Orb (2): Alpha Creator drops it

Drakon Skin (3): boss Drakon in NE corner

What objects you can make when (assuming you find enough Demon's Bile for the elixirs!)

You can't make any artifact until Dhonal's Isle, where you can make

the Creator's Belt (if you give up the chance of making the Crystalline Shroud before the end of the game), or

the All-Protector.

On Gull you can make:

the Emerald Chestguard (if you postpone making the

Avenger's Ring from near the end of the game

to very near the end);

the Crystalline Shroud (if you give up making the

Creator's Belt until the end of the game);

the Essence Aegis (if you give up making the

Infiltrator's Ring until the end of the

game);

On Spears you can make:

the Lightning Girdle;

the Infiltrator's Ring (if you haven't made the

Essence Aegis);

the Avenger's Ring.

Practically speaking, the All-Protector is always worth making since even if you don't use it you can sell it for a lot. It's probably not worth pushing hard to get it early, because it's very tough to get the Unmelting Ice if you can't take the golem monstrosity, and it isn't such a revolutionary item to have anyway.

The Creator's Belt is well worth making for a Shaper, but an Agent should skip it in favor of making the Crystalline Shroud sooner. For a Guardian the issues are how much you use creations, whether you're willing to postpone the Avenger's Ring a bit in order to use the Emerald Chestguard instead of the Crystalline Shroud, and whether you'd rather have some other attribute-buffing Girdle instead anyway.

The Crystalline Shroud is a must-do for the Agent: get it as soon as you can because it's fantastic.

A Shaper is going to have the Creator's Belt instead. A Guardian who forewent the Belt, and is willing to sacrifice some of the Emerald Chestguard's protection in order to get the Avenger's Ring early on the Isle of Spears, will definitely want the Crystalline Shroud for its +2AP.

The Essence Aegis is a fine item for anyone, unless you are planning to use ultra-high Leadership and Mechanics to good effect in the final major missions, in which case you'll want to hold off so you can make the Infiltrator's Ring soon after getting into Benerii-Eo.

The Lightning Girdle is great for Agents and Guardians, and you can make it early on the Isle of Spears. The Rings can only be made quite late in the game, after penetrating Benerii-Eo.

In my opinion the only really amazing artifacts are the Shroud and the Chestguard. The Creator's Belt is a bit hard to notice, but probably makes quite a difference, so it's the most important one for a Shaper. The two shields are nice but not game-changing, and the Rings are both excellent but come so late in the game that they don't end up making that much difference.

The Talisman of Might is next best thing to an artifact. It needs a gold necklace, a purifying elixir, and a Rotghroth fang.

You're saying that it's good that crystals are now valuable at least to somebody? I guess I'd agree. I always used to love Icy Crystals in the early game, then get some use out of Spray and Swarm Crystals a bit later, but soon forget all about them because they'd start to just miss all the time, or do negligible damage if they hit. With my Agent and Shaper in G3 I did the same, but it's beginning to look as though with my Guardian I'll need to keep using them. Which is fine, since there are a lot of them in the game and it's a shame for them to go to waste.

So far Guardians really do seem a fair bit tougher to play in G3 on Torment. Partly this is because I munchkined out initially by pumping Parry to 10, and in retrospect this was a waste of points I now wish had gone into Endurance, Dexterity and Missile Weapons. Anyway, even with my buddy Alwan along, the Vlish Woods on Harmony was extremely tough for my Guardian, where it was mostly a pleasant stroll in the park viewing Vlish-stains for my previous two characters.

So far I am still finding that my melee attack is very solid. It seems to be roughly comparable to an Icy Crystal, but I don't throw away my Steel Dagger with each strike. Maybe once I live down my ill-conceived Parry obsession, and get some points into better skills, things will ease up. I actually found it quite helpful to create a Thahd recently. So it may be that Guardians in G3 will turn out to be heavy users of equipment, including missile weapons, who also keep a few creations around.

As long as my melee attack never becomes pointless, I'd agree with Delicious Vlish that the new Guardian is much better. The G2 'Colonel Matrix' singleton Guardian was fun, but a bit too easy with high Parry, and too much like an Agent in playing style (just substitute 'charge' for 'Firebolt').

No, I'm afraid not. Sorry. Minotaurs just don't really make sense for the Geneforge universe. Sholai, sure. Maybe even a lost race of independent Drayk ancestors, who once learned to shape humans, but banned them into extinction because they were too willful and intelligent (*slaps self*). But minotaurs ... I mean, why minotaurs? Why not at least Ornk-lords?

Eyebeasts are the SUVs of G2. You get them just to show off the fact that you have more essence than you know what to do with. Gazers, however, are death with a smirk.

Just consider how you react when you encounter a bunch of different rogues together. If one of them is a Gazer, you do everything you can to take it out first, because you know that if you don't, something on your side is probably going to die. No other enemy has that pucker factor.

Drayks are great if you're on an essence budget, but they're so Sucia Island. This year, everyone who can afford them is making Gazers.

