Hume

IMO, magic shaping is a better choice by a large margin. Fire creations may be as good as magic creations, but fire shaping cost 1 more skill points each level, and in GF1, it is very desirable to boost you shaping skill up to 20. Besides, you really don't need to boost your int to more than 10. You end the game around level 20, which means you don't have that much skill points to waste. What makes the matter worse, each two Intelligience points over 10 only works as one. Finally, cheap creation in GF1 are quite effective only if their levels are high enough. I have beat the game with 7 freshly created artillas, with my shaper did nothing but cast haste. On torment.

Ur-Drakons in Geneforge 4 are awesome, while drakons are not. The latter lacks magic resistance which proved to be vital in later game. If GoodOld Jack wants to play a melee fighter, the best choice is servile, which rocks in GF4. As for the question endurance and parry which is more important, you need to invest quite a lot in both skills.

Dragonskin gloves (8% armor, +2 strength, +1 quick action, +5% to melee damage), the mightest Gloves/Gauntlets/Bracers for melee characters, are missing in the list. They can be found in Formello.

Originally Posted By: Y? Bcaus, I dnt knw he's on 3rd Seeing as hume refers to MattP in the third person I'll assume hume isn't him. In order to get permission you need to contact MattP at this email: elementalizard@aol.com (which you can actually find by googling for any avernum or geneforge walkthrough (and if not any then many)) He would be bored to death if people are pesting him with such questions. He has no reason to object. 1, It is freely available to anyone to begin with. 2, I gave him the full credit, and did not change anything. 3, I copy his list to the official spiderweb software site. It is not only not for commecial purposes, if the website benefits from his list, this is the site most entitled to do so. 4, His walkthroughs unsurprisingly used analysis and feedbacks from this site, mine included.

Matt P's list of items to hold: 1 Shackles 3 Curing Elixirs 1 Mortar and Pestle 3 Fine Leather 1 Towel 1 Pipe 1 Tongs 1 Pliers 1 Hammer 1 Graymold 1 Fine Waveblade 2 Vahnatai Cloaks 20 Bags of Meal 20 Bottles of Wine 4 Bottles of Gremlin Wine ~7 Glowing Basalt ~7 Icy Geode ~7 Swamp Nodules ~15 Chitrach Claws Construction items Fine Leather Fine Steel Focusing Crystals Gold Bars (a few) Emeralds (a few) Rubies (a few) Healing Herbs Spiritual Herbs Energetic Herbs Graymold Mandrake Root Sticks (a few) Crystals (a few) Gold necklace (maybe 1) Platinum Ring (maybe 1) Fine waveblade (maybe 1)

Though it is possible to keep your beginning creations to the end on normal difficulty, it is never worth it. Once you get wingbolts, you will not need any lessor creations. Wingbolts rocks in GF4, particularly on Macs, where drakons and ur-drakons does physical damage

Avernum: EftP for iPad has just been released. At the price of 9.99 USD, as Avadon.

This is no secret. Even the king knows that. Levitt is dying because of his illness, the king allows him to take the drug to alleviate his pain. Besides, he will not live much longer, drug addiction will not be too much a problem.

If it is so in other Geneforge games, agents will be more willing to invest in luck. But for guardians and shapers, this difference will change nothing.

Magic shaping is a better choice for GF1 than fire shaping. Not only are magic creatures more essence effective than fire, magic shaping skill is cheaper. I usually boost my magic shaping to level 20. A shaper with 20 magic shaping can make 7 artilas, haste them, and beat the game on torment. Regardless of you equipments or level.

You do not know how to use your table to spend you points. For example, if concerning only melee damage, a total of 104 points, with 8 in hardiness, 6 luck, 12 parry results 53% damage reduction. And there must be something wrong in your calculation

Tell you a secret we all know: Jeff made Avernum 6 that you can refund your points used in unlocking other skill. For example, you put your points into strength and melee, which unlocks blademaster, you put 6 into blademaster. Now before closing the window, you can decrease you strenth and melee, while keeping you skill points invested in blademaster.