So it seems Parry has been weakened a lot in G3: with Parry of 10, my early game Guardian is getting a parry chance of around 20%.

What it looks like is that the cheap cost of Parry as a skill is sort of misleading, because to get anything worthwhile you really need a lot of points in it: 10 is the new 4.

But, if you put it like that, I guess it's okay. Or?

Yeah, he just 'escapes the castle'. I didn't find him much help: he couldn't find Rahul to attack even though I was fighting Rahul right around the corner from Dryss. Plus by the time I found Rahul I had already cleared out most of the guards.

Having missile options is great, but there is still something wrong if I can do more damage with a javelin than with a Guardian's Claymore. The ideal would be for hand-to-hand to do more damage, but not so much more that it wasn't often worth standing back and thinning out the enemy from range before closing.

Could any betatesters maybe enlighten us about the thinking that went on over this issue?

In the early game missile weapons, especially the crystals, seem an amazing deal: good fast ranged damage cheap. Just one or two points in Ranged Weapons and you seem to be a decent archer (er, crystaler?) for a long time. But you do have to keep building up your Missile Weapons, or you find them really petering out in the later stages of the game, as their damage plateaus and they start missing more and more often.

It's good to hear that missile weapons become worthwhile for the Guardian, since that doubles the Guardian tactical options. But it's disappointing to hear that melee is really poor now, because I think you deserve some premium in return for taking the risk of getting in close, and expending the AP needed to do so.

Actually I think that it is harder in the end-game for Shapers, because they have to use an army of creatures. That means that it's really hard to do the shoot-and-duck manoeuvre with all of them -- there aren't that many handy corners at every fight. And it's also really hard to get all their dexterities high enough to do the infinite-AP trick, or get their energies high enough to exploit it. In the later stages of the game there are lots of fast enemies that you can just mow whittle down with a fast Agent or Guardian, but which always get their licks in at your creatures.

Ah, but having said that, what am I saying? The Drakons do keep blasting on my Gazers, in a way my Agent never let them, but my Gazers laugh at the Drakons' piddling damage, and cut them down with their counterstrikes. After a bunch of fights my Gazers run out of energy, but so did my Agent; the trip back to the essence pool is just a bit more tedious with a squad than with a singleton.

I guess all I'm saying is that it seemed harder, because the enemies sort of looked like they were actually fighting back. In reality, they didn't stand a chance; even when the Alpha Creator had six deadly monsters stacked up against me at a time and my Gazers were running low on juice, the fact was that the Gazers were so darn tough, they could just suck up the damage for a few rounds, using their melee attacks, until they powered up enough to finish the fight with ranged blasts. Plus my pair of experienced and Essence-Armored Ur-Glaahks were good at picking up the slack while the Gazers wheezed.

It was an exciting battle with the Shaper, and I did lose Greta; but in retrospect I don't think it was nearly as close as it seemed. With the Agent it was sort of tense but monotonous: ducking and blasting, again and again and again, with the only suspense lying in whether my energy would last. Once it became clear that it would, the thrill pretty much faded.

It is only killing the brood that upsets them, I believe; Khossos didn't seem to be a problem. I undid the brood-killing by saveloading, then went in and out of Icy End many times before they suddenly went ballistic.

I did kill him, but Icy End was still cool with me after that. Killing his vat-brood riled them, so I went back to a save before that. But killing Khossos himself seemed to be karmically neutral.

That's the guy. I guess I should have stepped to him; sounds like a nice dialog.

I still don't know just how I put my foot in my mouth for Icy End.

Sheesh, what else did I do? I opened up the Benerii-Eo south gate; but the guards nearby didn't mind. I walked through that snippy Drakon's little canister lab to get there, but he didn't mind, even when I ate his canisters (well, I did that behind his back). (When I first met him before that he gave me a dialog in which the only response I got, in my canister-mad state, was a challenge, but I just clicked out of it and he ignored me thereafter.)

At the moment I'm taking a breather before delivering a package to Lord Rahul, in this charming little resort behind the Monastery of Tears. The shopping is great but the service sets a new low. (And I have to say I'm finding it quite a bit tougher with my Shaper, with Greta, two Ur-Glaahk meat-shields and three Gazers, than I found it with my singleton Agent last game; on the other hand, last game I left it for last, so I was higher level.)

Ah, I told the Servant Mind in the Mushroom Cave to unlock the doors to the Vat Core for me. That's silly if that is what did it.

Forgiveme etc. don't work, so I must have done something really bad.

I seem to have angered Icy End (as a rebel), and they won't forgive me. The only bad thing I did was clear out the Vat Core. Okay, I guess killing all their golems was bad. Akhari Blaze and Litalia don't mind, though, so why is Icy End so upset? It's a bit annoying, because I really wanted to get that piece of cake, and now I'll never find out what it would have done.

Is there any way I could have gotten the Left Access Bracelet without angering Icy End?

After you kill Orois Blaze, Vrabel doesn't acknowledge that you have fulfilled his quest. Hit shift-D, then type 'sdf 81 1 1'. Now he'll praise your valor and give you the next quest, which is to kill some dead meat.