Originally Posted By: defen Are creations worthwhile in the long run with very limited investment (to the tune of 3 points in Intelligence and 3-4 in Magic Shaping) for a Warrior? Assume no leveling for the creatins, just creating as needed for tough fights and then absorbing. Should Healing Magic be increased at all? What about Endurance? Creations are of course worthwhile. I'd recommend you to keep you wingbolts once you have them, before that you can play anyway you want. Healing Magic should not be increased with your skill point, while you should put quite some skill points into Endurance.

Originally Posted By: Brocktree A couple of quick thoughts: - Getting luck to 10, and hardiness to 12, before pumping resistance, is skill point efficient. - With an optimal distribution of 150 points between resistance, hardiness, and luck (ignoring pre-reqs), you gain 60% elemental resistance. - At *least* six points in parry is a good investment. - It probably isn't worth unlocking riposte, as even when you do, you will almost always have something better to invest skill points in. Nice job! Resistance does not worth the skill points. It does not work for physical damage. So is reposte, which only works for melee attacks. By the end of game, each party member will have a total of near 300 skill points. Usually about half goes to help survival, and about 50 of which goes to endurance, so 100 or so points to spread to these skills. My choice would be, 10 hardiness, 10 luck, 8 parry, 106 points and will reduce damage by about half. (10 luck because it also provide the important mental resistance and other benefits like bow accuracy)

Let me put it this way. People on this site does not need scenarios to be convinced which built is better. All these skills percentage based, it means it does not matter what damage the attacking opponent does, what you armor is, etc. Introducing them only makes the simple questions complex. The best shopping guide people need is how much additional (damage reduction or life increase) divide the skill points cost for every new levels of the skill. HOUSE of S did an excenllent job http://www.spiderwebforums.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=189322#Post189322 , the table in the middle of the thread

Quote: This is a thought experiment. I'm trying to gain some sort of idea as to what distribution of skill points would provide the player with a 'survivable' PC. You are proving too little, if you do it this way. You showed that spending all your points in hardiness/luck is inferior to parry/reposte, all all points into edurance. But clearly all three options are far from optimal, so there can be little value in your analysis. Instead, if you assume already invested 50 points on all three categories, and have an additional 20 points to spend, don't you think your finding will be more benefitcial? Quote: Not if your armour is already 70%. You still do not get the point. Okay, if your armor is 0, you are fighting someone does 20 damage. Hardiness/luck reduce that to 16, by 20 percent. Now your armor reached 80%, you are fighting someone does 400 damage. It will be 80 damage without hardiness/luck, 64 damage with them. The point is, the percentage of damage reduction remains the same. You don't think your foes does less and less damage as the game progress because you get better armor? Quote: As better armour makes the number difference less significant, I would say that the effect is *not* the same. Spending 150 skill points to block an additional 50 points of damage is a waste, when you can use those skill points to purchase 200hp of health. Suppose a boss does 100 damage, your priest heals 50 damage. Block an additional 50 points means you can fight till he die (or your priest out of mana), 200hp only means you can last 4 more rounds.

I am quite sure that in the Windows version I played, parry skill can parry 2%*(skill level) for both single targeted spell, and multi-targeted spell (i.e. lightning spray). Not 1%

Originally Posted By: Brocktree The optimal combination is 13 parry, and 10 riposte Chance to parry/riposte in melee 57%. Chance to not parry/riposte is 43% Chance to parry/riposte ranged 41%. Chance to not parry/riposte is 59% Chance to parry/riposte spells 22%. Chance to not parry/riposte is 78% Again, I don't think your calculation is right. Chance to parry/riposte both ranged and non-AOE spells is 26%. Chance to not parry/riposte is 74% Chance to parry/riposte AOE spells is 0%. Chance to not parry/riposte is 100% Riposte works only for incoming melee attack. Targeted spell is not treated differently from ranged attack. (2% per point for both)

Trust me, you assumping is outrageous. It is insame to invest 150 points into endurance or hardiness/luck. Now suppose it is 30 points to invest, hardiness/luck combinition gives 23% all damamge reduction plus 12% mental/stun resistance, while parry gives 21% melee, 14% ranged, and 0% against area-effect spells. Quote: The multiplicative nature of Avernum's armour system is what kills damage reduction skills. Give that you are likely to have at least 70% in armour mid-game, and will hit 85%+ with wards, even a very large investment in these skills will make very little difference. You are doing maths wrong. First, if you have 70% in armor, wards will only bring it up to 79%. Second, if your hardiness/luck gives you 20% damage reduction, they always do so, although better armor makes the number difference less significant, the EFFECT always remains the same, unless you reach the cap. Third, the cap is nothing to worry about. My party are divine touched, with all the best protective gears, still, none reach the cap. Only the armors fighters reach the cap when steel ward is used. I do not use steel ward by then anyway, because element damage poses a greater threat and none of my parth member reach the cap for element even if warded. Another advantage for hardiness/luck investment is healing/regeneration. Edurance does best in helping survive one round. Then if your prist can only restore a small portion of it, do you think you can survive the next? For parry, if you successfully parried, you cannot benefit from them

Diseased mushrooms should be added to the list! I picked them up, later seeing that they are diseaed, can neither be eaten nor sold, throw them away, and now I cannot find them any more...

Originally Posted By: Vempele How much damage does deflect deflect? Over 80%, in my experience

Parry is actually a combination of 3 skills which work independently. When your parry level is 10, you get 50% parry, 30% deflect and 10% reposte. When parry level is 14, it is 50% parry, 50% deflect and 30% reposte. Reposte works only for melee attacks, while the other two works both for melee and ranged. Reposte overrides parry and parry overrides deflect. So when you parry level is 18, you reposte half melee attacks, parry half of the remaining half, deflect half of the remaining quarter, with 1/8 to take full damage. Reposte does not work for ranged, so at parry level 14, you take full damage everyone out of four of ranged attacks.

Originally Posted By: Triumph I would aim for 18 or 20. Really truly. You will find some items that can help, though. Any point in parry beyond 18 is a waste. Actually, 14 levels of parry is the maximum for parrying ranged attacks, parry works this way: PL means parry level 5% multiplies PL of parry(ignore damage), at the maximum of 50% at level 10 5% multiplies (PL-4) of deflect(ignore most of damage), at the maximum of 50% at level 14, 5% multiplies (PL-8) of riposte (ignore melee damage and damage the attacker), at the maximum of 50% at level 18 The 3 work independently. Reposte does what the other two do, and parry does better than deflect does, so if more than one skill is triggered, only the stronger works.

Originally Posted By: Nim My cryoa does good damage but can't really take much itself before going rogue or dying (this is on tricky btw). I guess this will only get worse ? Seems that keeping it alive might be a really pain or involve loads of reloads ? Same would probably go for a vlish/any other sub tier-4 creation with the exception of drayks ? Yes, it will only get worse. Did you get your cryoa as soon as possible, ie, before leaving south geneforge? Another reason may be, the AI of enemies attack those latest attack them. So your sevile acts first, then your cryoa, if that does not result a kill, it gets retaliated. My lifecrafter had nothing but 4 cryoas in chapter2 (also on tricky) finds it easy to keep them alive. Originally Posted By: HOUSE of S Wingbolts are the best creations in G4. If you're playing on a Mac, Drayks are about as good (their breath attack does physical damage on macs, which is better overall than doing fire damage). A swarm of wingbolts is pretty much unstoppable. Wingbolts are great, but not that great on PCs. they don't resist fire, which is a problem. Ur-drakons are the best, their high resistance to fire is also more important on PCs.

Originally Posted By: Lingti That would make it possible to play it on my phone, at least chained as it is to a mac or a windows comp, I get some reprieve, which has got to be good for the angels health. Surely, it would run slowly on Java than it would natively? A Java program can run half as fast as a C++ program. Considering the low requirement of Spiderwebsoftware games, the differences are not even noticeable.